Science's Responsibility While Investigating Consciousness?

Our attempt to justify our beliefs logically by giving reasons results in the "regress of reasons." Since any reason can be further challenged, the regress of reasons threatens to be an infinite regress. However, since this is impossible, there must be reasons for which there do not need to be further reasons: reasons which do not need to be proven. By definition, these are "first principles." The "Problem of First Principles" arises when we ask Why such reasons would not need to be proven. Aristotle's answer was that first principles do not need to be proven because they are self-evident, i.e. they are known to be true simply by understanding them.




As a lay person myself, while being introduced to the subject of synesthesia, I found certain correlations that were uncanny to me within the way I had been displaying this site here.

We know we can adopt many things by insinuation alone and that is not what I wanted to show here, but the actual responsibility in researching consciousness as it is being held too here with the investigation by Richard E. Cytowic, M.D.

So I pull the following paragraph from his book to demonstrate, that what he holds in terms in methodology, is no less then that required in our research to all the sciences involved. As I research physics/consciousness within context of this site also. I draw the paragraph because it made a impression for responsibility, and by insinuation, I would not like to leave this area without giving it this attention as set.



There is a responsibility toward oneself as you investigate the world around you.

So by example Richard E. Cytowic, giving the circumstance of his research on the subject of synesthesia, had to incorporate the valuations assigned within that paragraph I selected. To show the information, displayed as I travelled through the book, was a historical as well as explanatory method on what would become one's consensus as of today.

There is a Physical Matter Called the Brain

It is interesting to speak about emotion and at the same time think about the physical consequences "within the body" that causes us the consternations of our moods and it's effect on our consciousness.

Because I may relate the issues of emotion in context the alchemist, it is by such developmental aspect of the psychology that I would want one to think about the thinking process as having a direct physiological consequence.

This interplay of various ways of conceiving the world could be compared to the experience of synesthesia, where stimulus of one sense causes a perception by another, seemingly unrelated sense, as in musicians who can taste the intervals between notes they hear (Beeli et. al., 2005), or artists who can smell colours. Many individuals who have one or more senses restricted or lost develop a sensorium with a ratio of sense which favours those they possess more fully. Frequently the blind or deaf speak of a compensating effect, whereby their touch or smell become more acute, changing the ways they perceive and reason about the world; especially telling examples are found in the cases of 'wild children,' whose early childhoods were spent in abusive, neglected or non-human environments, both intensifying and minimizing perceptual abilities (Classen 1991).

While I mention the woodcuts, the "labels" serve us well here to show that a picture can become a road map to the psychological, as well, demonstrating the experience itself, as well laid out "ideals" with which we could begin to approach our actions, as consequences. To what can become, and has been deeply buried to this point by the impact of that emotion/memory.

Seeing a Psychologist at Work


Richards Wagners's Ring of Nibelung Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D. Ring of Power was interesting.

Strange that we could have seen A Jungian Understanding of the Wagner's Ring cycle, portrayed in todays world and how could have this been accomplished. But by re-introducing a fictional story and embuing it with the archetypal structures of what Jean Shinoda Bolen called, "The Abandon Child, The Authoritarian Father, and the Disempowered Feminine."

So giving some indication of the "metaphoric relation" applied to the psychology of a situation, I thought it best that while relating the road map to a "wood cut" that I show this expressionism at work as well. It is interesting to see how the psychologist speaks directly to the human condition?

Soul Food

The Man Who Tasted Shapes: A Bizarre Medical Mystery offers Revolutionary Insights into Emotions, Reasoning, and Consciousness, 2003: Revised MIT Press edition with new afterword

Not everyone will understand the title of this post? I will proceed to make this "exceptionally clear" once all of the post is completed. Some who visit will understand "something is nagging from the subconscious" to look at this even more. I do this on purpose by proposing the title and all "subsequent information a little later" as I am short on time as well.

You needed to know that any human endeavour to try and understand the self we need help sometimes, and I have no one who will do this work for me. I had to go looking for it. To realize the "synchronicity within of my own struggle" was actually recorded somewhere else. That my very site on it's own is realize within the inductive/deductive features where the need to relate too, demanded in my metaphoric relation to science as to how I was interacting with the world around me.

Now again I caution people to know that I am not saying I have this "topic related" other then to say "I see the world from the inside out." And that if you can digest this last statement then you will see what is happening a lot within this site I created, has some correlation within the study of others. I had no idea of these correlations until the words themselves help me to spot the nature of my own expressions.

I do take comfort from the fact Marcia Smilack recognized my language immediately, and that finally I was not alone in my attempts. With all my procrastination on explaining myself received, could finally have dealt with what had give me my views on science.


The fish is "soul food." The water the unconscious, all possible facets of the sensorium. The hook and worm, aspects of the "focus held" while you are fishing.

So I will demonstrate and "turn around a cartoon I seen" to help one understand "how I see" and then you see this cartoon in relation to it's owner's representation for comparison. It is a difference in how "my subjective views" are held in correlation to the original viewers own anecdotal evidence.

Artifacts of the Geometrical WunderKammern

As one visits the mathematical puzzles and conjectures, what value these insights to the physics or our universe if we did not see things in this way? As artifacts of some other kind of geometrical thinking that we could then apply it to how we see the micro-perspective and macro-perspective working within the Quantum or cosmological realms?

So abstract and foreign to our eyes that we let it escape our attention while we talk about all our theoretical points of view and divergences from what is symmetrical?

In the past, new scientific discoveries, strange finds, and striking pieces of original artwork were greeted with awe and wonder. It became popular during the Renaissance to build a "cabinet of curiosities" to display a private collection of art and natural objects of which the owner was extremely proud. These groups of objects were at first housed in an actual cabinet or ornate piece of furniture, known as Wunderkammern or Wunderkabinetts. They are simultaneously pieces of furniture and the collections of items within them.

In the exhibits of these early Wunderkammern, owners might display strange, beautiful, mysterious, and precious marvels like starfish, monkey teeth, alligator skins, phosphorescent minerals, Indian canoes, Egyptian figurines, and “unicorn tails.” Rich art patrons would display their new art acquisitions in the intimate backdrop of a prized spot in an ornate carved cabinet. At Kensington castle, Sir Walter Cope is said to have displayed, “holy relics from a Spanish ship; earthen pitchers and porcelain from China; a Madonna made of feathers; a back-scratcher; a Javanese costume, Arabian coats; the horn and tail of a rhinoceros; the baubles and bells of Henry VIII's fool; and a Turkish emperor's golden seal.” The collections demonstrated manmade wonders and the diversity of God’s creations as well as a fascination with new scientific approaches to the study of natural phenomena. Each collection’s commitment to miscellany dependended on the idiosyncratic interests of the collector.

So it was again important to bring people back to the ways of geometry working in spaces, that although seemingly detached from our reality is the underlying basis of the physics involved.

Mine is a layman's perspective so I cannot say for certain that all I write here will be of value. It is up to you whether you think it important or not.

Figure 2. Clebsch's Diagonal Surface: Wonderful.

Sylvester's models lay hidden away for a long time, but recently the Mathematical Institute received a donation to rescue some of them. Four of these were carefully restored by Catherine Kimber of the Ashmolean Museum and now sit in an illuminated glass cabinet in the Institute Common Room.

The Museum when thought in context of "Platonic solids" was some what of a contention when I showed it's location in early historical context as a artifact.

Shown here are the models in the mathematical wunderkammer located in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Arizona. Like those in most modern mathematics departments, the collection is a combination of locally-made student and faculty projects together with a variety of commercially produced models. Sadly, a century since their Golden Age, many of the models are in disrepair and much of their documentation has been lost. However, some recent detective work, with the help of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, has helped the department identify models by the American educators W. W. Ross and R. P. Baker in the collection.

Also see here for further thoughts on this

I thought it important to quickly post this so that people understand that "a glass case" can hold many things for inspection, but in this case ,I was referring to the geometrical forms. If any of these form were to show symmetry in action which of these would do so? Sylvestor surfaces?

An attempt in Latex to map these functions from a layman's perspective. What use if I cannot understand the mathematical language as it is written, yet, I can see "acrobatically" the way geometry works in space?

The Colour of Gravity

I am not sure how this post is to unfold, yet in my mind different exercises were unfolding as to how I should explain it. Can I come from an artist's perspective I wondered? Say "by chance" anything that seems relevant here in writing, and any relation to science "is" metaphorical by nature?

Yellow, Red, Blue
1925; Oil on canvas, 127x200cm; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

These free, wild raptures are not the only form abstraction can take, and in his later, sadder years, Kandinsky became much more severely constrained, all trace of his original inspiration lost in magnificent patternings. Accent in Pink (1926; 101 x 81 cm (39 1/2 x 31 3/4 in)) exists solely as an object in its own right: the ``pink'' and the ``accent'' are purely visual. The only meaning to be found lies in what the experience of the pictures provides, and that demands prolonged contemplation. What some find hard about abstract art is the very demanding, time-consuming labour that is implicitly required. Yet if we do not look long and with an open heart, we shall see nothing but superior wallpaper.

I underlined for emphasis.

Does one want to gleam only what is coming across in geometrical form as a painting without understanding the depth of the artist in expression? Some may say, why any association at all, and just leave science to what it knows best without implicating any theoretical positions with the thought pertaining to gravity here.

Yes that's why I selected the title of this post as thus, and why I am going to give perspective to what I may, "as artist in writing" see with these words, and then you decide whether it is useful to you.

The Field as the Plane

An ancient thought penetrated my thinking as I thought of "the field" that a society can work in agriculture, and yet, by definition it was the plane, "length and width" that was also appealing here. I did not want to loose it's "origination" while I moved any thinking to the "abstract of brane" and the like, without firmly attaching it to the ground.

But who was to know that this plane could be moved to any "fifth dimensional understanding" without having studied the relationship to dimensional thinking and the like. The physics elevated.

I allow this one time escapism to "other thinking" to demonstrate what use the colour of gravity implies while at the same time "theoretical positions" talk about it's place in the universe. If one did not accept the moves in science and the way it expressed itself to allow geometrical inclination, then how the heck could non-euclidean thinking ever make it's way into how we will discuss "the fields" about us?

It meant that a perspective "on height" be adopted? As an observer I was watching from a position. While in that sleeping/dosing state, I wondered how else to express myself as these concepts were amalgamating themselves into a "conceptual frame of reference?"

The picture of the field(I am referring to the ancient interpretation) continued in my mind, and "by abstract" I thought to introduce a line extend from the centre of this field upward. So here I am looking at this field before me. Now I had wondered off previous by bring "the brane" in here, yet is not without that sight I thought how the heck could any idealization so ancient make sense to what the colour of gravity to mean.

Title page of Opticks .... by Sir Isaac Newton, 1642-1727. Fourth edition corrected by the author's own hand, and left before his death with the bookseller. Published in 1730. Library call number QC353 .N48 1730.

So "an idea" came to mind.

While correlating Newton's work here and the "extra dimensional thinking," I also wanted to include the work of the "Alchemist Newton". "To expand" the current thinking of our "emotive states" as a "vital expression of the biological being."

Draw into any further discussion of the "philosophical or other wise," these views of mine which are a necessary part of what was only held to a "religious and uneducated evolutionary aspect of the human being."

A cosmologist may still say that such thoughts of Einstein used in this vain is wrong, but I could never tear myself away from the views of "durations of time."

Colour Space and Colour Theory

The CIE 1931 colour space chromaticity diagram with wavelengths in nanometers. Note that the colors depicted depend on the color space of the device on which you are viewing the image.

So by having defined the "frame of reference," and by introducing "Colour of gravity" I thought it important and consistent with the science to reveal how dynamical any point within that reference can become expressive. The history in association also important.

In the arts and of painting, graphic design, and photography, color theory is a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual impact of specific color combinations. Although color theory principles first appear in the writings of Alberti (c.1435) and the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (c.1490), a tradition of "colory theory" begins in the 18th century, initially within a partisan controversy around Isaac Newton's theory of color (Opticks, 1704) and the nature of so-called primary colors. From there it developed as an independent artistic tradition with only sporadic or superficial reference to colorimetry and vision science.

So you tend to draw on your reserves for such comparatives while thinking about this. I knew to apply "chemical relations" to this idea, and the consequential evidenced, by the resulting shadings by adding. I wanted to show "this point" moving within this colour space and all the time it's shading was describing the "nature of the gravity."

Adding a certain mapping function between the color model and a certain reference color space results in a definite "footprint" within the reference color space

By adding that vertical line in the field, the perimeter of my field of vision had to some how be drawn to an apex, while all kinds of thoughts about symmetry and perfection arose in my pyramidal mind.

All these colours, infinite in their ability to express the human emotive state, as a consequence of philosophical and expressed as function of the emotive being?

CIE 1976 L*, a*, b* Color Space (CIELAB)

CIE L*a*b* (CIELAB) is the most complete color model used conventionally to describe all the colors visible to the human eye. It was developed for this specific purpose by the International Commission on Illumination (Commission Internationale d'Eclairage, hence its CIE initialism). The * after L, a and b are part of the full name, since they represent L*, a* and b*, derived from L, a and b. CIELAB is an Adams Chromatic Value Space.

The three parameters in the model represent the lightness of the color (L*, L*=0 yields black and L*=100 indicates white), its position between magenta and green (a*, negative values indicate green while positive values indicate magenta) and its position between yellow and blue (b*, negative values indicate blue and positive values indicate yellow).

The Lab color model has been created to serve as a device independent model to be used as a reference. Therefore it is crucial to realize that the visual representations of the full gamut of colors in this model are never accurate. They are there just to help in understanding the concept, but they are inherently inaccurate.

Since the Lab model is a three dimensional model, it can only be represented properly in a three dimensional space.

Entanglement

the quantum entanglement would become so spread out through these interactions with the environment that it would become virtually impossible to detect. For all intents and purposes, the original entanglement between photons would have been erased.

Never the less it is truly amazing that these connections do exist, and that carefully arranged laboratory conditions they can be observed over significant distances. They show us, fundamentally, that space is not what we once thought it was. What about time? Page 123, The Fabric of the Cosmo, by Brian Greene

So many factors to include here, yet it is with the "idea of science" that I am compelled to see how things can get all mixed up, while I say emotive state, or Colours of gravity?

It gets a little complicated for me here, yet the "Fuzzy logic" introduced or "John Venn's logic" is not without some association here. Or, the psychology I had adopted as I learnt to read of models and methods in psychology that could reveal the thinking we have developed, and what it included.

Least I forget the "real entanglement" issues here, I have painted one more aspect with the "Colour of Gravity" to be included in this dimensional perspective, as we look to the models in science as well?

Working from basic principles and the history of spooky has made this subject tenable in today's world. A scientist may not like all the comparisons I have made based on it, I could never see how the emotive and mental statements of the expressive human being could not have been included in the making of the reality.

That I may of thought the "perfection of the human being" as some quality of the God in us all, would have granted sanction to some developing view of "religious virtuosity," against the goals of the scientist. So as ancient the views painted, there was something that may have been missed of the "Sensorium," and goes toward the basis of the philosophy shared currently by Lee Smolin.

This entanglement to me is a vital addition to our exploration of the universe. Our place and observation within it? It did not mean to discount our inclusion within it, within a larger "oscillatory perspective."

Newton's Space was the Sensorium

Sir Isaac Newton, FRS (4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727) [OS: 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727] was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, alchemist, and natural philosopher who is generally regarded as one of the greatest scientists and mathematicians in history. See here for further information.

While reading the responses to Aaron on the Cosmic Variance section, Lee Smolin made a comment there in his writing which triggered some recognition as I was doing some research on what he had proposed in previous work. So of course I am interested in how people form their ideas, so I went to have a look.

Lee Smolin:

I suspect this reflects the expectation many people have that time is not fundamental, but rather emerges only at a semiclassical approximation in quantum cosmology. If you believe this then you believe that the fundamental quantities a quantum cosmology should compute are timeless. This in turn reflects a very old and ultimately religious prejudice that deeper truths are timeless. This has been traced by scholars to the theology of Newton and contemporaries who saw space as “the sensorium” of an eternal and all seeing god. Perhaps the BB paradox is telling us it is time to give up the search for timeless probability distributions, and recognize that since Darwin the deep truths about nature cannot be divorced from time.

The alternative is to disbelieve the arguments that time is emergent-which were never very convincing- and instead formulate quantum cosmology in such a way that time is always real. I would suggest that the Boltzman Brain’s paradox is the reducto ad absurdum of the notion that time is emergent and that rather than play with little fixes to it we should try to take seriously the opposite idea: that time is real.

The key word here is "Sensorium."

The Life of the Cosmos By Lee Smolin Oxford University Press; New York, N.Y.: 1997

The critic is very harsh toward Lee Smolin, and I am very sensitive to these kinds of responses, so trust me when I tell you that these are not my views. My views are still forming.

Lee Smolin:

For Newton the universe lived in an infinite and featureless space.There was no boundary, ad no possibility of conceiving anything outside of it. This was no problem for God, as he was everywhere. For Newton, space was the "sensorium" of God-the medium of his presence in and attachment to the world. The infinity of space was then a necessary reflection of the infinite capacity of God.The Life of the Cosmos By Lee Smolin Oxford University Press; New York, N.Y.: 1997, Page 91

The term "Sensorium" is compelling for reasons that I am still not quite aware of, yet, it holds a fascination to me. It is colourful to me, yet, it had a nice ring to it as well.

Okay. :) I think it is the "relationship pointed out" and describing this relationship of Newton that is interesting. Most who have been reading my site will have some inkling of why.

It is not in what may be assumed of Newton and his religion towards the relationship to science? But some of the ways in which such "thought processes" may have been compelling. The way in which one can look at the world, gives new meaning to what was not so transparent before, now one included these aspects of the sensorium as "one."

That all of the senses had been "crossed wire to give perspective" in the way it did. How would you know this?

But lets move on with this here for a minute and I'll tell you why. But first some part of it's Definition from Wikipedia.

This interplay of various ways of conceiving the world could be compared to the experience of synesthesia, where stimulus of one sense causes a perception by another, seemingly unrelated sense, as in musicians who can taste the intervals between notes they hear (Beeli et. al., 2005), or artists who can smell colours. Many individuals who have one or more senses restricted or lost develop a sensorium with a ratio of sense which favours those they possess more fully. Frequently the blind or deaf speak of a compensating effect, whereby their touch or smell become more acute, changing the ways they perceive and reason about the world; especially telling examples are found in the cases of 'wild children,' whose early childhoods were spent in abusive, neglected or non-human environments, both intensifying and minimizing perceptual abilities (Classen 1991).

Part of the developing scientific view can come forth with new propositions if it has a foundation that is different then what was thought to be "it's basis of normalcy."

But imagine if you were a little different in your wiring that as a scientist you had difficult relating to the world, and you want to be consistent with your approach? Develope new methods, Calculus, to explain a process in nature? What may I ask will be forth coming form such a position, not to have thought, "hey this guy is nuts or just a broken flower pot?"

The track record so far seems to indicate that if such views are crossed wired in some ways, the interactive features of developing perspective will give model apprehension a new meaning that it did not have before?

Feynman in his concepts of a toy model approach? He may of seen what was of use from Dirac's geometrical thinking.

NASA's Hubble Telescope Celebrates SN 1987A's 20th Anniversary

A String of 'Cosmic Pearls' Surrounds an Exploding Star-NASA, ESA, P. Challis, and R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

Twenty years ago, astronomers witnessed one of the brightest stellar explosions in more than 400 years. The titanic supernova, called SN 1987A, blazed with the power of 100 million suns for several months following its discovery on Feb. 23, 1987.

Observations of SN 1987A, made over the past 20 years by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and many other major ground- and space-based telescopes, have significantly changed astronomers' views of how massive stars end their lives. Astronomers credit Hubble's sharp vision with yielding important clues about the massive star's demise.

"The sharp pictures from the Hubble telescope help us ask and answer new questions about Supernova 1987A," said Robert Kirshner, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "In fact, without Hubble we wouldn't even know what to ask."

Kirshner is the lead investigator of an international collaboration to study the doomed star. Studying supernovae like SN 1987A is important because the exploding stars create elements, such as carbon and iron, that make up new stars, galaxies, and even humans. The iron in a person's blood, for example, was manufactured in supernova explosions. SN 1987A ejected 20,000 Earth masses of radioactive iron. The core of the shredded star is now glowing because of radioactive titanium that was cooked up in the explosion.

The star is 163,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It actually blew up about 161,000 B.C., but its light arrived here in 1987.

If you get the chance take a look over at the post "Supernova 1987A" done by Stefan of Backreaction in regards to this issue. It is nice to be able to reflect where one was when such a event took place. Maybe you remember where you were and can comment?

About the event itself I must say it has not triggered any remembrances other then what I choose to reflect on my own life, and that's something different.

What is of interest to be is how these events unfold and what geometrics play within the design of this unfoldment. I do speak on that in various posts.

Kepler's Supernova

Four hundred years ago, sky watchers, including the famous astronomer Johannes Kepler, were startled by the sudden appearance of a "new star" in the western sky, rivaling the brilliance of the nearby planets. Now, astronomers using NASA's three Great Observatories are unraveling the mysteries of the expanding remains of Kepler's supernova, the last such object seen to explode in our Milky Way galaxy.

See here for link to this story.

This combined image -- from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and e Chandra X-ray Observatory -- unveils a bubble-shaped shroud of gas and dust that is 14 light-years wide and is expanding at 4 million miles per hour (2,000 kilometers per second). Observations from each telescope highlight distinct features of the supernova remnant, a fast-moving shell of iron-rich material from the exploded star, surrounded by an expanding shock wave that is sweeping up interstellar gas and dust.

By designing the types of satellites we wish to use to measure, we create the image of the events as beautiful pictures of unfoldment within our universe as seen above. Maybe you can see something in "the theory proposed of SN1987a pictures" that will help understand what I mean?

When one is doing mathematical work, there are essentially two different ways of thinking about the subject: the algebraic way, and the geometric way. With the algebraic way, one is all the time writing down equations and following rules of deduction, and interpreting these equations to get more equations. With the geometric way, one is thinking in terms of pictures; pictures which one imagines in space in some way, and one just tries to get a feeling for the relationships between the quantities occurring in those pictures. Now, a good mathematician has to be a master of both ways of those ways of thinking, but even so, he will have a preference for one or the other; I don't think he can avoid it. In my own case, my own preference is especially for the geometrical way. Paul Dirac

This universe has events at a time in space, which allows us to construct this event as as geometrical function. Some of the values seen in the microscopic world have placed an interesting role for me in how I see this relationship of what unfolds within our microperspective views, as to what is on display in our cosmos.

The Bohr model is a primitive model of the hydrogen atom. As a theory, it can be derived as a first-order approximation of the hydrogen atom using the broader and much more accurate quantum mechanics, and thus may be considered to be an obsolete scientific theory. However, because of its simplicity, and its correct results for selected systems (see below for application), the Bohr model is still commonly taught to introduce students to quantum mechanics.

While I appreciate these events in the cosmos I also needed to understand how such microperspective were motivating the geometry within that event, so it is not possible for me not to include the arrangements of the physics of reductionism and not compare it to these motivations that create these beautiful events

Update: It's 9:20 am and I was just over at Quasar9's blog and notice this entry in relation to SN1987a as well.

Where are my keys?

"Yet I exist in the hope that these memoirs, in some manner, I know not how, may find their way to the minds of humanity in Some Dimensionality, and may stir up a race of rebels who shall refuse to be confined to limited Dimensionality." from Flatland, by E. A. Abbott

The Extra-Dimensions?

So you intuitively believe higher dimensions really exist?

Lisa Randall:I don't see why they shouldn't. In the history of physics, every time we've looked beyond the scales and energies we were familiar with, we've found things that we wouldn't have thought were there. You look inside the atom and eventually you discover quarks. Who would have thought that? It's hubris to think that the way we see things is everything there is.

And what is it that we don't see? I thought of a comment somewhere that spoke about what first started to make it's appearance in how we communicate?

Time is the Unseen fourth Dimension

They were able to create what we recognize today as the "elliptical" and "hyperbolic" non-Euclidean geometries. Most of Saccheri's first 32 theorems can be found in today's non-Euclidean textbooks. Saccheri's theorems are prefaced by "Sac."

One of my greatest "aha moments" came when I realized Non-euclidean geometries. I had to travel the history first with Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri, Bolya and Lobachevsky, for this to make an impression, and I can safely say, that learning of Gauss and Riemann, I was truly impressed.

Einstein had to include that "extra dimension of time." Greater then, or less then, 180 degrees and we know "this triangle" can take on some funny shapes when you apply them "to surfaces" that are doing funny things.?:)

Second, we must be wary of the "God of the Gaps" phenomena, where miracles are attributed to whatever we don't understand. Contrary to the famous drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost, here we are tempted to conclude that the keys must lie in whatever dark corners we have not searched, rather than face the unpleasant conclusion that the keys may be forever lost.

Let me just say that "it is not the fact that any drinking could have held the mind" of the person, but when they absentmindedly threw their car keys. The "point is" that if the light shines only so far, what conclusion should we live with?

Moving to the Fifth

So of course whatever real estate you are buying, make sure the light is shining on what your willing to purchase? Is this not a good lesson to learn?

Moving any idea to a fifth dimension I thought was important in relation to seeing what Einstein had done. See further: Concepts of the Fifth Dimension. I illustrate more ways in which we may see that has not been seen for most could have helped the mind see how this is accomplished in current day geometric methods.

Why was this thought "wrong" when one may of thought to include "gravity and light" together, after the conclusion of spacetime's 3+1? Gravity. What Had Maxwell done? What Had Riemann done?

You knew "the perfect symmetry" had to be reduced to General Relativity?

Greg Landsberg:

Two types of the extra-dimensional effects observable at collides.

A graviton leaves our world for a short moment of time, just to come back and decay into a pair of photons (the DØ physicists looked for that particular effect).

A graviton escapes from our 3-dimensional world in extra dimensions (Megaverse), resulting in an apparent energy non-conservation in our three-dimensional world.

So why would it matter to us if the universe has more than 3 spatial dimensions, if we can not feel them? Well, in fact we could “feel” these extra dimensions through their effect on gravity. While the forces that hold our world together (electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions) are constrained to the 3+1-“flat” dimensions, the gravitational interaction always occupies the entire universe, thus allowing it to feel the effects of extra dimensions. Unfortunately, since gravity is a very weak force and since the radius of extra dimensions is tiny, it could be very hard to see any effects, unless there is some kind of mechanism that amplifies the gravitational interaction. Such a mechanism was recently proposed by Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos, and Dvali, who realized that the extra dimensions can be as large as one millimeter, and still we could have missed them in our quest for the understanding of how the universe works!

Of course these ideas are experimentally being challenged, like any good scientist would want of his theory. See EOT-WASH GROUP(4)

Light and Matter United

Murray Gellman: On Plectics

It is appropriate that plectics refers to entanglement or the lack thereof, since entanglement is a key feature of the way complexity arises out of simplicity, making our subject worth studying.

I was talking about some things in terms of the computerization that had gone to another level in perspective(gravitational entanglement). It was about how "technologies can change" while we had been held to a certain kind of thinking. While the limitations held us too, "not knowing what computerization may bring."

IN regards to the Landscape

It was important to understand why there would be such divergences in perspective and how these would be lined up? Some of course did not want to take the time, but it was important to me to understand the "philosophical position" taken.



One could just as well venture to the condense matter theorist and said, what building blocks shall we use? One should not think the "history of Platonism" without some "other influences" to consider. Least you assign it to a "another particular subject" in it's present incarnation? An Oscillatory String Universe?

So the evolution here is much more then the "circumspect of the biological function," but may possible include other things that have not been considered?

Physiologically, the "biological function" had some other relation? So abstract that I assigned the photon? So I said "feelings," while Einstein might assigned them to a "short or long time" considering his state of mind? :)

More thought of course here on the "fictional presentation" submitted previous. As a layman I have a problem in that regard. :)

Who would have ever thought that such "concepts that moved from my mind had some relation to the world at large in our emotive consequences?" That from such thinking, I would adopt fictional perspective to help me deal with what the advancements may be in the computerized world?

I already had to know of the development in terms of entanglement's issues, to move it one step further not only in my thinking, but in understanding that as you adopt model apprehensions, how shall these lead you to conclude that the physics in association, had some relevance to it.

The cosmologist may say that indeed the gravitational consequences and waves have as yet to be considered, but, if held to the photon in it's affect in such a gravitational field, then what would we want from such a graviton condensation?

It's colouring?

So of course it is appropriate that I show you the comment I made above, and then you judge for your self the thought I held in fiction, in relation to this article below as I am making that statement.

Lene Hau explains how she stops light in one place then retrieves and speeds it up in a completely separate place.
Staff photo Justin Ide/Harvard News Office

Atoms at room temperature move in a random, chaotic way. But when chilled in a vacuum to about 460 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, under certain conditions millions of atoms lock together and behave as a single mass. When a laser beam enters such a condensate, the light leaves an imprint on a portion of the atoms. That imprint moves like a wave through the cloud and exits at a speed of about 700 feet per hour. This wave of matter will keep going and enter another nearby ultracold condensate. That's how light moves darkly from one cloud to another in Hau's laboratory.

This invisible wave of matter keeps going unless it's stopped in the second cloud with another laser beam, after which it can be revived as light again.

Atoms in matter waves exist in slightly different energy levels and states than atoms in the clouds they move through. These energy states match the shape and phase of the original light pulse. To make a long story short, information in this form can be made absolutely tamper proof. Personal information would be perfectly safe.

The Perfect Sphere

Before I begin I had to mention the following two entries below that I wanted to do but was short on time.

This recording was produced by converting into audible sounds some of the radar echoes received by Huygens during the last few kilometres of its descent onto Titan. As the probe approaches the ground, both the pitch and intensity increase. Scientists will use intensity of the echoes to speculate about the nature of the surface.

I am following behind on the different posts that I wanted to write. One of them in relation to the descent of a "measure gatherer" (sounds primitive doesn't it?) and the sound values produced from that "descent on Titan." Can make it "sound ancient" while current research is of value.

Almost, as if one is a cave dweller blowing dried paint over their hands, could possibly be thinking of fire and rays cast while their own shadows made them think of a sun that can enter the cave, and chains that need to be broken from thinking so circumspect..:)



The second one I wanted to talk about was in relation to Themis and the Aurora Borealis. The labels will hopefully help with my previous research that I had done as well as other perspectives that allowed me to see this sun earth relationship. Quasar has currently dealing with that topic further in "Coronal Mass Ejection" as well and Backreaction entitled, "NASA launch of THEMIS Satellite."

Anyway on to the essence of this post and why it is troubling to me. Many would not know what goes on in my head as I am currently looking at the relationship of the Bose Nova to the jet productions that issue from such spiralled tendency. Accretion disc and the idea of such spiralling, to a pipe that follows to making anti-matter productions?

See Water in Zero Gravity, by Backreaction
How did this all arise? So you see such an idea of the sphere in a vacuum is a point from which to begin the search for things that were not there before, so we now know that such collisions can indeed produce "new" information?

The action taken, although seems related to what Arivero is saying, and of course I already have much on this in terms of Han Jenny, and the taking of the Chaldni plate to spherical relations. As an experiment with a "balloons and dyes using sound" similar to "sand on that same chaldni plate."

The Perfect Sphere and Sonoluminence.

Taleyarkhan.A second internal inquiry has found no evidence of misconduct.Credit: Purdue News Service

Purdue University officials today announced that a second and final internal inquiry has cleared bubble-fusion researcher Rusi Taleyarkhan of all allegations of research misconduct. "I feel vindicated and exonerated," Taleyarkhan says. "It's been a pressure cooker for about a year." But controversy surrounding Taleyarkhan's work isn't likely to die down any time soon.

Taleyarkhan is the chief proponent of the controversial notion of sonofusion, which suggests that sound energy can collapse bubbles in a way that yields more energy than was initially put in (ScienceNOW, 4 March 2002). Last year, an article in Nature reported that several of Taleyarkhan's colleagues at Purdue were upset by their encounters with him, suggesting that he allegedly obstructed their work and tried to stop them from publishing results that contradicted his own.

There has been some contention about the results, but this is far from what I wanted to show in terms of the geometrics involved. Patience as to the energy produced from this interaction of "sound on the surface transferred inside" to cause a spherical collapse.


Experimental apparatus used by the team at the University of Stuttgart. PMT = photomultiplier tube, PZT = piezoelectric transducer. Picture credit: Physical Review Letters

German researchers have measured the duration and shape of a sonoluminescence pulse for the first time. Sonoluminescence - the emission of light by bubbles of gas trapped in a liquid and excited by sound waves - is one of the most puzzling phenomena in physics. Although first discovered in 1934, physicists have yet to discover the underlying light emitting process.

Seeing the tensorial action on the bubble moving sound inside, I had wondered about how such a collapse could increase the temperatures involved to produce this "super higgs fluid." Lubos Motl never gave this much thought and I of course am impressionable when it comes to the science mind. I could not shake it.

Ultrasound can produce temperatures as high as those on the surface of the Sun and pressures as great as those at the bottom of the ocean. In some cases, it can also increase chemical reactivities by nearly a millionfold.

So we "assign fluids" as one might the "vacuum in space" to illustrate what we have as our way with these bubbles? These claims have not been fantastical other then what the science had been designed for, yet I am drawn to the schematics and geometrics.

So yes the ways in which the size of the blackhole could all of sudden collapse is critical here, to producing further results in what is required of the new physics? So looking for "such experimental processes" is always part of my resolve to understand the geometrics involved.

Please be patient while I am learning.


Axisymmetry is also broken in the fluid bells, which assume the form of polyhedra

See further information in regards to Broken Symmetry.

So the idea here that was troubling was the way in which the symmetry was broken in terms of the fluid flows demonstrated by the Broken Symmetry examples.

My perception is much different here in that the dynamical relation of "the super fluid", may have it's correlation in the Navier stokes equations. This is by "insinuation on my part." How preposterous such a thing to think that the conditions had to be "spelt out first" in order for us to understand the "new physics" beyond the standard model?

Navier-Stokes Equations

The Navier-Stokes equations, named after Claude-Louis Navier and George Gabriel Stokes, are a set of equations that describe the motion of fluid substances such as liquids and gases. These equations establish that changes in momentum in infinitesimal volumes of fluid are simply the product of changes in pressure and dissipative viscous forces (similar to friction) acting inside the fluid. These viscous forces originate in molecular interactions and dictate how viscous a fluid is. Thus, the Navier-Stokes equations are a dynamical statement of the balance of forces acting at any given region of the fluid.

Using the geometrical basis of my thought pattern established as a point in a circle, or a point with "no boundary", it seems it is very difficult to talk about the universe if one does not include the way in which such dynamicals can perpetuate the energy within this system.

In fact, in the reciprocal language, these tiny circles are getting ever smaller as time goes by, since as R grows, 1/R shrinks. Now we seem to have really gone off the deep end. How can this possibly be true? How can a six-foot tall human being 'fit' inside such an unbelievably microscopic universe? How can a speck of a universe be physically identical to the great expanse we view in the heavens above?

(Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe, pages 248-249)

Thus too, the understanding, that if you turn Einstein's equation E=mc² inside/out then what had you done? All "matter states" have then been assigned a energy value? Qui! Non?

Plato:

Layman scratching head while faceless expression of Boltzmann puzzlement takes hold?

How is one suppose to find "a equilibrium" in such a "low entropic state?"

If we were to experimentally challenging any thinking with "relativistic processes" how could they have ever emerged out of the BB? Maybe, it was a "highly symmetric event" for any asymmetry to show itself as "discrete measures" defined in relation to the "energy of probable outcomes?"

Where did such reductionism begin for us to ask about the "cross over?"

We needed high energy perspective to realize that we were still talking about the universe. Are there any other processes within the cosmos that can be taken down to such rejuvenated qualities to new universes being born that while the arrow of time is pointed one way, that the universe itself allowed such expression to continue in the expansion rate, and the speed up?

A Higg's fluid? Something had to be "happening now" that would dictate?

Forgive me here for my ignorance in face of those better equipped.

So you are looking for "this point" where things cross over? It is highly supersymmetric, yet, we know that such matter states have been detailed and defined as "discrete" asymmetric matter states.

I made a comment above that needed to be looked at again so I am placing it here while it suffers it's fate in another location. The basis of the argument is an ole one indeed that has long been exchanged by Smolin and Susskind.

Now it is again one of those things that I am trying to make sense of while one could go off in a philosophical direction. While the "facts of the matter" and experimental results dictate my thinking here.

It's the fault of that ole' Platonic thinking, and the Pythagorean basis of the universe in expression thingy. The universe is very dynamical geometrically while one debates the essence of inflation and disregards what allows such an expression to bring "other ideas" into the fold. How this "eternal idea" can bring other factors in terms of the speed up into consideration, while one ponders why such a thing is happening?

Neutrino Oscillations? Hmmmm.......

Oscillating flavors The three neutrino mass eigenstates are presumed to be different coherent superpositions of the three flavor eigenstates (ne, nm, and nt) associated with the three charged leptons: the electron, the muon, and the tau. There is good evidence that only two of the three mass eigenstates contribute significantly to ne. In that approximation, one can write

Just another fancy way of looking at CNO and the law of Octaves? :) While some thought space was empty, there were aspects of that space "which was alive" regardless of the asymmetrical realization of the discrete matters?

I'm trying here. You needed a background for it?

The triple alpha process is highly dependent on carbon-12 having a resonance with the same energy as helium-4 and beryllium-8 and before 1952 no such energy level was known. It was astrophysicist Fred Hoyle who used the fact that carbon-12 is so abundant in the universe (and that our existence depends upon it - the Anthropic Principle), as evidence for the existence of the carbon-12 resonance. Fred suggested the idea to nuclear physicist Willy Fowler, who conceded that it was possible that this energy level had been missed in previous work on carbon-12. After a brief undertaking by his research group, they discovered a resonance near to 7.65 Mev.

Now I am not pro or against anything, just trying to make sense of the disparity of such anthropic reasonings. So what processes in Cern reveals such an idea? Muons?

What's that saying? The devil is in the details :)

So we want to define our relationship with the world in some computerized method? It has always been something of a struggle to explain how one may see the world as they lose the focus of distinctive sight and hearing and soon realize that if they are all amalgamated, you might get this idea of the gravitationally inclined atomized in some computerized process? Feelings?:)

You finally learnt something about yourself?

A thought crossed my mind. A fictional story?

It’s interesting what calorimetric measure can do when you are looking at cosmological events. So, the photon becomes descriptive in itself?

Of course speaking of Glast here. Building alliances?


Perhaps Quantum Gravity can be Handled by thoroughly reconsidering Quantum Mechanics itself?

You are working “to set” the course of events? So we have this description then of the universe and it’s “phase transitions.” It’s behind the “value of the photon in it’s description and escape velocity” and it’s value also “gravitationally linked?”

So technology now stops the photon in flight? We can then “colour our views with the gravitationally inclined?”:) A “philosophical take” on new computerized development with feeling?

The leading computer technologies here is not to diverge from what I moved too in terms of understanding the human condition. This is very important to me, and includes not only our biological functioning, but our resulting affect from the physiological one as well.

So while "you think" I hope to chart the colours spectrally induced oscillatory universe from the "photon stop over" and subsequent information held in that abeyance. Sure it's a story of fiction right now, but in time I would like to see this connection to reality.

It may only rest at this time in conceptual framework that was constructed from what was available in the physics and science at our disposal, while I had to move forward slowly.

It was important to understand why there would be such divergences in perspective and how these would be lined up? Some of course did not want to take the time, but it was important to me to understand the "philosophical position" taken.



One could just as well venture to the condense matter theorist and said, what building blocks shall we use? One should not think the "history of Platonism" without some "other influences" to consider. Least you assign it to a "another particular subject" in it's present incarnation? An Oscillatory String Universe?

So the evolution here is much more then the "circumspect of the biological function," but may possible include other things that have not been considered?

Physiologically, the "biological function" had some other relation? So abstract that I assigned the photon? So I said "feelings," while Einstein might assigned them to a "short or long time" considering his state of mind? :)

More thought of course here on the "fictional presentation" submitted previous. As a layman I have a problem in that regard. :)

So no one knows how to combine thermodynamics and general relativity? Hmmm....Boltzmann puzzle..hmmmmm...and I slowly drift off in thought.

Our work is about comparing the data we collect in the STAR detector with modern calculations, so that we can write down equations on paper that exactly describe how the quark-gluon plasma behaves," says Jerome Lauret from Brookhaven National Laboratory. "One of the most important assumptions we've made is that, for very intense collisions, the quark-gluon plasma behaves according to hydrodynamic calculations in which the matter is like a liquid that flows with no viscosity whatsoever."

How does relativity ever arise out of such a situation? If "tunnelling was to occur" where would it occur, and where would "this equilibrium" find comparative Lagrangian relations in the universe? These perspectives are leading to what we see in the WMAP polarization patterns?

Are there not "comparative features" that allows for the low entropic states, within the existing universe? Allows us to return to those same entropic states in their respective regions, while "feeding" the universe?

You had to look for the conditions that would be similar would you not? And "supporting evidence" to explain the current universe speeding up. These conditions would have to support that contention.

I am holding off producing any new posts until I can bring the discussion to a suitable ending where Lee Smolin admits the ideas are not yet completed in terms of of our understanding of the landscape?

Clifford has a good humour post about real estate in the extra dimensions. Of course you had to follow other discourses here to understand how one may view what is "current in the thinking?"

This "balance in perspective" is not just one or the other but on how such perspective is formed around it. So on the one hand you have this Anthropic approach in string theory, and then you have the "philosophical differences on the other?"

Your trying to explain it and in so doing revealing the train of thought that was established. One does not disavow the road leading to the physics established of course, and no where is this intentional on differing perspectives

Lee Smolin: "Here is a metaphor due to Eric Weinstein that I would have put in the book had I heard it before. Let us take a different twist on the landscape of theories and consider the landscape of possible ideas about post standard model or quantum gravity physics that have been proposed. Height is proportional to the number of things the theory gets right. Since we don’t have a convincing case for the right theory yet, that is a high peak somewhere off in the distance. The existing approaches are hills of various heights that may or may not be connected, across some ridges and high valleys to the real peak. We assume the landscape is covered by fog so we can’t see where the real peak is, we can only feel around and detect slopes and local maxima.

Turtles All The Way Down

"Turtles all the way down" refers to an infinite regression belief about the nature of the universe (see Cosmology).

For Hawking, the turtle story is one of two accounts of the nature of the universe; he asserts that the turtle theory is patently ridiculous, but admits that his own theories may be just as ridiculous. "Only time will tell," he concludes.

For Geertz, however, the story is patently wise, teaching us that we will never get to the bottom of things.

This comparison also reveals a difference between the positivist and interpretive, or hermeneutic approach to the interpretation of myths. Positivists read myths literally and find them false and foolish; interpretivists read them metaphorically or allegorically and find them true and profound.

The phrase "turtles all the way down", or sometimes simply "a turtle problem" are often used to describe other infinite regressions. For instance, the question of "who polices the police" may be regarded as a turtle problem.

There is a question looming on my mind abut what reality is? There is the idea of the "infinite regress" of all particle reductions as we venture to "what may be" the first cause?

It is not necessary for me to hold any views of religious intent here other then to say that any person is quite capable of acting as the student and placing in front of them what the answer to that question of reality is. Then it becomes to them what they have satisfied what reality had explained.

Now this is not easy for me to answer such a question, and think about what had come before? In terms of those who asked this same question of the self, and what it may mean to you. Who am I. What makes "you" who you are?

So is it subjective that first cause may have something in association with the cosmology at large, in this question as to how the universe came into being, or is it a redundant feature to ask such a question and just accept what is?

NASA/JPL/Keck
Perspective on the past. Quasar spectra recorded at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii imply that a fundamental physical constant may have been increasing slightly over the past six billion years.

If we are "not aware" does the universe end? Do the fundamental laws of science not exist because you do not exist?

While I do not have time to complete this post I am going to add to it because there are concepts that are very appealing here in our investigations that serve to be looked at. I do not contest any fundamental constant here, other then to look at them as comparative features of our association with the natural world.

The Multiverse is like a....Flower?

Alexander Vilenkin

The implications of inflation are particularly important in the context of the landscape of string theory. One of the leading researchers studying how inflationary cosmology evolves through the landscape is Alex Vilenkin, a theoretical physicist at Tufts who has been working in the field of cosmology for 25 years and is a pioneer in introducing the ideas of eternal inflation and quantum creation of the universe from nothing. Here he sets forth his ideas of how the set of theories which began with Guth's inflationary scenario are playing out.

This post on the Multiverse of mine, may be an "psychological interpretation" here that I would like to bring forward. This may be distasteful for people of science. Please bear with me as I try to explain myself, and not sanction me to a site that has issues with "ten dimensions and and quantum tunnelling?":)

The Flower as a Universe in Expression

So I will open the above with an example of one of the flowers done up with regards to Mandalic interpretations. This has been part of my research to understand the "individuality of each persons expression" from the inside out. As if, one understood the "liminocentric structure" develop from the schematic of the "circle with a point" in it, "to a point" with a boundary condition that is contained, as an equation of E=mc².

AS well the student here is learning to give credence to a "way of enlightenment" that foreshadows what can exist as "this schematic mathematical diagram," could find itself looking quite nicely in such a expression as that of a flower.

"Out of Nothing" Came Art and Science?

But even empty space has faint traces of energy that fluctuate on the subatomic scale. As suggested previously by Jaume Garriga of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University, these fluctuations can generate their own big bangs in tiny areas of the universe, widely separated in time and space. Carroll and Chen extend this idea in dramatic fashion, suggesting that inflation could start “in reverse” in the distant past of our universe, so that time could appear to run backwards (from our perspective) to observers far in our past.

I think one can be detracted by good pictures as to the originality of how we might see the universe in expression. So "without further explanation" we might say yes indeed they are good pictures of flowers without understanding the inheritance of the explanation forth coming.

So the idea here is not to be judgemental of the "book by it's cover" until one has considered the explanation that is forthcoming. As one weights what the expression of any universe can mean, while within it, there are evidences for the possibilities of what exists as our own universe, was granted a design, as one might grant each galaxy in expression?

Take an event within the colliders and tell how each will react according to the energies used?


MARIO MARKUS, Max Planck Inst., Dortmund

This first issue of the journal became a "meeting place" of an international group of authors, representing five continents. Although the papers give reliable information about the authors, we add here some brief "informal" notes on all of them:

I may have been attracted to this one for consideration by implicating the "music of the spheres" in my previous comments so however words are transported back and forth between scientists, or "the insinuation" of JoAnne of Cosmic Variance has for it, I cannot help the way I see.:)

OKay now. On to the explanation, as I have learnt to understand it, and then, what ever fate I have assigned to me and this becomes the way of it for me? Cracked flower pot and all.

Bubble Nucleation

During a first-order phase transition, the matter fields get trapped in a `false vacuum' state from which they can only escape by nucleating bubbles of the new phase, that is, the `true vacuum' state. See here for correlating Post.

Now is it enough that I identify the "source of such expressions" to advance the "geometrical inherent of form" as a universe in expression? So where did this design come from. How could anything issue from such "chaos implied in all the possibilities" that we might have the universe we did in this one?

Physically, the effect can be interpreted as an object moving from the "false vacuum" (where = 0) to the more stable "true vacuum" (where = v). Gravitationally, it is similar to the more familiar case of moving from the hilltop to the valley. In the case of Higgs field, the transformation is accompanied with a "phase change", which endows mass to some of the particles.

So by looking at the picture below you get this sense of why the "sombrero as a hat" serves us well to explain the nature of gravitational considerations while this "collapse of the sphere" can produce all kinds of models of geometrical expressions, as a Calabi Yau?



The "landscape" has been something of a issue, as I have travelled through the last couple of years, watching scientists go back and forth in debate. They have their reasons why of course.

I will not assign "a label" although I use them here in this blog "to categorize the times that I have ventured onto a particular subject." I will not succumb to "any categories" that insinuate that "one group of scientists belong to let's say the "Templeton Foundation" and thusly criticize them, as being insignificant and deluded. "Founding a movement" to change society other then, what society wants itself to become.

So by characterization I have learnt to not hold any woman or man to the "fate of character alone," or the "choices they make." But to see the basis of science is continually being adhered to on a level of "correlation of cognition." Given, the experiment and facts, what does one conclude to do while they venture forward? What do they pull toward them, as they theorize about the science?

How is their philosophy imbued them to speak, while there is this underlying mathematical basis to the world? Is it all "flowery or drawn to the arts" that it detracts from the science? Are there not ways that art helps science visualize what has come from their thought processes?

So Tegmark saids,"the universe is not a bagel?" And we have all these ideas about the "shape of the universe." Cosmology likes em large, while the Calabi Yau-ist like it small? Okay, not small, but descriptively unique?