“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”
- Fom Manual of Muad’Dib by Prinses Irulan
Ok, so it turned out I had some settings wrong in InDesign. Haven’t got the time to tweak it all now, but here are some tastes... just the first page spread.
[still so impressed by Peter Gabriel I will reflect on it later, oh wow!]
Follow the link by clicking the picture, wait for the applet to load and hit the start button on the page. Now the applet window pops up. Fill in the applet as shown (just the dX0 box), hit Reset and then Start, speed it up by moving the slider.
This is the butterfly attractor of the Lorenz system for two different initial conditions. The amount by which the initial conditions differ is in this case 0.0001, what you filled in at dX0, but you can make it even smaller: 0.0000000001
After a while the trajectories start to diverge. At some point both trajectories predict the complete opposite atmospheric conditions. Each coordinate (x,y,z) corresponds to a state of the atmosphere and hence the weather. Imagine that the left wing represents predominantly sunny weather, the right wing could be a nasty hurricane and this difference is “caused” by the very small difference in initial conditions at dX0. It could represent a sneezing butterfly, so small. At least the speech was a storm in glass of water at the other side of the globe.
Interesting, I don't know if it is true but: Romance languages call anything German: Al(l)eman (add some diacritics depending on the language), so do the Turks and in fact all arabic languages. In English it’s: German, in Baltic languages and Finnish it’s: Saksa, in Dutch and other Germanic languages, it’s, Deutsch / Duits / Dutsk (Frisian) / Tusk (Norwegian, Swedish), etc.
Now, in the days of the Roman Empire, there were the provinces of Germania (Inferior and Superior). So why did this turn into Allemania for all of southern Europe? The Allemannen were a Germanic tribe. They were pretty annoying for the Romans and eventually stopped the progress of the Roman Empire and conquered the Germanic provinces. So the Romans in a way were “defeated” by the Allemannen and so you name that country after that tribe, logical. For the Baltics this also holds becuse the Saxons, that other Germanic tribe were the bad guys. The Roman province of Britannia, after the fall of the Empire, was conquered by yet some other Germanic tribes (the Angles and the Saxons, hence Anglo-Saxon). So you name your language after the ones who “defeat” you.
Now, France was conquered by the Franks, yet, yet another Germanic tribe. Those guys lived in the lower Rhine delta and around the “Zuyder Zee”, yep the Dutch and Flemish... (Not the Frisians, they held their own territory for a while and had some influence on the English language later on). The Franks went on to become the Merovingian Dynasty, but that is another story that centers around the French region of Orange and the date of the 30th of April (or is it just a coincidence this date is our Koninginnedag?).
So the Franken, Allemannen and Angles and Saxons all spoke kind of the same language. It was called the language of the people and “diutisc” means “of the people” (zum Volk gehörig) in althochdeutsch. Very consistent people, Volkswagen expresses the same idea. But also, Alle Mannen of course means All Men. And then some monks fled to the New World and that’s why the language “Nederlands” is “Dutch” in English (Could this be one of the first American English influences on British English?).
But I digress, back to the robots.
Sometimes you read a scientific paper that really stuns, amazes, infuriates, or inspires you... Sometimes you read a paper that appears to have been sent backwards in time from a distant future...
After I first came across this paper I immediately integrated it into a course I taught (now cancelled due to budget cuts), in which I predicted that soon engineers and technicians would know more about human development, human cognition, human emotion and well, basically everything psychology claims to study than psychologists would.
The reason: engineers and roboticists have long abandoned the idea that the human brain is something like a machine of the computer kind. So have I, so have philosophers of cognitive science, so have the ecological psychologists, but not mainstream psychology, behavioural science or cognitive science. Even the past proponents of the information processing approach admit it was a mistake to think that just increasing computation speed and storage of information would eventually lead to artificial intelligence. It does not, and if it ever will, it will not be an intelligence we will recognize as such.
I used to play a really cool roleplaying game hosted by my brother when I was young called TORG: the possibility wars. Situated in the Near Now, the background was that there were different Cosms or realities invading the Earth to obtain something called possibility energy. If successful they would impose their Axioms and Cosm Laws upon Earth’s reality, or Core Earth (f.i. Magic is possible). North America turned into The Living Lands (stone-age with dinosaurs), South-East Asia into Orrorsh (Horror genre), Egypt into The Nile Empire (Superhero / 1930s pulp genre), France into the Cyberpapacy (Cyber Punk genre), Great Britain / Scandinavia into Aysle (Fantasy genre) and more... Very noticeable changes for the inhabitants of those regions of course. Except for one region: Japan. Japan was invaded by the Nippon Tech cosm (Japanese SF genre). To the Japanese it just seemed that technological advances were happening more quickly than in the rest of the world. Nothing special.
Well, there may be some truth to that... just watch the video below:
What is important to remember is that there is no “pre-programming” of movements. They are all “learned” through perception and action. They even have simulations of fetal and movements in the womb and neonatal movements after birth, where they observe “self-touching” behaviour and very eerie realistic “uncontrolled” goal directed behaviour emerge from out of nowhere. The main reason why I think they are successful is that it is scary! It looks like there is someone inside that suit! Well, there isn’t and what it actually does in terms of movements is not pre-programmed as an algorithm but has developed... much like this cockroach robot that doesn’t have a brain at all (ok a two neuron brain).
On the site of the Asada Project we can read a clear vision of what future research should focus on:
“The 21st century is known as the "Century of the Brain" and will be an era of robot habitation with humans [...] It is important for life sciences in the 21st century to regard the brain as a complete system, and to clarify how brains realize function through interactions with the external world based on its dynamics.”
That is exactly what I (want to) do! It is kind of sad though, that this was also exactly what many great minds since the 60s have wanted to do, but never got the chance and were and are even now ridiculed or just ignored for proposing such ideas...
Well, guess again,
the Near Now... is Now
I’m sure they will eventually be able to Salsa-dance as well
Peter Gabriel discography (studio albums as a solo artist)...
(i) (ii) (iii) (iv) us so up scratch my back The first four albums are untitled... Actually... I guess they aren’t called albums, but projects... he aslo did some other stuff in between and before... Anyway (nice effort)...
The last project consists of “just” covers with new arrangements, played by a Symphony Orchestra: 1. "Heroes" - David Bowie 2. "The Boy in the Bubble" - Paul Simon 3. "Mirrorball" - Elbow 4. "Flume" - Bon Iver 5. "Listening Wind" - Talking Heads (David Byrne) 6. "The Power of the Heart" - Lou Reed 7. "My Body Is a Cage" - Arcade Fire 8. "The Book of Love" - The Magnetic Fields 9. "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" - Randy Newman 10. "Après moi" - Regina Spektor 11. "Philadelphia" - Neil Young 12. "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" - Radiohead
It will be followed up by: I’ll scratch yours
On which the people whose music he covered, will cover a song from him, so called: reciprocal covers Some of them have already been released as double A-sides on Itunes
The Magnetic Fields - “Not one of us” Bon Iver - “Come Talk To Me” Paul Simon - “Biko” Lou Reed - “Solsbury Hill” Elbow - “Mercy Street” David Byrne - “I Don’t Remember”
Well... not everyone will cover a song. Apparently Radiohead resigned from the project after they heard Gabriels recording of Street Spirit.
Guess they didn’t read this quote:
“If you’re going to reinterpret something, then really do something. Nail your colours to the mast and say: This is different, and it isn’t everybody’s cup of tea.”
I really cannot imagine that talented musicians like Radiohead would respond in such a way. It’s just internet buzz of course, but it appears they have some more cages to escape from (It’s not quite the same Phil). If I listen to the way the song The Boy In The Bubble is being discussed in the video below I would be honoured even if I hated the result. you do know I’m also a fan of lyrics right? Actually, one of my favourite lyrics is “For Emily, whenever I may find her” by Paul Simon (and Garfunkel). Also covered by other great artists: if only I could do this
Anyway (again), for someone to include songs by Bowie and Simon, Reed, Young and the Heads, but at the same time Elbow and Regina Spektor (first albums 2001) and Bon Iver (first album 2008), who the fuck are you be a critic to such a an open mind?
Oh well... I still love you Radiohead.
Oh my god! I forgot how cool David Byrne is, he covered “I don’t remember” It’s Peter Gabriels favourite reciprocal cover
(i) I think “heavy downpour” is now my favourite English collocation. It easily surpasses the much acclaimed “cellar door” in phonaesthetics and I am certain everyone agrees it beats “beautiful phonaesthetics” in spellaesthetics. As far as I know the word or concept of spellaesthetics does not exist. For me it is really strange there is no antonym to the “the claim or study of the inherent pleasantness or beauty (euphony) or unpleasantness (cacophony) of the sound of certain words and sentences.” Apparently there is eugraphy and cacography. They refer however to aesthetics of handwriting or funny misspellings or to semantics or images, since eugraphy may be used as an antonym to pornography. NOT to the aesthetics of the arrangement of the letters. The form, or “picture” of the letter string. To call it a painting would be too much I agree and conjures up images of calligraphy which is not what I mean: No matter what font, or which handwriting, there is a certain beauty in some letter sequences. Not just in digraphs (like ae, eu, ou,ei) and tripgraphs (like eau, sch,ieu). Beyond that. The beauty of “heavy downpour” for me lies in the following:
(a) The sequence “wnp”, which is not a trigraph, but a trigram with a low frequency of occurrence
(b) The fact that the second and the second-to-last sound are represented by a digraph: “ea” and “ou”
(c) Two letters protrude above the baseline, two below: “h-d”, “y-p”
(d) These letters are in fact each others diagonal reflection: “h-y” and “d-p”. There is a third: “u-n”
(e) o = o
(f) vy ≈ w
(g) I don’t like the r, except that “h____ _____our” is probably the reason I associate a long period of time with the downpour
(h) It’s a kind of feeling of symmetry that, if you look very carefully, still isn’t really there.
(ii) I think Feynman has swapped places with Bohr and Einstein as my favourite awe-inspiring physicist. I’m reading QED - the strange theory of light and matter. In which he explains the most successful theory about the workings of the universe ever to be produced by human minds, by talking about the reflection of light. In just 152 pages, no equations, your mum would understand it too. In Quantum Electro Dynamics (now Quantum Field Theory) the predictions of the theory and the results of measurements are in accordance down to the 8th decimal place! That’s why 20 countries invested 6 billion euros to build the Large Hadron Collider in eight years. That’s how certain they are in all the uncertainty. Apparently Feynman was also a proponent of spelling reform of English, a sensible man in all areas. But that’s not why I think he’s awe-inspiring. Also not because he: “... was regarded as an eccentric and free spirit. He studied Maya hieroglyphs, was a prankster, juggler, safecracker, bongo drum player, painter, and even developed his own pickup artist method he tested in bars.” Nope. That’s standard for awe-inspiring people. This is why: He explained and understood the universe through pictures. He brought back a visual form or conceptualisation of the constituents of the world around us: The Feynman Diagram. In this case a conceptualisation of gluon radiation. I think its beautiful too. I won’t bother you with the details, because... I don’t know the details. If you can make a picture of it, it does not necessarily mean it is has become easier. What I do know and understand is that some of the things he helped discover are so universal that they will need to be introduced into psychology at some point in time. One is he path integral and another (and more important one) the least action principle on which it is based and, of course (gauge) symmetries. I will come back to that at some point later this year.
(iii) I think I do not have a favourite awe-inspiring mathematician yet. Not that one needs to. The obvious candidate, Benoît Mandelbrot is actually much more. I am (also) reading Gaussian Self-Affinity and Fractals: Globality, The Earth, 1/f Noise and R/S. It is not like anything I have ever read before. The first line reads: “This books subject matter is nontraditional and its style and organisation are unconventional” It is a collection of papers and new texts and comments and observations, exploring the concept of self-affinity, another very important notion for psychology. There is a pattern here. Mandelbrot is also someone who likes to represent and conceptualise things with pictures. In fact, he claims that all mathematics stem from geometry. This picture here is the ‘fundamental phase diagram’ for a symmetric three-interval generator. Of course he generalized this to a grid free functions (i.e. all-intervals). This time I do know the details, but I still won’t bother you with them. Just that I think he deserves the Nobel prize for this. What actually struck me in the book are the passages on being an outsider and maverick in science. About maniacs, who will take an idea and proclaim it ubiquitous and universal. About deniers of whom there are many and about bashers who will do anything to keep things as they are. He calls himself a ferocious moderate and gives a very striking example of what happens to me almost daily (3.3 and 3.4): He also calls himself a philosopher. Something which has been held against me several times last year by empirically oriented colleagues. Interestingly my view of philosophy is the same as his: “I'm certainly a philosopher—how do you say?—entranced with unifying ideas. However, I don't only study books; I study nature. Also art of the past, for the purpose of finding artifacts that I could embrace.”
When I saw the F.I.T Mobile Mixer link pop up in google, I immediately thought someone had made a cool iPhone app to mix some tunes, an Ableton-like app or something.
Well.
It wasn’t
Apparently there is a great need among bodybuilders to create “smoothly mixed protein shakes” when there is no socket in the vicinity or while moving around a lot.
You can specialize in anything of course and I commend the company for finding this niche in the market, but isn’t it kind of weird to promote your product to bodybuilders as being lightweight?
My brother (Dirk Catharinus Johannes Hasselman) is in my grandmothers arms (Edith Ethel Hasselman - von der Pfordten). She was Bavarian nobility and died in 1979 at the age of 90. She was a Sufi. I guess this photograph dates back to 1975 or early1976, because my sister (Edith Olpha Catharina Dorand - Hasselman) was not born yet. Olpha is the name of my fathers first wife (Oplha Helene Lauten) who died of cancer, like my father eventually would. Catharina is the name of mother Ine (Catharina Maria Josefa van Barschot), who gave birth to me a year after she married my much older father, who married her a year after Olpha died. Catherinus Johannes (whom my brother was named after) was my grandfather (Catherinus Johannes Hasselman) who apparently died as a result of being weakened by the “hongerwinter” in Haarlem exactly one month after the Netherlands were liberated.
"Grandmother(left) and Grandfather(right) Hasselman in Glugur Indonesia"
My uncle Jack (also Catherinus Johannes Hasselman), my father, Olpha, my grandmother... they were all in Sumatera, Indonesia when the Japanese invaded. They were all sent to (seperate) civilian camps, except for my uncle Jack who was a soldier at the time, so he was sent to Burma to work on the infamous railway. I’m not sure where the other children were at that time (Charles, Dick and aunt Edith). Jack died recently at the age 92. He would not have allowed me to use the word Japanese, it’s “de Jap” and nothing else. He didn’t think Thailand was a place to spend a vacation and when I mentioned I had to take pills against Malaria he said he had suffered from Malaria 7 times and was still around. I guess that’s how you survive such an ordeal and reach an age of 92, still driving around, painting nudes that sell for 500 euros and basically dying because he could no longer take care of himself anymore after he became immobile. According to himself, he survived because he ate fresh lomboks in the Jungle and the British just wanted chocolate and cigarettes. No, he didn’t speak much about it.
He wasn’t pleased however when not long after 1945, just after having survived Burma, he was called for duty to go back to Indonesia and take part in the infamous “politionele acties”. Family history says my grandmother sent a letter to the Queen asking for my uncle to be relieved of duty. The latter is what happened, the first I can’t confirm. “Vadertje Drees” was also something you would not day when around my uncle.
In the 1950s my father moved to Japan with Olpha. To work there. For the Japanese. Yes... In Japan... ehh... I don’t know... My mother says he said something about not being able to hold a grudge forever. No, he didn’t speak much about it. The grudge and such.
Later he moved to Australia and Brazil where he worked for a toy factory. My uncle Jack never held his moving to Japan against my father and was apparently very close to him. When I last spoke to my uncle he told me my father wasn’t the strongest of the brothers, but could win any fight, partly because he was his mother’s favourite, but mostly because he was “Very sharp... with his tongue”. Apparently he inherited this from his grandfather (Charles Albert von der Pfordten) whom he described as “a great Malteser”.
Which could mean a large version of a usually small lion-like dog or a chocolate sweet.
Well, it is the guy sitting on the bench, with the mustache. Somehow I can see what he was trying to express.
Great-grand family von der Pfordten
Behind him is Fred (Frederick von der Pfordten),
the brother of my grandmother. I was named after him. Or after my father, who was named after him as well. Let’s just say I inherited some of his good looks :)
Where is Fred?
He went to India and was never heard of again.
So said my grandmother.
My cousin Margaret who lives in NY (Mary Margaret Hasselman) told me once she used to be afraid of my grandmother as a child because she was performing strange Sufi rituals all the time. I just remember boterbabbelaars.
She was much older when I was just a child.
Grandma
Searching for Fred I did find a Frederick George vonder Pfordten on the web. It was how I got to the site of Eddee. This Fred was my great-grandfathers brother and one of his children Arthur Reginald von der Pfordten who converted to Islam, was a Japanese POW during WW II and the grandfather of Eddee von der Pfordten who lives in Kuala Lumpur, whom I thank for his site and research!
Baron Freiherr von der Pfordten
Amazing.
We have the same great-great-grandfather: Baron Karl Ludwig Heinrich Freiherr von der Pfordten, professor of Law in Würzburg and Leipzig, minister of culture and foreign minister of Sächsen, foreign minister and two times prime minister of Bavaria:
First time (1849-1859) he resigned because his attempt to create a “third power” between Austria and Prussia failed. He was reinstated by Ludwig II (yeah he was funny in the head) in 1864 and resigned again in 1866 when the Austro-Prussian war was lost. The family was then “kicked out” by Bismarck as the family story goes. I guess they just fled because of the Kaisersbrief and the coming of the first German Reich. (Back) to Maltathat is, where he was a consul to Bavaria and Hanover.
Baron Karl apparently was also controversial in that he played an important role in the acceptance of a bill that gave more rights to Jews in Bavaria. The sharp tongue must have been present then as well:
Speech by great-great-grandfather prof.dr.jur. Baron Freiherr von der Pfrodten
I can’t relate another vdP to Ludwig, but there is also a Theodor von der Pfordten, a Bavarian who participated and died in something called the Hitlerputsch (coup) of 1923. Quite the opposite opinion I would say.
That happens a lot in these families. If you look at the family crests:
Hasselman
The crescent moons mean they participated in one of the crusades. That was against islam, yes. Yet my grandmother was -and a whole new branch of the family are- muslim.
von der Pfordten
I think that’s great! Just wait a couple of centuries and we’ll all change our minds again.
Why Malta? I wonder if it has something to do with this special category in the Malta Genealogy site: Crusade Families
The links to the Hasselman geneology are all from Fred A. Hasselman’s (unrelated) site, but originate from het Nederlands Patriciaat (Hasselman, Betuwe tak). A booklet of genealogies maintained by the Dutch state of families which have played an important role over a period of 150 years in Dutch society: Science, Politics, Culture.
Hendrik Dirk Stephaan Hasselman (www.oranjehotel.org)
There are the Hasselman ministers of Colonies or my grandfather’s brother (General-Major Hendrik Dirk Stephaan Hasselman) who was a member of the stijkelgroep but was arrested and executed in WW II, or the fact that the family used to own a large part of the Grachtengordel in Amsterdam a very long time ago and there were mayors of towns like Tiel and such. I’m in also in the book, so is Fred and Fred as well.
BRP Hasselman major of Tiel
My father was asked by the Bavarian government to take over my grandmothers title when she died, but he didn’t. I guess it’s the same with titles as with grudges: You can’t hold them forever.
A new Hasselman puppy was recently born, Finn. Uncle times 5 now!
Let’s see if we’ll make the Dutch Patricians the next 150 years as well. At least we have some stories to tell about his ancestors.
Anyway, I’m very glad that should we move to Millingen a/d Rijn, I can say my grandmother was from Duffelward (mother’s side: Willems) and my grandfather (mother’s side: Willem Cornelis van Barschot, that’s where the Willem comes from) from Groesbeek. No coats of arms, no patricians, no titles, but a hell of a good taste for picking a place to live. I also would have loved to learn from them about farming and keeping livestock.
I am on a two week mission to finish up on some writing that is due almost 5 years now.
I headed out into the Dutch jungle also known as the Achterhoek (which roughly, yet appropriately translates to “rear-corner”).
Surrounded by corn fields, some chickens and a whole lot of nothing, I put up camp in the backyard of an old farm. I let the locals carry the frozen rations, the local brewski and all the coffee I brought with me.
For they dared not touch the devilish technologies I wanted to set up so close to their lodgings.
“How can a piece of aluminum be a controller for a computer that is itself just a piece of aluminum?”
Black magic indeed, all without wires.
...But there is a magical nothingness here I can even see the grass grow...
...just heard a snail trip over a grain of sand...
...the sneezing of a butterfly...
... may cause a storm in a glass of water on the other side of the globe ...
...believe in such a thing as a totem animal in the supernatural sense that is...
Because believing is always the easier than knowing
When I met this guy in the picture, I knew, at that very instant, that my totem animal was a sloth. It just popped inside my head, inside my body, inside me. I knew then why people believe such things: Moving so slowly that fungus grows on your fur, chewing on hallucinogenic vines all day, intestines that turn upside down, swimming in a river full of crocodiles... that’s me!
Did I mention I was diagnosed with ADD earlier this year?
Ik zie Cohen en begin meteen aantekeningen te maken voor de beoordeling: -Vergeet wat in de cursushandleiding staat, -Niet de raad van je vrienden opvolgen, -Getallen zijn onbelangrijk, -Geen dingen proberen uit te leggen die je zelf ook niet snapt, -Hoe zou je het in het cafe aan de barman uitleggen? -Ok dan... hoe zou je het aan een kind van 12 uitleggen?
En het allerbelangrijlkste: - Think out of the box! - Their box. - Als je dat niet kunt... Their box is bigger than yours!
Oh nee, dit zijn geen studenten.
Ik stem geen PVDA, maar voor tips ben ik altijd bereikbaar.
We waved goodbye to the dreamy beaches, the amazing coral reefs and the seafood BBQs of Gili Trawangan... Are those tears in our eyes you say? No it's the wind caused by the 4x200 break horse power fast boat which will take us back to Bali in 1 hr! We went away from the coast to Ubud to be precise:
On our way to ubud we saw this family, dad is wearing a leather jacket in reverse in 34 C, underneath the little hat is a baby!
Ganesha welcoming us at our hotel
There are a lot of these guys around
and so are these guys!
The only way to tell if rambutan is ripe: There need to be ants on the shell
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