A Thought ~ 19: Numbers

On an earlier occasion, I suggested a Wildebeest's Theorem. At the heart of The Book of Numbers, I think, is, allegorically, the notion that numbers count; and that numbers are a thing.

Numbers are the promise of the future -- of surviving long enough for the species to be in it, still. It's not simply that there's safety in numbers; but also, crucially, that number (number) has the power to push back danger -- and even to crush it. That's the flip side (the understated aspect) of the Wildebeest's theorem.

Numbers are, in a seemingly tautological fashion, the reason why we count. There would be no need for it if everything and everywhere were a singularity. Numbers are a strength, as all armies know. And all snipers. Conversely, they are in certain instances seen as a weakness and a threat to stability and progress, as when there are "too many mouths." Too many noisemakers. Too many cooks. Too much plastic, even.

Numbers may be a tyranny, and a weapon against it -- a sure tyranny against tyranny. We pit number against number. In many fields now, and in all team sports, an equality of number is a prerequisite for legitimate contest. And for its conclusive end.

It is with numbers that, in important ways, we measure material deprivation and wealth; and determine winner and loser, failure and success, progress and regress -- and even realize our destiny.

Numbers are a code with which we contemplate and master complexity and great mass. Numbers are in the spirit -- of Genesis -- when/where God instructs Adam and Eve (Them Africans) to go forth and multiply number with number, and so to dominate:

"Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and every living thing that moves on the earth."

It is with numbers that the human species will do what it is that destiny demands of it. In the universe. In the multiverse, if you please.














Updated: September 8 and 13, 2017

A Thought ~ 16: The Music Ramrod

Renaissance:Music must surely be a/the ramrod by means of which Africa will gain/regain its glorious place in the cultural world. And if not the world, the universe.

Spetxa One by C4Pedro                                                                

Kelele za Chura by Chege ft. Nandy                                                               

               

Leg Over by Mr. Eazi                                                                                                                         

King Kong Remix by Vector ft, Phyno x Reminisce x Classiq x Uzi                                                           

Nana by Diamond Platnumz ft. Mr. Flavour                                                                                          

Dorobucci by The Mavins (Don Jazzy et al)                                                                                  

Dance For Me by Eugy and Mr. Eazi                                                                                                                                                                                                         

ARCHIVE: Toward a Theory of the Memetic Sphere

ABSTRACT:

Three basic objectives are pursued in this paper. One, to outline a theory of the memetic sphere. Some have called it the ideosphere, but none has dwelt upon the similitudes by means of which it reflects the celestial sphere, which in turn serves as its 'model'. 

Two, to show that an expanding memetic sphere is in actuality the centrifugal afterglow of a now permanent information explosion, which in turn feeds on it. A theory of the memetic sphere is thus a theory of information explosion. 

Three, to demonstrate that the way for individuals and groups to stay afloat  in an information cauldron, which human society has become, is to establish a computer-based network connectivity to transform 'Planet Earth' (otherwise a 'Wide Area') into a symbolic LAN (Local Area Network). This symbolism is, indeed, already ingrained in a popular catch-phrase in cyberspace, which says: "Think globally, act locally". A theory of information explosion consequently evolves into a theory of network connectivity... 

CLICK HERE TO READ THE WHOLE ABSTRACT AND PAPER




PS: A subsequent, shorter, version of this paper was published in Hekima: Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Volume 2 Number 2 of February 2005.

Mutations

Mutations are
The culturally-framed,
Problem-induced
Inventions, or
Deviations,
Of the genetic
Universe.

















Note: 'Mutation' is a meme. Culture is a meme-cluster, But the two don't/shouldn't drive the thinker into a conceptual loop/pool.

Is/Was Star KIC 8462852 an Alien Megastructure?

I suppose Sarah Kaplan's account sums up the awe and the questions with which we humans have always encountered a truly new phenomenon at a distance. But Star KIC 8462852 got me really thinking: Is it truly an alien megastructure? Are we in the cusp of another Galileo moment? This is it, is it? Is our view of ourselves and the universe and creation just about to change forever?

KIC 8462852 is some 1,814 light years away, though. Thus, we're told, the images we're reading about are 1,400+ years old, as light travels! But that's recent, compared to the Egyptian Pryamids at Giza, or even Stonehenge.

So who knows what an "odd display" of the 6th century A.D. might look like in a light display of right now? (Pity, we on earth would have to wait until the 35th century A.D. to know) [Click here for a Sixth Century Timeline on Earth . Pity, we have no feasible prognosis for the 35th century A.D.]

READ MORE: Sarah Kaplan (October 2015) "The star that has serious scientists talking about an alien megastructure

SETI: "...this material is not simply a planet.. [so may what we're seeing be] "a phalanx of orbiting solar panels (a so-called Dyson swarm) that block light from the star"? 

READ: Galileo Galilei Timeline

MicroFiction: Fable

1. Deep in the forest, his bow quivering with unspent energy, his stone things sharp as ever, he heard a strange voice behind the trees urge him to to to to to... GO!  

All he could see were tall, tall trees -- swaying in an eerie sort of windy circumstance. That made his head go round. 

Go round the trees though he stood still, his arrows restless to, to, to go. Go after a certain, unsettling, radiant heat-source. A certain heartbeat, as he thought might be it. At one tree, a spot in its trunk flattened as by a clever hand, and colourful. And he could see strange faces and hear unknown voices and noise there on that carved flatness. Say -- GO! 

Which could neither see nor hear. Him! Nor them! Selves!

Yet all that was so long ago one wondered if one wasn't moving in forbidden spirals and into rogue Black(er) Holes, thru which 1 (one) might yet crack int O and out O the big and bigger egg's (s)hell. The universe's. The one verse! And see more than was meant to be seen in all those pixels. And, so, lose all hope(fulness).

Then, in slow suddenness, he was on his way home, at last. Over theeeeere, in the mist. Oba! Oba! Beyond the hump-free. Which he'd known for so brief a moment one wondered where home could really be, if it could. Really was. Still. Past all the distance runners, and all that! Nay, all distance! Way, way past Time. As if all of a sudden, again! As if all of Time, again, was past. Past that very same Cygnus, alas, and toward that fabulous, some-time dimming, light he'd had sometin to say about when he couldn't remember now!

And he was not at all happy. Happy at the thought. At all at the thought he might not remember the strange words he'd heard. From them strange strangers he might not remember, and who might never ever recall talking to him as, and, they had no clue what language(s) he spoke either, anyways.

And remember whom to tell, ev'n. Things he'd seen them undo. Where seeing defies all belief, and belief defies all seeing, and undoing comes before all doing. And why. Things he thinks he'd seen he himself see.

Remember for all those uh waiting in despair and true, true sadness. Waiting for his fabled return, which might never happen. Because it happened, if it happened, already; before he was born, too.

All those waiting who might be long, long, long ago gone, in any case, and by all reckoning, before the waiting, of all waiting, could begin.

Gone after all these 10 centuries no one has yet heard of. Nay, millennia. Yes, millennia of millennia. Sure, before anyone's time that anyone knows or remembers. Of his sojourn on the other, the other, side of of of -- the ether -- of Time!

And he wouldn't let his arrows KO!

The moral of the story awaits its ending.

[Nairobi: Apr 23, 2010 - Oct 20, 2015]

A Tomb in Heaven: Haiku

It rained a little tear,
Far from the known universe.
As Philae landed.

Toward a Theory of the Memetic Sphere

By Prof. Mauri Yambo

Abstract

This paper proposes a new theory, a theory of the memetic sphere; and outlines its main features, based on library research. In Dawkinsian parlance, memes are ideas, phrases and sentences with a gene-like capacity to replicate. The theory maps the chain-reaction in the form of which this replication becomes what we know as the information explosion, and attempts to show what lies beyond the explosion. No known study has highlighted the similitudes between the memetic sphere and the physical universe. The theory is summarized in an Einsteinian equation, K = nc², to highlight the fact that the memetic sphere is underpinned by certain ‘regularities,’ velocities and ‘laws’. A brief sociological narrative of the evolution of the memetic sphere is included to underscore the wide Space-Time scatter of its origins and milestones. Though the memetic sphere transcends the biosphere, its alphabet mimics the genetic alphabet – with which it shares some regularities. ‘Unlike’ the universe, it is an open system. Like it, it will be increasingly harder to navigate with ‘arithmetical’ innovations; and will have more and more hidden and unreachable ‘places’ – places to reach for.

[This is the abstract of an article published in Hekima Journal, at the University of Nairobi]

Click here for an earlier version of the paper