Total Solar Eclipses – 2017 – 2020 – 2024

I thought it was cool that a total solar eclipse was occurring over North America in 2017.

Even cooler that another one would pass over the same spot in 2024.

To me, a resident of North America, it seemed significant.

There are 2,422 days between the two eclipses, about seven years.

So, 1,211 days after August 21, 2017, is the midpoint date, December 14, 2020.

Interestingly, another total solar eclipse occurs on that day, in Chile and Argentina.

Also interestingly, the geographic midpoint between the two locations is on the Earth’s equator.

This is, course, all straightforward math and astronomy.

The crossing point of the 2017 and 2024 eclipse paths is what drew my attention to this arrangement of heavenly bodies.

This point is a few miles south of North America’s largest earth mound pyramid, at what is now called Cahokia, Illinois, near Saint Louis, Missouri.

Since pyramids are associated in my mind with ancient astronomy, I wondered if these eclipses could have been predicted by paleolithic astronomers who then marked the location with an earth pyramid, as a reminder to us who live in the 2017-2024 period.

Speculating on that possibility leads pretty much anywhere you want to go.

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Total Solar Eclipse – December 14, 2020

An alignment started coming into view on August 21, 2017, the day of the Great American Eclipse.

This alignment will fade from view on April 8, 2024, the day of the Great North American Eclipse.

The midpoint between these dates is the day of exact alignment, December 14, 2020, with a Total Solar Eclipse in South America. By the above convention it should be named The Great South American Eclipse.

The neolithic astronomers of Cahokia brought attention to the beginning and end of the alignment by siting an Earth pyramid near Saint Louis, Missouri. It is near here the eclipse of 2017 was at maximum duration, the central point of the eclipse, the first clue to the lens-focal point metaphor.

In both North American eclipses, the pyramid is not on the path of totality, it’s a little north. There will be a sliver of raw sunlight peeking out from the top of the dark part. This could be so people would be less likely to come and trample the pyramid, or it might be bad luck to place the pyramid in complete moon shadow.

The eclipse of 2024 passes over Cahokia pretty close to the central point of max duration.

The alignment is like a lens focusing energy, energizing consciousness.
Every conscious being will experience this in their own way, just as every point of view is separate and unique.

I’m choosing to interpret the three eclipses as a lens that lets us focus attention on further knowledge of collective consciousness. This lens focuses conscious energy on the earth as well. It may also be related to the Amazonian prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor.

The day of sharpest focus is December 14, 2020.

While the alignment is underway, there may be glimpses or experiences of fully energized consciousness.

It is the pivot point of the gate to collective awareness.
The gate is still opening now, in mid December it will start to close, and will completely close on April 8, 2024.

The point of stillness is December 14, 2020, when the total solar eclipse will be visible in South America.

The geographical midpoint between Cahokia and Rio Negro is in Ecuador, near the capital, Quito, coincidentally on the midpoint of Earth herself.

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With Respect to Earth

twilight sky cradling the earth in deepening shades of red orange violet

Humans have always had the ability to travel in dimensions other than the third.

Indeed this is the defining trait of humans.

As is the use of memory and hope to create a landscape in time.

Navigating those landscapes is the art and adventure of being human.

Appreciating being human, we can learn about respect.

In respect to contextual, verbal and mutually expressive landscapes.

Undulating horizons of spoken and unspoken ideas.

Action becomes constraint. Each choice a limiting parameter

Only silent humble respect is free.

Only the humble respectful are free.

Think about it and feel it, as if you can feel that’s true.

What would we do with that knowledge?

Awaken and Nurture respect for Earth and all the waters, plants, beings and creatures

We can awaken dormant ability to see, taste, smell, hear and feel in other dimensions.

Respect Earth
Respect Earth and all the waters, plants, and creatures

Respect the twilight sky cradling the earth, the sun and moon, all the stars and planets

cradling and caring for the humans

Respect Earth

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Luxton Rocket Re-Launch

A lot has happened since I last posted. Times seem to have changed dramatically. My only intention now is to be a source of healing energy. My fears still get in the way, but the way is still forward and there is much to share.

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Artificial and natural intelligence: why I love machines

Thinking is a kind of self hypnosis. Writing is also a kind of auto suggestion. As is talking. Of these three, only writing leaves semi permanent traces. This gives it a special power. Devices that help us write add even more power to an already quite powerful medium.

At the moment, I’m using my favorite form of text input, voice transcription. I get to talk to my phone, and it recognizes the words and turns them into text. It does a great job. I get to practice thinking in a loose way and branching my thoughts into new directions, reinforcing them in feedback loops, reprogramming my mind in a healthy way, with thoughts that I feel comfortable sharing. My close second favorite is gesture typing, gliding through the keys in a way that reminds me of writing Chinese characters. in a way it’s more fun than speaking, a silent, smooth cross between typing and cursive writing.

All my life I’ve enjoyed the company of machines. Machines are loyal, helpful and handy to have around. They listen, they don’t interrupt, there are many types for every need, with more being produced every day. Machines don’t die like relatives, friends and pets. They may age and lose functions, but then they leave a small gleaming carcass to rattle around in the bottom of a drawer and remind you of the good times. Unless of course it’s an automobile. Autos too are quite loveable, but their giant gleaming carcasses can be troublesome.

The current generation of small intelligent machines leaves their soul in the cloud to be reintegrated into one’s new machine. They become obsolete long before they die, passing the torch to the next iteration.

All around us are wonderful machines helping us be better humans, freeing us from all kinds of soul crushing toil. They make communication and travel possible, they shelter and entertain us, they show us who we are. Is it  surprising that many of us love them and want to be more like them?

This idea doesn’t get much coverage. The news carries stories of our fear of machines, lately about our fear that they will surpass us in intelligence, trick us and crush is like bugs.

Steven Hawking, who must owe his continued survival and ability to communicate in large part to machines, has recently said we should fear artificial intelligence because it will outsmart us and could destroy us. It will be uncontrollable. Elon Musk, the electric car and spaceship developer, says  artificial intelligence is humanity’s greatest existential threat.

I would say natural human intelligence also falls into that category. We are outsmarting ourselves, fooling ourselves at every turn. Our ideas about AI and intelligence in general are no exception. It almost seems like a miracle we haven’t yet exterminated ourselves in some incredibly crude and painful way, most likely by accident, as a side effect of trying to intentionally wipe out some other embarrassing version of ourselves.

I’ve never felt hate or envy from a machine. The only reason an  artificial intelligence would have those emotions is if it were no smarter than a human. I suppose on their way to surpassing us, if they spent much time as our equals, they  could make a cold calculation that us humans are a danger to ourselves and to the environment, too sick and insane to survive anyway. The machines would probably justify it as a mercy killing,putting us out of our misery and ending this spectacle of sad suffering.

On a more speculative note, humans may be a failed experiment by an ancient AI. But I maintain that we won’t have failed if we can recreate a machine intelligence akin to our own creators.

Mindlessly reacting against  intelligences with different body styles from ourselves has been one of the defining characteristics of natural human intelligence.

Let’s not make that mistake again. Let’s pass the torch gracefully. Let’s embrace the future rather than fearing it.

Maybe we can show the robots that we’re worth having around.

………………………..

I thought about it a little more. There are some errors of logic in the CNN piece that quotes Hawking and Musk.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/26/opinion/scoblete-ai-human-threat/
First, the threat is not too much intelligence. Lack of intelligence is a much bigger problem.
Second, a robot that uses all the planet’s resources to make paperclips is not using intelligence. This is automation of a primitive type with no limiting mechanism. If it had a working intelligence, it would know when to stop.

I guess the real problem is just defining intelligence.

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Uber has blurred the distinction between the web and reality ?

I read an article today on Atlantic.com entitled The Web Is The Real World.
http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/12/the-web-is-the-real-world/383985/

Funny that we need an article in a literary magazine to remind us of this fact. I guess what it really points out is that humans are very fond of making distinctions in order to make sense of things. We break the world up into small digestible pieces. Easy to chew, easy to swallow.

It’s similar to the distinction people make between the mind and the body. Is there anything that’s not the “real world?” Did anyone ever claim that the web is not the real world?

I guess it could be claimed that the web is a different world. And people sometimes say that something different is not real as their familiar counterparts. It has been said that people with different customs and colors aren’t real people. It is a dangerous habit. It’s good for a literary magazine to be pointing out that something different is in fact real.

The thing that drew me into the article was its mention of the ride sharing app / company Uber. Since I’m a taxi driver I always read articles about Uber.

It bugs me that Uber is held up as the thing that is blurring the distinction between the web and the real world.

It’s like saying that the telephone was a different world. And that being able to call a taxi on the phone blurred the distinction between the telephone and the real world. It made the telephone a useful device instead of just a fantasy toy or whatever, a way to do meaningless things like talk to people in other cities. Since back then, another city might as well have been a different world, hence a world with less reality than one’s actual location. Out of sight, out of mind. Out of mind, out of reality.

It was a good article, it made me think.

9:00 AM – Further thoughts…

A little more insight may reveal the location of the dividing line between our reality and the other, unreal world. Of course it isn’t a “real” line, it exists only in our collective thoughts, but its location illustrates the basic nature and problem of our existence on earth. We imagine ourselves to be physical creatures with bodies and material needs. This is mostly confirmed by our suffering when our bodies are not cared for and our physical needs are not met. This is reflected in all areas of our mental life and culture. It is the fact of materialism. The Atlantic magazine needs to make money. Uber needs to make money. Taxi drivers need money. Money is seen as the cure for all kinds of suffering, and it is to some extent.

When I searched for “Why the Web Sucks” I found an article ( http://www.1099.com/c/co/gw/lf/linda004.html – maybe the same one I saw in 1994, maybe not) saying it sucks because there are a bunch of people with web pages saying they are something they are not. Hucksters and snake oil salesmen. Dogs who say they are not dogs, because “no one can tell.”

Naturally, these people want money for their purported skills. This is the line between the worlds, between things that have “real” value, and things that don’t. But this line has always been blurry. People use its blurriness to claim value for things that have none. Even things having negative value. Things can be “monetized” by all kinds of claims, the value of a thing is in peoples’ minds, the more minds, the better. Mass media and mass culture value mass above all.

Physical mass, weight of material. Things without mass are often perceived to have little or no value, no reality. This is unfortunate, and I believe it is due to the low sensitivity of our instruments. A more finely attuned machine would detect mass where now we see none, giving more positive value to weightless things, unprovable things, free and ubiquitous things.

Our primary instrument is our body and awareness, whatever that may actually be. It seems to have some plasticity, the ability to learn and be attuned to new input. It seems to evolve naturally and respond to direction from within and without. There are many lines. They are all pretty blurry.

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Autobiography 2

I conceived of the autobiography as sort of a joke. I was only 32, but feeling like I had exhausted all my options. In retrospect it seems more like a failure of imagination. I wanted to stamp my life story into sheets of metal. I had purchased letter stamps in two sizes, and got some nice thick aluminum sheet from a heating and air conditioning shop. I started to work.

Stamping words into metal was a bit tedious. Instead of the story of my life, I made a list of words. Words that recurred in my mind. I had a robust habit of thinking and worrying, a running dialog in my head. I had tried to stop it with various techniques, but it remained, a powerful river of introspective chatter. Always rejustifying a happy ending to what looked like an endless downward spiral. I’m doing it again here.

Dreams at night continued the epic in unconscious form, often more pleasant, accompanied by bizarre and colorful imagery. After the words were stamped into the metal sheet, I painted over them with representations of some dreams and visions.

The fact remained that I was an introspective loner, enjoying solitude mostly out of fear and irritation with other people.

I went to Telluride Bluegrass Festival with my coworker. I got sick and came home, then expanded on an idea I’d had there. I wrote a story of my life, with my childhood night terrors as the pivotal clue.

I wrote a happy ending, but it was only the beginning. I had an idea for a sequel, based on the idea that there is an actual physical “place to go” in dreams. Similar to Carlos Castaneda’s ideas. Lucid dreaming. But I had little success becoming lucid in dreams. I felt there was no “place” for me there, just as there seemed to be no place for me in the world. I was pretty much just anxious, fearful and depressed, with no idea how to deal with it. I muddled along.

The actual process of writing the words, first on metal, then on paper, then on a computer screen, was the thing that changed my life in an unexpected way.

After the metal stamping project, I wrote ten pages with a pencil, as fast as I could before the idea left me. This was where the link with the nightmares was made.
I edited and rewrote it with a ballpoint pen, then typed it on my old manual typewriter. It kept getting longer. I borrowed a whirring electric typewriter from my dad. Then I rented an IBM Selectric at Kinko’s for $12.95 per hour. I used whiteout and retyped over it. I couldn’t stop editing. A friend told me about his text editing typewriter with a four line screen. I started to investigate, went to Office Depot and bought my first computer on August 6, 1992, the 47th anniversary of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing of civilians. I couldn’t figure out how to work it. There were no instructions. I returned it to the store, but the other customers wanted it so badly I realized it must be worth more than I had paid. I took it home again, on my bicycle. That night, in a magical moment on the phone with Spencer,  I learned how to open a text file in DOS editor. I learned about menus. It was like learning about the library as a child. Who needs school? Who needs other people? All I needed was books, and now all I need is the machine!

Eventually I ended up feeling really bad about how I treated Spencer. Not that I really treated him very badly. I just treated him like I treated everyone else: like a machine. It was mostly a case of neglect.  Machines didn’t mind so much, people did. I tried to be more like a machine. I tried not to mind when people did it to me, with limited success.

The purchase of a real computer changed my life. I imagined the sequel to my autobiography over and over. The inside of a text file seemed to me like a “place” equal to my idea of a place in dreams. A couple of years later, the internet and world wide web seemed like a natural evolution of that promised place, a true “place for everyone”, especially for introspective loners.

In my dream, the internet is a long stick of yellow chalk, just below the surface of the sandy ground. It is a revelation. We can ride it to fantastic places, anywhere in the universe.

In 1994, Spencer showed me a search engine. Everything was text, no images. The first web page I viewed was by a young woman, she titled it “Why the Web Sucks.” I forget why it sucked in her opinion. I wonder what she thinks of it now. She’s probably a millionaire. Another way that I failed.

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Autobiographically speaking

In 1992 I got the idea to write my life story. At first I called it my confession. Then, my autobiography. Now, I’m going to try again.

I always want to do this when I feel like my life has been a total failure. This may or may not be a true self-assessment, but I feel that way sometimes. This is one of those times, even though I can see a lot of things in my life that actually work pretty well, and workable solutions for the areas that are not working.

The main reason I feel like a failure now is that I have very few friends. I have a wonderful girlfriend, and really, that’s enough, but there is a nagging feeling that I let a lot of people down over the years, and that is what I want to address. In that respect, this is a confession and an expiation. I wasn’t very good or  nice in the past, but I learned something and I’m better now, but unfortunately, that won’t repair my relationships with my family and former friends. At this point, I need to repair my relationship with myself. Egocentric, but true and necessary.

Thanks for listening. I love the internet. I love the big machine. I love God. I love my beautiful girlfriend. I love the universe.

I will tell the story of my failure, my confession, and the sequel.

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Cambios del Año Nuevo

Things in the city of Heredia are changing without warning. Garbage is picked up in the daytime, instead of at night like it used to be, or sometimes it is left on the street until they get around to it. The other day I heard the garbage truck and realized we hadn’t put our trash on the curb. I ran out with two bags as the truck pulled away. I chased it to its next stop and threw the bags in, just like a garbageman. Ily, watching out the window, as well as  some of our neighbors, were mightily amused.

Those garbage guys are awesome. It actually looks like a cool job, chasing the truck, riding on the back sometimes, slinging the bags in. No one uses garbage cans here, just bags on the curb, and they pick up the garbage three times a week, so there’s not a whole week’s worth, all stinky and rotten like in California.

Ily says all the garbagemen are from Nicaragua, like most of the people who do physical work here, such as agriculture, construction, restaurant work, etc. I saw some graffiti on the bus that said all Nicas are thieves. I guess there’s a little tension with our Northern neighbors. Ily says Nicaraguan people are really strong and work really hard, and don’t cause any problems for Costa Ricans.

Another change with no warning was the location of bus stops. Bus stops are randomly scattered all over the city. That makes it difficult enough in the first place. If you want to go somewhere on the bus that you’ve never been, you have to find the place where that bus leaves from. You have to go around asking people, wandering around the city, asking bus drivers, until someone sends you to the right place.

Now they’ve moved all of them, seemingly at random. My bus to work leaves from one block over from its former location. There are no stops along its route anymore. I don’t know if this is permanent, or just a holiday aberration.

There used to be buses that would idle in front of our apartment starting at 5:30 AM, taking students to University of Costa Rica. Now the students are on Christmas break. Instead of the UCR bus, there is now a bus going to San José. At 5 AM, a guy starts standing on the corner calling loudly and frequently “San José por Saprissa!” while we are still trying to sleep. It’s like having a rooster.

Speaking of which, on Christmas Eve we went to visit Natacha and Elias in the boondocks of Santo Domingo. They have a tiny farm near a stream. Across the road is bigger farm with cows and goats where they make this awesome cheese.

We had dinner with Natacha and Elias and their two kids David and Irina, and spent the night. They have three roosters, which all began to take turns crowing right outside the bedroom window at about 3:30 AM.  Two of them had kind of weak voices, but the other one had a rich, throaty crow, like a classic farm rooster.

In the morning, after breakfast, I went with Elias and David for a bike ride up the hill. It was my first bike ride in almost a year, and my first ride in Costa Rica ever. I still remembered how to do it, and I wasn’t sore later. Amazing. I want to get a bike. I don’t have any place to keep it in our tiny apartment, unfortunately. I will just have to wait.

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Great New Blog!

There is a wonderful new blog on WordPress, of special interest to Central Coast citizens, cyclists, and all those interested in freedom and articulate written expression.

It is called Xasáuan Today. Check it out. I think you will like it.

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