Dreaming Courses Dream – 14-08-2025

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Here is this morning’s dream had between 4 and 6 AM. Again another one seemingly out of the blue.

The dream starts in a faculty office. Behind a large desk is a woman in her 40/50s. She is powerful and dressed in an expensive skirt and jacket suit with a royal blue shirt. She exudes wealth and she is very accustomed to getting her own way, obeyed even. She tells me that the faculty have agreed to my proposals for a course on dreaming and that I may go ahead with these courses on an experimental basis. She needs to be kept in the loop of developments. She thinks that I am fearful and subordinate to her. When I simply very relaxed and fluid. I know that she has other agendas which she is trying to forward and that there are politics going on behind the scene. She hands me a book of mounted photos like a book of material swatches used in fashion or decorating design. The book of “swatches” has covers and I cannot see the contents. She intimates that she wants these included in the courses.

Her office leads out onto a full or partial quadrangle with a covered ambulatory or walk way. It has a light reddish-brown brick. There are cobbles in the quad. It feels a little like Greenwich but also has a sense of Berkley CAL. There is a history and the word meridian is to mind. On the side wall of the ambulatory there is a small wooden display case with a lockable glass front. In this cabinet I will display course synopsis for the passing footfall of students.

I go into an open room with whitewashed walls and a dark red stone or painted concrete floor. I am met there by a younger woman who has been assigned as to help me and, to keep an eye on me. She asks me why I think that there are no definitive books on dream content. I say that by their very nature dreams are nebulous and not well suited to reductionist quasi-logical methods. Dreaming is dreaming and it has to be approached via dreaming and not structure. Sense-making can hinder dreaming significantly.

I open the book of swatches to show to her. Inside it are photos of some kind of Tibetan centre, out in the country. There are images of coloured prayer flags blowing in the wind. One of small stupa only a few metres high. There are western white participants and a very few Tibetans dressed monastically. I know the word Drukpa is associated. It is clear that a part of the agenda from the powerful woman relates to Tibetan dream practices. There is more agenda.

The young woman has a notion that in dreaming cultures there is always a myth and a mythos. That these grow up around the dreams and the reporting thereof. As a part or her research she would like to see if we can seed a myth and a mythos into those participating in the dreaming. Rather than that being an ancient hagiography she wants to seed an artificial mythos and see where it goes. She ushers me over to the back of the room where there is a museum style display case with a sloping horizontal glass covered display. Under this are full depth “admiralty” drawers containing specimens. She pulls out one draw and there packed in cotton wool nests are several rock specimens. She selects a grey and black speckled “agate” egg. The black is dark like obsidian

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She says that this will or could be the dream egg around which we start to create a dream mythos or myth. She is excited and I say that I am happy to explore this avenue but that it needs fleshed out. We can use the egg for the birth of the course, metaphorically.

The power woman, the principle, from before knocks and enters the room.  She is wearing high heels which have been tricky on the cobbles. I show her two pages of A4 text which will serve as a flier for the course. This text will go into the cabinet. She asks what the syllabus will be and I say that the syllabus will be decided to a large extent by the attendees and mostly by dreams. She looks sceptical.

I usher her over to a tarpaulin. On which are several plants in black plastic pots tied to short bamboo supports. I say that these are going to go into the green house and that these will comment upon and be a part of the course. I ask if she would like to help us plant them. Yes. We load half the plants onto a flatbed trolley and head out of the quad-building to the university allotment where our greenhouse is. Together we all plant the plants. The principle comments that she found it very enjoyable and that it is the first time for a very long while that she has had dirt under her nails.

We go back to the quad room. The principle asks about a web presence or page. At her prompt I know that I have to send someone a link to the dream yoga blog as it currently stands. I will do this after I have written up and posted this dream.

The dream ends and I note with some surprise on my way back from the bathroom that its exactly 6:00 AM…

Derek Jacobi – Cats – Vance – US Visitors Dream Sequence 13-08-2025

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Here is last night’s dreaming sequence of three distinct though somehow interrelated parts. Out of the blue….

The dream starts in England, in autumn, outdoors, walking along a leafy path in parkland. I am with Derek Jacobi and we are slightly ahead of a small grouping of British theatre luvvies. The wife is with the second group, with Emma Thompson. We have been wined and dined at a pub like The Spaniards in Hampstead. The conversation is flowing and everyone is excited. We are going back to someone’s mansion / house which is nearby. Jacobi and I are talking about philosophy, deity and Shakespeare a prime passionate interest of his. He is being his usual erudite and expressive self. He is asking me multiple questions about “back then”, previous lives. We pause at a clearing and sit on a stump for the others to catch up. We are being celebrated, feted even. The others catch up and Jacobi leads us off; he says that dinner is being prepared and we did not ought be late.

I awake. The shutters are partially open to let the air flow on a hot night. The window is open. Gandalf the stray cat is patrolling the window sill. She meows several times. I mentally debate whether to acknowledge her. I cough she hears and soon departs. I imagine she is seeking reassurance that I am there. I intuit that she is somehow guarding us.

Back in the dream we are downstairs in our current house. Bibi the indoors official cat is with us. In the garden we can see Gandalf. I open the large sliding “floor to ceiling” veranda style doors. Gandalf comes in greets us and Bibi. They go to sit on a large white leather sofa which is somehow against the wall by the log burner. In the garden a third black cat appears and it too enters the house, greeting us and sitting near where we are standing. A tallish woman with mousey blonde long hair comes into the garden. She is wearing an expensive trousers and blouse combo. She is slim and taller than me. She is forties of age and American sounding. With her are mice, rabbits and other small rodent like animals. They all follow her into the house, a/her menagerie. She says hello and that she is new to the area. The wife asks her name. Ivanovich or Ivaniaovich or something like that is the phonetic reply. Her first name may be Irene. Another large light brown cat with very long hair comes into the garden. The cat inspects us but does not come too close. She says that this too is her cat, his name is Vance. He is aloof and does not mix well. He thinks he is important. Vance walks around keeping his distance. He is high maintenance, she says. She winks.

The next scene is set in a very modern rental house with several levels and a designer garden. It is our temporary home; the feel is non-descript European. Staying with us are an American couple they are high functioning and high powered. The wife somehow knows the female from before. We have had a party the night before and wake up to a messy house. I am taking coffee orders. Felix {the probably dead stray cat} is asleep on the white sofa with Bibi and Gandalf. Felix meows at me and goes to the sliding glass window. He wants to go outside for a shit. I let him out. I explain to the woman that he likes to shit outdoors. I get coffees and give one to each of the couple. I go upstairs to ask the wife what she wants for breakfast. Garlic cheese on toast is the answer. I say that she can have cheese on toast with coffee and that I will bring them up to her in due course. I go back downstairs.

We look out the window and a garden robot like a mower passes by. It is expertly raking the gravel around the roses and pulling weeds. The garden is low maintenance self-clean a design of the architect who designed the dwelling. I say that this explains everything. I had wondered why the garden looks fresh each morning. The woman gestures to me to follow her outside. I do. She takes me aside out of earshot of her male partner. She says that later in the year in Colorado they are going to have a celebration and wedding. She asks me if I will speak at the wedding and perhaps officiate the service for them. I say that I would be delighted to do that and ask her what nature of service she would like. She says a non-denominational service based on beings and the universe. I say that I am sure that I can prepare the words. She says not to mention it yet to her husband to be. He is already onboard in principle and there are a few other details she wants to sort out. She shows me a picture of the Colorado mountainside venue. They have already booked a suite for the wife and I.

The dream sequence ends.

Quantum Computing – $1 Billion in Patent Applications

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If you search Espacenet using the key words “Quantum Computing” it returns 155,000 results!!  Clearly, I have not read them all this afternoon. At a very low legal fee of ~ $6,500 per patent that is ~one billion dollars’ worth of fees for the patent attorney community.

Alice, Bob and the Cat have served them well. They have made a quantum leap in income. Would you like some dinner?

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Reason suggests that it is not possible to come up with 155,000 totally original ideas and concepts beyond the state of the art. There must be redundancy and perhaps overly zealous patent agents have awarded their national home grown talent with a facile grant. Some of these applications cannot be worth the paper they are written upon.

Never mind the quality measure the tonnage. No wonder there is a forestry problem…

I have long speculated that the whole intellectual property (IP) / patent arena is due for a big clean out / dose of salts. It is overblown and over stuffed. The inventive steps are often really trivial,  and not “quantum leaps” in understanding.

To generate new IP against the petabyte background already filed might be tricky. When I last looked, I thought many so called unique ideas were very derivative and the inventive step even obvious to me as a non-expert pikey in his shed.

Sooner or later there is going to be some big blow out tests in court. Or you can have a Samsung – Apple  –   “we’ll sell you ours if you sell us yours” swapsies.

Were I an investor looking at that very basic survey of landscape I would not be champing at the bit (excuse the pun).

Following the Quantum Thread…

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As is so often the case the whole world gets to hear about what is going on in the USA. The world, the internet, has a USA based centre of gravity and America likes to tart its wares. The endless self-promotion urge originates there. PR and hype have their home, therein. Understated is not a word in common parlance, not even sotto voce.

As someone who has probably read more patents than is good for them, who has even worked through in detail to understand dozens, it is something of a hobby.

“Old fart in his shed reads patents.”

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Speichergasse 6 Bern

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We have heard a lot about the big American tech companies and their quantum computing (QC) efforts. It is a piss on the street corner type of approach to mark territory. When I last looked in detail at the patent landscape ~2017-8 there were a lot of US patent applications on QC whereas the Chinese were then focussing on quantum communication and key distribution. There were a lot of Chinese applications.

Clearly quantum cryptography is the killer app for quantum computing.

First pass shows that the Chinese are now releasing press notes on their QC chip technologies, there are a few rumblings in Moscow. There are efforts elsewhere like Singapore and South Korea. An issue remains, quantum talent, and for Russia quantum brain drain has been mooted. The USA may worry about training would be Chinese quantum talent.

As mentioned earlier in the blog, I am due to be incapacitated in winter. So I might need somethings to keep me busy.

I wonder has there been any genuine quantum leap innovation since 2017?

What is left of the patent lifetimes?

Is it worth another scooby?

Alice & Bob – Quantum Jobs

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Prompted by the answer to a question on University Challenge, I typed Alice and Bob into the font of paid for promotion previously known as a search engine. The Mecca of product placed wisdom came up with a French quantum start up called Alice and Bob. They have received 100 million series B funding. They also have a fairly extensive job vacancy list. It was a tad French and probably not overly attractive internationally except for those fond of Alice in Paris Francophiles. French job descriptions can be as rigid as a rigid thing. They do not travel well.

Maybe there is a general shortage of quantum savvy job applicants….

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It occurred to me that the Quantum hype has been drowned out by the deafening AI roar. Maybe it has gone submarine like AUKUS.

That Luddite Herr Trump has been threatening the Harvard intellectual property (IP) portfolio. What a great way to ensure the death of US inventiveness and technological superiority, discourage invention and application for patents unless they are handled by MAGA lawyers, toadies and sycophants!! Already the incentive to NOT have an idea whilst at a university is high, because contractually the university owns your IP. Best stifle ideas until you are a free thinker…

Sometimes holes can be difficult to get out of. That can include ways of thinking and playbooks.

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It looks like Herr Trump is going to try again to leverage Ukraine into accepting a fait accompli agreed with Vlad the Impaler in Alaska. This forceful manipulation is an old Trump play. If he keeps alienating people, he may find himself in a hole like increasingly Billy-no-mates Israel. Trump does not understand that “friend” has a different meaning in KGB speak.

Oh look another groundhog…where did that come from….

What is the first rule when you find yourself in a hole?

Human beings can be pig-headed and stubborn. Inventive people do not share the same deal or no deal mentality as realtors. They are easily discouraged and disincentivised. One day the straw goes on the camel’s back, one too many.

Sometimes that tired old play book simply does not work. Thinking the same way that gets you into a problem cannot help to get you out of it.

There is no point in trying to explain this to someone who is vehemently adamant that they know best. Advice is as unwelcome as a dose of antibiotic resistant syphilis.

Some people are obsessed at the notion of a “corporate” solution when none exists. They may get all their ducks in line to present someone with a fait accompli sure that such a thing is irresistible. Even so-called intelligent people like professors can think like this. They can seek within group consensus oblivious that people outside the Olympian Ivory Towers do not think like them. This may not occur.

It is quackers.

People often talk with the monkey and ignore the organ grinder completely…

Anyway…

Has AI killed off the notion of quantum computation?

Where will they put all the server farms?

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Is this what our future looks like?

Academic Chemists – Derelict Site – Attack – Honour Dream 11-08-2025

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Here is this morning’s dream had between 5 and 7:30 AM.

The entire dream is in England and not the north or the midlands but south to that from geography and accent. There is some kind of gathering of chemistry academics in the upstairs of a large pub or hotel. There is a vague feeling of conference but it is not quite that. It is more of a social gathering with a problem solving outlook. I am there but largely unacknowledged nor welcome. There is hubbub and people drinking. A man, John, comes in who knows me and says that he has just got promoted. He is a bit younger than me. I congratulate him genuinely. I say that it  is good news for him but that my job is very definitely at risk if not already lost. He concurs. I am spare. I am not entirely sure why I am even at this gathering. I do not belong.

The scene changes and I am walking with a woman roughly my age who works at the place of the gathering. She is a lynchpin for the departments there. She has grey-blonde hair. We are in South London and approaching a very rough neighbourhood. I am not sure where we are going. She says that she has a secret place, there. We come upon a boarded up set of flats that are fenced off and ready for demolition. The site access gateway if closed off with a large chipboard wooden gate together with health and safety signage about helmets and hazards. She unlocks the chain and opens the gate. I ask her if she is sure that she wants to go in. Yes.

I follow her in and we can see several blocks of low rise four storey flats. They are in a bad state of repair but not quite Gaza like. She leads me through the rubble to one building where we are joined by another woman. Together they make their way to the back of one of the ground floor flats, to the kitchen. She has set herself up a snug with teapot, table and bone-china. She boils the kettle to make tea and gets out a plate of cupcakes. She ushers me into her snug but I cannot fit fully. It is as if she and her friend have shrunk as has the flat. I can get my head into the room but nothing else.

Behind me I hear noises. I turn out of the flat and look across the rubble strewn ground between the buildings, the demolition site. I can see half a dozen young black men approaching. They are carrying weapons and acting threateningly. I can feel my wallet in my trouser pocket. They approach and I say to them that I will give them some money. I take out six £20 notes and offer these. The lead man does not want them. He says that they are going to “fuck me up”. I say that they are welcome to try.

He lunges at me and I grab his wrist in a Kotegaeshi aikido wrist lock and swirl him around. I cannot however get full control of his wrist. Others come up and start to beat my back with iron bars which I can feel through my heavy overcoat. I let him go and then shrug the attackers off. They start to give chase and I head to the chipboard gate site entrance. They are following me at pace. I am completely unconcerned because their blows cannot hurt me or injure severely. As they follow me though the gate I head onto a grass verge in front of another block of flats. There is a massive police operation going on with many police in protective vests, armed and with dogs. They see my pursuers and recognise them as people they want to arrest. Half the police break off the search and give chase to my attackers.

I go back into the derelict site and find a white tiled bathroom which is intact. In the flat above there is a large woman who is a giant. She is five times my size and wearing striped tights with massive Dr Martens boots. She is curled up under the ceiling and above my bathroom. She has platted pony tails and is wearing a denim pinafore dress with straps. She is my friend and we go way back.

I turn on the shower and note the complete surround of white tiles which bulge slightly under the weight of the giant upstairs. I take a long hot shower. I need to cleanse, to get clean.  As I finish a young man with blonde hair in white overalls appears. He is the electrician-plumber and is trying to fix the bathroom and the derelict site. I explain to him that it is near impossible because there is no room left in the gaps between ceiling and roof. I have tried but gotten nowhere. He says that he has been given the job of fixing things. I wish him luck. It will be a thankless task.

The scene changes and I am in some kind of meeting with around half a dozen male chemistry academics. They are the “generation” below me and rather full of themselves. They are talking management bullshit about targets and how they are going to fix the problem of which I am a part. Although I am there I am largely ignored. They are arrogant. I know beyond all doubt that they are heading towards a massive mistake, a fuck up. I try to warn them. They ignore me convinced that they know best. They think they have a vision and a solution. They are very badly mistaken and it will go very, very wrong.

They ask me what I have in my wallet. I take my wallet out and pull out first four and then another two £20 pound notes. That makes a total of twelve £20 notes. In the dream I know that money re-presents crystallized power or knowledge. I have in my wallet the jewels of awareness forbearance 12 and honour 20. My honour remains intact no matter what they do.

The dream ends.

Granny Was a Gwrach…

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Gwrach y Rhibyn

The legend of the cyhyraeth is sometimes conflated with tales of the Gwrach-y-Rhibyn or Hag of the Mist, a monstrous Welsh spirit in the shape of a hideously ugly woman – a Welsh saying, to describe a woman without good looks, goes, “Y mae mor salw â Gwrach y Rhibyn” (she is as ugly as the Gwrach y Rhibyn) – with a harpy-like appearance: unkempt hair and wizened, withered arms with leathery wings, long black teeth and pale corpse-like features. She approaches the window of the person about to die by night and calls their name, or travels invisibly beside them and utters her cry when they approach a stream or crossroads, and is sometimes depicted as washing her hands there. Most often the Gwrach y Rhibyn will wail and shriek “Fy ngŵr, fy ngŵr!” (My husband! My husband!) or “Fy mhlentyn, fy mhlentyn bach!” (My child! My little child!), though sometimes she will assume a male’s voice and cry “Fy ngwraig! Fy ngwraig!” (My wife! My wife!).

If it is death that is coming, the name of the one doomed to die is supposed to be heard in her “shrill tenor”. Often invisible, she can sometimes be seen at a crossroad or a stream when the mist rises.

Some speculation has been asserted that this apparition may have once been a water deity, or an aspect of the Welsh goddess Dôn. She is the wife of Afagddu, the despised son of Ceridwen and Tegid Foel, in some retellings of the Taliesin myth.

From Wikipedia

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If I were to show you the autocorrelation traces of two femtosecond laser pulses on an expensive oscilloscope in a dark laser lab it us unlikely that you would be thinking of the witch, the hag of the mist, Gwrach-y-Rhibyn. The two things do not correlate for most.

A part of my maternal family hails from Snowdonia, the foot of Snowdon,  in North Wales and the family legend has it that at least one of my maternal relatives, a granny of sorts, was a Gwrach, a witch, perhaps a seeress. In that context then there is a chance that I inherited the bloodline and hence the “gift” so to speak. As such it was entirely natural {and perhaps inevitable} that I would be interested in shamanism and shamanic ritual.

Of course in terms of someone able to write Fortan programs to calculate Franck Condon factors for anharmonic oscillator molecular vibronic photon excitations that seems far-fetched.

Contextually the vice versa might apply. Why would a shaman piss about with fancy lasers and science?

In Brittany there remains an interest in {and perhaps practice of} witchcraft. This is no way freaks me out. It is possible the practises here were sourced in the Welsh diaspora arriving. They are of similar roots.

I’ll speculate that a blog post like this would not enhance my promotion prospects were I still institutionalised in science academia.

I have always loved the mist and the fog. I nearly died on The Old Man of Coniston once. I was alone and following crows up a trail in the snow deep into the fog, alone on the mountain. It was exciting. Luckily before I got completely lost in the otherworld, I turned back. I have had much similar fun on Kinder Scout in dense fog. There is something womb-like and enveloping.

Of a still and misty night, when the full moon is partially veiled and you heard a voice at your window calling your name, what would you do.

Could you take secure refuge in the omniscience of your infallible reason?

Or would your blood run cold?

Coincidence is Logical – Except When it Isn’t

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There is a certain type of person who prefers to ascribe coincidence, or random happenstance to events rather than accept any unproven {hypothetical} causal links. It would take a multiplicity of “coincidental” occurrence before they would deem significant corelation of happenstance sufficient to justify either causal linkage or even causality itself.

If the statistics to the contrary started to build up, they would resist dropping the logical conclusion of coincidence for quite a while.

Because of this they would never believe in karma. Even were it to slap them around the chops with a large wet pollack.

Say for discursive example you were covertly reading this blog and perhaps making some cunning plans which in some way pertained to me. You then noted that I posted “We’re only making plans for Nigel” here. The first port of call would be that this was entirely coincidental. You might start a tad, nevertheless. It is logically impossible for someone in another country to know that you were discussing or chatting about them. The occult ability of “seeing” belongs only to fictional characters like “Wednesday Addams”. At a stretch you might go so far as to think I had made some lucky intuitional guess which by fluke of timing matched circumstance. No way would you, as a rational scientist, accept that seeing is possible and that I am capable thereof.

People therefore write off many things because their confirmation bias says that they cannot or should not be possible. Anecdotal evidence of not boarding a plane because of  bad vibe and it subsequently crashing and burning, remains anecdotal and conversational perhaps to be found on “The Daily Mail”. The life of those prone to ascribing things near always to coincidence is a bit boring and chances are that they miss a great deal. They should steer well clear of roulette, statistics says so.

There are however many things for which coincidence and random happenstance are poor explanations. But logic is very limited and as it is currently formulated fails to encompass many things without far-fetched hypotheses like dark energy and dark matter.

“Show me a can of dark matter!!”

There is a part of society which believes in karma and synchronicity. Were you forever looking for these things then chances are you will find them. You could argue that belief in synchronicity is a self-fulfilling prophecy because of confirmation bias. Similarly if you were fond of the notion of seeing, ANY thing, any event, no matter how small could provide you with proof of efficacy. You could comb the opus of Nostradamus or the Revelation of Saint John and find clear {and incontrovertible} evidence of fulfilment of prophecy. It might not occur to you that you are kidding yourself.

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So where is reality?

Is it that coincidence is logical except when it isn’t?

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The Book of Revelation, also known as the Book of the Apocalypse or the Apocalypse of John, is the final book of the New Testament, and therefore the final book of the Christian Bible. Written in Greek, its title is derived from the first word of the text, apocalypse (Koine Greek: ἀποκάλυψις, romanized: apokálypsis), which means “revelation” or “unveiling”. The Book of Revelation is the only apocalyptic book in the New Testament canon and occupies a central place in Christian eschatology.

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