Category: Musings

Going Through the Motions of Life

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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Must have opened my front door at eight o’clock or so
And stopped along the way to buy some Chinese food to go
I’m sure I had my dinner watching something on TV
There’s not, I think, a single episode of Dallas that I didn’t see
I must have gone to bed around a quarter after ten
I need a lot of sleep, and so I like to be in bed by then
I must have read a while
The latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style
It’s funny, but I had no sense of living without aim
The day before you came

And turning out the light
I must have yawned and cuddled up for yet another night
And rattling on the roof I must have heard the sound of rain
The day before you came

Benny Goran Bror Andersson / Bjoern K Ulvaeus

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Whether we know it and accept it or not in our coterie, in our slumber, a sudden change to life can exist just around the corner. Something can upend and change much of that which we hold true and perhaps long-lasting. It might be as simple as a cancer diagnosis, being caught on kiss-cam in flagrante delicto or the arrival on the doormat of an unexpected DNA test result. Suddenly the trajectory of life and our assimilation thereof changes. The universe throws us a curve ball, chucks a spanner in the works and Bam!! Life is no longer what we assumed it to be.

Many are pretty somnambulant and any kind of wake up call can be a shocker. Others are hypervigilant always scanning and perhaps anticipating, thereby manifesting. Most in the comfortable West are going through the motions of life, it is relatively benign, doing similar things, without fearing an IDF bullet or kamikaze drone. They may even be pursuing a successful career assuming that is important.

Yet there it is, just around the corner, something which might shatter their complacency. Someone might turn their lives upside down. It does not have to be a movie script or an ABBA song.

I have recently been going through the motions of all these medical exams. I have not really pressed for them. I have followed the suggestions of others. At anytime some whopper could be revealed to me / us. In our house we are used, accustomed to, medical surprises of an unpleasant nature, which give us something new to contend with and endure. If there is any kind of expectation on my part it is that things will not be “just dandy”. In a self-fulfilling way I do not expect to be listened to or taken seriously. Therefore I cut my communication back to the very basic level, quasi monosyllabic even. If somebody actually listened to me, I might fall off my chair. Yet they could find something else untoward in their testing on the guinea pig which is me.

I sense in me and what I know somethings that could completely re-order notions of reality for someone else should they be exposed fully thereto. I have been very careful not to start something where I cannot follow through.

Without being all Nietzschean and super-man, no red underpants outside the tights, I do not feel encompassed by herd or shoal. What I have done to myself has changed me in ways which are not obvious yet are profound. I am not held to societal concepts in the common way nor do I contravene the basic laws in the country where I live. I look the same and at first pass behave the same. Inside I am wired differently. I am less perturbed by the crises of life. And in no way do I subscribe to the notion that life needs to be fair. My lot is my lot. I do not have concepts of deserving better or worse. It is what it is. I expect virtually nothing, I have few if any, wants desires or demands. By and large I have no wish to inflict myself on others. I have no axe to grind or vengeance to sate. I am not overly sympathetic to the petty wants and moans and whinges of others. They are just overly dramatic and manipulative. Perhaps I am cold and heartless, a cold fish. I am not a bleeding heart or hand wringer.

Provided that I limit my interactions to the most basic, the most mundane, I cause no pain, no suffering, no discomfort. I am thus well within my boundaries. I have a kind of clarity which I suspect many might struggle to live with. They need some sense of hope, some narrative to life, too. They do not see that the universe is a bleak unforgiving and potent place. Our minuscule which we deem important is insignificant. This notion, if fully attained, can be hard to bear fully. We may note it, put it to one side and then carry on as if nothing has happened. Human mind struggles to reconcile the infinite with the mundane, which is itself all too finite in space and time.

I struggle these days with compassion, finding it and expressing, that is. I see humans justifying and arguing about their right to visit brutality and death upon others as a deterrence, their just and bloody revenge. When, ever, in human history has death and slaying ever deterred death and slaying? I see gluttonous people ignore the burning planet to acquire more profits and to consume like hormonal locusts. I see the historical lessons from totalitarianism tattooed deep into the blood vessels of humans ignored and repeated. I see jackboots and caps, propaganda and division.

I see a comfortable numb complacency on all sides. People going through the motions of life, not rocking the boat nor upsetting the applecart. I see humanity walking half asleep, earphones in, staring at their shiny narco-screens, veins itching for the next electronic ping of social interaction. I see people without much in the way of purpose heading slowly, lemming like, towards an unpleasantness the scale of which they have no concept of.

Looking at the news, I have become inured, accustomed to the ceaseless death toll ticker in Gaza, the nightly drone count in Kyiv and the predictable soap box rants from DC. I don’t care how much Starmer increase taxes or if the Bank of England changes the interest rate by 0.25%.

The world, humanity, has lost its way, big time. Humanity is going through the motions of living. It is not however going anywhere meaningful…stuck in a rut…like a stuck Status Quo long player vinyl record, again and again and again…

The Shoe Horn of Ought & Should

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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When things don’t turn out how you think {and insist}, they ought to be, how they should be, it can fuck with your head. The sense of order is perturbed and a cognitive dissonance can set in. One can ignore the “data” before your eyes and try to fit an interpretation of “reality” to how it should be. One can invent stories to try to shoe horn notions so that the {sacrosanct} narrative of life does not get upended. Reality can be avoided because it does not match the fairytale.

A while back I had an “A” level physics student for whom I was a private tutor. The young man was very fluid and he was quick on the uptake when I used circular intuitive as opposed to linear list teaching. He was bored shitless at school, but we had some fun. He was a bit of a rebel. Run forward a few years and he was upset that his sleuthing skills had been unable to find much of an internet trace for me. It was a challenge for him and we eventually reconnected. His view was that people with my background do not disappear into the aether, there should be some institutional paper trail of my career. He could not find my contact details at Bedlam or Friern Barnet Mental Hospital.

In the UK alone there were ~313,000 missing persons reports in 2022-23 for England and Wales. More males went missing than females. And 0.3% of all missing persons reports had a fatal outcome. People can and do fall off the radar, slip over the edge of the world and otherwise disappear with few traces. It is harder these days because many carry a GPS monitoring device AKA ‘phone. It is pretty unlikely that anyone filed a missing persons report for me, though they might have. In which case I have not yet been found. The charities have pages devoted to individuals who are missing with entreaties for them to get in contact. I did not find a page dedicated to me. Maybe I should keep searching.

Sometimes the sense of should & ought is more subconscious than fully present in awareness.

About twenty years ago I used to give personal development courses for science Ph.D. students. I had quit {a travesty} a tenured position. Although not overtly stated I sensed that this renunciation of something to which many of them aspired was a big subconscious black mark against me. I was a suspect. They could not take me seriously because I had shown myself to not be aligned with their view of how the world {and things} should & ought to be. It was a non sequitur of elephantine proportions in the room.

In other cases people invented scandals as a driver for my exit. Perhaps I had been caught on kiss-cam with a junior at an Oasis concert. The truth, simple and unconvoluted, was against the perceived order of how things are, how they play out and how they should be.

I have no idea what stories, narratives and other bollocks may or may not have been in circulation. People can need some ersatz to keep the sacred should & ought intact.

People make assumptions often and the quality of those assumptions is generally a lot poorer than they assume it to be.

If the wife and I died quietly one night, nobody would raise an alarm here. It would only be when the post box started to fill up that anyone would suspect. We don’t get many letters and if there was no Amazon delivery due, it could take months before postie noticed. Because we are isolated nobody would smell our demise.

Maybe that shoe horn is important for a happy life with 2.2 children and a white picket fence. I suspect that many people are kidding themselves, a lot. The effort to fabricate a demonstrable outcome aligned with how things should & ought to be according to the omniscient THEY, is perhaps aback the so-called mental health crisis. It is my thesis that should & ought are in fact toxins which we socially enforce upon ourselves and one and other.

The pressure from that shoe horn squeezes the life out of us….

Future Plans – Pre-op Chore List

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Assuming that the frequency of hospital appointments remains reduced we can start planning for the future. So far there is no “show stopper” for the pencilled in total hip replacement surgery in late autumn. There are two major appointments for which we do not yet have dates: a pre-op anaesthesia assessment and a CT cardio-angiogram. The latter is due.

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The cardiologist suggested that this would probably be ok, but nobody has imaged me thus, yet. Given they operate on frail old nannas I should be good to go. But it may advise on my increased risk. I also need a full dental 360 degree check.

It seems a long way off but when you have a big garden, scale can eat time. I have to think about doing the heavy donkey work before the operation because I will be very incapacitated for 6 weeks or so, through Christmas. No driving for me…We live alone and have to hope that the wife’s health holds. If that starts to fail we are in deep shit.

I am not a fan of last minute dot com.

Chores:

  1. Sewerage check – lift the inspection covers and use plumber’s rods to clear the 30 metres to the cess pit. Should last 3-6 months.
  2. Wood – we need to order some oven dried wood. There is probably about 1 tonne of wood left over to be sorted and sized. I may need to split the pine left over from Tempest Ciaran. Perhaps another tonne or so. I will need to break and clear two wooden pallets. These can be sized for kindling. Two palettes is about 3 months. They may need to be cut to fire-stick ready size. Perhaps I need a new splitting axe.
  3. I need to move some more earth to shore up the side of the pond which has a slow leak. A couple of loads of 250kg of dirt should help it cope with the full pond. The pond always fills to overflow with the autumn rain.
  4. Need to clean and power wash the external hallway. The swallows who nested there will head off for Africa and leave the guano behind.
  5. We need to secure someone to help out in the gardening. The maintenance pruning needs to be put on hold
  6. The pink rambler rose at 2 metres  high needs dead heading.
  7. I have strimming and mole trapping to be done. There will be one or two full property boundary strims to do at 8000 metres squared that is a bit of strimming frenzy.

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  • Indoors we need to sugar soap wash the room near the wood oven. This will provoke painting of much of the downstairs. That is a big job.
  • The downstairs floor needs to be solvent cleaned with acetone to remove dirt accumulation from excess glue. I will need to use my favourite product Mr Propre floor cleaner with a mop.
  • The upstairs kitchen needs to be floored. It is the only remaining room which we have not done already. We have floored in excess of 200 square metres.
  • It may need a lick of paint too.
  • The repaired volet boxes need cleaned and filled, painted to bring back up to standard.
  • There is one room with loose wallpaper which needs removed and new paper perhaps glued in place.

We need to figure out if I need a downstairs hospital bed. The spiral staircase looks to be a bit tricky. The loo and shower are already disabled enabled downstairs.

Do we need a bigger freezer and for me to prepare spicey foods?

Knowing the way things work here I will need a yellow bio-hazard sharps box for the used anti-coagulant syringes, which I will be self-darting.

This seems to be what the next few months looks like heading into year end.

That is probably the scope of it…

I can already use a Zimmer frame and peg about on crutches.

Where can I get a black eye patch and a parrot?

Circle Game – Merry-go-round

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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There’ll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Joni Mitchell

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This morning I had yet another scan, a CT scan to test MY diagnosis of diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH). This based on my interpretation of a lung CT scan which included data on the spinal column.

“Diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH) is a type of arthritis that affects tendons and ligaments, mainly around your spine. These bands of tissue can become hardened (calcified) and form growths called bone spurs where they connect to your bones. DISH can also cause bone spurs in your hips, knees, shoulders, feet and hands and harden bones throughout your body. 

DISH, sometimes called Forestier disease, often doesn’t cause symptoms and is usually found when you have an imaging test for another problem. Some people have pain and stiffness in their  back that may get worse over time.” 

The GP has asked the radiologist specifically so we should get a specific answer. It will then be on record and “official” if indeed the formal diagnosis is made.

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This brings to the end a flurry of medical appointments and scans. Perhaps there will be a hiatus. I have a GP appointment late next week to pull threads together. Then I have a urologist “finger” appointment to discuss my elevated prostate specific antigen (PSA) level in early August. They may order a biopsy {yippee}, but perhaps we are not there yet.  

I am due a CT cardio angiogram at some stage before the hip operation.

A number of the threads will probably go nowhere, be left with no actions.

Of late I have been wondering, “does modern medicine with its endless testing and so-called preventative measures {like statins} actually make you ill? Is it some weird self-fulfilling prophecy?”

There certainly is tendency to obsess about health engendered thereby. What are my cholesterol levels like today? Have I had too many units of alcohol?  Will I die of health related anxiety or a stress induced hypertensive episode? Is the world getting a tad obsessed by medical metrics?

Buggered if I know…

What it looks like is maybe an autumnal new hip, perhaps followed by a second in early spring assuming I can hack it. Which means in summer ’26 I might have a little less pain and a little more flexibility. I am not expecting much.

Off-compound interaction is likely to remain low and we will have to sell the house to get something smaller and more suitable. The blighty or Brittany question will raise its head. Aside from that I do not see any great shakes. I have emailed a couple of people about dreaming.

In general people are vey busy, they have lots on their plates and I am functionally irrelevant to the wider world. I am an anomaly to the mainstream. No biggie…

A recent dream has pointed at some kind of engagement with mental health. Implicit in this has to be anglophone. I am not sounding a trumpet call of excitement. The world out there is a minefield. If someone can get sacked from their high profile job for a single racist jibe whilst half pissed, it is a strange and disproportionate place. Best to say fuck all then. That is the take home message.

I know that I am largely out of touch with the younger people. I do not have any personal data on how people younger than 40 think, because I have not interacted with any. It looks such a  dangerous minefield out there and it makes me so glad that I am not in my erstwhile role in “pastoral care”.

The dreaming has not dreamed in, any vision of the future. I note that in the year 2015 when I had my colon cancer operation there were precious few dreams. Maybe as I approach surgery later, they will cease in a similar manner.

Maybe the painted ponies have stopped going up and down for a while, a brief respite, while other merry-go-round users climb aboard. Soon the garish music will start anew and the ride will begin again….

The Cubic Centimetre of Chance

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“All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out he has the necessary speed, the prowess, to pick it up.”

― Carlos Castaneda

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With this quote who has the chance / opportunity can be down to perspective. Some feel that they may be holding and offering the chance to others unaware that it is they who are in fact missing out. The perception as to who has power may have more than one interpretation. It is not always obvious.

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I have noted elsewhere in this blog that in general I observe that people feel the need to “teach” me. They tend to extrovert and I do not often argue because my assessment is that there is little or no point. Rarely, very rarely, do people inquire.

When we have the chance to profess or the chance to learn, many choose to profess, often from their soap boxes. People like to be heard and sometimes admired. They like to be seen as knowing, expert even. There is kudos therein.

In the common view of the world opportunity is seen for advancement and material success. Applying for and getting a job at a top university, although difficult to achieve, could be seen as seizing the cubic centimetre of chance. Quitting the highfalutin could be seen as the opposite, though it could be the chance to get off the endless hamster wheel of the slippery pole rat race.

It terms of perspective chance differs. What is on offer, what is the opportunity, what is in it for me? Is philosophically opposite to emptiness and not striving. In the respective frameworks one offers material success and social kudos, the other a kind of pared back freedom. Many would struggle to seize such a gap to freedom were it to materialize. They would not like a life so lacking in accoutrement.

Inherent in the cubic centimetre of chance is the 99% rule. The rule states that 99% of people think only of themselves 99% of the time. People caught under the umbrella of this rule are nearly always unaware of the cubic centimetre of chance when it appears fleetingly before them.

Castaneda stresses the need for speed, for quick and decisive action, carpe diem on steroids. Afraid of looking foolish and worried by risk, many throw away cubic centimetre after cubic centimetre. In trying to control every aspect of life they fail to grasp that which might be of most  benefit to them in the long run. The problem is that effort and hard work are often unattractive though nearly always the most fruitful at harvest. Short termism wins out frequently. The gift horse is examined and found dentally wanting, it is wastefully jettisoned. Convenience is often detrimental to evolution. That which is familiar and convenient cannot bring change. This 7/11 choice is the most commonly made, stay the same.

The blinkers of expectation and desired outcome can often hide these cubic centimetres. They do not look like they should or ought according to rigid preconceived ideas. They may not have the fancy clothes of institutional affiliation; their track record or CV may be non-standard. That is why exactly they may be the cubic centimetre of chance. The wrapping is however unacceptable. The potential gift remains unopened.

People are often not very alert and as the saying goes, “Britain needs lerts”.

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Have you ever failed to seize a cubic centimetre of chance offered kindly to you by the universe?

Did you only notice in hindsight?

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Castaneda and Neuroscience

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Prompted by the dream the other day I have been having a little look into neuroscience. It seems that there is much interest in using hallucinogens to {perhaps} help with mental health. There is interest in the crossover between dreams and hallucinogenic activity. This from “Frontiers in Neuroscience”.

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In the books of Castaneda, don Juan introduces him to peyote (lophophora williamsii), jimson weed (datura) and magic mushrooms (psylocibin). Castaneda describes some of his outlandish experiences whilst off his trolly. Castaneda wrote a book on “The Art of Dreaming” which perhaps tacitly lies aback much of the Lucid Dreaming genre. One could suggest that Castaneda had an effect on neuroscience and the psychology of dreams. If you look at the graph below from the above article the similarity of psychoactive experience and dream lucidity is correlated with the don Juan substances of choice. Only LSD outperforms the “natural” substances. Cannabis comes close. {Man}

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When I was ill, I was prescribed the MAOI phenelzine which had no psychoactive effects, as far as I could tell. I had one hypertensive crisis at a business dinner in Japan, something iffy with tryamine in the seaweed. Those Nitrogen atoms look receptor ready…hydrogen bonding to the fore.

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“Phenelzine, sold under the brand name Nardil among others, is a non-selective and irreversible monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) of the hydrazine family which is primarily used as an antidepressant and anxiolytic to treat depression and anxiety. Along with tranylcypromine and isocarboxazid, phenelzine is one of the few non-selective and irreversible MAOIs still in widespread clinical use.”

I used this for probably one year. It is a MAOI to the right of the graph.

I have had limited exposure to magic mushrooms and LSD, over thirty years ago and I stopped smoking week in 1999.

Obviously if one is doing research, it must seem pukka and thoroughly scientific. I doubt anyone acknowledges Castaneda though some may have read him…

The Dreamers IN Time

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In his series of books on the Toltec Teachings Théun Mares suggests a model for understanding human nature in which people have various preferences or predilections. These can offer interpretations on behavioural traits, strengths and weaknesses. They could be seen as similar to MBTI types, at a push. At the risk of sounding like the last air-bender, these traits might have the description of earth, air, water and fire. Which are pragmatic grounded, cerebral thoughtful, nurturing watering and passionate fiery.  These are the directions North, East, South and West. We might say that people have a penchant for verbal inquiry {talking} or dream like reflection. We have extrovert (s)talker and introverted dreamer. It is difficult to dream whilst you are busy talking. It is difficult to converse when you are away with the fairies.

There are five types “assigned” to each direction with one “wild card”.

In this schema there are various techniques one of these is dreaming. Logic suggest that dreaming does not pertain to the known as it resists ordering, it flows like water. You dream in something unknown. Fire is ephemeral and not as well understood, so this too is of the unknown, it is unpredictable. Earth and wind are more predictable; these are the relatively well understood or known. We might further assign matter to the North, time to the East, energy to the South and space to the West.

Please note this does not correlate with the physics understanding in common use. Feel the qualities inherent.

Time then is observing the process of life, what happens. Space is understanding the purpose of life, why stuff happens.

In this arrangement the people assigned to the West are called “the dreamers in space”, because purpose is a feeling not a reason. Those in the East are called “the stalkers in time” because reason comes with words and chronology, a time line, a sequence of events, it is more cerebral.

My primary predilection, some would say obsession, is with dreams. I am also introverted. So I would be assigned to the South {dreams, water} an introverted dreamer in the “place” of dreaming.

My secondary predilection is cerebral, logical, thinking, cause & effect reasoning. I am keen on timing and a bit anal about being on time. I have a predilection for the East and eastern philosophy

One could say that I am a dreamer IN time.

I am picking up what may be a shift in that the dreamers of mankind are becoming dreamers in time and less in space. This suggests that dreams are acquiring a more time-oriented manifestation. They are timed to events. There is a shift to the East.

There are more dreamers IN time…

Anaesthesia Consent and DNR

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We do  have some lovely conversations in this house…

I will, early this evening, light the metaphorical blue touch paper for tomorrows procedure. It will be ten years since I had my pT3N0M0 adenocarcinoma removed. 39 lymph nodes were extracted and pathologically examined. Since then I have had numerous colonoscopies. Tomorrow I will have general anaesthetic. I will have another endoscopy. I will be shitting my arse off, tonight and tomorrow morning.

There will be Bastille Day “fireworks” chez nous.

I have to give consent in French and nowhere am I asked if I fully understand. The assumption of comprehension is one of the clinically flawed approaches here, in my opinion. Nobody checks if you understand. It is the kind of detail which bugs me. There are a lot of assumptions in France…the process is trusted. Given the quality of healthcare it might be a good tweak to make it better.

A simple question….Do you {really} understand what I am saying?

In the unlikely event of an emergency I have said that I do not want to be resuscitated if there is a danger of paraplegia or brain death. I now have an anomaly in my ECG…

Karmically if it is time, it is time. DNR, do not resuscitate.

I am anticipating that they will find some polyps which will be excised and biopsied. If the polyps are benign my next day of joy will be scheduled five years hence. If there is a need for a follow up, I will see the chimney sweep again sooner.

This kind of thing reminds you of impermanence…

The best thing is that even with a buzz cut hair cut they make you wear a groovy hair net. I will be 24 hours with no food…having been on a white-bland no-residue diet for three days…

The diet recommendations in France speak of not eating escargot, not a problem for me. The UK ones say that you can have plain naan and chapatti…

I have manged to do a “white” curry without onion or garlic, which was passable…

Pizza is on the menu for tomorrow evening with crisps….to follow…

Hare Brained Patent Ideas

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Following on from the dream mentioning the EPO in Munich, I have been revisiting some of my hare-brained patent ideas.

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Assuming all goes ahead with the operation I am going to be out of action gardening wise for several weeks. In order not to not drive myself and the wife mad, I will need something to do.

In around 2017 when I became very dis-illusioned with the REQUIRED verbatim parrot answers for “A” level chemistry exam questions, I looked into things quantum. As an aside if the physics syllabus back in the early ‘80s was as it is now, with quarks and astronomy etc., I would have tried a physics degree instead of chemistry. The so called right hand and left hand rules were boring and had other meanings. It was pretty soporific.

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I kept wondering when afternoon double physics would end. The teacher had been to the pub at lunch time and kept going off to the prep room mid lesson.

In a previous dream the notion of Quantum Telepathy was raised. I have already ascertained that the number of patent applications pertaining to telepathy are low. There are a few “occult” patents in French. To attempt to get a patent granted referring to quantum interruption of service for quantum computing or quantum cryptography would be fun and a challenge. The media might be interested.

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“Eccentric ex-boffin applies for quantum telepathy patent…”

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French is one of the languages at EPO. To make it even harder I could attempt to write the application in French. The possibility of opening a Pandora’s box lies perhaps therein.

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How deep the rabbit hole might go remains to be seen.

I was struck when looking at the quantum computing literature and patents at how far-fetched some of the claims were like ammonia trapped in buckminsterfullerene as an isolated molecule with a quantum superposition state of permutation inversion levels being the entangled pair. This person was not a molecular spectroscopist.

Other patent applications were longer than a Ph.D. thesis. It has to be a shit patent if it needs a hundred pages to explain. It was pretty obvious that people were getting patent number increase as a means for funding justification. It was also interesting seeing overt public reference go  suddenly “submarine”.

I have not seen data yet for quantum start-up failure rates. It seems some get bought up.

Around that time I had an idea for an entangled pair photon source produced by electric field induced spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC). I submitted that application in May 2019 and with some “discussion” it got granted. I speculated that because I was a “man in his shed” I was taken less seriously at the IPO in Newport. In one letter I mentioned the Imperial magic word and that I already had two patent grants. After that he was less discursive.

In that SPDC in low photon regime, and not parametric oscillator power range, requires that the electric field is quantizable along harmonic oscillator creator annihilation operator lines. I thought to myself there could be some new physics to be explored here….

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I also wondered why not exploit the time domain for quantum computing. Quantum entangled states are known to “beat” under certain circumstances. Working in the time domain before environmental dephasing kicked in could negate the need for extensive and expensive refrigeration.

Given my background in molecular symmetry it occurred to be that certain molecules could be used as a quantum gate. If they were allowed to “operate” on an entangled pair, they would in effect perform a computation on the state information. Molecular symmetry discussions were largely absent from the patent literature.

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A third order hyperpolarizability tensor looks very matrix like. Neo would be happy.

I had a third idea which escapes me now.

A while back I was looking into nuclear fusion reactor design patents. It occurred to me that for Tokamak and torus designs ignition could be enhanced by laser induced plasma ignition procedures. Hence a hybrid laser ignition “Tokamak” design may have benefits. Confinement in high energy laser ignition facilities to sustain fusion was then a known issue.

As a result of a largely NIMBY campaign to prevent an energy from waste municipal solid waste incinerator being installed next to the village, I looked into these. I came up with the idea for a laser induced plasma incinerator for ultra-high toxicity / biological hazard waste. At very high, near solar laser induced temperature, complete oxidation downstream from plasma formation could be ensured with high completion extent. In the cooling plasma reaction with oxygen free radicals could work. I approached Kilburn and Strode who helped me with the EUV patents. They were reticent in case they had a conflict of interests with one of their clients, the start-up I once co-founded!

It turns out that my ex-flat mate is a patent attorney and another from my year at university a patent litigator.

The other idea I had was to get my patent published in Welsh at the IPO in Newport.

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Cyfarpar i gynhyrchu parau ffoton

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Most of the Welsh patent agents I contacted were very supportive. They pointed me in various direction but the show stopper was that an English translation was also required. So much for equal…

Not quite sure why I am in this space this morning…