silence and god

Be still, and know that I am God.
(from Psalm 46:10)
Be still, and know that I AM.
(would this make a wider sense?)

Richard Miller & Spirituality

Think about what spirituality is: It's a deeper experience of life, where you transcendent the concept of a 'little' identity and gain the understanding that you're part of something bigger than yourself.

FUTURES

Futures is the award-winning science-fiction section of Nature. Contributions are usually commissioned, but unsolicited articles are welcome. Each Future should be an entirely fictional, self-contained story between 850-950 words in length, and the genre should, broadly speaking, be 'hard' (that is, 'scientific' SF) rather than, say, outright fantasy, slipstream or horror. Each item should be sent as a Word (.doc) attachment to futures@nature.com, including full contact details and a 30-word autobiographical note to be appended to the story if published. (Please do not send presubmission enquiries, but send the whole story.) Unsolicited artwork is not considered. Before submitting, prospective authors are advised to read earlier Futures columns in Nature and Nature Physics; selected examples are available free at http://www.concatenation.org/futuresindex.html.

Waves, harmonics, eigenfrequencies

A wave theory of god and the universe: "God is the sound of Om"; take it lieterally.
Samayama on things, persons: resonate harmonically
Samayama on own body: reduce non-harmonical frequencies.
Sayings: we're on the same wavelength.
Stable Ecosystems: decompose in harmonical (=stable) wave patterns
Origin or religion: memory of tuned-in state. Religious figures: harmonical composition? Do fourier transforms on venus willendorf, stonehenge etc.
Quantum mechanics: every particle is a wave.
Wave is energy;
Meditation: eliminating all non-harmonical wavelengths.

Deconstruction, reconstruction: the fiction

Use method to
1) reconstruct lost memories
2) enhance details of pictures
3) induce other's memories & sensations in one's own mind
get your own library of personal thoughts
extract and enhance memories of dying, comatosed etc crime victims for purpose of tracking down the murderer.
commissar haunted by images, shift of perception, personality, reality.
own wife victim: same method, but unexpected revelation?
or restoring one's own memories: strange details about own life?
or misleading information purpusfully induced in last victime through same method?

4) induce other memories for recreational purposes; spot crime:
say: bundgeejumping perception disk recorded on persons that know they will die - to obtain higher sensations.
danger of having publicity introduced.

Deconstruction, reconstruction: the science

sparse coding, histogram of wavelet filter output.
Used to analyse paintings;
use it the other way: to reconstruct, or higher the resolution of photos, nature, thoughts, dreams, memories.
a dictionary of spatial features;
the dictionary is trained on an ensemble of images. Minimum amount of elements from dictionary encode / build up a given region.
Detects spatial patterns that occur in images with higher frequency than chance, providing a snapshot of the structure contained in the data.
Neuroscientists have shown that such dictionaries, when trained on a large ensemble of natural scenes, match the receptive-field characteristics of neurons in the primary visual cortex of mammals. Sparse coding may be used by neurons for sensory representation in the cortex.

Intriguingly, all of these models are generative - that is can be used to synthesise images matching the statistics captured by the model.
Computers might be able to generate images that convincingly emulate the style of a particular artist.

Amma Sri Karunamayi

arriving early morn in extremely cold wind. Ladies direct, looking like from a refugee camp, with their layers and layers of unmatching cloths, torn away by the wind.
We struggle towards the tent like in a movie about biblical plagues.
Inside, vision like a camp for catastrophy surviors with an imminent cholera outbreak. Tent torn by the wind. Wear white was the directive, but people now where what they can get hold off, including fluffy lilac kid's scarfs and dog's plankets.
Fires are lit; with the wind they produce quickly unbearable smoke that makes our eyes burn.
Amma arrives, nonchalant, simple, with a completely yellow face.
Talks about how not to wear black, or receive black things, or eat cucumbers and what chant protects against premature boldness, toothache and bad digestion.
Lady in black gets dark looks from disciple.
Elderly lady plays tambourine, as if she publicly has to clean up doogpoo. Sometimes tries to blow a huge shell, mostly fails but inexorably goes pink-red from the effort. Indian 3D musician looks like she's ready to perform human sacrifice (Amma? herself? everyone?) and plays flute.
Other lady looks like a psychodelic witch, nose blocked with large paperstrips, huge dark sunglasses, cape over wild black hair.
Solkem oscillates like a cobra in front of the piper.
Amma burns enough food for an African village.
thinly dressed man next to fire puts frenetically wood in fireplace, resulting in much smoke that visibly causes extreme pain in the eyes of the lady who is on top charged to poor smoke-provoking oil into the fire.
Amma asks to chant incredibly complex syllables.
grey followers is extatically telling everyone the great things Amma did (poring milk over a statue, entering, walking, etc).
Solkem makes everyone sing mantras in search of HERS.

great novel says

The great novel says: 'hey, you could prevent this'.
David Brin

storyline

A contagious disease leads to human extinction, but it's a disease transmitted not by a pathogen or prion, but by behaviour only.
Aliens collecting DNA of particular Humans (human traits), to see which cause our extinction.
Alien spaceship lands in Poland and aliens speak fluent polish.

Characters

X likes to get his foot's imprints into fresh concrete, so that he'll leaves his traces in history.

Procrastination

Procrastination refers to the deferment of actions or tasks to a later time. Psychologists often cite such behavior as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting and/or completing any task or decision.[1] There are three criteria for a behavior to be classified as procrastination: it must be counterproductive, needless, and delaying.[2]
Procrastination may result in stress, a sense of guilt and crisis, severe loss of personal productivity, as well as disapproval by others for not meeting responsibilities or commitments. These feelings combined may promote further procrastination. While it is regarded as normal for people to procrastinate to some degree, it becomes a problem when it impedes normal functioning. Chronic procrastination may be a sign of an underlying psychological disorder.

characters

Loren's friend always carried a huge spoon.
after having had only bad prophecies from Chinese biscuits, which realised themselves!, Guillaume refused to open them. However as he did so after a few years, he had not one prophecy, but a whole lot of them, in one biscuit.