And Page Five is Away..

Some things I want to share from the research, because alot of what I've written here about the basis of it all is kind of a head trip.

First, we can pretty safely say now that networks don't work with entropy the same way that basic matter does. Networks can self-heal.

What this means is, that if you've got a set of connections and you disperse the memory of that connection once damage inevitably occurs you can recover that connection as long as you're regenerating the things that can connect. Ok, lets take a simple example.

The biggest network in America is the water system. Plumbing is everywhere, and water flows through it all. Say you have six connections to your block, all different points of the compass underground plus two midpoints. A line blows somewhere in the street. As long as the city has the map, they can send out a crew to re-establish service. And while that service is re-established guess what. They might as well fix the damage and replace the pipe. After all, pipe is cheap.

Contrast to say, a cup falling on the ground - the way regular matter deals with entropy - it shatters and doesn't come back. The cup doesn't leap back up on the table. Sure, a network can go down. But if each node is interested in bringing it back up. Its kind of like a cup that has a sort of ceramic that can cheaply re-assemble the basic parts of the ceramic lattice - parts of the ceramic cup that shatter near where it falls just sit there. But if the ceramic were networked and each lattice point had a memory of not only its neighbor but others, all that would have to happen is they'd have to be jostled back near each other and they'd reconnect. This happens in wave fields.

Age, neural destruction - are wave fields. The disease (!) we refer to as age (if you're talking about aging past 30 or so, maybe 32) .. is a wave field coming from the breakdown of your immune system. Inflammation response, the same stuff that ate away the flesh between your toes when you were inside the womb - starts rocking back and forth slowly across the body, stretching skin, shattering nutrients - a really old woman is actually a young woman. Totally sick from this. The waves get harder and faster as you drop the last bits of your telomere off , somewhere around 50, and then as you hit 60 you're just going to be breaking apart. My grandmother lived to be 98, she was a health nut - died on the golf course. Don't tell me we're not designed to live forever. If that old lady didn't bleed to death on her bed (and guess why her arterial walls broke down) today she'd be teeing it up over 100. Neural destruction occurs in a similiar set of slow waves - but the good thing about neural destruction is that your brain (not just a set of neurons, but the whole base brain and chemical environment ) is self aware, and self healing - all you have to do is eat enough food to be able to regenerate neurons. If you can feel pain, you can defeat those waves pretty easily - and thats something the body protects all the way up to the point of death so, that wave field works in a different way - its more of an attitude thing. I guess my grandmother sort of saw her life as productive at whatever age it was, she was always trying to teach us - she was a schoolteacher by trade. I think her last message was, ok, damnit, healthfood is good for you. It is. Very important: The brain is a problem solving machine. Don't give it the unsolvable problem of telling it, it can't solve a problem. Break the problem into smaller pieces ... check your cellphone every hour, instead of whenever anything arrives... if you're lost , stop and orient ... when you're trying to speak a new language, key in on a few words you can understand the rhythm and sound - say something useful. Do things you can do. Its like the Marines training manual , page one. "Any plan, no matter how poorly conceived or executed - is better than inaction".

Key to this , is keeping connection inexpensive. Thats what morals and ethics are about. Ethics are actually vital to survival. And social networks. Thats why animals have them. And why they're so easily abused. (Someone should check endorphin receptors in a cat while its purring, I bet you'll find activity)

I saw the film 'Seven Pounds' last night on my new laptop. Mostly to test whether or not my Rhino HP Pavilion DV 9000 with 17" XGA display, 1GB Nvidia , 2 GB RAM and (after I was done with it) RAID 110 GB storage ... would die on the vine. It didn't. I got a good deal.

The guy I bought it from, looked like he hacked it off a DVD, to see if he could build an AVI off the DVD he got. And I played it just to see what was going on. But the film bothered me intensely, even the first few minutes. I sensed something there. I could not figure out why it was called Seven Pounds. And the best way to deal with this film is to figure this out for yourself. And more, the images of the opening sequence seemed to be burned into my mind. I couldn't escape it. It deeply depressed me. I didn't know why. It also intrigued me. Again, no reason. Didn't see enough of the film to know. I have learned to follow things that kind of bother me, there is usually something there I need to find. Its sort of like a prayer circle - I am endlessly annoyed at how people see the Bible as a kind of mystical thing - but at the same time, the words and ideas there are so powerful its worth putting up with people who are basically all on drugs. Its a defense mechanism I have developed that lets me know where pain is going to be found. And how not to avoid it. Good pain. Bad pain.

I fired up the rest of the film on my couch while the rain came down last night. Kids were playing in the sunroom. It took about six or twelve minutes before I realized I wanted to watch this. I stopped it at 1 hour 12 because my son really wanted to get something for my daughter for her birthday and I was walking around trying to shake this film out of my head. I did. But the image stayed with me, I fired it up when we got back home. 1:12 turned out to be a key sequence, its about repairing things that matter. Its about love.

Seven Pounds is the enigmatic story of a man who seems to be on the edge of Suicide. In fact, this story is about the kind of love that I've been writing about here. The specific kind of love that I referred to in the post entitled 'Abiogenesis'. And the kind of love that, to my friends, lovers and anyone else within my immediate circle - is written about in ephesians 5 20ish. Its a film with a surprise ending. When did you figure out what it was about?

I am a guy. I like mountain biking. I run triathlon (if I can drop another fucking 15 pounds, I'm even going to do an ironman - 30 down 10 to go). I like black chicks. And white chicks.

I cried my eyes out. This is only the second time I've ever .. wait. Third time I've ever cried in a film. The first. Was when ET almost died, ok? Shut up.

The second was "The Notebook". A film about memory loss that hit too close to home for me. And the third, was the conclusion of "Seven Pounds". I loved that film. If you are following me, and you sometimes watch films I write about here - go see two films. Across the Universe. And . Seven Pounds.

But of the two, the one that I more closely resemble and respect in my personal and private life is Seven Pounds. Everything about that film spells out everything about who I am. Page Five is Away. Once this is done.

It will be done. I am going to be writing faster now. I have about 10 hours and a basic set of data. The data from India is going to be a part of phase II. I have enough data to write this paper, I know for a fact now that plateau effect can be defeated. I waited three years to write that single line, but its true. And in stroke recovery a survivor can defeat plateau - and it can be factored out of a speech recognition task. Its difficult as hell. But it can be done. And thats all we were trying to prove, anyway. Phase I wasn't about building it. We just have to be sure we can. I wanted a magic bullet. I didn't find it. But I found something that hits its target and if it doesn't it's cheap to go back and fix it up so that it can. Networks deal with entropy differently. And people connect with each other to destroy entropy. It falls away every day. Each day is a miracle. A gift. Live it.

To take a line from "Seven Pounds". Living each day as if it were a gift. Is part of the deal.
Its hot as hell honey in this room
sure hope the weather will break soon
the air is heavy / heavy as a truck
need the rain to wash away our bad luck
Well if the sky can crack
there must be some way back
to love and only love

U2 - Electrical Storm