Elaine and I are pretty serious about downsizing our lifestyle.
Natural thing that happens with age, and all: More than one level and more than one acre will – over time – become a bit more to maintain than we feel like. The difference between quaffing beer or sipping 18-year old scotch.
Part of the problem, of course, is that we like books. All kinds of books – all kinds of topics – and we love them all.
Pick a topic and we can probably find some guidance on it. Over a thousand to pick from. Not that we don’t trust the machine age and electronic books (we’re a three Kindle household, plus an Echo to see how voice technology goes…). It’s just that electronic books have not yet been taken to their full potential.
Microsoft Office has much better information-conveyance possibilities than does a book.
As good as our Kindles are (2 Fires and a Paperwhite) they still lack mastery of one thing a physical book has: Thumbing. Somehow, the man-machine interface just doesn’t have this one down yet.
Give me a physical book and I can hit the information I’m looking for in just seconds. With a Kindle, it could be many, many minutes – and that’s provided I don’t get bored swiping or trying to find an indexing answer.
Often as not though, the indexing strategy is difficult to articulate into keywords or locational searches and often only fits the “I’ll know it when I see it…” criteria.
When thumbing – which isn’t even primarily a thumb – that happens quickly. You can get a sense or recall how the information in the book was laid out – it’s a feeling. Thus,,in a good book, quickly defines the location of the desired details are located. It’s magical.
Well-written books are a joy this way; and it’s a key part of why the translation from paper to the portable document file (.PDF) format is still lacking. And, since Kindles eat a proprietary semi-clone of .PDF files, the problem has followed there.
Not that we don’t like Kindles, though: We have hundreds of books on them, too.
Initially, books have been limited to the .PDF format by one thing: memory size.
However, now with the age of cloud-based resources handy, there’s no reason not to have a much more robust, engaging, engrossing, and communicative kind of “book” out there.
By communicative, what I mean is many of the books I’m reading of late, such as a reread of Joseph Granville’s work on on-balance volume’s importance to stock trading, could be much more rich.
Here’s how:
Whether you’re talking Granville (or my other favorite book Technical Analysis) the authors of such books insert a chart that shows some occult stock market concept, say “flatbasing” in Granville, and then insert a chart that shows the concept but then completely stops.
Not that a chart shouldn’t have a right axis to it… of course it would.
But in this Book2 format I have in mind – to pin the tail on the concept – the right end of an example chart would be extensible. So a chart that in a commodity, for example, that covered from June of one year to June of the next, could be expanded with just a finger move, or two, to explode into a multi-year chart. Or narrowed to a single trading hour.
For me *(and you too, more’n likely) this would add a whole new dimension to chart work.
And this format “Book2” would also have incredible applications in the field of medicine.
I don’t know if you have been following it, but it is just coming out that while the Centers for Disease Control has historically claimed there has been no connection between autism and vaccine administration, the reality is coming out that a couple of highly placed bureaucrats are actually alleged to have censored the data in order to skew the results in an attempt to continue vaccine use!
This story started to break on InfoWars a couple of days ago under the heading “Bombshell: CDC destroyed vaccine documents, Congressman reveals.” Related is the C-SPAN video over here which is on the must-watch list.
Now, let me explain how “Book2” could go a long way toward not only giving the public better books to read, but also more honest research.
For one, the Book2 concept is rather large – like extensible XML.
In the case of medical studies, the core functionality improvement of the Book2 format would be that all study data could be forever inextricably linked to any book on medicine. In other words, all the MMR vaccine data could be preserved.
Not only that, but the Book2 format would include a more comprehensive list of sources of data as well as who provided funding for a book’s creation.
In the case of vaccines, it would be very interesting to have books that link snapshots of audited financial data of the authors as a detail of the Book2 format. Why? Well, take books on any disease you can think of and then ask yourself, “Who would stand to make a buck off this research?” To my way of thinking, this sort of thing ought to be included with the basic book material, as well.
And there’s the rich media aspect of Book2 content.
Think about this: How many books have been written about music, composition, artists, photography, film direction, actors and actresses, and on and on – right down to brush strokes in painting – that are completely devoid of any active content?
Yet with a cloud-enabled Book2 format, we could have all of these things: Voice responsive lookups with the Amazon Echo, rich media delivered to that Retina display or 4K screen, active underlying data sets, rescaling of charts, re positioning of drawings, examples of music and art down to the detail level, and in the case of hard sciences, even online zooming electron microscopes to show varying levels of detail that is not possible in the flatland of books.
The technology is not here, yet, but imagine a book with smells: The salt air of the open ocean for that sailing book, or the smell of the stable in that horse grooming book. Wind and water in the face during Hornblower; heat and dust in Lawrence of Arabia.
XML’ified information to better engage a wider range of minds, and thanks to translation engineers, easier (OK, instant) transliteration to share cross-cultural experience..
Information and intelligence, whether we like it, or not are topological phenomena.
The idea that there is a real Bell Curve to the distribution of intelligence is a fraud before a nation of simpletons. For everyone’s brain is not a singular line – a curve. Rather, it follows a topology such that a a person who may “line out” in one standardized test may in fact be a Chopin in music. It wouldn’t be evident without a music test, though, would it?
Wheeler in physics, or a Rembrandt in art. The “curves” don’t adequately capture the topology of genius because testing is almost universally a bad average based on limited scope questions in the first place.
A final note on the Book2 format: It increases the ability of an author to create compelling content.
I can’t tell you how many times in my novel (DreamOver) which is still pouring of the fingers in dribs and drabs, I have come up against the hard limits of the written word.
Not that I can’t do it – of course I can. I learned long ago that writing is the art of drawing a picture with words – and hopefully the words properly-chosen will create roughly the same image in your head, as I intend.
But that world of flat bookery is going away. The library systems as we know it are being virtualized. Gutenberg, Amazon, YouTube and Vimeo…there’s a progression only a fool could miss.
My little sister is going to a library opening in a week or so, having been on the planning group at one point. New libraries sound like a nice thing but I didn’t have the heart to tell her they are an artifact.
But it got me to thinking about how things have changed since all three of us siblings worked as “pages” *(book shelvers and tidy-uppers) at the Seattle Public Library when we were in school under the tutelage of Mrs. O’Brien who knew more about information that even many of today’s cloud engineers, I daresay,.
It was a delightful conversation, but it reminded me of the world we live in.
You know: The one where some day the last order of fish & chips will be eaten. And the one where books will eventually be rich-media events so that knowledge can be more readily consumed.
By people not damned to a life, defined by a line, that misses the beauty of the topology of us infinitely potentiated primates.
In the past, America’s great industrialists built massive free public libraries. But where is the echo today? The fortunes of Gates and Ellison and Buffett do good works, don’t get me wrong.
But the previous age of industrialists left a legacy of minds and seems to me that promotion of a Book2 extensible authoring framework to include more source, more media, and to provide accessibility and extensibility to new technologies would be a worthy legacy.
Still, to prove the point (how poorly we adapt to the future), do you know what Amazon still sells?
The Weaver Leather 5 1/2FT BUGGY WHIP BLACK. And less than $15-bucks. Horse not included.
We confused building the bank accounts with building the future at great peril.
Life Extension Colors
So here’s weird weekend thought #2:
Ever wonder if there is a relationship between the primary colors in your environment and how long you will live?
Here are three Wiki entries to read if you are going to follow along in a meaningful way:
OK, now we can move onto the science questions.
The first is “Since we know that light at certain frequencies has healing power” – and since we know pulsed laser light can increase potato growth by 43% *(among other things), “Is there a relationship between certain diseases people get and the colors that predominate their thinking?:
Lots of neat things are being done with photobiomodulation – besides the conference we’ll be attending in October where application of light to arrest macular degeneration will be on the menu.
Just last week, for example, a paper was referenced in PubMed that concluded “Our results demonstrated for the first time that phototherapy enhances the physical exercise effects in obese women undergoing weight loss treatment promoting significant changes in inflexibility metabolic profile. Lasers Surg. Med. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.”
While things like weight loss and arrest of macular degeneration are possible (early trials of macular degeneration continue) we couldn’t help but wonder if there’s a longevity angle to colors around the home.
Of course, it’s true that being color blind does not impact longevity (missing red traffic lights being an exception!).
There’s a neat tool over here to Convert RGB Colors to the wavelength of light. And most, it seems, of the real healing work takes place from the orange down to near infrared area.
All of which gets us to a couple of very interesting areas of conjecture.
The first is “Why does infrared/near-infrared (NIR) seem to work for healing?”
Turns out, those are the colors that predominate a campfire which has burned off most of the yellow flame and is down to oranges and reds of the coals, and even throws out some heat once the visible spectrum is gone. You can fell heat even if you can’t see it.
Is it possible that this is some kind of throw-back to when humans were first getting acquainted with fire, ran fires at night, sat (and laid) around them and they somehow have magical healing properties?
Perhaps so. We know the colors are right and we know there have been enough humans around fires that a genetic adaptation may have occurred. Is it one we are on the verge of rediscovering, albeit in a terribly advanced technological way?
Further, when ancient man (or woman) was injured in a harsh climate, was there something more healing about fire heat than, oh, hot water, for example?
The reading this weekend suggested that 640-660 nm light had certain positive aspects on blood capacity which sent me off to www.mouser.com shopping for super-red LED’s. Lab time cometh, again.
And last point on all this: Elaine painted our living room in a shade of red/orange/coral called “Fire on the Mountain” a while back. Was this a subconscious life-extension color?
We know that humans bond really well around orange to NIR light. That’s why bear skin rugs in front of fireplaces with a brandy and soft music….or why campfires and stories go so well, too..
But here’s the interesting part.
When you read books about death and dying – and in particular about the Near Death Experience (*NDE) you are drawn to the blue/white part of spectrum.
Do a Google image search of colors around the Near Death Experience.
Now flip up to that color tool I told you about a minute ago. 390-460 nm kind of range. That’s the exit color spectrum. Healing is at the other end..NIR.
So it brings us to the intriguing question: Is there a healthy healing part about light down in the 640-680 nm range and, as death approaches, do we sort of transition naturally up to the higher frequency (shorter wavelengths) in the 390-460 nm range, which brings us to the Big Death Question…Do we continue rising in frequency at death until we rejoin the one wavelength that permeates/Is ALL?
Is this what “ascension” is all about and the “I am the Light” stuff? The science hints, old books claim, and we are retracing some interesting ground, indeed.
Ah…it was one of those weekends, as you see.
I didn’t get jack-crap done this weekend, but the outside world isn’t where the foundation for lives beyond this one is laid, is it?
Write when you break-even…
George george@ure.net
George, your discussion about ‘the libraries of the future’ has opened up a seam of memory, and current thought I had not planned to plumb. I, too, had been a ‘page’ though at the Multnomah County Library system in Portland Oregon many decades ago. (Occasionally I wondered what happened to the people so ‘blessed’ at the start of their lives, as I was.) My love of libraries even survived working part-time ten years later at another county’s system, where some low-level offenders were ‘punished’ by giving them ‘time’ in the same work that I enjoyed.
(To hear someone say that your ‘passion’ is boring, is not a pleasant experience – I wonder if this ‘punishment’ is still doled out?)
Actually, sometimes I wonder if people even care about books, save those who have that passion . . . I’ve seen many pictures of featured homes in our online newspaper and almost never is there any evidence of people owning books. Lovely new houses with glorious woodwork – opportunities galore to put in say, a wall of bookcases – but nada, none – where is even a hint of reading – ‘media room’ with no reading, only viewing?
I too, am downsizing – but my books will go with me even if others think them folly and of little use – Computers, though loved, require attention and little ‘peace’. Books are like the caress of a dear friend, who understands the limitations of ardor and time. I can read a few sentences and say ‘I need to think about that . . .’ and not regret the intrusion of a machine such as I am writing on . . .
To read, and have the imagination NOT to have the entire experience ‘dumped’ in front of you – that works the mind . . . with pleasure.
I have a cousin whose running giggling playful daughter has never lifted her head under her own power, laughed, spoke, ran or danced since the day after her vaccine. She lives in a wheel chair hand fed, bathed and loved by her parents.
John
George is waxing new age 10 years after its all over.
Thing to keep in mind when looking at graphs that represent something in physical reality that since we live in a three dimensional world that there is always a third dimension to every representation which represents a third factor.
Even looked at Armstromg’s graphs and feel they don’t quite make sense? Well, I got him to admit that there is a third dimension to these graphs, but he keeps it hidden because, as he says, people could not handle it and also might attempt to manipulate the system. Humans have a little difficulty with that third dimension in a two dimension media, but computers handle it with ease, as does Armstrong’s model.
As I don’t normally have those weird dreams you do, I thought I should mention it when it happens. Last night I dreamed about gold having hit a low and people heard rumour that it was going to head up and began buying hard and stock gold. People were putting out money they could not afford in the hopes of a big score. It never happened and most either made just enough to get out without loss, or they lost money on the affair. Don’t know what it means, I just don’t have dreams like that. Then I check your column this morning and what is it about…weird.
Chris
George, thanks for once again, making this annual subscription one of my best investments, ever. Your comments about photobiomodulation immediately caught my attention in a post last week, but I couldn’t get to the linked site for some reason. Today, I had no problem whatsoever. Why do I find this area interesting? First, after spending 12+ years in hospital development, I came away with an interest in many things, among which was the calming effect of painting the interior of a child and adolescent behavior modification and chemical dependency hospital a particular shade of hot pink. Many thought the interior designer had lost her mind, but the positive calming effects it had on the often highly agitated patients was undeniable. Second, after teaching seminary for over five years, I came away from that experience with many questions of a technical nature: for example, why do so many of the faiths involving a “higher order of beings” suggest that, as we progress in our intelligence and learn to master our humanity, the is the promise that we may be blessed with “higher LIGHT and knowledge”, after proving ourselves to be worthy of it through our progression. Why do so many stories of religious visitation with beings of a higher order (angels, etc.) include manifestations of intense light? For that matter, why is it that so many recorded encounters with ET’s almost always include a description of those same manifestations? And of course, the most influential record we have of the ultimate form of human healing was reported by numerous of Roman soldiers at the Tomb of Jesus Christ, in which they described encountering beings/Angels surrounded by LIGHT (see the Apocryphal Book of Jasher). In the laboratory examinations of the celebrated “Shroud of Turin” (believed by many to be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ), the scientific examinations have resulted in the belief that the material appears to have been affected by an intense blast of energy/LIGHT that left indelible marks on the cloth, but did not burn the threads. Why were the Children of Israel led through the wilderness by a pillar of LIGHT/Fire? Was not the first commandment of the Creator(s) “Let there be LIGHT”?
Now, having shared those questions, we know that our human vision is a highly technical interpretation/processing of various shades and spectrum of LIGHT coming through the cells in the retina of our eyes and generating an image in our minds? Of course, I believe that LIGHT has many CREATIVE and RESTORATIVE properties, which brings me to my third reason for interest:
Macular Degeneration runs in my family and it appears that, in my case, the starting bell has rung at the gate! As my sight deteriorates, and as I struggle to assist my 93 yr. old father whose eyesight has greatly deteriorated, one of my closest friends and colleagues, has been faced with the challenge of caring for a wife, whose eyesight was perfect until one day when she lost sight in one eye, then the other within 2 weeks. The cause is an extremely rare optic nerve condition for which there is no known cure. But, we are determined to find one. Thanks George, for sharing your inquisitive mind with us and for posting the information about the photobiomodulation symposium, which has given us more hope!
(Perhaps someday, I can share my experiences with near death in another forum.)
Have a great day! (You just made ours!)
George, your work on photobiomodulation, etc., is fascinating. We all have a full plate(at least interesting folks do), and there’s a maximum time/effort that most can dedicate to research. You’ve got me very interested in this one.
A point to remember is that six companies control virtually all of research publications. Most are available to individuals at a rate of about $35.00 PER ARTICLE. Unless you’re connected to a university or large company, it’s financially impossible to keep up with the good stuff, and the original data/research. This stuff is copyrighted for 95 years(I think), and it can be locked beyond my lifetime and yours. Copyright used to be 28 years, and with publicly funded research, I really don’t think it should be copyrighted at all. There’s room for some wiggle room, but it seems five years for these articles is plenty for copyright. Any thoughts?
We’re shooting ourselves in the foot by hiding good research and data, and that also lets bad data get accepted without review. If we’re going to become bleeding edge in research as a country, this info needs to be available.
Now you are on to something with the light business.
I prefer the clouds, the lighter, brighter, sunnier layer of life, but then I have to come back down to bloody earth to deal with other humans, so to speak, else they think me daft.
Note: 2 60W bulbs in series, each gives a very close match for a candle in light output and color, at ~18 watts per bulb.
That was the size of the first Edison bulbs, said our guide at a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Springfield, IL., and the bulbs in that house are replicas running 18 watts.
The Sunset and it’s colors must be deeply wired into our brains. They have the same calming effect if it is June or January. Since we have been scurrying about in daylight for thousands of years and the dimming of the day is a logical time for us to come together as family and community think about what this does for us as a species. Peace, Chris
colors can be culturally attuned: white is funerary to the Chinese, red is for weddings in India…
I believe you’re definitely on-track with the frequency/healing connection. From my perspective, illness/wellness is all about frequency. The lower frequency we’re operating at the more illness; the higher frequency the more wellness. ~ The human body is 50%-78% water [depending upon which study we’re quoting] and every cell contains water. Linking Dr Emoto’s work with emotions/thoughts/music [varying frequencies] and his experiments with water to ice crystals… to me it’s clear that our thoughts, the music/light [frequencies] we surround ourselves with, and the foods/chemicals we ingest [nutrition vs lack of nutrition; artificial/processed vs natural; essential nutrients vs essential ‘synthetic’ nutrients]… powerfully imprint our body’s water and collectively contribute to our overall state of health. ~ I’m convinced that health treatment, in the not so distant future, will focus on 1) balancing and raising the body’s frequencies to the perfect harmonic/alignment… 2) coupled with teaching us to consciously choose/direct our thoughts/emotions… 3) eliminating the poisoning of our bodies… and 4) providing the body with the complete array of nutritional building blocks [at the cellular level] so the body can repair itself. ~~ Pretty simple… it’s not rocket science!! lol :-)