Horses in Ancient Egypt

There have been developments in the research into E.6953, regarding its context and Ancient Egyptian attitudes to horses.

The object is likely to have been made of Nile silt, due to the characteristic red colouring of the clay, suggesting that the object was made in Egypt, not in the Ancient Near East, where other such models come from. The two horses share a body and four legs but have their own heads, a style that may have been utilised to make the model robust and easier to make. They have reins and blinkers, which may indicate that the break at the rear of the object was a chariot. The fact that this figurine depicts a chariot is unusual, as this is the only example that has been found in the course of this research and other examples depict only one horse.

The object cannot be dated before the New Kingdom, as this is when horses were introduced to Ancient Egypt, as the first archaeological evidence of horses is at the Hyksos site of Tell El-Dab’a, where a significantly large number of horse molars have been found. This indicates that the species may have been introduced during the settlement of the Hyksos during the Second Intermediate Period.  Horses are depicted in writing for the first time in the Stela of Kamose, before becoming a routine feature in Ancient Egyptian art and becoming a standard hieroglyphic sign.  The hieroglyphic sign for the collective is ‘sesmet’, which is derived from the Arabic ‘susim’ and indicates the influence that Ancient Near Eastern culture had on the Ancient Egyptians.

Horses and Power

In Ancient Egypt, horses were never used for labour, but were a symbol of royal power and heroic actions in scenes of chaos. In the Kadesh Inscription of Rameses II, his two horses are named ‘Victory in Thebes’ and ‘Mut is content’. The fact that these animals were given theophoric names by the king indicates the prestige that they held with royalty. It also shows how even though horses were not a part of religion, they could be used to indicate how the gods were always beside the king. The fact that Rameses II also tells his officers that his horses would be eating with him, because they behaved more nobly than they did, indicates the level of care that was given to these creatures. Although this is hyperbole, it does indicate the high regard that horses were given in Ancient Egypt.

Similarly, the Sphinx Stela of Amenhotep II also describes an episode where he is shooting at a target from his chariot and describes how he trained his horses into fine beasts. This indicates that these were a highly revered animal and were an important part of royal iconography, especially as horses were expensive to obtain and maintain. It also indicates how they were an important part of Ancient Egyptian warfare, being used to pull chariot in battle, from which the rider would then fight.

The fact that the king was so appreciative of these animals in Ancient Egypt can be seen in the Stela of King Piye from the Nubian Twenty-fifth Dynasty. After finally ending his assault on King Namart, ‘His Majesty proceeded to the stable of the horses and the quarters of the foals. When he saw they had been [left] to hunger, he said “I swear, as [Ra] loves me, as my nose is refreshed by life; that my horses were made to hunger pains me more than any other crime you committed in your recklessness!”’ This passionate speech shows the real concern of the king at the poor state in which he has found the horses and that he finds it the most despicable crime of Namart, indicating the passion the Ancient Egyptians for horses.

Hunting and Racing?

Near the palace site of Malkata at Kom el-Abd, a track of 4km width and 120km in length has been discovered. It has been suggested that this is a racecourse for chariot racing, however it is difficult to date this structure and with a lack of comparisons from within Egypt, it would be hard to ascribe this function to the site confidently. The tomb of Userhet (TT56) shows the owner hunting using chariots pulled by horses. The reins are wrapped around his lower waist in order to free his hands for hunting. This is important, as it shows that horses were often pulling chariots in Egyptian art, which would indicate why E.6953 is of two horses.

Finally, horses were not just valiant, brave and noble creatures to be used in hunting and warfare, but they also had rather a romantic image. This can be seen in poems written on P. Chester Beatty I, Verso, where the poet writes:

‘Oh, might I welcome you

As the king’s own steed is welcome,

A champion chosen from thousands,

Thoroughbred, best in the stables.’

Lauren Hill.

Translations taken from:

Foster, J.L. (1992) Love Songs of the New Kingdom. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Further Reading:

Houlihan, P. (2002) “Animals in Egyptian Art and Hieroglyphs” in Collins (ed.) A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East. Leiden, pp. 97-144.

Teeter, E. (2010) Baked Clay Figurines and Votive Beds from Medinet Habu. Chicago.

Ancient Egyptian Mummies

Content Warning: Images of unwrapped mummy.

The discovery and analysis of mummies from ancient Egypt, has fueled a long-standing fascination with ancient Egyptian culture. Mummies enable the modern audience to connect with the physical forms of people who lived thousands of years ago. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mummies inspired morbid curiosity among the upper classes and wealthy patrons would host ‘unwrapping’ parties where the remarkably preserved bodies would be have their bandages removed, bringing people face to face with ancient Egyptians. Modern analysis of mummies is far more controlled and scientific, involving scanning, x-rays, DNA analysis and blood tests. For example, the mummy displayed here at the Garstang Museum is known to be blood group A from the tests performed on it in preparation for their later use in testing the mummy of Tutankhamun. The stunning preservation of mummies enables archaeologists to reconstruct ancient lifeways in beautiful technicolour, but the process of mummification is perhaps one of the most intriguing practices in ancient Egypt.

The Garstang Mummy (2015/13)

How to make a mummy?

The extensive, 70 day embalming and burial process was an important part of Egyptian belief, and was crucial for a successful journey into the afterlife. The mummification process consisted of two main components: the embalming of the remains, and the wrapping and burial of the body.

Canopic jar heads in the shape of the hawk-headed deity Qebehsenuef and the baboon-headed deity Hapi (E.7840 E.7841).

During the embalming process, the body was washed with water from the Nile for purification. The internal organs were then removed and stored in canopic jars. Canopic jars come in sets of four, each identifiable with a specific god; Imsety, a human-headed jar to store the liver; Qebehsenuef, a falcon-headed jar to store the intestines; Hapy, a baboon-headed jar to store the lungs; and Duamutef, a jackal-headed jar to store the stomach.

Next the heart (ib) was put back into the body, and the body was stuffed and covered with natron (salt) to dry it out, before being covered for 40 days. The body was then unwrapped for the final time to be coated in embalming oils before being stuffed with dry materials to give the corpse the appearance of life.

The wrapping of the corpse began with the head and neck, then the individual fingers and toes, and finally limbs. Ritual spells would be spoken over the mummy by priests during the wrapping to protect against evil spirits in the journey into the afterlife. The limbs were then bound into the body with cloth that was wrapped around the entire corpse, and liquid resins were used to glue the bandages tightly. The body was then placed into a series of coffins for its final journey.

Canopic jars featuring the human-headed deity Imsety and the hawk-headed deity Qebehsenuef (E.5267 & E.5266).

How do we know about the mummification process?

Greek historical texts are a useful (if often confusing) source of information for mummification; writers including Diodorus of Sicily and Herodotus discuss mummification practices in ancient Egypt. Herodotus left little to the imagination in his description of the processes:

“…making a cut near the flank with a sharp knife of Ethiopian stone, and then take out all the intestines, and clean the belly, rinsing it with palm wine and bruised spices.”

Perhaps even more interesting in Herodotus’ writing is the discussion of burial practices when there is little physical body to preserve:

“…anyone, Egyptian or foreigner, known to have been carried off by a crocodile or drowned by the river itself, must by all means be embalmed and wrapped as attractively as possible and buried in a sacred coffin by the people of the place where he is cast ashore…”

Mummy Mysteries

At the Garstang Museum, a mummy placed in a child’s coffin was always believed to be the remains of a child. However, X-Ray analysis revealed that the mummified remains were those of two cats, wrapped to look like a child.

There are two obvious possibilities here; the most likely theory is that there was a mistake by the embalmers leading to the original body being lost and replaced, but it is possible that the child was carried away by some creature from the Nile. The embalmers may have crafted the best impression of a child mummy they could to allow the ka (soul) of the child to carry on into the afterlife with some form of a physical body buried in their place, as alluded to in Herodotus.

 E.537 (2)

E.537 (3)

Child’s coffin containing the mummified remains of two cats (E.537).

Preserving Identity

The processes and rituals behind mummification have long fascinated societies around the world, from ancient Greek travellers and historians to modern archaeological scientists. Mummies provide a remarkable opportunity to understand ancient Egyptian people, their lives and their identities. Arguably, the most striking feature of mummies is how easily identifiable they are as humans, allowing a modern audience to look directly into the face of the past.

Greta Brown.

Ancient Egypt in Focus: The photographic Archives of John Garstang

John Garstang was one the early pioneers in the use of photography as a method of recording archaeological excavations, artefacts and surveys. The museum’s photographic archive contains almost twenty collections of glass-plate negatives relating to Garstang’s archaeological research in Egypt, Sudan and the Near East. These photographs give an insight not only into how excavations were carried out during the early part of the twentieth century but also record now lost artefacts and sites, as well as showing us a little of what life was like for Garstang and his teams.

The Pilgrim Trust funded ‘Ancient Egypt in Focus’ project aims to catalogue and digitise a portion of the photographic collections held by the Garstang Museum, specifically, those relating to John Garstang’s excavations in Egypt and Sudan at the sites of Meroë, Abydos, and Beni Hasan. This process will ensure the preservation of these images, they will also be published online on the Archives Hub so that others may also view these images.

Image of the excavated portico discovered during excavations of Sakçagözü, Turkey, 1908, Reference: SG-044

In 2011, the Hertitage Lottery Funded ‘The Lost Gallery: John Garstang and the discovery of the Hittite World’ project processed the Museum’s photographic collections relating to Garstang’s work in the Near East, including the excavation of Sakçagözü, Turkey. The negatives were digitized using a digital camera suspended above an adjustable platform from which the negatives could be illuminated by a light box below.  The equipment was fully adjustable to cater for different size and formats of negatives. In six months the project processed nearly 900 images. For the digitisation of the Egyptian and Sudanese negatives, the project will last for fifteen months, allowing for an even greater number of negatives to be processed, indeed, the new project hopes to process over 2000 images!

Interns using the digitization equipment during the Hittite project

Interns using the digitization equipment during the Hittite project

It is early days in the project but we will be making frequent updates about our progress here on the blog and on our facebook page

For more information about the project please contact the project archivist, Katie Waring (

Archives Hub

Object in focus: A fragment of a “dummy” funerary vessel (E.586)

Whilst working in the museum stores, we often come across objects that have suffered from the effects of time, wear and tear. This is the case with object E.586, a broken piece of limestone with a polished, curved surface inscribed with two lines of hieroglyphs.

E.586 front view

E.586 front view

We came across this object, and many others during  the museum redevelopment project. At first sight, it was assumed to be part of a statue. However, one of our volunteers (who is a ceramic specialist) noted two slight breaks in the curve above and below the hieroglyphs, this led him to suspect that this was in fact a dummy funerary vessel.

After a little research, a number of similarities between this fragment and a type of dummy funerary stone vessel popular during the 18th Dynasty  became clear.  These dummy vessels had the outward appearance of popular shapes, but were not hollowed out. This type of object has been found in several high-ranking Theban tombs, such as the one belonging to Tutankhamun’s grandparents, Thuya and Yuya.  . Without the complex and time-consuming effort of hollowing out these stone vessels, they were much quicker, cheaper and easier to produce, they functioned as magical stand-ins for the real thing.

The inscription on E.586 identifies the owner of the vessel as “The Overseer of the Fields of Amun, the Osiris, Nebseny”. During the 18th Dynasty the title “Overseer of the Fields of Amun” was held exclusively by very high-ranking officials associated with the Karnak Temple. One particularly famous holder of this office was the 18th Dynasty official Senenmut who lived during the reign of Hatshepsut.

Reconstructed side view E.586

Reconstructed side view E.586

Image copyright of the Griffith Institute

Image copyright of the Griffith Institute

Curiously, E.586 is not the only museum object to mention Nebseny. A funerary cone in the British Museum (EA62848) contains an inscription for “The Overseer of the Fields of Amun, the Accounting Scribe of All Supplies in Upper and Lower Egypt and The Overseer of the Cultivators of Amun, Nebseny, the Justified”. EA62848 was gifted to the British Museum by Egyptologist Norman de Garis Davies in 1930. Davies had received the funerary cone from Sir Robert Mond, who found the object during his excavations near the tomb of Ramose (TT55) in 1903-1904. Robert Mond also has close links to the University of Liverpool and to John Garstang, having been associated with the Institute of Archaeology in its formative years.

Unlike funerary cones (which were displayed outside tombs), the dummy vessels were part of the burial equipment and would have been placed inside the tomb shaft itself. Mond does not report discovering any tomb belonging to Nebseny, it seems  likely that the heavily broken E.586 was damaged as the tomb was looted, only to be discarded in the vicinity of the tomb. The tomb of Nebseny,  remains undiscovered.

The Texts of the Coffin of Userhat (E.512)

One of our most prized and most viewed objects is the box-coffin of Userhat (E.512). The coffin was excavated by John Garstang in 1902 and was one of the first objects on display in the museum of the Institute of Archaeology in 1904. The text inscribed upon the coffin tells us that Userhat was a soldier He lived during a period Egyptologists call the Middle Kingdom (c. 1991-1783BC).

The Inner coffin of Userhat (E.88.1903) kept at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge

When Userhat died, he was mummified and interred in an anthropoid (human-shaped) coffin, which was then placed inside the box coffin. Userhat’s inner coffin was donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge by the Beni Hasan Excavation Committee in 1903, where it is kept today (E.88.1903).

As Garstang was a pioneer in the use of photography within archaeology we are also able to see the coffin as it was first discovered, with the inner coffin laying on its side, with the face of the coffin looking out of the painted eyes upon the outside of the box coffin . The rest of the tomb merely contained a few pieces of pottery.

The coffins of Userhat in situ

The coffins of Userhat in situ

The texts which adorn the coffin are dedicated to a number of funerary deities, such as Osiris, Anubis, Isis and Nepthys. Most of these texts are highly standardised, with only a few alterations made in each register. The texts translated here are the first inscriptions that would have been seen by Garstang, they are from the head end of the coffin and refer to “the revered one” (i.e. deceased) Userhat in reference to specific deities.

Userhat Text

Top: Revered one before Nepthys, the Soldier Userhat

The image in the centre of this panel is of the goddess Nepthys, whilst the goddess Isis strikes a similar pose at the foot end of the coffin.

Left column: Revered one before the Great Ennead, the Soldier Userhat

Right Column: Revered one before the Lesser Ennead, the Soldier User(hat)

An Ennead (pesdjet in Egyptian) is a grouping of nine-god. Some of these groups are more important than others, hence the “Great” and the “Lesser” Enneads.

It seems that the painter of this coffin had not planned the size of the text out fully before applying the paint as despite requiring the same amount of space and signs, they ran out of space  for Userhat’s  name, cutting off the lower parts of these signs.

Detail from the Coffin of Userhat as it stands on display in our galleries

Come and see the Coffin of Userhat in our Egyptian Afterlife Gallery, we are open to the public every Wednesday from 10 ’til 4 and are completely FREE!

Object Biography: Meet ‘Felix’ one of our mummified cats

E.5425 a.k.a. 'Felix'

E.5425 a.k.a. ‘Felix’

This is ‘Felix’ one of our mummified cats, or more officially E.5425. Felix often goes with us on outreach activities though he is fairly quiet and doesn’t really eat much even when on the road! Really we should probably call him a more Egyptian name such as ‘Ta-miu’ (literally ‘the girl cat’, think meow), which is the name of the pet cat of a Prince Thutmose, but Felix rather stuck.

However, Felix was not buried in such a lofty location as the Valley of the Kings, in fact we are unsure of where he was originally buried. Instead, we know where he spent a portion of the 20th century- in an attic. On Thursday 12th November 1992, workmen were clearing the loft areas of one of the university buildings not too far from where the museum stands today; as they cleared the space they found some ancient pottery, basketry, mummified pieces and Felix. The building they were clearing, 11 Abercromby Square, had been part of the Institute of Archaeology before the 1940s and it appears that these objects were placed under the eaves for safe keeping and forgotten about for fifty years! An unusual find, but only last year another mummified cat was found lurking in an attic: (although the daily mail suggests that it was a mummified pet- keep reading and we will let you decide whether this is correct).

Scarcophagus of ‘Tamiu’, the pet cat of Prince Thutmose ©Madam Rafaèle

Why mummify a cat?

There are two reasons to mummify a cat, the first of these is to provide a pet with a caring burial (like Tamiu), and the second, more common reason is for ritual purposes. A number of animals including cats were mummified to serve as ritual offerings to the gods. Felix is probably one of these offerings. Cats were often offered to the cat-headed goddess Bastet as votives, with the practice of mummifying animals peaking in the 1st Millenium BC.  Huge numbers of animals were often stored on mass in underground galleries. As this was done on such a large scale, most of the mummified cats which were offered as votives were kittens, this was so that the temple could continue to produce these votives without spending unnecessary time raising an adult cat.

Wholesale cat mummies for fur-tiliser

Cartoon from "Punch" (15th February 1890)  showing a grizzly result of using the mummified cat fertiliser

Cartoon from “Punch” (15th February 1890) showing a grizzly result of using the mummified cat fertiliser

Liverpool also has an unusual link with mummified cats, on 10th February 1890, 19.5 tons of mummified cats (approx. 18,000). Found by accident in 1889 in Speos Artemidos, this large shipment was auctioned off in Liverpool and caused quite a stir in the media. The reports of the sale vary but they seem to agree that the cats were sold off wholesale when they had disintegrated (for use as fertiliser), with the more well preserved cats being sold whole or just as heads/bodies. There are even reports of the auctioneer using the skull of one such cat as a gavel!

For more on this, see:

An Unknown Official and an Unseen Statuette (E.7804)

During the course of the work we are currently doing on the redevelopment of the Garstang Museum of Archaeology, a number of interesting artefacts have been found languishing in the museum stores. Many of these objects have been in storage for decades, and some may never have been seen by the public.

This elegant, yet sadly damaged, statue is one such object. It is carved from a relatively soft stone known as steatite, or soap-stone, and is a beautiful matte-green in colour. Even though the head and the bottom of the figure’s legs have broken away and been lost, it is nonetheless possible to tell that the figure was male and in the ‘active pose’ – with his left leg extended as if in mid-step.

This pose was highly popular throughout Pharaonic history, for kings and commoners alike. The stance, along with the youthful physique of the statue (with highly defined muscles) was intended to convey the “go-getting”-attitude and vitality of the deceased individual.

The dating of the object is not too difficult, even though it does not have any archaeological context. The pointed wig and posture is highly reminiscent of late Middle Kingdom private sculpture. Examples of this style are found in museums all over the world, such as this basalt statue currently residing in the Petrie Museum of Archaeology (UC8711).

Attached to the back of the figure is a pillar containing a hieroglyphic inscription of the offering formula. The purpose of this formula was to ensure a perpetual supply of foodstuffs and goods in the afterlife, and is a very common feature of ancient Egyptian funerary material. A similar back-pillar and inscription is also found on the now-famous “spinning” Middle Kingdom statue of Neb-Senu from the Manchester Museum. Despite keeping a close eye on E.7804, we have not yet witnessed any spinning – perhaps due to the loss of his legs!

E.7804 Inscription

E.7804 Inscription

The inscription on E.7804 is dedicated to “Osiris, Lord of Ankh-Tawy” which is quite an unusual combination of god and epithet. Ankh-Tawy was the necropolis district of the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis and is almost always associated with the god Ptah. However, on occasion Osiris, as the Ruler of the Dead, was associated with this vast cemetery during the late Middle Kingdom, which adds further support to our suggested date for the figure.

Unfortunately the inscription breaks off just before the point where one would normally expect the name of the statue’s owner to appear. Egyptian statues were highly stylised, rather than being accurate portraits of the individual they commemorated. For this reason the inclusion of the individual’s name on an object of this type was of critical importance as it allowed the owner’s ka (spirit) to identify, and subsequently inhabit, the statue.

E.7804 will be going on display with a number of other funerary statuettes in the new gallery of ancient Egyptian funerary beliefs, opening in 2014.


Latest in Gaming

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Faction short story The Strength of Steel now available

Anne Stickney

The Order of the Cloud Serpent is one of those factions that while pretty long, is a satisfying grind in its own way -- the promise of a mount at the end of the quests and dailies is pretty compelling. But the one thing that really made the faction worth it to me, was the resemblance to the Netherwing quests of old. With the Netherwing, you were helping a beleaguered race of subjugated dragons regain their freedom. With the Order of the Cloud Serpent, you were raising a hatchling of your own, caring for it, watching it grow larger, and waiting for the day when at last it was strong enough to carry you into the skies.

It was touching because there was a distinct sense of heart surrounding the faction -- and the latest faction short story, The Strength of Steel by Raphael Ahad, illustrates that journey in a completely different way. One of the new allies of Garrosh Hellscream's Horde are the Dragonmaw -- a clan of orcs bent on subjugating dragonkind, forcing the beasts to obey and act as steeds of war. So what happens when a Dragonmaw, living with the ideals of the Dragonmaw firmly ingrained in his mind, comes across a cloud serpent hatchling of his own?

It's an oddly touching, beautiful little story that highlights the difference between pandaren and orc, between trust and control. As Koak struggles to raise his hatchling, there's also that internal struggle between what it means to be a Dragonmaw, what it means to be Horde, and where Koak stands in between it all. I have to admit, I didn't expect much out of a story surrounding the Order of the Cloud Serpent, but Raphael Ahad really hit a home run with this one, penning a heartfelt tale that in the end, was well worth the read. You can read The Strength of Steel over on the official site, and while you're there, be sure to check out the other fine tales in the Destination: Pandaria section.

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Post-Harvey Houston faces a dilemma: how to rebuild with integrity

A new report paints a startling picture of the inequality faced by immigrants doing the hard work of reconstruction. Can a more equitable vision prevail?

The reconstruction of Houston will be the largest since New Orleans after Katrina. But it can be dangerous work.
The reconstruction of Houston will be the largest since New Orleans after Katrina. But it can be dangerous work. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

“I think the lesson here is that the rules of the recovery need to be set up early to be allowed for a just reconstruction,” said Soni. “To achieve a successful rebuilding and reconstruction and to particularly to achieve a just reconstruction, we really have to be in for the long haul.”

Last weekend, immigrant groups, labor unions, civil rights and environmental groups assembled for the first meeting of the Houston Rising Coalition with their allies in the local Houston government. The group aims not to just to prevent residents from being displaced, but also to address long-simmering issues of affordable housing, environmental justice, and wage inequity.

“In every respect, this is an opportunity to do things better than they were before. Period,” Houston recovery czar Marvin Odum, the former CEO of Shell Oil, who has been appointed by the Houston mayor Sylvester Turner, told the crowd.

However, the efforts to rebuild Houston could be hampered by the actions of the Trump administration, which has faced criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike in the state.

In early November, the administration requested that Congress grant $44bn in federal aid to the state, less than half of what was spent rebuilding New Orleans a decade earlier, and a level of funding condemned by all sides.

Outside of their agreement on the inadequacy of federal dollars being earmarked for reconstruction, conservatives and workers’ rights champion agree on very little else.

Worker groups in Houston want the federal aid to be distributed through the Houston’s mayor office, where they feel like they have a solid progressive ally in Democratic mayor Turner.

However, Abbott wants the federal money to be distributed through the Texas general land office run by George P Bush, former presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s son. Advocates fear that if the Republican controlled state government distributes the money, little will flow to immigrant and workers groups in the area.

Immigrant groups say that given the culture of fear that exists among immigrants in seeking government help that it’s essential that these groups are given funding to make sure that these communities aren’t exploited in the recovery.

The flooding in Houston, Texas, after Harvey.
The flooding in Houston, Texas, after Harvey. Photograph: David J. Phillip/AP

While members of the Houston Rising Coalition remain skeptical about how recovery aid will be distributed, they say that they are preparing to take action into their own hands. Groups have organized the Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund Community Relief Fund so that private money can follow directions to the group.

The money from Hurricane Harvey Relief Community Relief Fund has helped groups like Houston Rising and Worker’s Defense Project hire on additional organizers for not just philanthropy but also to hire more community organizers to mobilize workers to fight for an equitable reconstruction.

“There are real people on the ground right now who are still suffering through this recovery, who have mold in their homes, who have been injured in recovery effort, but in the face of the challenges to working people, there is a real movement of people who are coming together to demand a recovery that is equitable” says Jose Garza, executive director of Texas Workers Defense Project.

“It is like many movements we see rise in the age of Trump,” says Gazra. “It is people who see that the federal government under Trump is failing them and they have a responsibility to stand up with their neighbors and fellow members of their community to make change in their own backyard”.


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Moon-Rahu Conjunction

Today, Moon-Rahu Conjunction.

Let's 1st understand what these planets represent on their own?

Moon - Moon represents Mind, Emotions, Mother, Local Government, Peace of Mind, Home Environment, Water, Milk etc.

Rahu - It represents Illusion, Foreign Lands, Foreign Things (foreign as in unknown things. So, for someone living in Punjab, culture and rituals of Kerala is also unknown and hence Foreign), Drugs, Medicines, any type of intoxication, Fame, Wealth, Success, Obsession, Past-life incomplete Desires, Movies, Television, Online World, Cheating, Imagined Fears, Unusual Things, Unique Things, Creativity, Rule breaker. Rahu also blows things out of proportions

Meaning of Moon-Rahu Conjunction - Moon is Mind & Emotions. Rahu is Obsession. So, this conjunctions simply means someone who is obsessed for emotions or highly/obsessively emotional. In common medical term, this conjunction shows someone who has OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. When they want something, they will never listen to any counselling. They will try their idiotic best to get that thing. It doesn't matter to them at that moment as to what & how much it is going to cost them? This conjunction is similar to someone who has Rahu in Cancer, i.e. obsessively emotional. If they are happy, they can throw party to whole town. If they are sad then they can even contemplate suicide. It gives a very unusual or unique relation with Mother. They can have some illusions regarding their Mother. It can also be the case that they are taken care by Foster Parents, especially Mother. They themselves can have Motherhood through unusual ways like Test Tube Baby, Adoption or Surrogacy etc. Their highly emotional nature can lead to Caring Nature too where they can be very caring/emotional towards others. If they go in field of caring/healing others, it can help their Moon. But Rahu is still illusion and it is with its enemy Moon. So, this person can be equally illusive, i.e. Cheat or Deceitful. It can give an inclination to find peace in foreign lands or by some very unique/unusual creative ways. It is a difficult conjunction. The only way out here is to Meditate.

Who will win the Conjunction? - Rahu will, in any case.

Dignity & Strength

In any sign or any house,it will be a tough conjunction for Moon. In Taurus only, it can be little better but person will be obsessed towards Wealth and Assets. So, it is a different type of madness but only thing in favor is Moon exalted. So,Mind will have some balance. In other signs, it is all Rahu's impact.

Vishal S Saxena – Astrologer

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Stop and Watch the Dolphins

We can often get wrapped up in policy discussions and advocacy, and forget to take a moment to appreciate why we care about the ocean.  Last week a video started popping up on the internet of some dolphins off the coast of Santa Cruz, CA.

The video was meant to be of a tuna fishing trip, but caught some magical footage of a pod of dolphins swimming together.  The video is so vivid; it almost looks like computer generated animation.  So take a moment, click play (wait until about the one minute mark), and appreciate why working to preserve our oceans’ ecosystems is important.

The Blue from Mark Peters on Vimeo.


To write an explanatory paper a student should learn about its specific character

To write an explanatory paper a student should learn about its specific character, first of all. An explanatory essay is a paper the goal of which is to explain certain events or phenomena. Your explanation should be simple for the readers to understand you. At the same time the topic of your research is expected to be something interesting and rather complicated as there is no sense in explaining some well-known thing to people. Taking into consideration the aforesaid students need some help to see how they should write this work and what topic is better to choose.

There exist plenty of types of college papers and professors want the students to know perfectly how to write all of them. Sure, its not so easy to treat such a volume of the information. That is the reason of why our Internet company was created. Our professional paper writers compose numerous handy tips and useful guidelines for the benefit of our respected students.

Before starting to write a paper that explains something, think, first of all, what topic you want to touch upon, what thoughts you want to convey to other people. Some nice explanatory essay topics will be:

How to write essays quickly?

What films are better to watch before going to bed?

How to become a diligent student?

How should one live not to disappoint his parents?

What type of literature influences your personality?

Such questions themselves require extended answers that form the base of your essay. Choose a topic that is more or less close to you. It will facilitate your research greatly. Dont use a very wide concept as your theme. Your professor wants to see how you explain a certain situation, not giving some philosophical interpretation of it.

No matter how creative you are and what crazy ideas you want to reveal in your paper, remember that it has a certain format. If to take a classical form of an explanatory paper, then it consists of the introductory part, in which you name your subject and the aspect that you are going to explain. Then you formulate the longest part of your work, which is its main body that contains all the arguments, explanations and examples. The last element is the conclusion, in which you confirm the idea of your explanations and make a final step to be sure that everything is understandable for your listeners.

The aim of this article, and we hope that we have reached it, is to help you to make the right selection of the explanatory essay topics for your paper to be one of the best.


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The shared human enterprise is multidimensional. Its various dimensions don’t exist in mutual isolation. Each dimension implicates all others. Human efforts and developments within the various dimensions need to articulate with human efforts and developments in all others. Politics can’t be considered without considering economics, and economics can’t be considered without considering technological developments. None can be considered without considering the production and dissemination of ideas and values and understandings and techniques (and the emotional reactions to them), in short, of human cognitions (including emotions).

The evolution of our social institutional and technological landscape is the overarching theme of human history. Wealth is produced and distributed, ideas created and disseminated, wars sparked and fought, buildings designed and built, political forms and processes developed, all due to and through and as an expression and producer of our ever changing social institutional and technological context.

Technological developments pose both opportunities and challenges. They provide new ways, new tools with which, to produce wealth and address problems. But they also create new problems of their own.

The Economist magazine recently provided a glimpse into the immediate future, by exploring some cutting-edge technologies of the present (see Perhaps the most striking aspect of the package of new technologies changing the face of manufacturing is the 3-D printer:

3-D printing is one aspect of the larger phenomenon of “digital manufacturing,” which in turn is one aspect of the larger phenomenon of what can be called an “information technological revolution.” We all are aware of it, but we don’t always incorporate that awareness into our more generalized understandings and strategies. The fact is that the rapid developments in information technologies (i.e., the set of technological innovations that includes computers, the internet, and mobile communications devices that now are hand-held communications and information processing instruments) is transforming our world, and will continue to do so, in dazzlingly dramatic ways.

The impact of this IT Revolution isn’t just that everyone has or soon will have an i-phone, hooked into a global network of thought and information access. It is also that the more generalized processes of conceptualization, communication, creation, development, production and distribution of cognitive material and all of its products is undergoing a major paradigm shift that has deep structural implications that will ripple and reverberate throughout the social institutional and technological landscape in acceleratingly transformative ways.

We’ve seen the first salvos of the political implications in “The Arab Spring” and other geopolitical events and transformations in recent years, with autocratic governmental control of information flows (and thus of populations in general) being eroded by the IT Revolution. We’ve seen it in our own political system, with political organizing and fund-raising and networking enhanced by new tools which favor those who most rapidly become most adept at their utilization (see, e.g., A Major Historical Threshold or A Tragically Missed Opportunity?). We’ve seen it in science and scholarship, starting with the development of “Chaos Theory” in the early days of modern computers, and growing from there into an accelerating transformation of our understanding of the nature of the world of which we are a part (including the evolutionary ecology of the social institutional and technological landscape itself; see the essays linked to in the first box at Catalogue of Selected Posts).

Now we are seeing it in how we create, produce, and distribute the material manifestations of human existence, the machines and commodities and, in general, the “stuff” of our lives.

What does this all mean for those of us who are most consciously engaged in the human enterprise, who are committed to working with others similarly committed to do the best we can in service to humanity? It means we need to start thinking in new ways, ready to utilize new tools. We need to develop new paradigms that incorporate all of this massive information, these massive changes in the processes that comprise our shared existence, this threshold through which we are passing, and address the future not just as an economic challenge narrowly conceived (as some do), and not just as a technological challenge narrowly conceived (as others do), and not just as a political challenge narrowly conceived (as still others do), and not just as a scientific or scholarly challenge narrowly conceived (as still others more do), but as an integrated challenge incorporating all of these together.

One of the lagging components of the paradigm shift we are undergoing (perhaps always the lagging component in all historical paradigm shifts) is the intentional or organic integration of its various parts for maximum human benefit (see, for instance, American Universities: Two Dimensions on which to Improve, for a discussion of the need to better integrate and articulate the products of our scholarship across disciplines). This is where the crucial challenge lies: How do we gather together these various threads of thought and innovation, and synthesize and channel them most effectively for human benefit?

One of the common threads emerging from the IT Revolution is coherent decentralization. Our ability to publish, network, and organize (social media and the blogosphere), to be vigilant (see Counterterrorism: A Model of Centralized Decentralization), to raise funds (see Tuesday Briefs: The Anti-Empathy Movement & “Crowdfunding”), and political and economic collaboration in general (see Wikinomics: The Genius of the Many Unleashed). But it’s not just augmented multi-lateral communications in play, but simultaneously augmented information processing (e.g., the data analysis function of computer technology), and now, the direct translation of information into its physical manifestations (i.e., production and construction). 3-D printers enable anyone anywhere to manipulate the design of an object digitally, integrating mass production and custom design into a single technology, and to manufacture that object remotely, for anyone else anywhere else, on demand.

One of the central implications of our current technological trajectory is that the demand for human labor will be increasingly a demand for highly trained, technically proficient, information-intensive labor. Humans will be more and more relegated to doing the tasks for which humans have –and will long have– a unique comparative advantage over any devices we can invent, and that is in our highest levels of cognitive functioning, in our imaginations and creativity, in our unique human consciousness. Increasingly, developing that consciousness as something more than a set of mechanical skills that can be sold on the labor market will not only be what feeds our souls, but also what imbues us with what will increasingly be the only asset for which there will be a future demand on that same labor market: Brilliant, imaginative, inventive, creative minds.

There will never be a shortage of opportunities for minds thus developed, but there will increasingly be a shortage of opportunities for everyone else. In a society and world where we haven’t yet met the challenge of educating our children sufficiently to meet the needs of the past century, meeting the challenge of educating our children sufficiently to meet the needs of this imminent and in many ways already present future poses an urgent, imperative challenge to us as a society.

This is nothing less than a revolution in the speed and agility of our technologically augmented collective consciousness, and in the speed and agility of our ability to translate that consciousness into action and objects, into wealth and welfare, into opportunity and the accelerating realization of human potential. But it also poses daunting challenges, challenges in how we prepare people to contribute to and participate in this production of wealth, and how we cope with the inequities and inhumanities that will result to the extent of our failure to do so.

There is so much dazzling new cognitive material currently flourishing in our shared cognitive landscape, a garden of possibilities bearing rich new fruits to be picked. But it is through their constant cross-fertilization, through the interweaving of their various vines, that the richest and most abundant fruits will be produced. The future is hanging low on the boughs of human consciousness, of imagination and innovation. We need to stop waiting for its fruits to fall on us of their own accord, and reach up and grap them with conscious intent and design, because, by doing so, we increase their value and quantity. When it comes to human consciousness and all of its products, it is through the act and intentionality of harvesting it that we most effectively cultivate it.

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The one constant is change, but the speed and utility of change is not constant at all. Organizations emerge for the purpose of fomenting change, yet, as a general rule, they soon ossify in the same kinds of unimaginative patterns as the institutions they are seeking to affect. Significant change through the medium of established organizations and institutions is generally catalyzed by either those who are raised to positions of influence despite their failure to satisfy conventional check lists of appropriate qualifications, or those who act in ways not predicted by the fact that they satisfy conventional check lists of appropriate qualifications.

Human actions fall within a space one axis of which is defined by courageous and imaginative choices striving for excellence at one extreme, and conventional choices striving for mediocrity or maintaining the status quo at the other. That axis alone does not describe the quality or efficacy of individual actions: Courageous and imaginative choices striving for excellence that are made in service to an odious ideology, or that are in some other way misinformed, may well do more harm than good, whereas conventional choices striving for mediocrity may make valuable marginal contributions to human welfare. But, while caution, analytical sophistication, foresightedness and respect for uncertainty, and subtlety of insight and strategy are necessary variables to render courageous and creative innovation a positive rather than negative force, the absence of courageous and creative innovation guarantees suboptimal outcomes.

Several recent experiences have raised this to the fore of my mind: A program director position for an educational reform foundation that I applied for, and would have done a truly exceptional job in, that I failed to get because an unimaginative vice president was looking for candidates that satisfied the more superficial and easily acquired criteria for the job rather than the more profound and harder to duplicate criteria of greater importance; other nonprofit positions filled by decision makers similarly focused on superficial and less salient criteria; an alternative school led by a robust and idealistic principal who may prove to be an exception to this “rule;” a widespread insistence, across the ideological spectrum, to cling to conventional modes of thought and conventional strategies and conceptualizations of political activism, rather than to reach down a bit deeper and attempt to foment truly fundamental change instead.

The most profound lesson of human history is the robustness of social change, the degree to which that which is taken for granted as a permanent feature of our consciousness and our social institutional landscape is truly ephemeral, and can and does change far more rapidly and dramatically than those living in their own time and place are wont to realize. It is true, of course (as discussed in The Variable Malleability of Reality) that some things are easier to change than others; that smart strategies identify what aspects of our current reality are more malleable in order to massage our encompassing social (and natural) systems in ways which move us in desired directions. But it is also true (as discussed inThe Algorithms of Complexity) that that layered complexity, in which deeper levels are generally less malleable than more superficial ones,  provides frequent opportunities for rapid, dramatic change, when some of the underlying “algorithms” are actually fairly malleable. The art and science of participating in history in socially responsible and “ambitious” ways involves recognizing and reconciling these two aspects of the challenge at hand.

It’s time for a new social movement that confronts this challenge head-on, and does so with a commitment to doing so as rationally and imaginatively and compassionately as possible. I’ve outlined one general proposal for organizing such a movement in A Proposal: The Politics of Reason and Goodwill and in the other essays linked to in the second box at Catalogue of Selected Posts. (In the first box at Catalogue of Selected Posts can be found essays exploring the nature of our social institutional and technological landscape, to better inform such efforts; and in some other boxes can be found specific applications and aspects of this analysis.)

The proposal has three components: 1) Non-partisan community organizations whose members agree to commit only to reason and universal goodwill, to listening to competing views, and to seeking the policies which best serve humanity; 2) A data base or internet portal making access to all arguments that are framed as analyses applying reason to evidence in service to human welfare, and that provide documentation for all factual evidence relied on, upon which such community organizations can draw for their discussions and debates; and 3) Something I call “meta-messaging” (see Meta-messaging with Frames and Narratives): The emotionally and cognitively effective dissemination of the narrative that this is a good and worthy project, that it is good for individuals and good for society to view our shared existence as a shared existence with shared challenges and shared opportunities, that, as I like to put it, it’s better to be Ebenezer Scrooge after his adventure with Marley and the Three Spirits than before.

Such a movement depends on suspending substantive debates until they can be contextualized in the framework being advocated, because to do so would be to lose what cross-cutting appeal such a movement might have. While there are many who would never join such a movement, and never join the community organizations that are a part of it, there are many who would, including many who identify themselves as “conservatives” or “independents.”

This is not, and cannot be, a movement to overturn Citizens United, or a movement to increase public spending on social services and education, or a movement to achieve preconceived substantive goals of any kind, because to allow it to become so would be to defeat its purpose: To find and develop the one common ground all people who wish to be reasonable people of goodwill can agree on, and that is that we all strive to be reasonable people of goodwill, humble enough to know that we don’t know all of the answers, wise enough to engage in a public discourse devoted to doing the best we can, and disciplined enough to develop new procedures and new institutions that help us to work together as reasonable people of goodwill confronting the challenges of a complex and subtle world.

What we need more fundamentally and more critically than to achieve any of the individual, ideologically saturated substantive goals that divide us is to rediscover and develop our common ground, the underlying values and aspirations that most of us share, and the procedurally and attitudinally focused framework that we can create to pursue them more constructively and cooperatively. There are many people in America who are sick of the divisive, angry, excessively intransigent political rhetoric which dominates our public forums and airwaves, who would flock to a movement that steps back from that and tries, instead, to establish another kind of public discourse, another kind of political participation. This is a movement to bring them in, and move us forward.

That means letting go of the rituals of warring false certainties, and coming together instead around a common acknowledgement of shared uncertainty and fallibility. It’s time for all who are willing to make that leap of daring idealism, of courageous commitment to doing better, of believing in our humanity, to do so. We can continue to reproduce the unimaginative and unproductive ritual of over-confident warring false certainties, or to work together to create something new and vibrant and potentially revolutionary. As always, we each get to choose how daring and imaginative and conscious, and therefore how effective, our commitment to progress really is.

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There is much about the Tea Party mentality that is similar to anti-progress attitudes of the past, such as the fear that any improvement in the production or distribution of wealth comes at the expense of those who are invested in the status quo, and that the local and immediate interests of those who are inconvenienced or made worse off in the short run should trump the global and long-term interests of the many who would benefit from advancements in the production and distribution of wealth.

Throughout human history, in varying balances, there have been those who cling to a familiar past and those who reach for an improved future. The progress made despite the former has included a shift in balance in favor of the latter. Whereas traditional societies anchored themselves in ossified rituals and beliefs, modern societies have increasingly embraced the possibility of progress. But, as many have noted, modernity is “a candle in the darkness” (Carl Sagan’s phrase to describe science, still today), flickering in the midst of howling hordes of gods and demons, superstitions and arbitrary certainties, that continue to hold us back.

Early in the industrial revolution, British artisans protested mechanized production by destroying the power looms that were displacing them ( There are two important things to note about  this: 1) Progress does indeed cause dislocations, and, unless we take pains to address it, localized losses amidst generalized gains; and 2) to the extent that these victims of progress, whether their victimization is real or imagined, succeed in obstructing progress, we all lose in the long run, for the improved techniques that were obstructed would have created far greater wealth and opportunity in the long run than the archaic techniques that were preserved.

The Tea Partiers are modern Luddites, taking mallets to social institutional rather than technological innovation. As I discussed in several previous posts (see, e.g., The Politics of Consciousness , Information and Energy: Past, Present, and Future, The Evolutionary Ecology of Audio-Visual Entertainment (& the nested & overlapping subsystems of Gaia), The Nature-Mind-Machine Matrix), both technological and social institutional innovation are part of cultural evolution, the reproduction, mutation, and selection according to differential reproductive success of “memes” (i.e., ideas). And as I’ve also discussed in several previous posts (“Political Fundamentalism”, “Constitutional Idolatry”, Liberty Idolatry, and Small Government Idolatry), the political fundamentalism of the Tea Party is akin to the religious fundamentalism from which it mutated, and to the Inquisition which is the historical model of such fundamentalism, clinging to archaic orthodoxies that do not stand up to rational scrutiny (see Real Fiscal Conservativism for an economic analysis of this vis-a-vis the Tea Party), and fighting against the heresies of progress.

We are simply embroiled in one of the on-going battles of human history, constantly reincarnated, and constantly obstructing our ability to do better. It is incumbent upon us to open as many eyes as possible to this fact, and leave those who prefer to be champions of avoidable human suffering to become increasingly marginalized and reviled, while those who prefer to be champions of human welfare and true spiritual growth can join all other reasonable people of goodwill in the shared enterprise of forging a progressive path into the future.

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This is a very specific, almost arbitrary, example of the systemic nature of the reality in which we live, and an illustration of the coherence of systems across levels and disciplines. The relevance, for me (other than exercising the sense of wonder that I believe should be driving us), is to draw attention once again to the ways in which we can better understand the context within which we live, both “human” and “natural” (it’s all natural, really), and, by doing so, can be better equipped to interact with that context wisely and productively. It stands in opposition to the movement advocating self-governance by shallow platitude, and in support of the movement that insists we are conscious entities, forever summoned to cope with the challenges and opportunities of a complex and subtle world.

The October 11 issue of Time Magazine has an article in it about Blockbuster’s “failure at failing” (i.e., its failure to manage its demise in shareholders’ best interests), which made me think of what an excellent example audio-visual entertainment is of the parallels between economics and evolutionary ecology, with the distinction (among others) of far more cross-over synthesis  involved in the flow of innovations (like “breeding” of genetically dissimilar species to produce dramatically different ones). It is a story of dominant successors displacing eclipsed predecessors, combining with other dominant successors from other distinct lines of evolutionary descendance

Like a whole new species emerging from the combination of photographs (flipped in rapid succession) and, eventually, phonographs, first silent movies and then talkies spread like Eucalyptus trees in California. Movies shown at movie theaters became a dominant form of entertainment. Breaking this down a little, silent movies were the Neanderthals to the Homo Sapiens Sapiens of talkies, a dominant sub-species either displacing or interbreeding with the “inferior” one, driving it into extinction.

Then, by improving and adapting the technology of broadcasting signals encoded with sound (radio) to this form of entertainment, incorporating moving images as well, a new ecological niche was formed, one that would prove to be immensely robust: Television, in one’s own home (again, television being the dominant successor to radio, with the synthesis of audio-visual entertainment with broadcast technology being its genesis). The various species (audio recordings, radio, movies, and television) have found different ecological niches ever since, sometimes competing at one another’s expense, sometimes contributing to one another’s reproductive success. Silent movies were the only species from these various braided lines of development to go (virtually) completely extinct.

Within the television industry, various micro-ecologies evolved, with three major networks in the United States swallowing up and revitalizing local stations, forming a very robust symbiosis. Different content formats were tried and evolved: Talk shows, variety shows, news broadcasts (all off-spring of radio predecessors in form). Sit-coms, courtroom dramas, cop shows, and other archetypical forms, emerged and evolved, and occasionally blended into new forms (Ally McBeal and Boston Legal  each blending comedy and courtroom drama, for instance).

Meanwhile, movies evolved as well, with special effects, and various genres, and various motifs developing and cross-breeding and displacing predecessors in a variety of ways. And some cross-breeding occurred between movies and television (and novels), with mini-series briefly enjoying a heyday (though short-lived due to the expense of production, a species-killer, at least in television, at least thus-far).

Enter video cassettes, a technology cross-pollinator of movies and TV. Now movies produced for cinemas could be watched at home on television sets. This seemed to threaten the survival of the movie industry for awhile, reducing box office revenues dramatically, until the movie industry adapted, and found that home rentals and sales could be every bit as lucrative.

Then the separate evolutionary thread that produced the computer revolution cross-fertilized with these, as with virtually all other evolutionary threads, producing compact disks, and, eventually, streaming video (as well as downloadable songs and i-pods, and downloadable movies).

Blockbuster was an innovative business piggybacking on the invention of video cassettes, which made more sense to rent than to buy. It was a niche waiting to be filled. But like ostentatious displays such as huge antlers on elk or bright plumage on peacocks, signalling to potential mates a surplus of male prowess, few qualities contribute more to reproductive success of products sold in the modern market than increased convenience. So, with the invention of the compact disk (and more manageable postage rates associated with smaller size), Netflix swept in to occupy that niche, ultimately spelling doom for the far larger and richer Blockbuster.

Netflix itself had to adapt to streaming or downloaded video via computer, or it would have been displaced by dominant successors just as it had displaced Blockbuster (which failed to adapt in time, though it might now). In fact, Netflix faces stiff competition from others eager to fill the streaming and downloadable video niche, including Amazon and Apple. And a separate niche exists for supermarket and store based CD rental vending machines, in which Redbox enjoys an early dominance.

I’ve traced above just one set of strands of a far vaster and more complicated net, with, for instance, the evolution of audio recording devices (phonographs to reel-to-reel tape to cassettes to digital, with the various forms of vinyl recordings evolving alongside of magnetic tapes); different filming and projecting technologies and types (as well as production styles); television sets (from small black-and-white to slightly larger, then color, then much larger, then projection, then plasma screen); different television signal delivery technologies (local over-air broadcast, cable, satellite, digital, which catalyzed a proliferation of channels and networks); and, of course, evolving computer hardware and software intertwined with all the others.

Any aspect of the “anthrosphere” (human social institutions, technologies, products and constructions, and cultural motifs) can similarly be zeroed in on as one aspect of the evolutionary process discussed in “The Politics of Consciousness ,” and “Information and Energy: Past, Present, and Future.” We can trace building construction, or aviation, or land transportation, or clothing, or medicine, or money, or markets, or warfare, or farming, or mining, or law, or political forms, or religion, or any other aspect of the human-produced sphere of our existence, in exactly the same way as audio-visual entertainment, and then trace the linkages and cross-fertilization’s among them. By understanding the anthrosphere in these terms, and contextualizing those human systems within the similar biological evolutionary ecological systems (the “biosphere”) that they mimic and echo, all within the framework of other natural systems (e.g., the hydrosphere, atmosphere, and lithosphere), we have a single, coherent paradigm within which to understand the entire global system, applying complex dynamical systems analysis adapted to the particular forms of analysis evolved to address various subsystems, focusing on different aspects in different ways, zooming in more tightly or panning out more broadly, but not arbitrarily divorcing any one branch from the others with which it is ultimately interconnected.

(see also Adaptation & Social Systemic Fluidity, The Evolutionary Ecology of Social Institutions, The Fractal Geometry of Social Change, The Evolutionary Ecology of Human Technology, The Fractal Geometry of Law (and Government), and The Nature-Mind-Machine Matrix for more on this general theme).

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No sooner do I write and post an essay on the literally evolutionary nature of modern information technologies (, then I come across an article in The Economist zeroing in on one aspect of exactly what I’m talking about (

In my novel (, a wizard ruminates that “the genius of the many is a captive giant, whose freedom is the ends and the means of all other things.” Wikinomics is about another large step in the liberation of that captive giant, by reducing the transaction costs involved in massive decentralized network communications. Ronald Coase famously said that in the absence of transaction costs, we would bargain our way to maximum utility. Some have interpreted Coase’s Theorem to be more about the formidable obstacle posed by transaction costs than the efficacy of bargaining our way to paradise. But, in either case, the internet has dramatically reduced the size of that obstacle.

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I almost titled this post “Knowledge AND Power,” as a play on my previous post a week or so ago titled “Knowledge is Power,” but decided to be less cute and more descriptively precise. published today an article on a Boulder company’s contribution to smart grid technology ( “Power Tagging,” the name of both the technology and the company, involves embedding “a digital signal deep in the flow of electrons that can be read through the noise.” The larger implication is the gradual evolution of more efficient energy delivery systems, by, for instance, incorporating real-time cybernetic feedback loops that allow energy delivery to adjust to conditions, much as a thermostat turns on and off the heat or air conditioning in a home. But the implications of a smart grid, and particularly of this new technology, are that the more information flows with the energy itself, the more efficiently the demands on the system (e.g., producing exactly the right amount of energy to balance the grid in real-time, a physical requirement of energy production and distribution) can be met.

More generally, information and energy are the intertwined life-blood of human and natural systems. The biosphere on Earth is fueled, ultimately, by the sun (starting with photosynthesis, at the start of the food chain), and evolves through the reproduction, occasional mutation, and competition for reproductive success of packets of information (genes). Human systems are embedded in, and echo, this pattern (as I discuss in my post “The Politics of Consciousness”: In our earliest form, on the African savanna, our fuel came from that solar-powered food-chain and, eventually, the combustion of some of its products (i.e., fire). Our early development involved ways in which to utilize that energy source (feeding domesticated animals, and using fire in the preparation of food and tools, for instance). Much of human history thereafter can be understood in terms of the evolution of energy sources and the technologies for utilizing them (from levers and pulleys to nuclear reactors and solar panels).

Parallel to, and informing, this evolution of energy sources and technologies, is our own cultural evolution involving the innovation, diffusion, and synthesis of ideas. But just as our own evolutionary process is an echo of Nature’s, we in turn have created a technological echo of our own, by creating information technologies which vastly accelerate the reproduction, mutation, competition, and evolution of human cognitive information. And now, we are increasingly taking steps which will allow that information to operate independently of us, just as a thermostat does, with technological systems reacting to information that no human being need ever be aware of.

The potentials for increased efficiency and efficacy in how we address the challenges and opportunities which face us are enormous. Despite the hyperbole that has sometimes surrounded the Computer Revolution, few recognize just how dramatic a threshold we have entered in just the past few decades. From a historical perspective, it may come to eclipse the Industrial Revolution in importance, just as the Industrial Revolution in many ways eclipsed the Renaissance and Enlightenment which were preludes to it.

Just as our own echo of natural evolution is a vastly accelerated process, so too the technological echo we have created promises a new quantum acceleration once again. Human history is an acceleration of natural history due to the increased rate of information-packet reproduction (as fast as we can communicate), mutation (as fast as we can modify), and selection (as fast as we can choose what to believe or what technology to utilize). The secondary evolutionary echo that may occur as a result of information technologies operating autonomously could be another quantum acceleration still, communicating, processing, modifying, and selecting information not only at the accelerated speed that modern computers can, but with the accelerating acceleration (i.e., increasing nth order rates of change) produced by the accumulating innovations themselves. We’ve already begun to experience the first whisper of this new acceleration, with the rapid communications and data processing capacities of modern computers, ushering in new wonders of comprehension and capacity at an accelerating rate. But that is still restrained by our own cognitive speed, still the bottleneck through which our computer-augmented data processing must pass. It is when the evolutionary process of self-replicating, mutating, adapting packets of information by-pass us completely that the new echo begins in earnest.

In a book about speculative future possibilities that I read decades ago (and can remember neither the title nor the author), one idea the author floated was the prospect of robotic combination space-faring/mining machines that could self-replicate with the materials that they mined from extraterrestrial bodies, bringing back virtually unlimited material resources to Earth. (Obviously, we would also need to invent self-replicated garbage collectors removing the equally prolific production of waste, else be even more deluged by garbage than we already are!) Now, imagine combining such machines with any variety of self-replicating and self-disposing/recycling machines to perform any variety of tasks. Finally, imagine their ability to process information about changing conditions or potential design improvements diagnosed from experience, and self-modify when reproducing in order to adapt to this information.

Such an accelerated process may well also accelerate our ability to safely and cleanly tap and utilize the universe’s abundant supply of energy sufficiently to meet any demands placed upon it. Both drivers of evolution, of progress, -information and energy- would be placed on autonomous growth curves, with problem-solving algorithms incorporated into them. It is even conceivable that self-replicated computerized machines could create not only their own off-spring, but their own novel inventions as well, new self-replicating computerized machines to accomplish new tasks newly identified.

Of course, the immediate future offers prospects more modest than these far-fetched possibilities, but dramatic prospects nonetheless, and prospects that will become increasingly dramatic with the passage of time. What it requires of us is a willingness to progress, an understanding that we have not yet arrived at our final condition, that our lot in life can indeed be dramatically improved, and that it is incumbent upon us to facilitate our advance toward an ever-more robust, sustainable, and fair social order to the best of our abilities.

But, as Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility,” and great potential for disastrous unintended consequences. This is true on several dimensions; technological, environmental, and social institutional. As some have noted, we may be on the brink of creating what is essential mechanical life-forms, and unleashing forces we will no longer be able to control. The most common and imminent concern involves nanotechnology: The creation of microscopic machines that can be used, for instance, to target diseases in the body, and can be programmed to reproduce and adapt to changing conditions by reprogramming themselves as they do so. Michael Crichton, in one of his typically scientifically-almost-plausible-but-extreme renditions of this concept, wrote the novel Prey, which depicted swarms of such nanites becoming very effective predators.

Clearly, more dramatically exploiting Nature, both on Earth and beyond, means more dramatically risking the destabilization of the complex systems which comprise us. We must always remain vigilent, and increasingly so, that our increasingly robust harvesting of Nature’s bounty is not done at the expense of the stability and sustainability of the systems which produce that bounty.

And the fear that informs conservatives, that the more we act with a concentrated will, the more we risk losing ourselves to the center of power thus created, takes on new dimensions as well in a future such as the one I have outlined. Vigilantly avoiding the possible pitfalls of falling prey to our own technological and institutional inventions is one more demand upon us, and one we must keep forever at the forefront of our contemplations. But the liberating possibilities of both a more effective and expansive social institutional context, and a more effective and expansive technological context, both  facilitating the provision of needs and wants and opportunities beyond all but our wildest dreams (just as the present is beyond all but the wildest dreams of those of generations and centuries and millenia past), freeing us to grow and celebrate life in ways more profound and subtle than merely meeting the demands of survival which were forever our first and most formidable shackles, is a dream not to be denied.

Despite the risks involved, I find the path we are on more exciting than frightening, one which, when combined with our inevitable increasing mimicry of nature in the production of more organic and organic-like technologies and social institutions, holds the promise for a very bright future indeed.

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167 / high dart – 809

high dart went part way back to the roots and part way to space. The sound of 809 is spacey-rough,
trippy and sometimes there’s a little glint of well-camouflaged cheesiness. and guitars!
while the LP emerged, a lot of synths were oscillating. what else should they have done?
So, 809 is a four dimensional object. To us nothing but a lot of time slices. It can be seen as a tram that takes you down a 40 minute long route through 11 zones inside the abstract. Sometimes it appears spooky, especially if you spend enough time at the terminus of 809.

download: bandcamp | archive.org

147 / 3dtorus: Living Room Ambience

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3dtorus submerges his techno beats in the deepest fathoms, and Living Room Ambience is high quality minimal Berlin electronica relocated to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. This is the deepest of houses.

download: bandcamp | archive.org | SoundCloud


New Year's Eve in Renfrew 2013/2013 - the Cradle of the Royal Stewarts

Located only 10 km away from Glasgow, in the west central Lowlands of Scotland, Renfrew is a former royal burgh with a recorded population of around 20,000 inhabitants. Once the county town of Renfrewshire, it currently owes its fame to its early link with the Royal house of Scotland and Great Britain. This is what makes it a chosen destination for the New Year's Eve in Renfrew 2012/2013.

Handsome mansions scattered all over the place and delightful family-run hotels make this a particularly picturesque settlement. Blythswood House, built of the finest white freestone, Jordanhill, built around 1782 and surrounded by scenic landscape or Scotston, an ancient inheritance of a branch of the Montgomeries, are only a few examples of the splendours offered by the place to tourists spending the New Year's Eve in Renfrew 2012/2013. Particularly renowned for its healthy air, the excellent water quality and the great privilege of salmon fishing in the Clyde, Renfrew will make a unique holiday destination.


Outdated Job Search Advice You Should Stop Following

Looking for a job is one of the most dreaded activities of the big, bad world when a fresher steps into it. But whether it is trying to get rid of the “fresher” tag, or changing jobs or careers midway through life, looking for a job becomes an intricate dance of knowledge, assessment, networking, and searching. There are several ways to go about it, one of which are the suggestions we encounter from well-meaning friends and family members. In desperation, a job-seeker might follow all the random, half-baked advice that is thrown his way, and cannot distinguish between useful advice and the detrimental kind, all because it comes from someone they tend to trust, or just want to try everything. Thus, the job seeker ends up committing several gaffes that may reduce his chances of landing that dream job.

In order to be a well-rounded job applicant, one may do well to remember to flow with the times and change according to changing trends.
Tactics and Techniques of Application
Every organization has their own modus operandi for recruitment. Trying to go against it to show how unique you are is not wise. Depending on the kind of job applied for, tactics of application must change. If you’re applying for a teaching or local job, sending in a personal application would be preferred instead of applying online. If applying in IT or software development, apply through their online system that has probably been specifically developed for recruitment.
Respect Hiring Managers’ Time
Scary interviewer.
If the ad specifically tells you to send in your CV by E-mail, then send it by E-mail and not snail mail, and don’t keep calling to ask whether they’ve received “online and offline copies” to show how dedicated you are. Chances are they take a little time to sift through all incoming applications. People already short on time will not appreciate anyone persistently interrupting them from doing their work. If it’s been too long, make one call if this is important to you. Else move on.

Listening Only to Your Parents
Building a network.
Most of us end up listening to parental advice that is terribly outdated because we know they don’t mean harm to us and we trust them. However, most parents do not know the current scenario, and have not written a CV or appeared for an interview in years, and thus they end up having no idea regarding the current situation. Depending on how well versed they are, take advice. But also have other avenues of help open.


Ken Smith

Navy dismisses 7th Fleet commander after warship accidents

The commander of the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet has been relieved of duty following a series of warship accidents that raised questions about its operations in the Pacific.

The firing of Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, a three-star admiral, was a rare dismissal of such a high-ranking officer for operational reasons.

The Navy's Pacific Fleet released a short statement Wednesday saying Adm. Scott Swift, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, had relieved Aucoin "due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command."

The move follows four Navy accidents in the Pacific since late January, including two collisions that left sailors dead and missing.

On Monday, the...


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Actionable news in C: CITIGROUP Inc,

Citigroup Beats Estimates as Trading, Investment Banking Rebound

Citigroup (C) posted higher quarterly profit than analysts estimated as consumer lending grew and trading revenue increased.

Earnings of $1.24 a share compared with the $1.10 average estimate from analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Net income slid 14% to $4 billion while revenue of $17.5 billion was in line with analysts' projections.

Reports from the New York bank and San Francisco-based Wells Fargo (WFC) , which also disclosed second-quarter earnings on Friday, show banks are rebounding after a...


By Ken Croswell

For the first time, astronomers have watched the spiraling dance performed by two stars merging into a single star. The observations, taken between 2001 and 2008, suggest a solution to the vexed problem of how rare "red novae" form.

Most novae are blue and occur when material on a white dwarf star explodes. But what causes red novae has been a mystery.

The best-known red nova was spotted in January 2002 toward the edge of our Galaxy's disk. Named V838 Monocerotis, it was more luminous than normal novae--at peak brightness, it briefly rivaled the most powerful stars in the Galaxy.

In September 2008, the red nova V1309 Scorpii appeared in the Milky Way. Fortunately, it was positioned in a part of the sky being watched by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE), a Polish-run program using data from a telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile to search for signs of dark matter and planets. As a result, the team had inadvertently captured the process that sparked the red nova.

"The material is fantastic," says Romuald Tylenda, an astronomer at the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center in Toru, Poland. "I never expected to see so many observations before an eruption." From 2001 to 2008, the OGLE team had observed the pre-nova star a remarkable 1,340 times. In a paper submitted to Astronomy and Astrophysics, Tylenda and his colleagues say that the red nova was created by the merger of a double star system known as a contact binary.

Glowing peanut

A contact binary consists of two stars that circle each other so closely that they touch. If viewed from an orbiting planet, the stuck-together suns would resemble a glowing peanut-shaped object. Exotic though they seem, contact binaries are common: the nearest, named 44 Boötis B, is just 41 light years (13 parsecs) from Earth.

Because they are so close together, the two stars continually eclipse each other, causing the brightness we see to vary. This allowed Tylenda and his team to deduce the nature of V1309 Scorpii, which is roughly 10,000 light years (3,000 parsecs) from Earth.

Before the explosion, the two stars danced around each other every 1.4 days. As they spiraled together, this period shortened until the stars merged and exploded, upping their brightness by 10,000 times. Tylenda and his colleagues estimate that the larger star had about as much mass as the Sun. Current observations indicate that the system is now single.

"It certainly is a very exciting discovery," says Howard Bond, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., who was not part of the discovery team. "This is clearly something that we've never seen before." However, Bond cautions that the same process may not explain other red novae.

Tylenda disagrees: "I think that almost all of the red novae are mergers." In particular, he argues that the best-known red nova, V838 Monocerotis, resulted from such a merger. That explosion was more powerful than V1309 Scorpii, indicating a greater mass.

The first observational sign that contact binaries merge came in 1981, when American astronomers Bernard Bopp and Robert Stencel said a fast-spinning giant star named FK Comae Berenices was a former contact binary that had merged and become single. This star and two other fast-spinning giants stood out because most giant stars spin slowly. But when a contact binary merges, the angular momentum of the orbiting stars spins up the single merged star.

Shrinivas Kulkarni, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, describes the findings of Tylenda and colleagues as "amazing." Kulkarni notes that theories to explain red novae outnumber all the red novae known. "They've been so mysterious for so long. This discovery is a huge, huge step forward."


When You're Thankful at a Eulogy

Funerals bring out the best in people, especially when congregants heed a life lesson.

My uncle's memorial service was held this week. He was 83, a high school and community college math teacher, and something of a comedian, which probably comes as a surprise to people who have ever met a math teacher.

He was a good man, my mother's closest brother, and while he and I didn't agree on how to run the government, his grandson, my first cousin's son, gave some remarks that pleased me greatly. The best part of them, to me, is the takeaway (learned by at least one Millennial) that intolerance goes both ways in political debate, and that it's up to us all to show respect for those with disagree with, or don't even know, as much as to those with whom we agree on everything.

My cousin's eulogy is published below with his permission.

I was fortunate to spend a lot of time with my grandfather over the years, and I learned a lot in those times together. Much was factual information about classical music, calculus, or philosophy. However, the most important things he taught me were intangible qualities of the human personality: especially tolerance and inclusiveness.

We would have many conversations about current events and how people were treated throughout the world. I always found in talking to him that it was inconceivable that one individual should be treated differently by something such as race, religion, or creed.

We have a tendency as humans to group people who we can’t find physically or ideologically similar to us. We may call them terrorists, fascists, tree-huggers, or some other term that implies they adhere to a specific set of values. We have trouble believing that each individual has a personal doctrine of beliefs and he or she or whatever you want to be may be striving for the same thing.

Happiness, companionship, and a life uninhibited by someone else’s persuasion that you are living incorrectly. I saw many people in my life that looked different or scary from what I was used to, and my grandfather would talk to them and show how that person was so very similar. That person smiles just like you and me at whatever silly joke he told. That person only wishes to go about life and make a decent wage so they can get home to friends and family.

What I learned from my grandfather, and you should too, is to not be afraid to talk to someone who is different. Do not exclude someone because they do not look or act like you. Do not call someone a disparaging name because you don’t agree with them.

We are all working towards the same goals we just have different approaches to getting there. Likewise, if someone says something demeaning towards you, don’t hold a grudge. Let the small stuff pass, enjoy the good of each individual and enjoy that person’s idiosyncrasies. I choose to remember the good moments in people just as my grandfather did. When you focus on that, the bad memories can easily fade away.

I don’t mourn Baba’s death today because he will be with me throughout the rest of my life. Not in spirit or as a ghost in my dreams but in my daily routine. ... I enjoyed every moment I spent with him and am elated to see how many people felt the same.