Category: Musings

The Dreamers IN Time

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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…

How We Are Perceived…

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…never look a gift horse in the mouth

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I’ll speculate that there is a good chance that I might be perceived as a quasi-Jurassic old fart.

The estate agent recently said that we had a lot of DVDs just like his parents. I do not know most of the protagonists in Wimbledon, I have no idea what music “stars” are popular with the exception of Taylor Swift, on celeb Goggle Box I have no idea who some of them are and I could not name more than a few of the Labour party cabinet. I recognise a few players in the England cricket team and am perhaps the most up to date with northern hemisphere rugby. I do not use a smart ‘phone and have never done “face time”.

Science fiction can predict with sometimes uncanny accuracy future trends. The detailed match is not exact but the scoping predictive. We have Orwell’s 1984 and now webcams and microphones driven by fibre broadband in most homes. The Trumpian “ministry of truth” publishes edicts to millions over the internet. The propaganda wars are on. We have the “new-speak” of wokeism and offence at pronoun use.

In the film “Logan’s Run” the young and the beautiful have an expiry date before they go to “Dignitas” for recycling. When the time comes, they are expunged. Everyone must be young and sexy and beautiful. Fat crippled old men are not allowed. Books are an antique artefact of the past.

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Now you can get Turkey teeth, a Brazilian bum lift, liposuction, a bionic penis and a designer vagina. You can get lip filler so that you look like a pollock who has bitten a stinging jellyfish and get plastic bags full of chemicals sewn into your tits. You can take weight loss drugs instead of heroin to lose weight. And of course you can buy Sino-Mexican fentanyl at bargain basement prices for a few pesos.

Not all “progress” is uplifting or good.

There is a tendency to throw the baby out with the bath water.

The summer of 2003 was pivotal for me. I had just gotten divorced and went on a PADI advanced open water diving course, on my own, at Sharm El-Sheikh. I was partnered with a young woman who was intelligent and a cardio-fit dentist. She was also a fairly high level rower, only a little younger than me. She was on holiday with others of the rowing “Henley” set and there was some talk about some of them preparing for Olympics. She represented two things I did not understand, the choice of dentistry as a profession and competing in rowing. I could not and still cannot understand dentistry as a profession. Yes, it relieves pain and is financially viable but isn’t it a tad repetitive and boring.

We got on fairly well and worked OK as a team. We were both a bit anxious. It turned out that she was single and looking to change that. I understood that she was attractive according to how these things are perceived. I saw her mostly as my diving partner. She talked a lot. Then one day on the bus she looked at my recent root canal work, which was not up to scratch according to her professional opinion. I knew at that moment her orientation towards me had changed from mild interest to “no, this geezer has bad teeth”. There was a slight cooling on her part. I had been scratched off a mental list.

When we finished the course, I climbed Mount Sinai on the night before my birthday and saw dawn of my birthday atop said hill. It was for me a truly transcendent experience. Something very powerful started that day and I was “off my trolly” for most of the journey back to London.

In this inane example she looked in my mouth and did not like what she saw. A perception was based on a single variable. It was a show stopper for her.

Nowadays where everybody has to be plastic-fantastic with their own PR and propaganda anti-social media platforms it is difficult to find a non-embellished reality. The drive to subscribe and adhere to a faux-perfection is said to be a driver for poor mental health. It is difficult to know who or what we really are or may be.

Cosmetically my appearance to the young is not appealing. I have yellowing teeth with several gaps. I am portly and hirsute. My below belt grandpa-garden is untended. I have not had a crack back and sack, ever. My teeth, which remain, are my own. There is no dental mortgage. I do not dress fashionably and I waddle when I walk, like a duck. I have never had an umbilical cord to my iPhone or Galaxy. If I were to attempt to type a text it would be snail pace and error strewn. I am a bumpkin, a yokel even pikey. I have zero power or kudos by association

I am in a package which would be unappealing, no doubt some might seek to educate me and bring me up to date. Were I to have things to share and impart, many would not be able to see past the gift wrap.

“What can that crippled old man with gappy yellow teeth possibly have to offer me? He is such a success, he has done so very well for himself, not.”

How we are perceived may differ substantially from how we actually are. People can squander opportunity based on prejudice about how things ought to be…

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…beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

Feeling Wired… wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie…

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But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Still thou are blest, compared wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I cannot see,
I guess an’ fear!

Robert Burns

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Well I am all wired up to a polygraph. Looks like it measures heart, noise in the trachea, air flow in the nostrils and the saturation of oxygen in the blood. It is not the latest spec machine and I don’t want to pay twenty euros for a user or technical installation manual. The temptation to take it apart is high but I will resist.

Over the last few months with nearly fifty medical appointments so far this year I have felt a little like a lab rat / mouse. Last time I was like this was around 1994 when they did shit loads of tests to figure out my low B12 and high haemoglobin. They gave me a radio-tracer labelled B12 sample and wanted me to collect my piss. I was off on a night out with the lads, by the end of the night my rucksack was very heavy with ~ a gallon of Tennent’s Extra flavoured sample. They told me to collect it all!! They were taking the piss.

I figured that I was a part of some research project at St Thomas’ so I played along. Perhaps I helped someone’s dissertation.

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I learned today that a diagnosis of moderate to severe sleep apnoea means that you have to stop driving and tell the DVLA!! You then need to get the problem under control.

They say that it can affect concentration. I’ll bet my level and extent of concentration against the bulk of the population. I’ll win.

Either the results will be invalid due to the apparatus falling off during the night, or they will be “normal” or they will have some anomalies due to my decade of dreaming practice and two and half decades of meditation. The first two cases are easy.  The third case might raise an eyebrow; be seen as an artefact or suggest a re-test.

All these scans and tests are getting a bit boring. I would much prefer to be in the control room watching the acquisitions than on the slab in the middle of a polo mint.

I have often wondered on the mentality of those able to torture mice. I did a team development course for those operating a gene related animal house {mice} at the University of Cambridge. They seemed to be regular people a bit annoyed by the unrealistic expectations of the last minute dot com academic demands. The academics wanted the animal house “sorted out”. I suggested to HR that it was the academics who needed to learn team work and to develop their interpersonal skills, which were poor.  I offered to do a course for them. Needless to say my offer to “Olympus” was not taken up. I would have had no problems calling out a pompous Cambridge prof or two.

I take the device back on Tuesday morning before my colonoscopy. We shall see {perhaps} what is recorded thereupon. The fun-filled and action-packed life goes on…

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Failure to Piss & Moan or Whinge & Complain…

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From the Urban Dictionary:

whinge

Verb To whinge

A British/Australian/New Zealand (possibly South African and other commonwealth) English word which describes incessant complaining. A behaviour commonly associated with poms/pommes/pohms/pommies (people from England).

If you want to get anything done in this country you’ve gotta whinge till you’re blue in the face!

Aw piss off ya blardy whingin’ pommie!

Whinging pom

An joyless English person who complains incessantly.

See Piers Morgan.

That Piers Morgan is such a whinging pom oh my god.

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This morning whilst trying to go back to sleep I was reflecting on a phenomenon of non-plussed. This is when I observe other people being non-plussed when I fail to piss & moan or whinge & complain in line with their normal level of their expectations. They seem not to know what to do when I don’t bemoan my lot or plead how terrible life is and how much miserable pain I am in {poor me, pass the feather boa.}


People are accustomed to hearing high levels of whinging and moaning and therefore expect these.

I have an idea that the medical profession don’t take me as seriously as others because I am not complaining endlessly and asking of their deity for help with my suffering. They can’t gauge things on the whinge / complain / moan scale.  I am too close to the zero-whinge state to be taken seriously.

As a rule most people like to have others hear there whinges and go, “there, there, poor you”. They seek someone to join them in their misery and seek affirmation of how terrible their personal suffering is, Bless.

If you observe, a fair percentage of so-called conversation is about complaint and woe-sharing. If people stopped whinging there would be a lot less. One is supposed to offer succour to the woe-sharer. If one does not woe-share people can be non-plussed. They do not know what to do or how to behave.

A very large amount of woe-sharing comes from the notion of how unfair the world is imagined to be. It is very victim and poor me in source. It is a bit sandpit or nursery, toddler like.

Who said that life is fair? Why do people have such an expectation?

Anyway, is seems to me that my failure to piss & moan, whinge & complain sufficiently leaves people non-plussed. It is a non sequitur which does not make sense. It can cause unease.

The Holy Trinity – Fat Fags & Booze

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Brixton Prison, Jebb Avenue London S.W. 2 Inglan

it was de miggle a di rush hour
hevrybody jus a hustle and a bustle
to go home fi dem evenin shower
mi an Jim stan up waitin pon a bus
not causin no fuss

when all of a sudden a police van pull up
out jump tree policemen
de whole a dem carryin baton
dem walk straight up to me and Jim
one a dem hold on to Jim
seh dem tekin him in
Jim tell him fi leggo a him
for him nah do nutt’n
and ‘im nah t’ief, not even a but’n
Jim start to wriggle
de police start to giggle

Sonny’s Lettah – Linton Kwesi Johnson

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Isn’t it funny that when you wait a long time for a bus at the bus stop near Jebb Avenue on Brixton Hill, there are none then all of a sudden three arrive at once?

Every weekday morning for around five years I waited at that bus stop.

Last Friday I had a radio-nuclide bone scan, Tuesday I had an ECG and comprehensive cardio ultrasound, tomorrow I will have overnight monitoring for sleep apnoea, Monday I will start taking industrial grade laxatives with a colonoscopy due Tuesday afternoon and next Friday I am due a CT scan to check for diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH).

What a fun-filled and action-packed time I have.  That is quite a lot to cram in. That is a lot of buses.

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Tomorrow I will get fitted for various monitoring including cardio. Later, they may go one stage further and do a hospital admission with full electroencephalography (EEG).

Given hip pain, enlarged prostate and hot weather, I am not sure they will get a good data set.

I don’t know what gizmo I am getting tomorrow. BUT if there is an EEG it could easily generate an anomaly which they may struggle to explain. I know from before and self-test that I can flat-line a fast Fourier transform frontal lobe EEG within the S:N ratio. If this happens in a sleep study it might raise questions or get ignored. I would be an anomaly.

The hospital version has EEG. It may never happen.

As a researcher one is trained to look out for anything unusual. I have a low parathyroid hormone level which seems anomalous. It makes my research bells go ting. It does not seem so important to others.

It seems to me that the consensus is coming around to the idea that the root cause of many of my ailments is being ascribed to the Holy Trinity, fat, fags and booze. My high iron levels will get adjusted during any hip operation by blood loss, in the first instance.

In terms of the Holy Trinity I only have fat left to renounce.

Whenever I watch a medical video, say on a part of the endocrine system, I think to myself that is a whole lot of variables which you are asserting to be interrelated yet you only have very few data points. Is that not a bit of a stretch?

I suspect that I would have been a shit medical student, too many questions. I would struggle with the exams.

In a fortnight’s time I should have a few more pieces of information, including my putative diagnosis of DISH.

Looking at the bus timetable there may be a wait……after a fun-filled and action-packed week.

Touch wood, cross fingers etc.

ECG Anomalies and a CT Coronary Angiogram

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Well, more rides on the medical merry-go-round are in store. I have a patchily shaved chest to which they attached the electrodes and they found some anomalies, a slight lowering, in the ST part of my ECG trace.

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These can be due to ischaemia {low blood supply} or muscular hypertrophy. The nice young man was very thorough with a good bedside manner. He has recommended that I get a CT Coronary Angiogram, a new procedure to me. So I have just emailed the request to the radio people.

He was reassuring but you don’t fork out for fancy tests on a whim. There is a reason…

My gut feeling to get the cardio MOT done early was right. I figured there could be some twists and turns.

There are a lot of medical threads out there which hopefully we can make some global sense of {eventually}.

Luckily, I know where the radiography department is, it is near the nuclear medicine place I was at Friday and close to the coffee machines.

More loyalty card points for me…

It Is a Long Way from Kansas – Cardiology

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The world is pretty fucked up right now. When the butcher of Khan Yunis is nominating B2- “Obliteration”- Boi Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize things are more than a little topsy-turvy. This is perhaps a new(ish) if twisted reality for our times. If you remember Franco, Mussolini at al., the unpleasant people, once formed a bad-boys club before and that turned out well…

The world is heading into a very nasty phase. Brutality is holding dominion over compassion and humanity. Rife me-first separatism is being propagated, decency {and common sense} is subdued by the practice of domination, coercion and forced submission. The disproportionate exercise of power is once more in flow. Waving cocks is once again sadly de rigueur.

It is along way from any idyllic Kansas of ere.

Today I get to find out if I have a heart amid all the high iron rust in my arteries and veins. They will probably plug me into the mains and look for traces of Fe2O3 in the pre-operative electrocardiogram. They may look for signs of a still pulsing muscle with an ultrasound device.

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By the 18th of July I will have had 13 medical appointments in a little under three weeks. I will have given blood, had a CT and separate radionuclide scan {bonus CT also included}, a colonoscopy and test for sleep apnoea. I will have seen GP, implant dentist and consultant orthopaedic surgeons, a cardiologist, an osteopath, a rheumatologist and a lung specialist. That is a fair clustering of appointments. My dance card has been and is still full. In August I get to see a urologist for an update on my high prostate specific antigen levels. The next line of attack after the high res MRI I already have had is a prostate biopsy. Yippee!!! That will be fun. You can see from the look on my face above when they try to put a finger on it.

And on the TV in the news we get to see a stage managed travesty as mentioned in the first paragraph…

Are we really in this parallel universe. How the hell did we as a humanity get to this low low place. How much lower must we sink?? When this sort of thing seems quasi-normal?

This stinks, it smells real bad…

Gandalf and Felix – Our Resident Stray Cats

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Yesterday at feeding time Felix, the old beat up neutered tom, did not show. He has been looking increasingly shabby of late, the vet suggested that he has cat AIDS. He has been with us for three or four years. He was fearful and wild. Other younger cats taught him to come close to us. Of late he has let me touch him and he rubs himself up against me at feeding time. We play picky-ups, where I pick him up with my foot and drop him gently out of the way. He keeps coming back for more. It is a game he likes. You can usually set your watch to his stomach. No sign of Felix. Gandalf was fed as per usual.

This morning again no sign of Felix. Something has unnerved Gandalf the young, spayed female. She followed me around the garden like a limpet. I was looking to find a perhaps dead or injured Felix. She was very attentive and seeking physical contact. No sign of Felix. Not in any of his usual haunts.

We understand that our care of Felix is perhaps end of life and palliative.

I just went out to feed Gandalf down by the river and with all the noise Felix arrived. He is in a bad way with what looks like a blunt force wound to his head. There is a swollen open cut like a boxer’s injury. Gandalf seemed pleased to see him and yielded the bowl to him. No contest.  I came back to the house to get another bowl and she followed me, while there was food available. She mewed and followed me back down to where Felix was feeding. It was as if she was asking me to feed them both as is the usual custom.

I put her bowl down and she was edgy, hardly snacking. She kept greeting Felix who was trying to eat. I stood there and petted Gandalf a little. She had a few mouthfuls. I was standing like presidential “security” while the two cats ate. Something bad has gone down and freaked them out. In the past when scared or injured, cats have sought me out. I have taken scaredy-cats out into the dark for a late night piss. Gandalf remembers humans and some of her memories are good. Perhaps some not. She is glued to the side of the house where she feels safe at the moment.

Felix has finished eating and is out by the greenhouse for his post feed snooze. I have been to look and his left eye is closed again like a boxer. He has some kind of injury to that side of his mouth. Looks like a car or dog or fox and not a cat inflicted wound. Gandalf was again following me like a magnet and it looked as if she was getting ready to jump up into my arms. Which would be a first. I “took” her close to Felix and she quieted down a little. She knows he is poorly. At the moment they are sat close to the house near the magnolia.

It might be wise to swing by the vets tomorrow to ask what to do. That wound could go septic, it does not look clean and Felix is not washing after eating, which is something he usually does.

The cats are clearly unsettled by some kind of trauma…