OMG.

That is all I have to say right now.  Moving a family 720 miles in any direction from where you are SUCKS ASS.

But we are getting there.  Got Internet, I suppose we can call that progress.

Time to reconnect with all the people who can’t stand me.

Aurora CO is………..different.

HEY, “The Strange Attractor” is up at Astropoetica!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Wooooo!

• ITEM #1

During the course of writing my global consciousness article I asked Dr. Roger Nelson the following:

I have struggled to understand how you gather the data and interpret it.  On your recent appearance with George Noory I believe you used a “coin flip” analogy.  In ten flips of a coin we expect five heads and five tails.  Useful data would be some significant number of coin flips that deviate from the expected result.  The EGG’s generate random strings of 1’s and 0’s, and when you retrospectively examine the data for correlation to some major world event you are looking for coherence in the form of unusually long strings of 1’s or 0’s.  Am I even in the ballpark on this?

While waiting for Dr. Nelson’s reply to this, I found a mainstream media news story that used virtually the same analogy, so I went forward with it.  It is useful in that it gives non-mathematically inclined people (me, specifically) a means by which to grasp the concept, but it is not an entirely accurate description.

In an email, Dr. Nelson offered this clarification:

Not exactly. What we do is collect 200 bits each second at each node. The bits are summed, and this sum is the trial value. Like flipping 200 coins and counting the heads, we expect about 100, +/- standard deviation of 7.071. Thus we have some 65 parallel sequences of numbers like 101, 97, 78,111, 100,… The standard measure calculates the variability of those numbers across all the eggs to create a “network variance” measure for each second. Then we combine the seconds over the duration of an event to make a statistic that represents the departure from expectation (if any) that is correlated with the attention and emotions shared around the world during the event.

Basically, the question is simple: Do we see deviations from expected random behavior of our instrument (the egg network)during times when large numbers of people share focus and emotional responses? All the calculations do is create a fair scientific measure of that hypothesized correlation.

Of course there are many other questions we can ask, like does distance matter, and how many people must be involved, but the essential starting point is: Do we see a correlation between big events and non-random structure in our data?

I might also add that Dr. Nelson went well out of his way to help me with my article.  I’m grateful for his efforts on my behalf.

• ITEM #2

I just heard from Marge Simon over at Star*Line.  She picked up two of my poems for the Jan. 2010 issue.  More on that at a future date.  Look for my poem “Giza” in the July/August issue, late summer or early fall.  “The Strange Attractor” is due out at Astropoetica as well.  I strongly recommend you follow that link.  Astronomy and poetry.  Beautiful.

• ITEM #3

I found out a couple weeks ago that they are shutting down the facility where I work.  This could be a disaster, or it could be an interesting new adventure in my life, depending on how I choose to view it.  I may be able to transfer to another facility in Aurora, Co.  Scary idea, but kind of exciting as well.  Can anybody tell me anything about Aurora?

• ITEM #4

Not one, not two, but six poems rejected by GUD in the space of about six days.  Ouch!

• ITEM #5

I have a Twitter account.  It’s a toss up as to which confuses me more–Dr. Nelson’s random event generators or Twitter.  I did manage to set it up such that I can post to the sidebar of this blog from my cell phone.  Woo hoo.  You can follow me. Could some kind soul tell me how to get ABC news off my thing where I read other people’s crap?  I did everything it said…still there.

• ITEM #6

The whole Michael Jackson thing depresses me a lot more than I might have imagined.  I was never much of a fan, but I remember when his music started getting big.  Good times.  Good days.

• ITEM #7

Found this at a thrift store today.  Looks like a good read.  What’s funny is that it was published in 1977.  Did they imagine that nothing important would likely happen between 1977 and the year 2000?  Wasn’t there some wall somewhere that fell down?  1989-ish?  The Simpsons?

This is the sort of book I like to read sitting out on the porch with the terminator squarely overhead, and with a cold beer handy.

• ITEM #8

Finally, I take back every mean thing I ever said about White House press corps senior correspondent Helen Thomas.  I just heard a news story on Fox where she crawled right up White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’ ass.  I thought she only did that to republicans.

“The point is the control from here. We have never had that in the White House. And we have had some control but not this control. I mean I’m amazed, I’m amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency and you have controlled…”

Get on with your suddenly bad self, Helen!

WHAT IS A “GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS PROJECT”?

Is there such a thing as mass human consciousness, and is it something that can be measured?

As “new age” as that may sound, it is a question that scientists began to explore in the late 1960’s, concurrent with the advent of computers and micro electronic technology.  In 1979, Princeton University established a laboratory–the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) group–to study the effect of human consciousness on electronic devices.  In 1980 Dr. Roger Nelson, an experimental psychologist with a background in physics, statistical methods, and engineering, joined the group.

For the next 22 years Dr. Nelson and his colleagues developed and refined electronic hardware designed to generate random data, and used it to test their hypothesis that human consciousness can exert a measurable influence on physical electronic systems.  During this time Dr. Nelson began to formulate ideas for what would later become the Global Consciousness Project

HOW DOES IT WORK?

The GCP’s core hypothesis is that mass human consciousness, when it is focused on some major global event, should measurably affect a network of continuously operating random number generators set up in 40 countries over the course of about 10 years.  The process is rather complicated, but the concept is simple.

GCP’s instruments, referred to as “EGG’s” (an acronym for electrogaiagram), generate random numbers which can be represented as a continuous output of 1’s or 0’s.  The principle is similar to that of flipping a coin, only much faster.  In any set number of coin flips, an observer has an expectation that half of the coin flips will produce a result of “heads,” and half will produce “tails.”  In Dr. Nelson’s process, “heads and tails” are replaced by “1’s and 0’s,” but the concept of an “expected result” remains the same.

Fractal Analysis of Random Data (Image courtesy of Dr. Roger Nelson)

In his analysis of this data, Dr. Nelson is looking for significant deviations from the expected result.  That is to say, suspiciously long strings of either 1’s or 0’s.  Using our coin analogy, imagine that you decide to flip a coin 100 times.  You would expect to get 50 “heads” and 50 “tails,” with the understanding that the actual results might deviate slightly one way or the other.  But what if you got “heads” 90 times in a row?  That would indicate a significant deviation from the expected result.

By itself, this seeming coherence in a random system is meaningless.  It isn’t until we apply the data to Dr. Nelson’s hypothesis that a very interesting phenomenon is revealed.  Using a very strict criteria, Dr. Nelson began to examine the data as it correlated to major world events.  Targeted events included such things as the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the death of Princess Diana, and even New Year’s Eve celebrations.  What Dr. Nelson discovered was that in the majority of these instances, the sampled data from the EGG network did indeed show the significant deviation from expected result that I describe above, and that Dr. Nelson predicted.  Stated more simply (if somewhat less accurately), the results seemed to indicate that during major global events, the consciousness of a vast number of the world’s people–likely focused on the event–seems to exert some influence on the EGG network…the random number generators begin to generate long strings of non-random numbers.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

For me, it is interesting in and of itself.  Dr. Nelson has data that seems to reveal a meaningful correlation between coherence in continuously generated random data, and focused mass consciousness during major global events.  He has his critics, and I find it reassuring that Dr. Nelson meets them head-on on his web site.  He doesn’t shy away from it.

But let’s go ahead and unpack this.  If Dr. Nelson’s core hypothesis…that our instrument (the network of “eggs”) will show anomalous deviations associated with Global Events when there is widespread participation or reaction to the event…is proved, then what does it mean?

Well, it would seem to mean that there is such a thing as “Global Consciousness.”  It would seem to mean that we humans…each and every one of us…are connected one to another in a very intimate and hitherto unsuspected way.  Or it may mean that the planet we live on has a consciousness, and is generating the “cause” for Dr. Nelson’s “effect.”  I prefer the first possibility, not being a part of the “gaia-worship” crowd.  Either way, it is for you to further explore.  Here’s the LINK…and I hope your journey on this particular path is as rewarding as mine.

I don’t know if I support the guy that these folks voted for, but I sure as hell support their right to be heard.

Add my voice to theirs.

I want to draw everybody’s attention to a new feature here at Vacuum Genesis.  Check out The Void Sprocket both at the top of this page, and in the right sidebar.

The Void Sprocket is basically a resource guide for speculative poets.  I may expand it into an actual speculative poetry market in the future, but for now I just want to keep it simple and useful.

There is a bit of a story behind the image that I have chosen to associate with this project (shown left, or above, depending on how WordPress chooses to crunch it all).  I put it together using an old family photograph and some rather inept editing with Photoshop Elements.  It was intended to be the cover of my self-published speculative poetry collection titled–obviously–The Void Sprocket.  That project fell apart, so I have recycled the idea (and associated image) for the purposes of my little on line web-zine.

I hope that my fellow speculative poets find The Void Sprocket to be a useful and interesting resource.  Bookmark my Vacuum Genesis  blog and check back often.

This stuff is about four years old. I sat on it for a long time because I wanted to run it as a UFO story. It’s not. What we have here is a very interesting meteorological phenomenon that bears a bit of examination and study.

A friend of mine was driving south from Oklahoma City. I can’t tell you whether she is on I-35 or the H. E. Bailey Turnpike. Maybe someone more familiar with those routes could tell from the pictures.

Along the way she encountered a storm which in all likelihood would have been moving east or northeast. Figure 1 below sets the scene.

 In this image we can see the storm to the south moving toward us. As the sequence progresses the storm will pass us on our right. The storm appears to be anywhere from five to ten miles away, and we can see a pretty well-defined lowered base which would indicate that what we are seeing is a mesocyclone–that is, a rotating thunderstorm. If we look very closely at the area straight ahead and above the highway we can just begin to make out some tiny lights floating in the air just beneath the base of this storm. Figure 1 detail highlights the area in question, with arrows pointing to the strange lights.

In the second set of images we are a little closer to the storm. There is a truly alarming funnel shape on the right side of the rain shaft but I can’t say for certain if it is in fact a tornado. It is kind of in the wrong position in the storm for that, opposite of the obviously lowered section of the storm on the left.

You can very clearly see the light objects now, particularly in the detail of this image.

The third image is taken shortly after the second, and shows us pretty much the same phenomena. The funnel feature persists, and in the detail we can count 7 light objects. That is significant in that I count the same number in the previous image. These light objects are persisting, not winking in and out, or on and off.

In the fourth sequence a couple of minutes have passed. We are a closer and the angles have all changed. I cannot count seven light images in this shot, but as we will see in the next image, they are still there. The funnel feature seems to have dissipated.

I can count seven light images in this next set of images, but I have to admit that one of them may well be the setting sun. My friend is driving south and shooting out of her passenger-side window, which means that she is shooting west. The former funnel feature is now very pronounced, and it’s position in the storm is more where I would expect it to be if I were in fact chasing this storm and I knew for a fact that it was tornadic.

In the final set of images I can only clearly see three of the strange lights, but I note that the others may well be lost in the brightness of the setting sun. The possible tornadic feature persists, and the detail is truly startling. Whatever these things are, they are there.

I think the salient points are as follows:

• The lights are very plainly visible
• The lights persist over a long period of time
• The lights are clearly associated with the storm, and moving with it
• There appears to be some tornadic circulation in this storm
• The number of lights provably remains consistent over a certain period of time, and may well remain consistent throughout the entire sequence if we allow for the limitations of the camera and the intrusion of the setting sun into the images

Not UFO’s, this is clearly some sort of meteorological phenomenon. The strange lights are moving, but they are moving slowly, with the storm. They are not darting around, or winking in and out.

I have no idea what it might be. Really big and long-lived ball lightning? I very very rarely canvass for comments on this blog, but I would love to hear what other people think about this.

(I apologize for the screwed up formatting of this post.  Any time I have a lot of pics this happens.  The Internet sucks;)

Just a reminder.  My poem “Giza” is due out in Star*Line sometime this summer, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

Related.  I see where fellow speculative poet and on-line acquaintance Rose Lemburg has a poem in the current issue of Star*Line…”Burns at Both Ends.”  She also has a poem nominated for this year’s Rhysling Award.  Go Rose!

Related to that…I finally found the issue of Star*Line that proves one of my poems was once almost nominated for a Rhysling.  You see, when I found out that Rose’s poem had been nominated I was so thoroughly pissed off, jealous, and seething with indignation happy about it that I remembered when I almost once received that honor.

I don’t have the thing right in front of me, but it was a 1988 issue of Star*Line in which a list of Rhysling Award nominees was presented (prior to the balloting, obviously).  At any rate, I can remember to this day getting that issue in the mail and my eyes popping out to see that my Poem “Sound and the Electric Ear Dream” (Amazing Stories, Nov. 1987) was on the list.  Woo Hoo!

Then I saw the asterisk.  Turns out it wasn’t actually nominated…it was somebody’s second choice.  I don’t think they take “second choices” now, and I’m not sure why they did then since the “second choice” wasn’t included in the anthology, but it was still kinda nice to know that it was somebody’s second favorite speculative poem that year.  I can live with that.

Anyway.  I have a poem due out in Astropoetica.  Not sure when.  “The Strange Attractor.”  I’m really proud of that put because I REALLY love that specpo outlet.  Click the link and check them out.  Good stuff.

Before I get to the main point of this particular post, here’s a treat. I found the “shower scene” from Parasite Eve 2 on You Tube while checking out this other stuff. Watching it makes me want to play the game again…

Granted, a lot of younger gamers will think it a bit lame, but it was pretty cool for its time and the game is one of the better ones for the old PS1.

On to the new stuff.  I was checking my blog stats and clicked on one of the “referrer” links.  It took me to a page devoted to all things Aya Brea, one of which turned out to be a blog devoted to “cosplay.”

For those like me who haven’t the faintest idea what “cosplay” is, here’s a brief description from wikipedia:

Cosplay (コスプレ ,kosupure^?), short for “costume play”,^[1] is a type of performance art whose participants outfit themselves, with often-elaborate costumes and accessories, as a specific character or idea. Characters are usually sourced in various Japanese and East Asian media, including manga, anime, tokusatsu, comic books, graphic novels, video games, and fantasy movies. Other sources include performers from J-pop, J-rock, visual kei, fantasy music stories (such as stories by the band Sound Horizon), novels, and objects from cyberspace or the real world that are unique and dramatic (especially if they have or can be given an anthropomorphic form).

Cosplay participants (“cosplayers”) form a subculture centered around wearing their costumes and reenacting scenes or inventing likely behavior inspired by their chosen sources. In some circles, the term cosplay has been broadened to include simply wearing a costume, without special consideration given to enacting characters in a performance context.

Here’s the link, if you would like to read the entire article.

So I wound up at Cosfantasy, a site that features photo galleries of various cosplayers portraying their favorite characters.  I jetted on over to the Aya Brea archive and was pleasantly surprised, as I am sure you will be when you click here.

Granted, Aya Brea probably isn’t one of the more complicated characters to “cosplay,” especially if you happen to be a slender Japanese girl with long blond hair, but this girl looks exactly like Aya.  It’s awesome.  I didn’t navigate around much, but some of the other costumes looked very elaborate, and I would imagine that these folks are spending a lot of time, or money, or both, to pursue this form of performance art.

I’m curious about the legal issues involved, though.  Further into the wikipedia article, the writer states that:  Since the design of the clothing is originated from mostly fictional characters from manga, anime, tokusatsu, comic books, graphic novels, video games, and fantasy movies, the design itself is not copyrighted by the author or the maker of these forms of publication. Therefore, small manufacturers are able to take advantage of this by simply produce and sell packaged set costumes to cosplay fans.

I’m not sure I buy that.  If you tried to manufacture and sell Superman, Spiderman, and X-Men costumes, I would imagine that Marvel Comics would slap a Cease & Desist on you faster than the proverbial speeding bullet.  Why would video game characters be any different?  I don’t see a problem if people want to make their own costume and use it for their own cosplay, but if they are being made to sell than I can see some trouble down the road.

Anyway, it is not my intent to mess with other people’s thang, so I’ll let somebody else pop the top on that particular can of worms.  In the meantime, enjoy Aya.  If you haven’t already, buy the game and play it.  I like PE2 a bit more than PE1, but both are good games and quite striking visually, at least for their time.