The existentialist view point or Pythagorean philosophy.

Existentialism essentially reflects the crisis of a superficial world view world view and a belief in progressive development of a society inherent in liberalism, which gave way under the pressure of the last turbulent century. Having emerged as a pessimistic world view, existentialism tried to answer the question "How should a human live after the liberal illusions have been shattered by historical disasters."
Existentialism is a reaction to the rationalism of the enlightenment and classical German philosophy to Kantian ism and positivism which was widespread at the turn of the century.Existentialists maintain that rational thought has the existential feature of proceeding from the principle of antithesis of subject and object.As a result the rationalist considers all reality, including humans, only as an object of investigation and practical manipulation and resultantly have an 'impersonal' approach. Therefore existential thought is an antithesis to impersonal scientific thought.
So philosophy was set against science by the existentialists. Heidegger believed that the subject of philosophy is "being" whilst that of science is "existing". "Existing" belongs to the empirical world, and should not be confused with "being". What is "Being"? Being is comprehended by humans not through rational thinking, but directly through personal experience.The existent therefore incarnates the unbreakable unity of object and subject and this cannot be comprehended by either rational scientific thinking nor by speculative thinking.In everyday life, Humans are not always aware of themselves as existing, for this they must find border line situations, for example facing death.

When they have realised themselves as existing, humans gain freedom for the first time. Freedom in existential thought means that humans should not be a thing which is shaped under the influence of natural or social necessity, but they should mould themselves by their every act and deed. Thus free humans take responsibility for what they have done and do not try to justify themselves by 'circumstances'. Sense of guilt for what is going on around them is the sense of a true human. (Berdyagev). So freedom essential reflects a protests against conformism and time serving typical of a philistine who believes that as a servant in the gigantic bureaucratic machine they are unable to change anything in the chain of events. This is why A.S. Neill's 'Summerhill' is so interesting as an educational establishment.

So indeed this is why existentialists believe humans must be held responsible for everything that occurs in history.This explanation of freedom is subjective as it discusses freedom on a purely ethical basis and not on a social plane.
Existentialism offers a method of immediate intuitive cognition of reality, based mainly on Husserl's theory and partially on Bergson's intuition ism. Existentialists such as Marcel, Camus and Heidegger in his later thought believed that by its very method of cognition, Philosophy is closer to art than to science.Existential thought exerted a profound influence on Western literature and arts, creating the differing social and political views held by various groups of existentialists.

The Pythagorean were followers of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras of Samos (Circa 580 to 500 BC) . this school had and still has a great influence, making valuable contributions to the development of astronomy, mathematics and music. However, by absolutising abstract quality and divorcing it from material objects, the Pythagorean developed the conclusion that quantitative relations constitute the essence of things.This gave rise to the Pythagorean mathematical symbolism and mysticism of numbers, which was full of superstitions and combined with Pythagorean's faith in the soul's transmigration.
It is tempting to dismiss most of Pythagorean thought as mere fantasy, but they offer a key to the understanding of a powerful current of intellect and emotions.Influencing Plato and Aristotle, this school was the first to develop mathematics as an abstract deductive science.Thinking everything was number,they perceived the relations and laws of musical harmony in number and number formed everything in nature.The elements of number were the elements of everything and the entire cosmos is harmony and number.However, in discovering right angle triangle laws, they proved that when the legs of a right angles triangle are of the same length there is no common unit of measure of which the legs and hypotenuse are integral multiples.Therefore, the hypotenuse is imcommensurable with the legs. A conflict of the creed of "the cosmos is harmony and number"The logical empiricist philosophy of the Pythagoreans is a stark contrast to that of the new image of science expounded by the Existentialists.What they both deal with are the two central problems of the theory of knowledge, namely meaning and truth.In Hume's 'treatise of human nature', Hume develops the problems of the empirical approach by developing threefold distinctions between language, ideas and expression. "All perceptions of the mind resolve themselves into two kinds, Impressions and Ideas"

Impressions are the immediate objects of awareness when we perceive or introspect. Ideas are objects we become aware of in our mental activities other than introspection and perception.When we reflect,remember,imagine and create, essentially we are distinguishing between simple and complex ideas.
The history of science is not so anarchistic as Feyerbend would have us believe. It is not constituted of bare facts. Science holds no bare facts, but facts which enter into knowledge and are therefore ideational. Paradigms become dis proven or proven, changed or altered, evolved into new ones.
What therefore, is order?
The question of order clearly goes beyond the confines of science.Order though, plays an incalculably significant role in the totality of human thought and action.When ideas change in a fundamental way, they tend to produce a radical change to society and this reaches into every area of life.Radically new ideas are generally incommensurable with what went before.
Society is left with a crisis that encompasses and all one once believed in is now judged irrelevant, improper or even immoral.
Order is neither solely object nor subject, but in both.It can be seen to lie between orders of a low degree and chaotic orders of an infinite degree of which randomness is a limit.Indeed there is no place for the concept of disorder, only randomness. A randomness of orders of an infinite degree that are free from significant correlations and suborders of low degree. Structure is an inherently dynamic notion and is comprehended through a hierarchy of ratio, which may be apprehended in a perceptive act of intuitive reason.
Sequential order gives way to generative order, in the world of fractals.The creation and creative perception of nature.Investigating implicate order , we find super implicate order,which organises lower ones whilst being affected by them. In this way implicate order is in fact a subtle generative order. Consciousness is a generative and implicate order and mind and matter are related because these orders for the grounds of all experience. Science, nature , society and consciousness for an overall generative order.Because of "being" there is order, because of order there is the cosmos, because of order there is chaos.

The existentialist view point

Sunspots sunspots, sunspots

The sunspots come, the sunspots go.
the picture from
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/22/new-cycle-24-sunspot/
Shows we're in a blue period.

ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SUNSPOT_NUMBERS/MONTHLY

ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SUNSPOT_NUMBERS/SMOOTHED.PLT

This shows 1954 being a lower year than 2007, after that,
we go back to 1933, 1934 and then 1923

These figures show some patterns.
At the moment we have been below 23
spots for 36 months
and the last time we saw this was in
when 45 months were below 23,
from January 1931 until February 1935
We had 50 months like this from November
 1910 until December 1914
And from January 1807 until January 1815.
The big data set that hits me is from March
1790 until August  1835
with no figures above 100.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/solanki2004/fig3a.jpg

The image shows some analysis, and look at the blue....
This worries me now,
given the short life span of current sunspots.

Are e heading for a 'super minima'?
I think what happens all depends
on the next maximum. If it's weak,
it's going get cold.

The sickness of sport

Sport is sick. Its not about winning or loosing anymore, its about money. Well, that and winning.Because a winner brings money (or perhaps sportsmen are paid to throw matches for betting scandals?)
Sport isn't about individual pride anymore, or team pride, or national pride. Its just Money.
Things I'd do.
1) Make every winner stand to attention to the Olympic anthem and flag. Not the flag/anthem of their nation.
2) Put an earnings cap on to any player (and include sponsorship and ads in the cap) of 1 Million us dollars per year. That seems enough. Hell, I'd love to earn that per year, wouldn't you.
And I slog my guts out 8 hours plus per day. So none of that namby pamby 'they could break a leg tomorrow', because so could I. Besides, most top sports people go on into the media and earn a lot there too. Most top sports men and women have a career after sports.
3) Make top sportsmen and women pay some money back into the grass roots of their sports, or support those sportsmen less able/disabled/injured/ and thier families. That's the definition of 'fair play'

Telling me that 'its a free market and they can earn what they like' just doesn't cut the mustard as the same applies to us all, and we sure as hell cant demand what we like from our boss, regardless of if we think we deserve it or our respective talents.
Sport. The weathy and beautiful (well except Wayne Rooney) play for the spectators (poor and ugly).
It really gets me that those sportmen and their girlfriends can spend 2 million on a new second home but the proles have to slog there guts out for 30 years for a house 1/20th of the value. Tax them more.

Against Dogma

From 'Knowledge or Certainty" an episode of 'the ascent of man' by Dr. J. Bronowski

"The Principle of Uncertainty is a bad name. In science--or outside of it--we are not uncertain; our knowledge is merely confined, within a certain tolerance. We should call it the Principle of Tolerance. And I propose that name in two senses: First, in the engineering sense--science has progressed, step by step, the most successful enterprise in the ascent of man, because it has understood that the exchange of information between man and nature, and man and man, can only take place with a certain tolerance.

But second, I also use the word, passionately, about the real world. All knowledge--all information between human beings--can only be exchanged within a play of tolerance. And that is true whether the exchange is in science, or in literature, or in religion, or in politics, or in *any* form of thought that aspires to dogma. It's a major tragedy of my lifetime and yours that scientists were refining, to the most exquisite precision, the Principle of Tolerance--and turning their backs on the fact that all around them, tolerance was crashing to the ground beyond repair.

The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase, the Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930s it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it, the ascent of man, against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mIfatdNqBA

It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false: tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. *This* is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality--this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge or error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we *can* know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."

We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to *touch people*."

'WE CANNOT HOPE to match the total complexity of nature any more precisely than a language matches the complexity of social life. The answer to the polite enquiry "How are you?" is not a medical bulletin. And the answer to the scientific enquiry "How are atoms of carbon made?" is not a full analysis of the mind of the Almighty. There is a tolerant give and take in the reply that we make to questions about our health; and there is the same give and take, an essential intolerance, in the sentences that we can frame to picture the improbable generation of the carbon atom. A single experiment can be described in a bulletin; but the grand processes of nature cannot be sketched without the ambiguity which dogs all language. Science would come to a standstill if every ambiguity were resolved, for there would be nothing left to discover. It is this which makes it more vivid and more enlightening to call science a language for the machinery of nature and not an engineering drawing.'

from Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos'

• Every one of us is precious in the cosmic perspective. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

• History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power have destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again

My view.
Bronowski was a genius. His series 'The ascent of man' is well worth a look, really ringing home some very interesting points. I've seen almost all this series, and every episode is like a carefully crafted gem. It's taken me a year to watch, and I feel humbled.

Science is never 'the final discovery' as if we discover everything, there will be nothing left to discover. the debate over global warming shows the real dogma of people saying it's real or it's not; the fact is, both are right , the globe cools and warms, as iceages and warm periods show from ice cores.
It isn't a question anymore of 'what is correct', just a question of 'what is probable'

Poems and novels

Seagulls by Dobbin


Seagulls too, follow my tiller,
Above the naked, bleeding earth,
Ochre rich the soil is open, needing,
Seeds to fill the hollow ground.

Come and see the seagulls,
Come and see them overhead,
Watch the seagulls towards my tiller,
See the bounty of the earth.
We who wait and wonder why,
Stop the seagulls swooping seawards,
Bury the bleeding battered soil beneath.

And, all is always, angry,
Seagulls never help you lift the load.

Seagulls too, follow my tiller,
See the seagulls circling, swooping,
Whilst the plough breaks the icy earth,
As a ship through icy seas,
The frost it hangs onto the iron bows,
Behind me are the Herring gulls.

Seagulls, too follow my farrow,
Feeding off the torrid soil,
All about me there are seagulls,
Circling o’er the ochre earth.
Come and see the seagulls circling,
Come and watch the Herring gulls,
The earth is open, bleeding, naked
Offering up its daily bread.

Come, and see the ploughman pushing.
Come, and watch the beads of sweat.
Watch whilst every aching sinew.
Watch whilst every bead of sweat
See the droplets and their sorrow,
See the windows they reflect,
Watch whist every aching sinew,
Pulls the plough o’er the stony ground.

The sky is crimson, azure in beauty,
Horizon red, and apex blue
Nadir, still the naked soil,
Flocking, still the starving seagulls
We who try will fall and fail.
Feeding seagulls with our flesh.
Never shaking off the seagulls,
Just serving to sustain them instead.

Seagulls too, follow my furrow
Overhead the naked Earth
Laid bare bleeding, opened,
The seed-drill trenches linear and all too narrow,
All around the pastures girth,
Sea the seagulls and their tokens,
See the seagulls and the sea.

Carla Bruni and the power of publicity

It is my opinion that Carla Bruni is using her position to gain publicity that exceeds that which her talent alone would command. She is 15 in the album sales this week, but she's appearing on French TV in an afternoon show , talking about her meeting with the Dalai Lama (which she only got due to her political connections) whilst those artists above her (Duffy for example) are notably absent from the show.
Cara Bruni.
She got French nationality with a click of her husband's sticky fingers and I had to battle for a year to get it. Hmmm, I wonder why.
That old lie, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

Towards a new Maunder minimum, Dalton minimum or just the end of cycle 23?

I was interested in solar cycles as I thought there may be a link between solar activity and political unrest. I 've been watching the Sun for a while now, and I noticed no sunspots on the sun for a month. Why is the sun so quiet? Well, I'm far from being an expert on the subject and so I did some reading on the net.

What is the Maunder minimum?
http://science.jrank.org/pages/4184/Maunder-Minimum.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_minimum (wiki bulls**t??)

I found a similar blog here
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/where-have-all-the-sunspots-gone/
and here
http://theglobalwarmingheretic.wordpress.com/2008/02/16/where-have-all-the-sunspots-gone//

Indeed, very interesting. The result? Icecap growth in the Artic (at a time when Global warming is supposed to be shrinking the ice cap.

http://www.icecap.us/


The results of a Maunder minimum? http://www.kolumbus.fi/tilmari/some200.htm

My theory about political unrest?

http://www.carolmoore.net/articles/sunspot-cycle.html

However, pass a big pinch of salt because

http://www.michaelmandeville.com/earthmonitor/cosmos/solarwind/Sunspot_Cycles_Influence_Human_History.htm

Predicts a recession in 2006 and it's 2008 and we didn't have a recession then , but it looks almost certain now.

Solar cycle 24 officially started, with a big bang ending solar cycle 23, but it seems solar cycle 23 has come back, like a bad penny.

Nasa say its not something unusual,
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml

And I'll have to admit while trawling the internet I came across all kinds of claims, from 'the Sun's nuclear fuel is running out and it will expand' to 'A new Maunder minimum is certain' (it probably is, but certain when?)

So whats happening?
Well in France, we've had cold and wet summers 2007 and 2008 and if one looks at the data for sunshine hours a peak can be noted in 2005/2006 with a lot less hours this and last year(source meteo France click on http://france.meteofrance.com/fr and click on
ensoleillement) and the last ten years figures for Rennes show this
2008 thus far 1276 (hours of sunshine)
2007 1709
2006 1748
2005 1842
2004 1741
2003 2007(year of heat wave) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3156853.stm
2002 1655
2001 1736
2000 1552
1999 1561

This shows an increase from 1999 to 2001, a blip , an increase,a decrease, a blip in fact, it shows not much...

Is the rainfall due to the volcanic eruption earlier this year in Chile?

http://geology.com/events/chaiten-volcano/chaiten-first-eruption-ash-plume-750.jpg
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/05/06/chile.volcano/index.html?iref=newssearch

Are we heading for Eighteen hundreed and froze to death version 2?
http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Calen/Year1816.html
If the sun doesn't produce a spot sometime soon, I think a minimum could be possible.
My prediction?
A cold winter (Really, amazing, winters are usually hot :))

In 1963, the sea froze in northern europe, and the Loire froze at Ancenis


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_1963
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/education/secondary/students/winter.html#coldest

My guess? Colder than that, and then some. or not. Interstingly, cycle 19 ended in 64

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/SOLAR_CYCLE_LENGTH_SUNPSOT_NUMBERS_AND_TEMPERATURES.pdf/SOLAR_CYCLE_LENGTH_SUNPSOT_NUMBERS_AND_TEMPERATURES.pdf

Predctions for the future show that the future is grim(don't they always:))

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10may_longrange.htm

and thats from Nasa.

or is it grim?

http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/sunspot.shtml

here "The scientists expect the cycle to begin in late 2007 or early 2008, which is about 6 to 12 months later than a cycle would normally start"
And back to wiki again


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation#Solar_variation_theory

More ideas here
http://spaceweb.oulu.fi/~kalevi/publications/non-refereed2/ESA_SP477_lostcycle.pdf

and for the history of it all

http://www.oa.uj.edu.pl/~michalec/history.html

Is global warming a myth? Well , human activity is having an effect on the climate, thats sure, but the Sun probably has an effect too.

http://www.global-warming-and-the-climate.com/abrupt-climate-change-action.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling


I may or may not agree with the views expressed in the links in this blog.

How does the sun affect human behavoir?

http://sidis.net/Revolution.htm


Is the sun broken? Is this the Gore minimum?

Now I know why we used to worship the sun.

Is this all internet 'g force' or is it real?
What's your opinion?

As for me I think global warming and global cooling both occur, but I don't know why (man?earth's rotation? too many pies? you tell me!)

It's truly amazing the stuff you find on the internet:)

Update (16:08:08) still no sunspots since 20th July and counting. Already Dr David Hathaway from NASA has changed his ideas http://gammaray.nsstc.nasa.gov/colloquia/abstracts_summer06/presentations/Hathaway.pdf on the upcoming solar cycle (and he's the expert). Scientists now predict sunspots could dissapear altogether in 2015....http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/02/livingston-and-penn-paper-sunspots-may-vanish-by-2015/ of course all this panic started way back here
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ray-of-hope-can-the-sun-save-us-from-global-warming-762878.html
The sun's been quiet for a long time. I wonder what the link between war and solar cycles is? Another interesting thought?
http://www.prisonplanet.com/dearth-of-sunspot-activity-to-herald-new-ice-age.html
it looks increasingly likely we will have a few cld winters.

This is science at its best. Not dogma, but argument.

Even better is this
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19926734.700-should-naples-fear-a-big-bang-from-vesuvius.html Which predicts a volcanic eruption..... Sulphate aerosol veils and here comes the 'Volcanic winter' In fact, solar minimums can cause increased volcanic activity.http://www.unisci.com/stories/20022/0613022.htm

The amont of CO2 produced by man probably did heat up the world, but the sun's cylce will also affect us, as will volcanoes and other natural disasters.




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UPDATE New sunspot seen today, 22nd September with reversed polarity. looks like its the start of a new solar cycle as it at a high latitude. Ice? What ice age.... Watch this space....


Update 2011
The sun is still fairly slowly coming back to life.Sunspots and solar activity are low , and the sun stillhas problems coming out of the solar slump.The sun slowly comes back to life with flux predictions around 80 proved wrong, as it it now stands at around 100 and will continue to rise.

Welcome to my blog. Bienvenue à bord

This blog is designed for several purposes.
1) an outlet for my RAGE(only joking:))
2) To discuss various topics , hot or not, be it sport, climate ,politics, knitting, and so on

I hope you enjoy reading and that you take time to respond.
This blog will be written in French and /or English.

Bonjour
Cette blog est pour moi et pour plusier buts
1) pour m'aider à exprimer mon colere( je deconne:))
2) pour parler de tout et rein (le climate, poltique,tricot,sport, etc)
j'espere que vous passes a bonne moment ice, et que vous prennez le temps à repondre, en Anglais ou en Français
Merci
Thank you
Le 5 septembre 2008
The 5th of September 2008