Author: quantumdreamer

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Faux Pas and Extracurricular Activities

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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Faux Pas: a significant or embarrassing error or mistake: blunder

especially a socially awkward or improper act or remark

: an embarrassing social mistake

A faux pas literally means “wrong step” in French.

You could just use the term “fuck things up” instead, but if you wanna look classy, use “faux pas”.

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There is in human thinking the notion of social hierarchy where status and kudos are important. It is easy to misread these often unwritten pecking orders and clues. One can get things wrong. Some cultures are more sensitive than others to such mistakes. When pecking orders abut things can be indeterminate and the possibility for miscalculations high. To prevent error some societies, start with the concept of humility and perhaps “lower” themselves until the minefield is better understood and thereby negotiated.

A big cheese in one system is small fry in another. I found that in “business” and “industry”, for example, academics are not held in very high regard. A VC said to me that from time to time they do invest in a “prof in his garage” but that such things were very risky, early stage. A young Ph.D. student might see Prof. X, in his garage, as being near deity perhaps having aspiration to emulate and to join the Gods. Working across hierarchies and socially invented pecking orders can be tricky. Some prefer Stilton others Emmenthal. It takes all sorts.

Apparent power can be gained by association. A long time ago when on business selling some science ideas in Tokyo, I was on a mission from my then Sensei to hunt down any video / film footage of various “obscure” old-school Iaidō masters. I was given some text in Japanese and the addresses of various martial arts shops dotted around Tokyo. Sensei was an advanced practitioner of various Ryu and Japanese trained. These shops were well off the beaten track and some had a dōjō associated. On a number of occasions on furnishing the Japanese text the shopkeeper called into the back and an older Japanese man came out to help me. They took the task very seriously and furnished me with more “leads”. It was obvious that I had kudos / respect by association even though I was a low grade student. It was the Ryu and his mastery that conferred. I was ultra polite and very careful so as not to bring disrespect and dishonour. They were very keen to help and found it interesting that Sensei was teaching in a small classical dōjō in London. I knew that disrespect might, if gotten out of hand, prove fatal. It was all very good natured and fun. No faux pas was made and allowance was made for my gaijin degrees of gauche.

At the time I was a lecturer in physical chemistry and soon to be start-up co-founder. Nobody where I worked could possibly have understood all the subtleties of what my major extracurricular activity was. This was more important to me, in some senses, than my job!!

We really do not know what is going on for others. There is a back story for most about which we are very largely ignorant and unaware. It is easy to barge around like a bull, on amphetamines, in a China shop and make huge fuck ups. The more arrogant and know-it-all we are the more likely it is.

Like a frog in the bottom of a well people can be a big-Gouda in their silo unaware that there are oceans out there. People are blind and blinkered in their silos. You can try to tell a well dweller about life outside the well but they may not accept that such a thing exists. In the absence of six-sigma proof they will deem extra-well existence impossible and mere conjecture, pseudoscience even. Because they have not seen an ocean, they will not accept your stories about them. Their adamant insistence means that they will probably never have the experience. They will go to their “graves” saying “I told you so. I am right. Oceans are figments of imagination!”

If someone unaccustomed to an ocean goes swimming therein, it is easy for them to get out of their depth. They may not have had this experience before and the notion of being out of their depth is alien to their omniscience. If you say, “careful you are out of your depth”, they are likely to pooh-pooh and disregard. When they get tired and can no longer swim, panic can set in. Being out of their depth they do not know how to proceed.

In general, I have found that trying to warn people that they are stepping into something they do not understand is fruitless. You warn, are assumed weird and a numpty. They disregard the warning and proceed full steam ahead into clusterfuck territory. There is nothing you can do, if an arrogant person needs that experience, who am I to rob them of it? By definition it is impossible to teach a self-diagnosed omniscient or know-it-all, anything.

People in silos or wells are ignorant of life outside the well but they don’t know it nor will they accept it.

If for example you were a skilled physical chemist accustomed to using synchrotron radiation to elucidate the properties of lipid membranes and you were thrust into the midst of a Vajrayana demon banishing ritual it is unlikely that you would take it seriously and believe. You might think it quaint and an indigenous ritual. You would not feel nor note the exorcism. After all synchrotrons are more real and more important than Vajrayana magic.

Maybe one day you might on a whim play with a Ouija board. Because you know best there would be no danger of you opening a portal and allowing a demon in, to feed off your aura and possess you.

People do not understand that “expertise” does not travel well between contexts and worlds. And if you are sufficiently ignorant to make the faux pas of pissing off a demon, there could be hell to pay, literally.

But of course, outside of your well, demons do not and cannot exist, you are adamantly correct about this, are you not?

Hip Pin Removal – Jersey Incentives – Russian Passport Dream – 07-06-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is last night’s dream.

The dream starts in a medical consultation on the island of Jersey. I am with the wife in a consultation room and a male doctor is looking at the x-rays of my left hip on an old fashioned backlit viewer. He is discussing that it is bad practice to leave a Titanium implant in long after the joint has recovered. It will make operating on my hip more difficult. He shows the extra bits of bone he will have to chip away.

The scene now changes to some kind of real estate / lawyers / Jersey corporation offices. We are consulting about moving to Jersey and the locals are offering an incentive for us so to do. They are explaining the ins and outs of buying property in Jersey, the law concerning company set ups and tax advantages. They mention local investment incentives and what kind of residency permits we might need in order to buy property. They say that it is best to be very thorough at the start.

The scene changes and I am on transport to Russia. It is not a train or a plane but somehow somewhere in between. A man in Russian army uniform with a big wide brimmed army hat is walking along the aisles checking passports. He gets to my row and ushers me to stand up in the aisle. He asks to see my passport. I give him by current blue-black one. In it is a special small visa document. He asks me the recent history of my passport applications. I say that I applied in Farnham and then in France. He looks at the passport and says that it is in order. He looks at the visa and reads it. He says, “Doctor Taylor we will be very pleased to welcome you to our motherland Russia!” He clicks his heels together, salutes and hands my passport back. I thank him and sit back down in my seat.

The dream ends.

Gateway to the Nagual’s World – South the place of Dreaming

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In my case, don Juan wanted an omen before he taught me the ritual. That omen came when don Juan and I were driving through a border town in Arizona and a policeman stopped me. The policeman thought I was an illegal alien. Only after I had shown him my passport, which he suspected of being a forgery, and other documents, did he let me go. Don Juan had been in the front seat next to me all the time, and the policeman had not given him a second glance. He had focused solely on me. Don Juan thought the incident was the omen he was waiting for.

His interpretation of it was that it would be very dangerous for me to call attention to myself, and he concluded that my world had to be one of utter simplicity and candor – elaborate ritual and pomp were out of character for me. He conceded, however, that a minimal observance of ritualistic patterns was in order when I made my acquaintance with his warriors. I had to begin by approaching them from the south, because that is the direction that power follows in its ceaseless flux. Life force flows to us from the south, and leaves us flowing toward the north. He said that the only opening to a Nagual’s world was through the south, and that the gate was made by two female warriors, who would have to greet me and would let me go through if they so decided.

He took me to a town in central Mexico, to a house in the countryside. As we approached it on foot from a southerly direction, I saw two massive Indian women standing four feet apart, facing each other. They were about thirty or forty feet away from the main door of the house, in an area where the dirt was hard-packed. The two women were extraordinarily muscular and stern. Both had long, jet-black hair held together in a single thick braid. They looked like sisters. They were about the same height and weight – I figured that they must have been around five feet four, and weighed 150 pounds. One of them was extremely dark, almost black, the other much lighter. They were dressed like typical Indian women from central Mexico – long, full dresses and shawls, homemade sandals.

Don Juan made me stop three feet from them. He turned to the woman on our left and made me face her. He said that her name was Cecilia and that she was a dreamer. He then turned abruptly, without giving me time to say anything, and made me face the darker woman, to our right. He said that her name was Delia and that she was a stalker. The women nodded at me. They did not smile or move to shake hands with me, or make any gesture of welcome. Don Juan walked between them as if they were two columns marking a gate. He took a couple of steps and turned as if waiting for the women to invite me to go through. The women stared at me calmly for a moment. Then Cecilia asked me to come in, as if I were at the threshold of an actual door.

Don Juan led the way to the house. At the front door we found a man. He was very slender. At first sight he looked extremely young, but on closer examination he appeared to be in his late fifties. He gave me the impression of being an old child: small, wiry, with penetrating dark eyes. He was like an elfish apparition, a shadow. Don Juan introduced him to me as Emilito, and said that he was his courier and all-around helper, who would welcome me on his behalf.

It seemed to me that Emilito was indeed the most appropriate being to welcome anyone. His smile was radiant; his small teeth were perfectly even. He shook hands with me, or rather he crossed his forearms and clasped both my hands. He seemed to be exuding enjoyment; anyone would have sworn that he was ecstatic in meeting me. His voice was very soft and his eyes sparkled.

We walked into a large room. There was another woman there. Don Juan said that her name was Teresa and that she was Cecilia’s and Delia’s courier. She was perhaps in her early thirties, and she definitely looked like Cecilia’s daughter. She was very quiet but very friendly. We followed don Juan to the back of the house, where there was a roofed porch.

It was a warm day. We sat there around a table, and after a frugal dinner we talked until after midnight. Emilito was the host. He charmed and delighted everyone with his exotic stories. The women opened up. They were a great audience for him. To hear the women’s laughter was an exquisite pleasure. They were tremendously muscular, bold, and physical. At one point, when Emilito said that Cecilia and Delia were like two mothers to him, and Teresa like a daughter, they picked him up and tossed him in the air like a child.

Of the two women, Delia seemed the more rational, down- to-earth. Cecilia was perhaps more aloof, but appeared to have greater inner strength. She gave me the impression of being more intolerant, or more impatient; she seemed to get annoyed with some of Emilito’s stories. Nonetheless, she was definitely on the edge of her chair when he would tell what he called his “tales of eternity.” He would preface every story with the phrase, ‘Do you, dear friends, know that. . . ?’

The story that impressed me most was about some creatures that he said existed in the universe, who were the closest thing to human beings without being human; creatures who were obsessed with movement and capable of detecting the slightest fluctuation inside themselves or around them. These creatures were so sensitive to motion that it was a curse to them. It gave them such pain that their ultimate ambition was to find quietude. Emilito would intersperse his tales of eternity with the most outrageous dirty jokes. Because of his incredible gifts as a raconteur, I understood every one of his stories as a metaphor, a parable, with which he was teaching us something.

 Don Juan said that Emilito was merely reporting about things he had witnessed in his journeys through eternity. The role of a courier was to travel ahead of the Nagual, like a scout in a military operation. Emilito went to the limits of the second attention, and whatever he witnessed he passed on to the others.

From “The Eagle’s Gift” by Carlos Castaneda, Part Three.

Burning House – Pots of Honey – nagal’s Courier – Tim – Dream 06-06-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is last night’s dream.

The dream opens in a large, several storey, mansion like house. The house is in London and it is full of people milling around. There is a sense of there being former colleagues there, though I cannot identify any individuals. There is a mild chaos and a mild sense of consternation heading towards panic. There is much ado.

Somewhere in the building a fire has started. There is a growing warmth, heat and smoke. People are even more directionless and flapping about. I notice a pair of double fire doors with Fire Exit written upon them on a green panel. I press the bar to open the doors and start to shout and usher people outside to safety. For some reason they have lost the plot and it is my calm that helps them make good the exit.

I can see that the fire is not yet very serious but is in the process of worsening. I am cool calm and collected. I go back inside the building. I can see two fair sized terracotta amphorae. I put one hand in the neck of each of these and lift them up from within. I calmly carry the amphorae out of the building to the fire assembly point. I set them down on the ground and pull out my hands which have been immersed in the amphorae. A rich light golden honey flows off my arms and hands and back into the necks of the amphorae. For a long time, honey flows off my forearms and hands into the amphorae. I know that there is nectar in the honey and that both my hands are fully immersed and coated with that nectar-honey. I enjoy the sensation of flowing honey.

The scene changes and I am walking out of an urban car park at night. I am being tailed by some young men in jeans and with hoodies. They are following me for quite some distance. There are a few of them but two main protagonists. I am unconcerned. I stop and turn. I ask them why they are following me. They say that they have noted that I have something in the back right hand pocket of my jeans. They asks what it is. I say that it is a “special” USB flash drive with a plan, a business plan for Alexandros who is the nagal’s courier, my nagal’s courier. They say that they want me to give it to them. I say that it is encrypted and that only Alexandros and I can read it. They say that they still want it. I explain that it will be for them a Pandora’s box and any attempt at reading it will unleash things they do not want unleashed. They insist. I hand them the USB drive which is in a small black velvet bag with a drawstring closure.

The scene changes and I am in some big faculty like meeting where {big} cheeses are sat around tables in a boardroom style layout. There are more than a dozen people there all smartly dressed. They are aged fifties and early sixties. The meeting is being chaired and convocated by Tim Jones. He has been given this job as being less partial and personally implicated than others. They are to discuss with me what my business plans are, what it is that I want. There is a sense of UK university with some politico-input. I say to Tim that it is more than a little rich that they are finally asking me what I want. How come it is now. He does not know what to make of the situation and is resentful that he has been drawn into it. With no success I try to explain to him and those present that I want nothing, I have no demands. The ball is not in my court – so to speak. I remind Tim that I was pivotal in examining many of his Ph.D. students and was used by him then discarded. Those gathered around the table do not know what to make of it as they are expecting some kind of plan from me, where there is none.

The dream ends.

Squeamish About Death – Place Your Bets

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I think it fair to speculate that many are afraid of death and the concept of dying. Opinions differ on the nature of afterlife, if there is one, and although reincarnation is a widely held concept there is no direct physical proof, rather circumstantial evidence. People are curious about what happens when you die. If one is simply extinguished then death is not to be feared whereas loss of life might be.  Time wasted is regretted.

People say “it is tragic that so and so was taken from us” when in fact death is a wholly natural process, at least on our planet. Few say, “it is natural that he passed away.” There is much social conditioning around death.

Humanity has a hang up about death.

I saw my first deaths up close in the Zambezi River aged ~11. One man died by drowning the other by crocodile. I had to write the account for the local police because they, grown men, were unable to write. Somewhere that report of death in my scruffy childish handwriting may still exist.

No matter how strong your faith, what your teachers tell you, nor whatever is written in books, from a philosophical point of view, whatever your opinion about death is, is simply that, opinion. There may be aspiration or wish. In effect you are placing your bets on what may or may not happen. This may be conscious or simple laziness. People can drift sleepwalking towards their death. Some contemplate it up close and personal. I’ll speculate that it is better to be prepared.

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To think about death can be seen to be morbid. On the other hand it might be wise to take advice from the inevitability of death and change your actions accordingly. No matter how squeamish you may be about death, dying and the death process, it awaits you. Your allotted time, your length of planetary sejour are finite.

If you are placing your bets on there being no heaven or hell, then you could be in for a surprise when you find “yourself” conscious therein. If you are shit-scared of dying then the process for you will be very uncomfortable. If you are relaxed and ready, then whatever happens will be more facile.

According to religious theory you cannot get away with placing a spread bet, covering all options. You need to choose, decide and commit.

If you are somehow still conscious after death and visit your old “haunts” to see what is transpiring, you could be in for a surprise. If you came to check up on me, to say hi. That might be a surprise for you. What might you say? If I was less surprised than you, would that be surprising for you?

If the light simply goes out there is nothing left to worry about.

At the end of the day, literally, how you approach death depends upon where you have placed your bets in life, what your opinions, points of view and actions have been.

Death although it can be in a public space with people, is largely personal. I don’t believe that you can bullshit death. You may try to be in denial, but death will not care. You are effectively alone on your own when you die. That may not be brain consciousness as we know it. But there is nobody “there” with you on the “inside”.

I don’t think that being squeamish about death and dying is wise.

Can Dreams Be Prescient – Death 05-06-2025

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This morning, I had a dream in which someone I knew and last spoke to over twenty years ago was dead. The sense was that this death was/is in and around now. They had recently died or are currently in the act of dying. The feeling was that they will visit, after death, relatively soon.

I searched the internet with their name and the key word obituary. If they have died, or when they die, there will be some kind of obituary published. I found none, today.

A long time ago, unless I am kidding myself, I went through a period when my dreams seemed to be uncannily prescient. I dreamed things and they happened within a few days of the dream. I can not 100% rule out that I saw what I wanted to see. But my feeling is that they were indeed prescient.

I have dreamed post-death visitations from a number of people. Some came true, some are yet to happen. I dreamed in detail the death of someone who had a large impact on my life and they died on the other side of the world roughly concurrent with my dreams. There were other signs. I have had other dreams of death which were proved roughly contemporary.

Today I have a date marker, which may or may not be valid.

For some reason I am getting the words “inorganic beings” on and off of late. This refers not to the inorganic beings of Castaneda but UK chemists of that persuasion.

I keep coming back to the notion of how people use the end of their life being important. In those last few years work can be done on outstanding karmic due, work required by karma. It can be the crowning glory or the ultimate failure of a life. A time of rich harvest or a time of badly increasing debt.

Interestingly the theme of the USA increasing its debt, what it owes, is current. The USA is living on the borrowed. Borrow now pay later…

Genetic Counsellors and Cans of Worms

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I learned a new phrase today “genetic counsellor”. Apparently, at least in Canada, such things exist. I have been recommended to have the HFE gene test to see if I have hereditary haemochromatosis (HH). This for completion. Back in 1994 I visited this high haemoglobin “space” and was bled regularly at St Thomas’. Retrospect suggests that I may have had an ongoing health condition which was missed back then.

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They took an armful each time. 

This HFE mutation would provide a benign explanation for my raised haem and ferritin levels. My ferritin levels have been increasing with time over the last four years. I don’t really have many of the symptoms associated with the genetic disease. It is linked with the less benign polycythaemia. Which would require a wider more substantive gene panel test, so-called molecular oncology. The authorisation for this testing is probably reserved for specialists. Iron overload is not without consequences. It can “cause” cancer or be correlated with it. Medical literature often blurs correlation with cause.

The problem with all this new-fangled gene testing is that it can open a can of worms

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Needless to say, the genetics are complex.

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I would be a mutant of sorts…

The next stages are Iron MRI and/or liver biopsy. The latter does not sound like much fun!!

Liver disease is possible maybe even likely, but I am largely asymptomatic. My enzyme work was ok.

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The next stage of inquiry would be to look for myeloproliferative neoplasms which are rare, not lottery winning rare, but rare enough. Search of JAK 2 and other related things starts increasing the price. JAK 2 can mutate.

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“Mutations in JAK2 have been implicated in polycythemia vera, essential thrombocythemia, and myelofibrosis as well as other myeloproliferative disorders. This mutation (V617F), a change of valine to phenylalanine at the 617 position, appears to render hematopoietic cells more sensitive to growth factors such as erythropoietin and thrombopoietin, because the receptors for these growth factors require JAK2 for signal transduction. JAK2 mutation, when demonstrable, is one of the methods of diagnosing polycythemia vera.”

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The thing is looking closely at most people my age the chances are that you will find something which has gone wrong.

The French sites suggest that some kind of follow up is warranted because of my Iron status.

Not sure what if anything the GP will recommend….

The osteoporosis situation seems simpler to treat with some pills, supplements and vitamins. But could have an Iron cause.

Given that the haemoglobin situation has been ongoing for, perhaps, thirty years it seems unlikely that any new unpleasant things have suddenly taken hold. But the ferritin level has doubled since 2021.

There is part of me that thinks that I just let this all drop…The osteoporosis might have enabled the fracture of my femoral neck six years ago. I have perhaps been living with it since. Simple answer is to not fall over.

A few more pills is no big deal however…

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hereditary haemochromatosis – regularly being bled.

Not HH – Iron MRI / Liver biopsy —

Liver disease – it depends on what – treatments in absence of virus are usually diet and no booze.

Something fancy and esoteric – myeloproliferative neoplasms – massive complex can of worms

The French sites suggest that some kind of follow up is warranted because of my Iron status.

What is inside the can…?

Stuck, On Hold and In Limbo

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While the world is caught up in a Bruce Springsteen “Glory Days” rose-tinted-sepia version {drama} of what America might once again become, not much is moving forward. The capitalist evangelist nation has admitted it is no longer competitive and is thinking sanctions to protect its internal markets. Your average American is unwilling to work for the same pay as someone less corpulent.

The war in Ukraine and the barbarity in Gaza continue apace. The world watches, sits on its hands and talks but does not. Humanity is very stuck and harping on about the Glory Days will not help no matter how many Bud Lights you refuse to drink. There has been no genuine lead from the USA for near a decade. Unsurprisingly the economic miracle foreseen by the Brexit soap-boxers has not propelled the UK into becoming a world economic superpower. Cunning plans may not be well thought out.

There is a huge leadership vacuum in the world today.

In my opinion humanity is need of an almighty wake up call to re-start the “save the planet” agenda and to overcome the for profit climate change nay-sayers. The equation is simple choose to be “comfortable” now and do fuck all, then pay very dearly later. This manifesto will get you elected in a “popularist” sense.

Here we have decided to see if it is possible to get anything done to ameliorate my hips. We have decided not to attempt to sell and move. The idea being that two new hips is about a year if the waiting time is a few months. I can’t find data on French wait times. Nor do I know if it is even possible. At the end of the month, we shall have a little more information. Best guess is the earliest operation would be after the summer. If it was UK best case scenario is six months wait with up to two years possible / probable. I could spend a huge chunk of remaining life savings and get it done privately in Hampshire, near the ferry port.

At the moment we are on hold and in limbo. Things are up in the air with no answers. We share that stuck-ness with the world. The news on television is very repetitive, a daily Groundhog Day. I don’t care who is on Love Island nor what percentage of GDP the UK will devote to defence.

Humanity needs an almighty wakeup call…