Using the language of topology to describe complex systems, leads to new insights about waves and weather patterns on earth. Some features of fluid flow on Earth can be explained by principles that traditionally apply to quantum systems.
Earth’s Oscillating Weather – Quanta Magazine
It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me.
Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion, it seems–aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet.
Yes, there is death in this business of whaling–a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then?
And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.
Chapter 3 – The Chapel, Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast.
Nothing exists in itself.
If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
But if the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm.
For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich.
For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air.
Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.
Chapter 11, Nightgown – Moby Dick by Herman Melville
* Thank you Will Henry for Wallace-the-Brave
Perception of time will eventually condense into an infinite now. Until then, observe the rush of random thoughts as they travel downstream.
Non-stop flight from London to San Francisco shows as a curve on Mercator Projection map of the Northern Hemisphere. The trip takes 11 hours at 36,000 feet altitude in the cramped fuselage of the Boing 777 jet airliner traveling up to 590 mph.
The older you get … the higher you have to kick.”
Salman Khan
One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of existence. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of living and dying.
The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris L. West,
These two bicycled from one side of the USA to the other, just like this! Such a healthy duo!
Update 2024: I’m feeling fine. Getting energy back. Speech is still affected, but can at least communicate. Hoping focus on exercise and caloric restriction proves effective.
Update 2023: Doctor asks for me to take a look at the MRI. It is stable from before, not worse or better. The good thing is there is no contrast enhancement to suggest an ongoing active infection. Since steroids have not helped symptoms, think it is best to do another spinal tap (lumbar puncture) just to make sure there is no inflammatory process.