Noetic Silence

So, thanks to this girl I know bugging me about it all week, I finally got round to reading my copy of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, something that you'll either never do, or did about a year ago. Because I'm useless at doing anything to a deadline, even something that's meant to be relaxing. And, having read in the front of this book that a field mentioned in it, noetic sciences, was real, I thought I'd write about that today. What I didn't realise was this: it's impossible to find any information on this field. I wonder why that could be...
Right, let's start at the beginning. In the book, this field is a kind of blend of science and mysticism, combining the focus and observation of physics with the cool effects of magic. The character who's involved in it mentions that, following the events of 9/11, researchers found that all these random number generators where no longer generating truly randomly. Or something. To be honest I skim-read that bit... anyway, it's about how the mind can change the world around us.
So, when I got home I Googled it. There's no Wikipedia page on "noetic sciences", just a few on associations of noetic theorists, and one on noetic theory. According to that page, the theorists hold that "there exists an additional purposefulness... found in cosmological principles of consciousness." So far, so illegible. Wikipedia, what was I thinking. Here we go, a group called NASI, that looks important... so I go to their Wiki page, to try to find a domain address and, just whilst scrolling, notice that it's in the Religion portal.
Now I'm worried.
And I find their domain (www.noeticadvancedstudies.us, if you're interested). And I see their logo. It's a blend of superimposed octograms above what looks like a wormhole. It looks a bit culty, but hey, I've not read anything yet, who am I to judge?
Oh, yeah. Before I forget, the Director of Noetic Sciences at this Institute is currently writing a book called, "Orbiting the Moons of Pluto: Complex Solutions to the Maxwell, Einstein, Schrodinger and Dirac Equations." (yeah, he misspelt Schroedinger in his book title...)
Anyway, this page is basically empty... it's upsettingly empty. Maybe I missed something.
Also, one of the fellows is publishing everything under a pseudonym. It's odd...
And none of these results are anything like Dan Brown's book, or even like actual results. There are some failed "remote viewing" experiments, and some complex-looking maths (although I'm not gonna spend £80 to check their figures... if you want, send me the money), but nothing actually advancing physics or the sciences in a significant way. Maybe I'm being dismissive. Obviously this is just my opinion.
But maybe Wikipedia had a point, about the Religion thing?

A musical joke

An A, a C, and an E walk into a bar.

The barman says, "Sorry, I'd lose my license if I served A Minor."

[Citation needed] of the day

From the Wikipedia page on "Shaggy dog story":

The calculations usually become more difficult as the journey progresses, for example, "At its eighth stop, 25 people get off and 37 get on". At the end of the bus journey the other person is finally asked something unrelated to the calculations, such as "Now, what is the color of the bus driver's socks?", making the entire puzzle meaningless and a humorous[citation needed] waste of the other person's time.

Cloth-eating terrorists

So you regular readers/anyone who's spoken to me around Autumn/anyone who'll listen, will know about me and moths. I don't like moths. I hate them, in fact. I mean, look at them: obviously evil. Doesn't even need saying, agreed? Good.
And usually around this time of the year, I start closing my windows at 6, keep lights off in my bedroom, and check the bathroom before I go to bed, and that keeps all but the little ones out of my hair. Means I don't need to worry about the big buggers, at least, as long as some idiot doesn't open a window or something, and ruin all my hard work. The only rational response in that situation is to punch them, right in the mouth.
But. But but but. Thanks to the recent hot weather, something has happened. Thousands, nay millions (maybe), of moths from the Mediterranean and Spain have upped and left their lovely warm homes that are far away from me, and moved. To Dorset. Easily within flying reach for a tenacious moth. And I know what you're thinking, "Oh it's just a little moth, who's worried about that?"
Time for some stats, idiot:

Death's Head Hawkmoths, one of the species that are now in the UK, can have a wingspan of 13 cm.
And it has a skull on it's back. Seriously, a skull. You seen Silence of the Lambs? It's that one. Anything a serial killer loves, I hate. Just the way it works.

So now I'm double-checking my windows every night. Although I'm not too upset; I've been getting complacent. The fact is, my neuroses give me something to do. They stop me being bored. Like writing this blog: keeps me busy, and both would interest a psychiatrist.

So those moths are another thing to be scared of. Like terrorists to me, they are. Flappy, cloth-eating terrorists.

On Facebook

So, about 2 weeks ago (but not exactly, or I wouldn't be writing this), I took it upon myself to do something about how much stress, anxiety, and general apathy Facebook was causing me with it's damn buzzy little messages and it's bloody cluttered... anyway, I deleted it. And since I did that, people have been bugging and bugging me to set up a new one. So I decided tonight, since I cracked this cipher for the Southampton Uni CC 2011, to set my Facebook back up and post the solution. Except. Except.

It's worse! How is it worse? The reactivation process took about 5 minutes, or, 5 minutes longer than necessary, and the second I got on it started popping up little messages and opening sidebars and... how can anyone enjoy that? It's so stressful. Pop-ups flying at you like bullets, it's ridiculous. And cluttered. And no longer cool. So I'm staying away, and you can bug me all you want. That experience was traumatic, and I'm not coming back.

For those who read this (a suspicious number of Russians and no-one else) who still want to contact me, I have an email address which I check, I have a phone, and some of you see me on a day-to-day basis. I don't need Facebook. I don't do anything that's that important that I need to know before tomorrow, do I?

I knew you'd agree.

Laziness

I couldn't decide what to blog about, so enjoy this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obIGsb-IZMo&feature=related

Also, Q8: the maths prefects, named after the quaternion group Q8, as we have 8 members. God we're funny. Anyway, could the members who read this blog please tell me when we're doing what. I'm designing some poster ideas and if I can get anything solid, I'll post it on here tonight.

On Apathy

You know that feeling when you're lying in bed on a Sunday morning, and you know you should get up and make that cup of tea or watch that blonde girl, the one with the arse, present that Sunday morning talk show, but you just... can't. You can't quite get the energy together to scratch yourself, let alone crawl out of bed and all the way down all the stairs. You know that feeling? Makes you feel crap, doesn't it? Well.
Life can get like that sometimes, can't it? Like a stifled yawn, or a really milky cup of tea: you just can't quite get enthused about it. It's not that it's rubbish, exactly. It's just not brilliant; kind of like Mirrors (the biggest vehicle I've ever seen: cut out all the scenes of Sutherland posturing and it'd be half an hour at best). It's average. Humdrum. Like all the acts on the X-Factor that you never get to see, the ones who aren't bad singers exactly, they're just not "right for the show".
And when you feel like that, like you're watching a constant Big Brother live-stream: everyone just bumping about and whinging quietly to themselves and pouring glasses of water and sleeping and living their own boring lives, when life gets like that you feel... well, nothing. It's hard to feel emotions toward anything when it's just so dull. It gets hard to care. I have an (unproven) theory that this is how serial killers feel all the time. Or cab drivers - to be honest I thought this one up when I was drunk...
Anyway. You start wandering about shops with nothing to buy, mostly to waste time in the day. You take up silly crafts and hobbies that you know you'll never do again. Maybe you write a novel, or some poems, or paint a picture, and then get other people to look at it. Maybe they compliment it, make you feel a bit more important, and your life takes a swing up. Or maybe, they see it and tear it apart with their cold cold words, and bring you down to their level. I'd opt for that one, loads more fun. Apparently.

Actually, I have done that to someone before. My friend's ex-girlfriend. I think I hurt her feelings (whatever those are). Though I think that it was fair, seeing as she told me at the time that, quote, "the red paint has my blood in it". She was way below the hot-crazy line...