Munzly the Hermit

Great song, but just wait for the dancing.....

Common Sense Quantum Physics
Author: Arjen Dijksman graduate of Delft University of Technology.

1. Polarization:

2. Schrodinger Equation:

3. Planck's Quantum Action:

More: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Making_sense_of_quantum_mechanics
and Text versions: http://commonsensequantum.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html

Ground breaking space-art from the 1940s.

Above: Painting of Saturn as imagined from its moon Titan (1944)
Below: The imagined surface of Mars (1949), showing the persistence of the 'Martian Canals' ideas of astronomer Percival Lowell in the late 1800s.

Both paintings by Chesley Bonestell (1 January 1888 - 11 June 1986)

Philosophies of consciousness and the basics of neuroscience:

Echoed from TGD - a great source of alternative ideas.

Here's a good question: Why don't MPs get a secret vote?

I thought they represented their constituents, but if their votes are known to their fellow MPs and their party officials, then they have to toe the party line even if that is not the way they know their constituents would have wanted them to vote. Surely a secret ballot would be more democratic?

A working model of an ancient computer was recently recreated in London.

Antikythera mechanism

Read more: http://www.newscientist.com

Jeff Hawkins: Brain science is about to fundamentally change computing

Clips from a BBC documentary explaining the arguments from the 1920's until now as to whether electrons are particles, waves or both. (Embedded from YouTube)

It outlines Einstein's distaste at Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and is a good starting point in realising that the universe is far, far stranger than can be imagined.

Humour Warning!
If you don't have a sense of humour DON'T watch this video.

As we stand on a new edge of knowledge, with the promise of strange new data from ever faster colliders, It seems a great shame that Carl Sagan is no longer with us to enjoy the discoveries and present them to us lesser mortals in a way we could understand.

I can't help wondering if the Great Library of Alexandria might have held some early thoughts on what we now call the Quantum World.

"If you think you understand quantum computing, you're either lying or crazy" Richard Feynman.

Since I just mentioned conciousness in a comment on the Armchair Revolutionaries Group Blog, I thought I'd post this rather interesting lecture by Richard Sheldrake. The second half is all Q&A so you could miss it as the whole thing is so long.

I should point out that this stuff is controversial and, personally, I am unconvinced by some of it, but prepared to be open-minded about it.

Another interesting lecture. You might want to flip over the introductions.

An extremely interesting lecture about the history of the Universe: (The two buttons are the same video, just for different versions of the Adobe, Flash Player.)

With acknowledgements to on The Daily Grail website.