Yet another digression from the magine/PJ issue, but something I feel you guys would probably appreciate:

Someone on the Unknown Armies RPG e-mail list mentioned this Space Opera in Scientology thing and I fond it particularly fascinating.

Continue reading Hubbard’s Great Space Opera →

Mini-review and obligatory digression.

Minor spoilers for various movies below.

The Brothers Grimm could’ve been worse, but it could’ve been better too. I think it’s safe to say that Gilliam isn’t hitting the top of his form with this one.

Continue reading Review: The Brothers Grimm (with a little The Village review thrown in) →

Which begs the question: what principals would allow such a device to operate?

As already demonstrated certain sorts of fluctuations and effects at the quantum level can have direct and widespread consequences for macroscopic objects. And one member of a virtual particle/anti-particle pair may be culled off allowing the other to become an entelechy. It seems to me that a way only need be found to link these two effects together in an auspicious manner suitable to producing the particular macroscopic systems desired.

Similarly, other sorts of virtual entity/anti-entity pairs might be conjectured to exist but which normally cancel each other out with a net of zero effect on the universe. The trick would be to would be to cull the anti-entity while allowing the desired entity (or it’s component parts, or components which might give rise to such an entity) to escape into the universe.

One problem that may arise with this sort of process is that quantum level effects may take circuitous or otherwise undesirable routes to propegate their effects at the macroscopic level (ie. a “butterfly effect” type scenario). And basically the more particles involved (say an entire body vs. a few atoms) the more difficult it would be to predict and control the propegation of the effects.

Fortunately, there may be a solution of sorts to this challenge. As proven with the creation of Bose-Einstein Condensates, under certain circumstances a large number of particles can act as if they were a single entity. Having a large number of particles (or perhaps “clusters of precursor particles”) able to spring into existence as a single entity would simplify matters.

There may potentially be some odd issues with the manner in which Heisenberg’s principal of indeterminacy would or would not function when allowed to apply at the macroscopic scale on such massive quazi-fundamental particles. But there may be some ways around the more sticky (pun intended) aspects of this issue through the use of intentional quantum entanglement.

The only real remaining obstacle is that Bose-Einstein Condensates technically only exist at extremely low temperatures and when using homogeneous groups of particles. If a means can be conjectured and tested to temporarily create heterogeneous composition condensates with single-particle waveform properties then I think we could well be in business.

+++

Grandma Dragon’s Recipee

Ingredients:

• 30 oz. – Buttermilk biscuits (the storebought kind in those cans that sort of explode when opened).
• 3/4 cup – Sugar (regular)
• 1 teaspoon – Cinamon
• 1/2 cup – raisins
• 1/2 cup – Chopped nuts
• 1 cup – brown sugar
• 1/2 cup – butter
• Small amount – Shortening or oil

Instructions:

1. Grease a 10 inch tube pan (or bunt cake pan).
2. Cut each biscuit into fourths (or pieces roughly the size of a quarter).
3. Mix the regular sugar and cinamon in a plastic bag. Then add the biscuit pieces and shake to coat all the pieces. You may have to add the biscuit pieces a few at a time.
4. Put loose layers of biscuit pieces in the tube pan. In between each layer of biscuit pieces add some nuts and raisins.
5. In a seperate pot melt the butter and brown sugar together over medium heat until they boil, stirring regularly. Boil them for 1 minute.
6. Carefully pour the boiling butter and brown sugar mixture over the layers of biscuit already in the tube pan.
7. You may have wanted to pre-heat the oven to 350°F while you were doing all those previous steps, but it’s too late now. Sucka!
8. Bake the whole thing at 350°F for 35 minutes or to taste.
9. Let stand for 15 minutes before removing.

You may have to eat this stuff out of the pan. It tastes good but can be difficult to remove. Also, if you’re not eating it with your fingers it’s not traditional monkey style.

Note: the author can neither confirm nor disprove the theory that monkey bread is so named because it’s gooy and handfuls can easily be flung at folks like so much feces in the primate house.

crudely put: Even empty space has a certain amount of energy. This energy manifests in the form of “virtual particles”. These are particle/anti-particle pairs that spontaneously spring into existence and then almost instantly annilate each other.

The existence of these particles is so brief and the counter-balance of their forces and magnitudes so perfect that the net effect is almost as if they never existed, hence the term virtual particles. However, though fleeting, certain effects such as the Lamb Shift are thought to suggest the existence of particles such as virtual photons.

In the her book Many Waters author Madeleine L’Engle implies that like virtual particles other potential entities might straddle the border between existence and non-existence.

As a side note: if a particle/anti-particle pair forms near the event horizon of a black hole, one of the particles might fall into the black hole and be lost while the other escapes into the universe. Since the particles could not annilate as they normally would the net effect is that a particle springs into being out of nothing. In actuality the energy to form the particle comes from the black hole it’s self, thus decreasing the black hole’s mass.

This process, a form of quantum tunneling, when repeated over a long period of time will eventually cause even the inescapable mass of a black hole to gradually evaporate.

+++

There isn’t a lot of progress to speak of currently. I’ve taken a job teaching a night class on American Literature and this has really put a crunch on time and energy. Although it is material I am interested in, I’m not entirely happy about the fact that it is a time and mind drain. I am hoping that the amount of time, energy and frustration I devote to it wains in the coming weeks. Then I can devote time, energy and frustration to screenplays.

Treatments and screenplays: Last week I got quagmired in one of the treatments. I think I’ve managed to pull myself out of the quagmire now though. I’m not sure how many more treatments I will write before I jump off here at some point into an actual screenplay. We’ll see.

Ameviathan has come to a temporary standstill. I think that of the two screenplays, the *Green Machine* is the more obvious choice to shoot. Now it is just a matter of scouting locations, figuring out what props are needed, seeking out the actors and putting together some sort of hodgepodge crew.

Non-profit and profit research has also come to a standstill. It is a daunting amount reading to do by myself. I’ll get to it, somehow.

So there you have it. Frustration. Part of the process perhaps or perhaps illuminating in terms of decisions that I’ll soon have to make.

Don’t look back.

Do you guys hear something?

…sort of like hoofbeats just beyond the hill?

+++

If
you
have
an
itch
on
your
foot,
in
your
shoe,

DON'T

itch
your
foot
with
a
pen
because
you
will
write
on
your
sock.

Groin.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this exercise it’s that you can’t very thoroughly describe an archtypal pair of pants without using the word “groin” a few times. Oh, I’m sure you can describe a lot of features of pants and vaguely give the location of those features, but if you want to give a position for anything above the knees and not directly associated with the waist, then you probably have to indicate some clue relating it’s proximity to the groin.

If you look at pants as being like a country then the cuffs and waist are sort of akin to the frontiers. The legs below the thigh are like far flung provinces. But ah, the groin! The groin is the like unto Grenich England from which all longitudes are judged, ancient Rome to which all roads lead, a sort of axis mundi of pants if you will.

Continue reading The Ideal Pants (a treatise) →