Hi all… Just ran across my oldest blog (I’ll have to integrate this content one of these days! In the meanwhile, my new blog is at www.BruceRawles.com … Enjoy!

The Sweet Café in Eagle Point (where some of Nancy’s new acrylic and oil paintings in her “Intuitive Abstract” and “Fun with Food” series are currently on display) is also a great place for coffee … and sweets of course … My favorite libation there (not being a coffee drinker) is Teri’s pumpkin spice Chai; quite tasty! Here’s a couple of images from a recent impromptu Saturday musical gig there. Location: 178 West Main Street (on the corner of Platte Street) in Eagle Point, Oregon 97524; open from 10AM-2PM every day except Sundays; 541-826-7988

OK, time for quick update to start on the backlog of ideas & reflections percolating in my psyche…
First, in the kudos department, a quick tip of the musical hat to Imogen Heap” (who I hadn’t heard of until a clip on NPR exposed me to her lovely vocoder work the other day)… now I have been happily haunted by her synth-assisted a cappella work in the song “Hide and Seek”… and no, it isn’t just because she has a reference to crop circles in the lyric

I just finished reading “Crooked Soley: A Crop Circle Revelation by Allan Brown & John Michell” from Roundhill Press. There quite a lot of insight and inspiration in this little book. Brown shows the triangular relationship of the geography of the formation, Crooked Soley, and Straight Soley; he also has some lovely mosaics in the back that incorporate the gematrian numbers incorporated into this DNA toroidal hexagram pattern at Crooked Soley. Michell goes into more detail about the Gematrian number connections (with a focus on numbers 5040 & 7920) and their relationship to close approximation to circle radius and quarter circumference, squaring of the circle, Earth/Moon diameters, the Great Pyramid’s cross section, Stonehenge, Glastonbury, factorials, and other intriguing relationships. Patrick Harpur’s classic article concludes the book with wisdom about the important perspective that “Crop circles are not problems to be solved but mysteries to be entered, like labyrinths.” A highly recommended book!

Here is the text from the back cover:

“Crop circles are the finest, most beautiful and original art forms of
modern times, and they are totally mysterious.

Behind the crop circle phenomenon is an evident purpose. Some intelligence,
human, alien or spiritual, is in the process of communication. It is
exposing us to a course of re-education, beginning with the symbols of
sacred knowledge and wisdom.

The most striking evidence for this view is the amazing formation that
appeared at Crooked Soley in Wiltshire on the 27th August 2002. Clearly
expressed in its design are certain numerical symbols that are known
esoterically as the ‘Keys to Creation’. They are also keys to that universal
science associated with the Holy Grail. From time to time it is revealed
again, and when that happens, culture and the human spirit are renewed and
life on earth is restored to its natural state as a reflection of paradise.”

Hi all:

Here’s a quick update in the “worthy cause” department. Here’s the
email I just sent to my elected representatives (hopefully there’s
still time for you to contact yours if you haven’t already):

What I sent to my elected representatives:

We owe it to our country, our planet, our children and our selves to
not only stop the reversal of democracy that the so-called “Patriot
Act” represents, but to become a better example of true egalitarian
democracy and freedom in THIS country first. Please do whatever you
can to stop the “Patriot Act” and also to remove the rider on any
legislation that would allow drilling in the Arctic Wilderness. Thank
you!

The “Boilerplate”:

Subject: Two Days to Stop the Patriot Act

Hi,

The White House is pressuring Congress to reauthorize a new version of
the Patriot Act that is worse than the original law and doesn’t
include needed reforms. This could come before the Senate as soon as
Thursday.

A bipartisan group of senators have agreed to fight the Patriot Act
–by filibuster if necessary.

This is a huge moment. Senators from both parties are standing
together to protect freedom and liberty –and they’re ready to fight.
Can you sign this petition to show them and the rest of the Senate
that you support filibustering this bad bill? The Patriot Act has to
be stopped until it includes reforms.

http://political.moveon.org/patriotact/

Thanks!

Hey, it’s a blue moon! I thought the theme was appropriate for today … thanks to Carolyn Brent for the link and suggestion. Lots more content on the way; I’ll start uploading (and organizing!) a huge backlog of interesting and useful posts and links about worthy causes, friends who have been invaluable, recommendations, and of course more geometric and philosophical musings over the holidays… stay tuned!

For those of you in southern Oregon, I’ll be interviewed on KMED AM 1440 (Medford) with Bill Meyer this morning (Wed. 14Dec2005) at 8:10AM PST. Hope you can listen in!

Cheers

In the Keynote (Apple’s wonderful alternative to PowerPoint) presentations I’ve been giving over the last couple of years, I have been fortunate to have been given permission to use some imagery from some serious polytope pioneers. What is a polytope, you ask? The mathematical answer (hopefully I’m not too far off with my paraphrasing, for those with far more expertise in this arena than I) is that it is a general term for certain types of shapes of arbitrary dimension. The easiest ones to discuss are the “regular” ones; those with all the angles and side lengths the same.

Let’s start with regular polytopes in two dimensions; these are called polygons, and are probably the most familiar to most folks. In 2D, you have polygons like triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, heptagons, octagons, nonagons, decagons, etc. to infinity… In 3D, there are only 5 regular polyhedra, called the Platonic Solids. My sacred geometry tutorial at www.intent.com/sg (and various links on the site) has lots of info about these classic shapes that have amazing connections to every aspect of our usual (illusory?) material world that we humans hang out it most of the time. Once we get past three dimensions, however, our minds have a bit of trouble grokking the hyper-jump into 4D. There are actually 6 regular polytopes in 4 dimensions and these are called polychora. Need more help with this concept?

I recently put up lots of links on my my links page. Scroll down to “Links to sites about polyhedra & higher dimensional polytopes.” At the top of that section are links to Russell Towle’s 4D shadows (and animations) as well as lots of other related links. I had the pleasure of spending the better part of a day at Russell’s place near where I lived in California last year, and he showed me a plethora of exotic and wonderful imagery created with Mathematica, POV-Ray and other tools that dazzled my imagination. Accordingly, I put his links at the top of the list, although the other links in that section are also a cornucopia of great imagery, animations and info as well.

If the 4D math is too intimidating, I still recommend visiting these sites just for the imagery! Perhaps the flatland-pencil metaphor is in order for the those of us who minds turn to putty trying to wrap around even the most basic polychora. Imagine us 3D folks being somehow magically trapped in 2D (flat-land), and stuck on a piece of paper. If some 3D soul with a slightly mischievious bent wanted to have a little fun, all they would have to do is pass a pencil through our “world” (the paper) and we would have these bizarre hallucinations (quick phone the Dimensional Enquirer; we have their lead paranormal story!) At first we might see a black circle (graphite), then a light brown circle (shaved cedar), then a yellow hexagon (the paint on the pencil), then another circle (the metal holding the eraser), then a pink, slightly squishy circle (the eraser). To complete our hallucination, the pink circle would disappear almost instantly, and we’d immediately question reality, our sanity or perhaps our optometrist…

So if string theory suggests there are at least 11 dimensions (and this stuff is all completely consistent and robust in terms of the physics and math from what I understand … which isn’t a lot), then perhaps this metaphor might go a LONG way toward explaining a whole lot in our “reality” that is currently relegated to “meta-” stuff.

Those mystics among us might not be quite so crazy after all… I’m sure I’ll have more to share on this subject later, but that’s enough for now, and do check out the links, especially Russell’s awesome animations (each frame of which is like a “3D slice” of a 4D object.) If you have more links (or ideas along these lines to suggest), please contact me via the “Contact..” link on my site.

I’m a big fan of community radio (snipped the purse strings to big money) and such great diversity… so check out
KSKQ-FM’s new stream from Ashland Oregon. Let’s support independent media! I’m listening this evening for the first time and I like what I hear…

This is a postscript to the prior post… When I was assembling material for a presentation in southern Oregon on crop circles earlier this fall, Jay sent me this colorized image with his comment: “… the big news is that we got a genuine crop circle in front of the exhibition one day before there should have been a hoaxing contest in this field.â€? http://www.mysterypark.ch
- email sent 22 Sep 2005