Mare's Nest: 2009

The Ancient Elf

by James Stephens

I am the maker,
The builder, the breaker,
The eagle-winged helper,
The speedy forsaker!

The lance and the lyre,
The water, the fire,
The tooth of oppression,
The lip of desire!

The snare and the wing,
The honey, the sting!
When you seek for me-- look
For a different thing!

I, careless and gay,
Never mean what I say,
For my thoughts and my eyes
Look the opposite way!

.: The Ancient Elf :.

Private Jackson

Parker: [firing machine gun] I'm out of .30 Caliber!

Private Jackson: [lining shots] Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teaches my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.
[fires rifle twice]
Private Jackson: My goodness and my fortress... my high tower and my Deliverer.
[fires rifle]
Private Jackson: My shield, and He in whom I trust
Private Jackson: [fires rifle, then to his rifle]
Private Jackson: Here you go baby.

[fires rifle few more times. Notices a tank has spotted them]

Private Jackson: Parker get down!

[the tank fires at the bell tower killing both Parker and Jackson]

-- Barry Pepper in 'Saving Private Ryan'

Inspired by 2001 A Space Oddysey

Image by Alun Salt via Flickr

Bek from #darkfall prompted this:

[00:45] [hoojoo] 2001 a space oddessy
[00:45] [hoojoo] err however you spell it

[00:46] [laylah] Boring, except for one or two scenes.

[00:46] [hoojoo] bah

[00:47] * Laylah picks up a femur and bashes Hoojoo over the head.

[00:47] [hoojoo] ow!
[00:47] [hoojoo] its not my fault i havent figure out tools yet. and you only know cuz the obilisk told you!

[00:47] [laylah] The Obelisk likes me best.

[00:48] [hoojoo] that makes sense. im a bit of an A hole

[00:48] * Laylah peels a banana, before eating it.

[00:48] [hoojoo] lol
[00:49] [hoojoo] i actually read the books before i ever saw the movies

[00:49] [bek] The books were much better than the movies

[00:49] [laylah] yes.

[00:49] [bek] Did you read 2065 and 3001 as well, Hoojoo?

[00:49] [hoojoo] thats almost always true
[00:49] [hoojoo] yes
[00:49] [hoojoo] ive got em around here some where

[00:49] [laylah] Me, too.

[00:49] [bek] The little page that describes the monoliths

[00:50] [hoojoo] i used to read alot when i was younger, i dont really read much now. not books at least

[00:50] [bek] is one of my favorite passages in all of writing

[00:51] [hoojoo] there arent any book stores near me that i know of. =(
[00:51] [hoojoo] damn internet ruining print

[00:51] [bek] http://cl1p.net/t108/ <----
[00:55] [hoojoo] gotcha
[00:55] [hoojoo] its good, but tough out of context

[00:55] [bek] I think it's in both 2001 and 3001

[00:56] [hoojoo] i havent read either one since elementry lol
[00:57] [hoojoo] thankfully my teachers were cool, i never had to read frog n toad or any of the kiddy crap.

[00:57] [bek] hehe

[00:58] [hoojoo] i was reading dickens and jules verne in 2nd grade
[00:59] [hoojoo] good stuff

Call them the Firstborn. Though they were not remotely human, they were flesh and blood, and when they looked out across the deeps of space, they felt awe, and wonder-- and loneliness. As soon as they possessed the power they began to seek for fellowship among the stars.

In their explorations, they encountered life in many forms, and watched the workings of evolution on a thousand worlds. They saw how often the first faint sparks of intelligence flickered and died in the cosmic night.

And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped.

And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.

The great dinosaurs had long since passed away, their morning promise long since annihilated by a random hammer-blow from space, when the survey ship entered the Solar System after a voyage that had already lasted a thousand years. It swept past the frozen outer planets, paused briefly above the deserts of dying Mars, and presently looked down on Earth.

Spread out beneath them, the explorers saw a world swarming with life. For years they studied, collected, catalogued. When they learned all that they could, they began to modify. They tinkered with the destiny of many species, on land and in the seas. But which of their experiments would bear fruit, they could not know for at least a million years.

They were patient, but they were not yet immortal. There was so much to do in this universe of a hundred billion suns, and other worlds were calling. So they set out once more into the abyss, knowing that they would never come this way again. Nor was there any need: the servants they had left behind would do the rest.

On Earth, the glaciers came and went, while above them the changeless Moon still carried its secret from the stars. With yet a slower rhythm than the polar ice, the tides of civilization ebbed and flowed across the Galaxy. Strange and beautiful and terrible rose and fell, and passed on their knowledge to their successors.

And now, out among the stars, evolution was driving towards new goals. The first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood; as soon as their machines were better then their bodies, it was time to move. First their brains, then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining new homes of metal and gemstone. In these, they roamed the Galaxy. They no longer built spaceships, they were spaceships.

But the age of machine-entities swiftly passed. In their ceaseless experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light.

Into pure energy, therefore, they presently transformed themselves; and on a thousand worlds, the empty shells they had discarded twitched for a while in a mindless dance of death, then crumbled to dust.

Now they were Lords of the Galaxy, and could rove at will among the stars, or sink like a subtle mist the very interstices of space. They were freed at last from the tyranny of matter, they had not wholly forgotten their origin, in the warm slime of a vanished sea. And their marvelous instruments still continued to function, watching over experiments started so many ages ago. But no longer were they always obedient to the mandates of their creators; like all material things they were not immune to the corruptions of Time and its patient unsleeping servant, Entropy.

And sometimes they discovered and sought goals of their own.

One of my quirks: That I cannot sleep while anyone else is driving.

That I cannot sleep while anyone else is driving.
I must stay awake to keep the car on the road through sheer force of will.

As the Entanglement goes up, so does the Randomness

Image of a Kitty in the Maybe-Dead Box via Wikipedia
Please do not try this at home.

Too much entanglement can render quantum computers useless:

“Entanglement introduces a certain randomness into the system,” Gross says. “This randomness appears in the measurement outcomes. However, as the entanglement goes up, so does the randomness. When entanglement increases to a certain point, there is so much randomness that the system ends up being about as useful as coins tossed into the air. You don’t get any useful information.”

Why would anyone put a cat, a poison gas canister, and (basically) a Geiger counter in the same box?
Answer: Blame the roommate / boyfriend.

Think this applies to a lot of things besides quantum computing. Sharing living quarters with someone, for instance.

In related news, two independent groups of scientists have recently confirmed that the universe does exist when we are not observing it. They swear they didn't look, only peeked.

Of What I Cannot Do

See more at Wikipedia

Of what I can't do: More interesting if I could? More pleasant, not as interesting? If I had done it, I would remember more than wonder.

"In mannered love, and perhaps in the first five minutes of passionate love, a woman taking a lover pays more attention to the way other women see him than to how she herself sees him." I tried this out on a woman, though, and she doubted it was the case – but then do remember this was written nearly 200 years ago, and they did things differently then. (Note that word "mannered".)

* * *

"I am making all possible efforts to be dry," Stendhal writes early on. "I want to impose silence on my heart, which thinks it has much to say. I constantly fear having written nothing but a sigh, when I believe I have set down a truth."

(emphasis added)