Category: Musings

Ye Olde Git Clothing Company Ltd

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

A market opportunity exists for a clothing company serving the vertically challenged non-svelte section of the middle mature male population. It should approach this market in a no frills, no fuss, no bullshit fashion. The trousers should offer short legs and elasticated waists. No internet fuckwittery in terms of paid for advertising is needed, nor are any vouchers or special bonus code “deals”. There in no need for a corporate heroin-loyalty-card simply a WYSWYG service that is reliable and timely. No need for any geezer whom you do not know the name of nor recognise in the adverts. There is no need to shell out vast sums of money for advertisements featuring a black-ginger-freckled-disabled-gay-anthropomorphic famous person with a large Tok-Tik following with ultra-woke or for that matter MAGA credentials.

There has got to be a vast horde of people like me, forgotten, grey, invisible middle aged men in need of some strides, some trousers. Strides that are simple, unfussy and you don’t need an extra £20 for a banal logo thereupon. The sort of people who get cancelled left right and centre for not being entirely PC. This market has money which it does not spend on manicures, tattoos nor crack, back and sack waxing. A market that is not unfamiliar with prostate exams and endless ticking offs by GPs about diet and alcohol consumption.

I shall apply forthwith to the Trademark office to try to trademark “Ye Olde Git Clothing Company Ltd”. I will purchase the domain name “ye-olde-git-clothing-company.com”.

Next, I will go on Dragon’s Den and pitch to Türker Süleyman for start-up funds….

Waking Dream – Mystical Vision

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If one was to imagine someone having a waking dream or a mystical vision it is unlikely that you would picture an unshaven white man in his sixties dressed in a white t-shirt and army surplus combat trousers who had been around the block a few time. That person would not be technically obese nor skilled in the art of high resolution laser spectroscopy. He would not be a grey. There may be a tint of eroticism to your imagination of a visionary. The person having the vision would either be young and “attractive” like Joan of Arc or Joseph with his groovy coat. There would be some kind of glow or aura perhaps. There could be some CGI graphics and perhaps some pointy elven ears. They could be a Russian mystic blinded at birth. They could be misshapen. They would have some cool sounding foreign name. They would not be called John Smith.

Either that or they could be in a secure psychiatric ward having avoided taking their medication by hoodwinking the staff.

People are likely to have prejudice about how they might imagine a visionary / whacko.

Last night whilst watching a fly on the wall crime drama about crystal meth in Norfolk I had a tremendously strong vision of the Dalai Lama and one other senior figure in Tibetan / Bhutanese Buddhism. That subjective observation has persisted on and off since then. It interfered with one of my normal nocturnal, pre-sleep meditations. This morning I have that subjective experience conflated with people at Stanford university. {They may be inquiring about Phowa practice – my guess.}

There is no logical reason why out of the blue I get a strong visual image of the Dalai Lama to mind and in mind. There is no effort for/by me to have it there. In fact it would be more convenient for it to fade. I can type, do the shopping and in a few moments, I will make a sandwich with these “visions” at the periphery of consciousness.

In the context of my normal CV and life experience it does not make sense. It is illogical and irrational. I have not exactly hung around with Tibetan Buddhists on a regular basis. Nor have I been brooding on either Tibetan or Buddhist themes of late.

After lunch I will start to sugar soap wash the wall by the log burner, then begin the chore of sizing the wood in the garage so that it is ready for use post operation in autumn-winter. We have about ¼ of the mass needed in the garage.  Once tided up, we will order a couple more cubic metres this month before the price goes up.

It is a bit odd but for me not unusual as Mr Jones might sing.

A Fly in the Ointment  – ECG ST Segment Depression

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Earlier this week we learned that the specialist machine doing CT angiograms is very busy at the big hospital in Saint Brieuc. They are backed up and will not be able to do the study before the date upon which my hip operation is scheduled. This means that the risk is less quantified. They are possibly worried a little about how I might respond to being hacked open and losing a few wine glasses of blood while someone saws off the head of my femur and whacks in a Titanium implant.

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The added concern comes from my recent resting electrocardiogram (ECG) in which the ST level was depressed below the isoelectric point.

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The ST segement is seen as potentially diagnostic for a number of conditions, lowering is correlated with these things.

Causes of ST segment depression:

Myocardial ischemia

Hypokalemia

Digoxin

Cocaine

Left ventricular hypertrophy (with concurrent T wave changes)

Bundle branch blocks (with concurrent T wave changes)

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I can exclude the three middle suggestions unequivocaly.

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The depressed ECG ST wave form is characterised as above into three basic types. My ECG has a lowering of  about 1 mm and is most like the horizontal depiction above

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Bearing in mind that I have spent decades looking at spectroscopy traces on chart paper, oscillosocpes and computer screens it is easy for me to spot “anomalies”.

Whenever I see ECG traces the first thing which comes to mind is, “why is the data so shite?”

Is the test human not grounded, is there a floating earth?

Can’t they do better, develop better machines, improve protocol?

Verbally the cardiologist wanted to check for myocardial ischemia or ventricular hypertrophy. The latter can come from being overly athletic in which case it is ok or it is simply that the heart if gettting old. Back in the last century I had strong athletic tendencies.

He has propsed a so-called cardio stress test. They asked me if I could pedal. Maybe enough to raise the demand on the heart…we shall see.

Going left to right the power output by the human hamster wheel rider increases by 50 watt quanta B-C. This data shows the depression of an ST ECG trace as incresing demand is placed upon the heart.

“Reversible ST-segment depression is the characteristic finding associated with exercise-induced, demand-driven ischemia in patients with significant coronary obstruction but no flow limitation at rest.”

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The jury suggests that this methodology could tend the “diagnosis” either towards or away from ischemia or blood supply insufficiency. The guess was that my aging heart was just as bit too big and aged. The holy trinity of fat, fags and booze have given me their sacred blessing.

If I am losing blood during the operation the heart will pump that little bit harder.

All the articles suggest that when a stress test is done there is a medic present who is cardio-trained in case the stress test causes a heart attack…

It was mooted that an appointment for this stress test may also not be easy to come by. The pre-op anaesthesia meeting is scheduled about 1 month out before the operation.

If the ST depression is unexplained, will they go ahead or will they insist upon more data?

There is a potential fly in the ointment.

We have found that in general the French are more keen on lastminute.com than we are…I foresee a mad clustering of yet more medical appointments early autumn…

Can a Jaguar Changes Its Spots?

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People can have very fixated images and perceptions of others. They may shoe-horn others into well out of date perceptions. How they remember them can be stuck in a time warp.

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We are watching a TV programme with Eddy Redmayne acting as The Jackal. Even though he is not the same actor, I keep wondering where Wellard or Well Hard the dog is. At the moment in the series  highly armed MI6 agents have just been engaged in a  massive shoot out near Budapest. The sort of thing that is likely to be an international incident but which serves for dramatic purpose.

Not everything makes sense.

It is very easy to get typecast in the eyes of others. There could be a wildly inaccurate narrative circulating which sticks like glue. Once a visiting Japanese postdoc. famous for his drinking prowess back home decided that he wanted to out-drink me competitively because he had heard my legend. We started drinking after I had already had six pints of Stella unbeknownst and unrevealed to him. I stopped drinking a bit before him and he claimed victory. So there may be a story back in Japan of how he beat a champion drinker in the UK. Not all stories are true but it does not stop their circulation.

People can have their perception locked, very locked.

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Many are not a lot like they once were. Some people change. It is said that the warrior’s path is one of transmutation,  transformation and transfiguration. This suggests that the change may be more radical than a cosmetic tinkering.

I’ll wager were I to meet people I was acquainted with two decades ago they would initially interact with me using that out of date context, if they even remembered me at all. There is and was a whole side of me of which most were completely unaware. One student thanked me for my 9 AM winter morning lectures because they gave them a chance to catch up on their sleep in a nice warm lecture theatre. Others have told me that they doubted that boring dead-pan me could be any use to them when they were unwell. After half an hour of quiet chat they were off to see the GP for a mental health consultation and had provisionally booked a session with the on campus councillor.

Few would imagine that I have had dreams of shaman and Jaguars.

Jaguar Dream Link

People struggle to a) notice and b) fully accept change in others, particularly those who they think they know well. Radical change is considered impossible. After all a leopard cannot change its spots.

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Fate or Self-Determination?

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Many imagine that they have partial control over their lives, their circumstances and the trajectory of those lives. I have used the plural lives here which might be a moot choice for those who do not believe in reincarnation. Already people might want to debate singular or plural. Their own minds may not be certain, “do I cark it and that is it, or am I reborn?” This is quite fundamental in terms of outlook. They don’t imagine that the entire trajectory of life can pivot on a few tiny things.

If those marking my undergraduate exams in 1985 had given me one more mark and Sue one less. We would have tied for the last remaining SERC Ph.D. quota studentship. The organic section already had a lot of applicants, the inorganic chemistry section less. The decision would have been to grant the supervisor of my third year research project the studentship and I would have done a Ph.D. in the synthesis of Pt and Pd mixed valence compounds with X-ray, FTIR and Raman. I would have become an inorganic chemist of sorts at UCL and not gone to the Royal Institution nor helped moved the group to Imperial College. At some stage down the line the UCL trajectory could have led me to doing coherent Raman spectroscopy of GaAs growth at UMIST. Here the two possible trajectories could have remerged. This could have led me to the Interdisciplinary Centre for Electronic Materials and to Imperial.

But my life would have been markedly different in the meantime. I would not have formed the same “relationships”.

When Sue transferred to UCL part through her degree I helped her catch up on the course. In effect sealing my own fate by an act of kindness. Without my intervention I would have “beaten” her. Of course I could also have smoked fewer spliffs and not gotten so pissed on a regular basis too.

Seemingly innocuous happenstance can nudge life trajectory more than you imagine. Is it down to fate or is it down to the integral over all the decisions we make? I prefer the notion that fate has a considerable hand. Others do not like the idea that some external force has influence and control of their lives.

BUT.

If you choose your incarnation then you have in a way self-determined your fate by the choice of vehicle into which you incarnate. There may be a fate but it was caused by your choice.

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At the moment the residual fate in this life looks pretty simple. No big deal, no big external dramas and marginal significance to the world at large. I am very unlikely to have much ongoing wider significance. If it is fated there is no intervention required of me. If it is fated otherwise something might happened outside the compound to change things. I don’t have to be in any way proactive in this respect. If it is fated, it will happen.

Tomorrow, I have a urology appointment to follow up on my elevated prostate specific antigen (PSA) test. I don’t have cancer yet according to the guidelines of how these things are assessed. But the way the PSA numbers are going it will not be long before I fall into the right numerical regime to mean that I have cancer or at least warrant another hour long session in the high resolution MRI machine or an invasive biopsy. I may get a prostate exam. The trajectory of our lives might take another turn, if it is so fated.

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There are many who really don’t like this notion of relying on fate. It is core belief and orientation for me. My dreams help me evolve my fate in accordance with what I, the indwelling dreamer, planned at birth. I have made huge life changing decisions based on dream interpretation. Some of which were very hard with difficult consequences. I was fated to dream and fated to use those dreams to guide this life.

Of course I may seem like a complete nut-job to some. But if so, it was always fated thus.

I am open to the fact that there is not much left fated for me to do in this life. Why would one not accept one’s fate? Even were my life entirely governed by self-determination there is precious little that I can do to alter life circumstance as it stands. It looks like fate has me “cornered” so to speak…

Shit happens… you may as well relax into it…take a deep breath… this will only take a few seconds…

Coming Home to Roost Dream and Preparation 02-08-2025

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Last night in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness, in the cusp between here and yet to come, I had yet another coming home to roost “slide show”. In that, things come home to roost for some people whom I once had acquaintance of. I take no joy or glee from these happenstances, these scenarios, rather a tinge of sadness at folly and adamant folly to boot. For example if you falsify any official document there is a chance down the line that it could come back to bite you on the arse like a rabid chihuahua. If you succumb to temptation and allow the tendrils of evil to find purchase, they rarely let go and your relationship becomes symbiotic. Without knowing it you supply the food. Short of a full blown exorcism it is game over in terms of liberation for this lifetime. Nobody involved in such a symbiosis will ever believe or accept such a statement.

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Everything seems normal to them. Their playbook seems to work and they have success in the world and among peers. They can handle whatever mini-crises are sent to them. Or so they think.

The thing about karma is that it can be subtle. People who believe they are thoroughly entitled do not imagine that it exists. When something happens that is “bad luck” , “unfair” and not an effect which they have had a hand in causing. One day, perhaps in a lifetime to come, people get to have the penny drop whilst incarnated and they see with irrevocable clarity the outcomes and consequences of their actions, their emotionally charged bile and punitive vengeful thoughts. Theory has it there is a review at the time of death too. I witnessed bedside my father struggling with his. It was not pretty.

I have started mentally preparing for my operation and other commitments later in the year. It has become reasonably obvious in the twilight that I need to return to the A-U-M meditations and revisit Phowa practice just in case. I probably need to start doing more stretching exercises and work at building back some muscle in my legs and hips. At the end of the month I start a new birth-year, leading me further into my final pinnacle. Who knows what is in store aside from some hippie action in the operating block.

My understanding is that when people incarnate, they choose all the circumstances of their birth to enable them to learn from a “lesson plan” that might help them best evolve and work at karma. They made this plan themselves. For example I was born into a family in which the education mantra was strong. I was sent to boarding school in another country, education was more important than any close familial relationship. I subsequently ended up working  in “education” for a couple of decades. I planned this before birth.

In the birth lesson plan trajectories of whom you are “meant” to meet are bullet pointed. The possibilities exist. These individuals have the wherewithal through which you might learn. Human choice must be allowed. Thus it is possible to completely screw up the lesson plan which you yourself wrote. Literally miss the boat by miles. You can fuck up a life and badly so, through your own arrogance. The moot point is were you always destined to fuck up or did you simply act that way out of bloody-mindedness? Did you cut off your nose to spite your face or had you zero choice in the matter? In the grand scheme of things learning will inevitably ensue. But it may be many lifetimes later that such a great learning opportunity re-presents. People learn painfully yet effectively through loss.

It is the karma of snakes and ladders.

The thing about dreaming is that timing is never atomic-clock accurate. But when the dreams increase in frequency it does mean that the event is getting nearer in time, it will happen sooner. It also means that the likelihood or probability is increasing.

Dreaming by its very nature cannot be an exact science….

Philosophy at the OU?

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Yesterday on a whim I looked at the Open University web site thinking about doing some study. I wondered about doing some courses in Philosophy. Because of my relatively poor ability in Maths I think it unlikely that I would pass any degree course in Physics. Though there was a time when I was a jolly good member of the Institute and officially qualified as a chartered physicist. That qualification is lapsed and cannot be resurrected.

I wondered how any tutor might mark / respond to my efforts. Clearly, I would be very undisciplined. When I looked into the possibilities, I foresaw problems.

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It occurred to me that the course was not Philosophy per se, rather the history of human ideas dressed up as Philosophy. I never liked the part of science that gave personal names to equations, like the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. That method was a sure way of encouraging me to forget. The hagiography of dead people has never really lit my candle. A little closer look suggested that what passes as Philosophy contains a lot of discussion of socio-political interaction and social conditioning.

I reckoned that were I to proceed there would be disagreement. The strict definitions would not work for me under the umbrella of Buddhist impermanence and non-attachment. Arguing the toss for arguing the toss’s sake seemed to be a core part. Anyway for France the prices are not low, around four grand a module. It suggested to me that what I think I know is not suitable for the normal Venn diagram discussions of traditional ways of thinking. It does not fit to that socio-political framing which seems to be a big part of a philosophy degree.

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“Block 3: Philosophy of Mind
Humans and other animals have minds, whereas sticks and stones do not. But what is it to have a mind? The brain seems to have something to do with it, but is it the whole story? In the distant (or not so distant) future, might there be robots, or other artificial intelligence, capable of thought, emotion and experience? The block explores these questions.

Block 4: Ethics
This block looks at three philosophical answers to the question of what it is for our actions to be right or wrong. Are the right actions simply the ones with the best consequences? Or do we have ‘moral duties’ we should fulfil regardless of the consequences? Or perhaps we should simply focus on being good, virtuous people and then the right actions will follow?

Block 5: Epistemology
Epistemology is the study of knowledge. How do we know about the world? One obvious answer is by using our senses. Do our senses supply all that we know? Even mathematics? Don’t we, in fact, also acquire knowledge from listening to other people and reading what they have written? But how do I decide whether to trust other people? Do we all have equal access to knowledge, or are some groups better ‘knowers’ than others?”

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The conclusion I came to was that it would be better all round not to apply or try to start a course. I don’t think that the contextual setting would sit well with me. I would become a problem.

Yet I do consider myself to have some kind of a philosophical approach to life.

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Is a mystic different from a philosopher?

What is the difference between wisdom and knowledge?

Forbearance Builds Intent

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There is a fair degree of historical precedent to suggest that brutal oppression is eventually causal of rebellion and revolution. The trick for the longevity of totalitarianism is therefore to control without being overly brutal in that oppression, to allow the populace sufficient comfort so that they do not feel the need to take up arms.

One could suggest that the inventiveness and resilience of the current Israeli population has arisen out of their long need to forbear in years gone by. It has created a strong Zionist intent out of the brooding powerlessness and persecution of the past. Forbearance was a seed that perhaps germinated into Israel.

Now the brutality in Gaza is very disproportionate offering the Palestinians the opportunity to practice forbearance under very harsh and dehumanising conditions. Those who manage to survive will be the fittest, the most resourceful and the strongest. They are having to forbear a great deal. Israel is not endearing them to itself. A total “victory” is an unattainable thing.

Karmically the Israeli actions in Gaza are very bad for Israel. In the short-term blood lust for vengeance there is no consideration of the longer term karma. From a karmic point of view Israel is perhaps sowing the seeds of its own downfall decades, even centuries, hence. History when examined contextually can be seen to be the manifestation of karma. Things are cyclical, pendulums swing back and forth.

Migration is a form of pecuniary osmosis. People migrate from low money places to higher money concentration places. Semi-permeable membranes like the Channel or the Rio Grande may impede the osmosis a bit, that is all. Nature is nature, humans can try to stymy it. Nature finds a way.

Sooner or later all oppression brings about its own demise. By training people to forbear, it builds intent for resistance against.

Shunning Ostracism & Excommunication – Historical Precedent

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I think it both accurate and fair to say that there is much historical precedent for the “human” practices of shunning ostracism  & excommunication. The practices may be official or unofficial, sanctioned by the hierarchy or simply via the social practices unspoken by “they”. Often the shunned is/are way ahead of their times, avantgarde or simply unwilling to submit and comply with some edict or other. Many who refuse to kowtow are ostracised. At the time the ostracism or excommunication is considered thoroughly justified. Imagined divine right is on the side of those doing the exclusions. The hindsight of years or decades looks back in disbelief. “Really? They did that?”

The shunners do not imagine for one moment that shunning is what they are doing, it does not even occur to them and is rarely overtly discussed. There is no thought or empathy for the shunned or ostracised.

“They are not us. We are right!”

Shunning ostracism & excommunication are cult like practices which continue to this day. The threat of these is used to coerce compliance. In Scientology one can even be declared “fair game”! The person ostracised and shunned is the subject of gossip and hearsay, in absentia. No prodigals are allowed.

Someone might read an article on say Galileo in the Inquisition and tut-tut, then talk of Martin Fleischmann or Ranga Dias. One is a hero the others not. If your reputation is tarnished it is very hard to get a research grant funded, the so called objectivity flies out the window. People are way more fickle than they are prepared to admit. Every church, including science, has some form of shunning practice.

Shunning ostracism & excommunication are tools of coercion and manipulation favoured by the status quo, used to assert power over. The fear of these can stifle any dissent. A church “elder” can claim it can prevent some god-fearing person from entering heaven. That is a manipulative mind-fuck of high order.

The historical precedents are extensive and these practises continue to this day, in churches, organisations, political parties, clubs and societies. They even occur in peer groups.

Humans are prone to repeat rather than learn from history. They keep the same old manipulation playbook, Grimoire, and use it over and over…

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Significant and Normal

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Many people might wish to fit in and be “normal”. That is comply and not be the sore thumb of life. These may seek to blend with a peer group if they are not normal in the populace at large. Geeky McGeekface is more at home with others of similar persuasion and not comfortable being with the popular plastic fantastic.

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I will speculate that I am not within two standard deviations of the peak of the normal distribution of intellect. By this I am already slightly abnormal. It is not really significant because there are many way further out. They will have a higher IQ according to how these things are measured and be much better at conventional examinations than me. I am not normal but not significantly abnormal either.

On other metrics I may be more of an outlier or anomaly. It is not my ego or desire to be weird which is suggesting that, rather a detached observation. I don’t particularly want to be special or different, but I am or appear to be, a bit odd. Socially I am not a mixer and socio-politically I do not play the itchy back game so enamoured of by many. Because I am less easy to leverage by “what is in it for me” people may deem me less tractable to control and/or ready manipulation. I do not play “the” game. I am not one of “US”. I am not “good people”.

My bones have osteoporosis so they are among the 0.5% too thin for my age and sex. This is significant enough for the medics to want to medicate me in case I end up in A&E with another fracture.

What each of us finds significant depends upon our terms of reference and the world which we perceive and assimilate. Thousands watched “the Lionesses” on The Mall this afternoon. They are mostly normal in this respect. I watched a bit on TV. Does that make me normal?

Life circumstance has me/us where we are, living the way we do. Our impact on the outer world is minuscule because we do not interact overmuch. In the grand scheme of things human we are not significant. Though in the past we have both changed and facilitated many lives. Our life circumstance and health in particular, limits us. Because there is no fairy godmother our life circumstance is very unlikely to change and even it did, there is no dynamic reserve of time and energy to offer. To an extent we are spent.

Put me in a car on the M25 and I may not cope. I can no longer hack the outside world. A few glancing interactions perhaps and that is about it. Even if someone wanted it otherwise, it isn’t and cannot be. I have not been in a proper city for more than a week or so in the last six years and that for hospital / health reasons. I am a bumpkin these days…Life circumstance has me away from the crowd. It is better for me and probably for them too.

Here is an aphorism pertaining to the rule of the three pronged nagal from the Toltec Teachings by Théun Mares

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This is not a normal example or tract of text. The question might be, “is it significant?”.

As is so often the case, it depends upon context. It sounds grandiose and might fleetingly captivate the attention. To the vast majority of people it has no personal significance and at best might be a curiosity. People are concerned with Facebook, Insta and TikTok. This type of thing would be abnormal to them. It is not abnormal to me.

I think it fair and accurate to speculate that what is normal and significant for/to me is abnormal and insignificant for others.

Thus we are in the subjective. Normality and significance are not objective, people make {personal} judgments which may or may not be rational concerning these notions. At the moment its seems normal to bomb the fuck out of Gaza and starve the people. This is normal for some but abnormal, brutal and evil to my eyes. The Palestinian death toll is more significant on Al Jazeera, less so on the BBC.

So-called normality is not always a strong recommendation for being better. Significance can depend upon prejudices and alliance.

If I was a mosquito, I would be grossly insignificant, unless I were in your bedroom of a hot summer night, and a bit peckish. Then for a few hours I could be significant.

Significance has a temporal component. It was once normal to have slaves. Slavery was more significant for the slaves than for the masters. That normality is now shunned and people are asked to accept the significance of their past slave ownership. Nothing can undo the abuse and torture.  A few quid here and there, a public apology, does not change one single lash of the whip.

Being normal may not be all that it is cranked up to be!

Normality has a checkered past…

Who knows what is normal for you, right now, may in time be seen as a misguided travesty. But for the time being you have the comfort of your peer group to tell you, “We concur old chap” and that everything is just dandy.

I am not sure that anything normal has brought about progress, ever. In that sense being normal is largely insignificant.