The Wonder of Weird Worlds

Exoplanets that stagger the mind and whiffle the imagination.

Day 100 of the year, but who’s counting?

I’ve only been paying a wee bit of attention to the news of exoplanetary discoveries. It’s amazing how many planetary systems we’ve managed to discover in the past few years. I am always amazed at this type of exploration – much like all the new species we keep finding on earth. Wonders never cease.

As we’ve already limited our own solar system to 8 planets (sorry, Pluto, you’re too evil), and an increasing number of planetoids (Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris and so on). However, we have turned our attention ever outward (if that’s how spacetime works, it might be backward) to new places. I thought I should look at some of those, just because it’s kinda cool.

Most Ancient, ‘Impossible’ Alien Worlds Discovered

As we discover more worlds orbiting distant stars, we are finding that “conventional thinking” doesn’t seem to apply to the growing menagerie of exoplanets. And this most recent exoplanetary discovery is no different.

In fact, the two exoplanets found to be orbiting a star 375 light-years away shouldn’t exist at all.

The two gas giant planets were spotted during a survey of “metal poor” stars. When focusing on a star called HIP 11952, researchers from the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, discovered a slight wobble in the star’s position.

The wobble is being caused by the gravitational tug of two exoplanets — one is nearly the size of Jupiter and orbits the star every seven days, the other is approximately three-times the size of Jupiter and has an orbital period of 290 days.

Exoplanet Art Slideshow

Kepler 16-B is an exoplanet that is orbiting two stars.

Worlds such as this one are referred to as “Hot Jupiters” – big gas giants that are very close to their parent stars (there’s a Hollywood joke in there somewhere).

Star Rips Exoplanet to Shreds with X-Rays

Located 880 light-years away, the star CoRoT-2a is ruthlessly pummeling a closely-orbiting planet with powerful X-rays, blasting an estimated 5 million tons of material off of it every second! The planet, dubbed CoRoT-2b, orbits its star at a distance of about 3 percent the distance between the Earth and the sun — only around 2.8 million miles — and receives a hundred thousand times the X-ray radiation that Earth receives.

In turn, the planet’s close proximity may be responsible for keeping up the high rotation rate of its star, increasing its magnetic activity and thus its X-ray output.

Conclusion?

That’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There have been over 100 exoplanetary systems discovered, and the number will undoubtedly increase as we go ahead. The most troubling aspect of this bonanza is the underlying argument that we are searching for worlds that may be suitable to support human life. In point of fact, we already have one. Now’s not the time to bail and try to find greener pastures light-years away.

Reminds me of Gil-Scott Heron.

265 Days to Dec 21st 2012

Related articles

• Jupiter Sheds Light on a Strange Planet Outside Our Solar System (2012indyinfo.com)
• New Ultradense Planet Found; Astronomers Baffled (news.nationalgeographic.com)
• First Four Exoplanets of 2012 Discovered (science.slashdot.org)
• Hell off Earth: Blustery Exoplanet Charted in 2-D for First Time (scientificamerican.com)
• Three Tiny Exoplanets Suggest Solar System Not So Special (science.slashdot.org)
• Space Telescope Finds 100 Billion Alien Worlds in Milky Way (foxnews.com)

Complexity and those who Immerse themselves in it

Keen observations on the complex of complication.

Noam Chomsky interview in Slate

Q: In your new book, you suggest that many components of human nature are just too complicated to be really researchable.

A: That’s a pretty normal phenomenon. Take, say, physics, which restricts itself to extremely simple questions. If a molecule becomes too complex, they hand it over to the chemists. If it becomes too complex for them, they hand it to biologists. And if the system is too complex for them, they hand it to psychologists … and so on until it ends up in the hands of historians or novelists. As you deal with more and more complex systems, it becomes harder and harder to find deep and interesting properties.

Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind

Which reminds me of the premise of Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind by Guy Claxton. He characterizes three aspects of the brain’s thinking: the instantaneous reaction, the logical D-mode, and the undermind, which deals with the most complex ideas we have to think our way through. In essence, the key to working through a complex idea (or problem or whatever way the complexity manifests itself) is to keep ruminating on the idea, and providing new input. Read articles, books, sites, have conversations about the subject. Then kick back, daydream on it for a while, and a bit later BLAM the solution presents itself.

Sort of like the snappy comeback that occurs to you the day after it would have been useful. These things take the time they take, and no amount of D-mode is going to solve a complex problem. It’s better at simple things that can be seen all at once. The undermine takes in the larger, more complex stuff. I must admit that knowing this helped me wade through all this calendar nonsense. The finished Abysmal Calendar just showed up one day (Dec 21st 2005, as it turns out).

Here are a number of quotations I’ve extracted from Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind, which I think illustrate how an intuitive playfulness and focus on one’s work can work together to create true innovative thinking, by seeing through the obvious to the underlying elements. Undoubtedly, this is the kind of thing that James Gleick describes in his book Chaos: Making a New Science.

Everything is gestation and bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living in the artist’s life. –Rainer Maria Rilke

There are a number of metaphors that creators use to describe their process, but none more common than that of gestation… Gestation has its own timetable: psychologically, as biologically, it is the process par excellence that cannot be hurried. And it cannot be controlled; once the process has been set in motion it happens by itself… –Guy Claxton

If I were obliged to name the class of things to which [poetry] belongs, I should call it a secretion… –AE Housman
Differences between people characterised as rigid, and other characterised as less rigid, may be attributable… to personality differences in time availability… Time availability makes possible broader cognitions, more abstract thinking. and consequently greater flexibility. –Milton Rokeach

… the undermind is keeping a continual check on what is happening below the horizon of conscious awareness, detecting what might be important or dangerous, and deciding when to butt in to consciousness with a ‘news flash.’ –Guy Claxton

Say it nay so

What I continue to find gobsmacking are the off-the-cuff criticisms and knee-jerk denials of people who delve into said complexity and extracted something intriguing. Einstein observed that common people responded positively to relativity before it was accepted by the scientific community. Given the scientific community had a much larger framework into which to fit relativity. The more important aspect of Einstein’s discovery is that he came up with stuff as a clerk, where he had time to mull over what it might be like to ride the lightning. There is an argument here for dilettantes (and plenty of arguments against them, like the proverb “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”)

I studied literature back in the last millennium, and am a voracious reader (check my reading list if you don’t believe me). I have heard the value of non-fiction upheld, and fiction dismissed out of hand. Not everyone, but it makes me scratch my head. Fiction has been around far longer, particularly if you consider language a metaphor.

But the value in stories, particularly the fantastic, the complex and the playful, is that the communicate with our undermind, with the part of our mind that understands that princesses have less to do with entitled debutantes and more with archetypes. The value of fiction over nonfiction is that they explore different things. Same as science and religion. Comparing them as if they were equivalents is a faulty premise to begin with. Oranges are obviously an inferior fruit to apples, because you can’t eat the skin…

Posts of Interest

• How Stories Tell us Who We Are

And one of my personal favourites in 6 years of blogging in theAbysmal, American Plutocracy, which I feel describes the history of United States more tellingly than “factual” history has ever managed, because it works through myth, metaphor with a generous sprinkling of fact. The key to the whole thing is weaving the narrative threads through knots of commonality. The beauty in American Plutocracy is that it came about as a result of my research into various fields of interest, starting with H.P. Lovecraft, who lived during the Depression, mycology, WWII, astronomy, chemistry, and some calendar-related stuff. And suddenly, all these connections started coming to mind. The undermind noticed them, and kept kicking them up, demanding I pay attention.

If I’d set out to develop that story deliberately, mapping it out, sketching, outlining, revising, it would probably be sitting in the pile of all the other things I’ve started writing that never amounted to much beyond a good idea and pages of notes.

I think that the role of the artist, regardless of the medium, is undervalued, and has been for some time (although this varies across time, cultures and the phase in which the culture finds itself). I’m seeing a resurgence, which is encouraging, because Ottawa could really use some insight into complexity. It has, as late, fallen into dismissive oversimplification, the last gasp before being ridden out of town on a rail.

266 Days to Dec 21st 2012

Related articles

• Complexity and Extended Phenomenological-Cognitive Systems (manwithoutqualities.com)
• Book Review: Chaos: Making a New Science By James Gleick (wanderingmirages.wordpress.com)
• Complexity Theory (margaritamayoralvilla.com)
• Chomsky on Creativity and Innovation (sophisticatedfinance.typepad.com)

The Thirteen-day Fortnight

theAbysmal Calendar and lucky 13.

A commenter reminded me of a project I’d been working on and had been hoping to post. Thanks for the memory jog.

theAbysmal year is divided based on the formula 4 x 7 x 13 + 1 = 365. Thus far, I’ve divided the year into 13 x 28-day months, and 4 x 91-day years, which leaves 7 x 52 day periods. If we organize the days into 13-day fortnights, then they can be grouped into 4s (that’s 52 days) and 7s (which makes 91 days, equal to a quarter of 13 7-day weeks). At any rate, here’s the way it breaks down visually.

In the Mesoamerican Calendar, the one I’m most familiar with that used 13-day periods, they were arranged in groups of 20 as part of the sacred calendar (which Mayanists refer to as the Tzolkin). The resulting 260-day calendar wasn’t linked to the year, didn’t skip any days for leap days, but was a cog that linked all the cycles of time together – cycles of 365 days and 360 days in particular, as well as planetary synodic cycles. Because the Mesoamerican system was a continuous cycle of days, without any leap years to keep the calendars synchronized to the year. As a result, theAbysmal and the Mesoamerican systems are incapatible.

At least theAbysmal zero day (december 21st 2012) is identical to the Mesoamerican Long Count date of 13.0.0.0.0, which is kind of a zero day (at least according to the GMT (584283) correlation).

theAbysmal Year

First, having mapped the 13-day periods through theAbysmal year, I was pleased to note that the days midway through each quarter (circled in the image below), occupy similar roles here as they do in the 13-month year. They are midway in the fortnights in which they occur. This adds a little something to the significance of these days, which are already loaded for bear.

Quarters

Each quarter is 91 days, which divides nicely into 13 weeks, or 7 fortnights. Here’s what each quarter looks like organized by 13-day periods.

There is an advantage to having a choice of periods to use when scheduling one’s activities. The 7-day week is familiar, and we have long scheduled our lives around it. To some, the seven days of the week are a religious observance (as with the Hebrews, the 7 days of creation and the Sabbath), to others, it is a secular, financial structure (payments scheduled weekly, biweekly). the 13-day fortnight has been used as a sacred cycle as well.

The 7th day of the 13 is the centre point, with 6 days before, and 6 days after. I read (some time ago, and I don’t recall the source) that activities were restricted to the central days of the fortnight – the “energies” during the first three days (if memory serves) were considered too weak, as with the last three. So the central seven days were considered ideal for undertaking work (although I’ve forgotten the nature of the work in question – I seem to recall it was more spiritual in nature, as opposed to everyday, but such is anecdotal evidence).

Four Fortnights

I’m not sure what to call these. As four weeks makes a month, four fortnights makes one of these. This is a common division in the Tzolkin. There are 5 such periods in 260 days. In a 364-day year, there are 7. These periods weave with the months, quarters and so on, and synchronize at the end of the year.

At least the 52-day periods are equivalent to the 52-weeks of the year. As go the first 52, so goes the year. The same can be done with the first 13 days and the 13 months of the year. It’s up to us to choose how to use it. Not all these measures are necessarily useful for everyone, but the more choice we have, the better, no?

Annual Divisions

Here we go with the week, the fortnight, the month, the 52-day period and quarters.

Now all I need to do is figure out how to put together 4-day periods – there’s 91 of those in a year, but I’ll leave that for another day.

267 Days to Dec 21st 2012

Water. Water? Everywhere…

The essence of life, in essence.

I’d like to dedicate more time to his subject, but for the time being, just a few links and general musing on the subject of water. It’s an increasingly important issue, as our fresh water is treated like every other natural resource – used to create profit at the expense of those who need it (which is pretty much everybody).

Agriculture uses the most of it, and a good deal of it is mixed with cement to make concrete. The cause of development can undermine watersheds, drain wetlands and trap water in toxic concrete. The idea of “development” is falling under increased scrutiny for irresponsible practices.

Water and the Seasons

theAbysmal Calendar has been defining the seasons in terms of the amount of daylight, or at least the relative position of the Sun in the sky. From a Northern Hemispheric bias, the longest night is the winter solstice, when the Sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn. The days grow longer after that point as the sun moves towards the Equator and the Tropic of Cancer.

We often think of the amount of light as part of the season. Temperature is another important variable, and of course, water. Many equatorial regions have two seasons – the wet and the dry. Japan has five, in essence, as the end of summer is a cool rainy season there. Here in my corner of Canada, the winter brings snow (usually – this year was an odd one).

While the local seasons are defined in no small part by the water cycle and temperature, the more global seasons are determined by the relative location of the sun. Nevertheless, water is so fundamental to our survival, that we too often take it for granted – especially in Canada where we have such an abundance of fresh water.

Pollution

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Walkerton Contamination Tragedy

Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Spill

There are plenty more examples of toxic spillage, leakage, seeping, fracking, contamination, and so forth. These are just a handful off the top of my head.

The addition of chlorine and fluoride to municipal water is another curious situation. There is a great deal of controversy about this. The Canadian Government’s stance is that the levels are low enough to avoid adverse effects, and that many of the problems due to excess fluoride are due to the use of toothpaste and other substances that contain it. The most curious thing about fluoride is that it is a biproduct of the fertilizer industry. It also happens to be excessively expensive to dispose of. This is hearsay on my part, for the record.

Here are some links on fluoridation and chlorination.

Fluoridation

Government of Canada’s Stance

Health Canada’s Take

2.1 Health effects

Dental fluorosis is the most widely and frequently studied of all adverse effects of fluoride. It is the effect occurring at the lowest level of fluoride exposure in the population. Mild and very mild dental fluorosis are not considered to be adverse effects, whereas moderate dental fluorosis is found to be an adverse effect, based on its potential aesthetic concern, and is used as the endpoint of concern in this risk assessment.

Skeletal fluorosis is the most serious adverse health effect clearly associated with prolonged exposure to high levels of fluoride in drinking water. Skeletal fluorosis can occur at very high exposure levels, and has rarely been documented in Canada.

The weight of evidence from all currently available studies does not support a link between exposure to fluoride in drinking water at 1.5 mg/L and any adverse health effects, including those related to cancer, immunotoxicity, reproductive/developmental toxicity, genotoxicity and/or neurotoxicity. It also does not support a link between fluoride exposure and intelligence quotient deficit, as there are significant concerns regarding the available studies, including quality, credibility, and methodological weaknesses.

Fluoridation – a Horror Story

EPA – Drinking Water Contaminants

The Case Against Fluoride

Second Thoughts About Fluoride

Fluoride Damages Childrens’ Liver and Kidneys

Iodine Protects Against Fluoride Toxicity

Good News in Public Health

Chlorination

Health Canada’s Stance

Chlorinated Tap Water Linked to Birth Defects

Chlorine and Cancer

268 Days to Dec 21st 2012

Related articles

• Researchers explore fluoride debate (windsorstar.com)
• How Bad Is Fluoride In the Water For Long-Term Health? (alternativendhealth.wordpress.com)
• Should we add Fluoride to our water? (phinneyj.wordpress.com)
• Community Water Fluoridation Opinion (phinneyj.wordpress.com)
• Flouride accumulates in Pineal gland (thebovine.wordpress.com)
• New Jersey Threatened with Mandatory Water Fluoridation – Science and Residents Ignored (prnewswire.com)
• Halton Region sticks with fluoride (thestar.com)
• Dangers of Fluoride (cryominute.wordpress.com)
• What Do We Know About Fluoride? (theatlantic.com)

Billions and billions of degrees of Carl Sagan

the man who could make the infinite accessible.

Carl Sagan was one of my heroes growing up, who still remains one (can’t say the same for Superman). Having gone back to looking at his work, it’s amazing how much have it I’ve kept with me.

“We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.” –Carl Sagan

Sagan was notorious for his use of “billions and billions” to refer to the sheer immensity of the cosmos. The image above is a representation of the distribution of galaxies (those aren’t just stars). Billions just doesn’t cover it.

It’s this very sentiment that leads me to not suffer fools graciously (and by fools, I mean people who are in a position to know better, but would rather be proud of their ignorance). The more we learn about anything, the more the cosmos knows. In that light, do you think the cosmos is really in need of so many different experiences of “Jersey Shore”? If that isn’t a sign of the end, I shudder to think of what’s yet to come.

Here was a man who really knew his stuff, and yet instead of isolating himself among academics, and his peers, he shared his passion with us plebes – those of us who could benefit from having someone explain scientific understanding of the cosmos in a way that doesn’t require knowledge of advanced physics and mathematics. This skill is undervalued, and a rare thing indeed, especially as we become increasingly specialized. My hat (if I wore one) is off to you (which I guess is always the case).

There’s a tribute series to Carl Sagan on the Youtube, but I’ll embed the first six videos here to share. Science is meant to be a joy. If it is a chore, then you’re doing it wrong.

269 Days to Dec 21st 2012

“We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.”
Carl Sagan

Related articles

• Science Writing Prize 2012 – Barry J Gibb (wellcometrust.wordpress.com)
• Sagan and Druyan: Shared Time in the Cosmos (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
• Carl Sagan’: Future of Humanity (milkandcookies.com)
• Carl Sagan on Evolution (atheistthoughts.wordpress.com)
• On Carl Sagan, curiosity, and the lowly book (writteninc.blogspot.com)
• Carl Sagan on Charlie Rose: A Pale Blue Dot Capable of Greatness (singularityweblog.com)
• Carl Sagan’s Last Interview: Science as a Candle in the Dark (singularityweblog.com)

If you have to aks…

Timing as an intimate, internal intuition.

For this Quarter, I am committed to learning some music theory. Not just the theory, as in an interesting idea to be toyed with, but in its practical application in the playing of music. My neighbours probably won’t appreciate my slow learning curve, but eventually, they will either move, or learn to love it. Or maybe grin and bear it.

The object of my affliction:

I’ve chosen this particular instrument for a few reasons:

1. Louis Armstrong built Jazz with it
2. It looks like a blunderbuss
3. It requires a well exercised diaphram to play

I can make sound out of it, have the beginning of an embouchure, but am still working on learning the circle of fifths. I’m dedicating one week this quarter to learning a new scale. Once I have the major scales down, I’ll move on to the relative minors – or not, depending on how much practice I need before moving on.

There are a number of sites and videos to help with this, but like so much else, it takes practice to get anywhere. Trumpet Studio has a number of free resources which I have found invaluable. Especially the ultimate warmup which lists all the keys. You’re on your own for fingerings (ahem).

Also, I’ve been using Musescore, free music composition software. I’ve transcribed the score for the tenor sax, and changed it to suit the trumpet‘s range. I’ve also taken jpgs of music and entered them in. It has helped me play the pieces so I can see how the notes on the page relate to the music in my head.

Also, I have come across some free sheet music online, however, most of it is still for sale. For the free ones, I’m ever so grateful.

And it’s in B-flat which I know at least…

The purpose of this is to apply time and timing to playing music, which along with dancing is the essence of the musical experience. I’m hoping to embody the complex communication that is sound. And at some point to make noises that aren’t completely jarring and upsetting.

Also among my assortment of gear (I like collecting stuff):

Harmon mute

Silent Brass

Although the arban method is still pretty much out of reach for me. You can look through it online here. It’s pretty technical. I mean, look at this:

What in hell am I supposed to do with that? I’ll just be happy to play “charge” at the next hockey game I go to.

 

270 Days to Dec 21st 2012

Related articles

• Music Composition 101 (jeffkamp.com)
• Music Notation: Compose Masterpieces With Free Software (soundtangent.com)
• Music Theory Crash Course 1 [More Than Scales] (thesongwritingblog.wordpress.com)

Nothing to see here

271 Days to Dec 21st 2012

Gardening by the Moon

Gardening has long been in my blood, especially when I haven’t had a garden. I have lots of pots of plants on my window sills, in hopes that I’ll have a patch of ground once the weather warms up (which appears to have happened this past weekend).

So for this season, I’ve decided to plant according to the lunar phase (without paying attention to the astrological position, which some people do as well). Basically, plant above-ground plants at the New Moon, and below-ground plants at the Full Moon. The Moon influences plant growth through gravity, light and drawing up groundwater.

I’ve been using up seeds I purchased while living on the West Coast from Salt Spring Seeds and West Coast Seeds (no GMOs, non-treated and in many cases, organic). I’ve also got citrus trees (forgot to label whether they’re grapefruit, lemon, orange or tangelo), McIntosh Apples, Custard Apples and Cherries from growing from seeds I harvested from organic fruit. The citrus & custard apple are doing well. I’m still waiting on the others.

Custard Apples & Citrus

Here’s the chronicle to date:

Lunation 3

• New Moon – Lunation 3 Day -304 (equivalent to February 21st 2012). Month 2 Day 5 (on theAbysmal Calendar):

1. Planted: 1000-year tobacco, maules peppers, manzano peppers, and poblano peppers
2. Daily misting, occasional watering, singing & playing the trumpet to keep them happy. I also meditate in the room with them.
3. Waiting.

• Equinox – Lunation 3 Day -277 (equivalent to March 20th). Month 4 Day 3 (AT = Abysmal Time):

1. First tobacco sprouts (teeny tiny, but the seeds are as well, so it’s to be expected). – So for the first lunar month of planting, 3 tobacco plants have sprouted – the scores of other stuff are probably going to wait out the inevitable snowfall (all this warm weather can’t push away the usual volatile spring weather, can it?).

Out of Focus Tobacco Sprouting

272 Days to Dec 21st 2012

Quarter 1 begins

Examine the roles of the annual quarters, and how they relate to the months of the year.

The first 13 weeks of the year are done, and having tried to pay closer attention to the elapsing year, I feel I should at least take a look at how observing quarters differs from the months. Other than in duration, of course. Unlike the Gregorian Calendar, which divides itself into four quarters of 3 months each, theAbysmal calendar doesn’t equate quarters and months. They are different measures, and only coincide within the measure of the year. I have read some arguments in favour of the Gregorian over 13-month calendars because of this, however, why is it so important to have months and quarters match up? The result of theAbysmal scheme are quarters and months with regular numbers of weeks, and thus regular numbers of days. This should be a vast improvement to bookkeeping, and to the economy all around. If you pay something on a monthly basis, it’s always for 28 days. If you compare quarterly profits, it is always over the course of 91 days. This is more accurate, simply put.

Lucky Thirteen

The number 13 figures into the patterns of theAbysmal Calendar. As I examined in Endless Cycles and the End of History, shorter measures can be used to lend foresight to longer ones. For example, in the Gregorian Calendar, the 12 days of Christmas (from Christmas to Epiphany), each day is meant to represent one of the months of the upcoming year. As such, they are used to give some idea of what to expect. Such a ritual can also help one to plan the upcoming periods. With theAbysmal measure of 13, that would mean 13 days at the New Year (6 last days of one year, New Year’s Day, 6 first days of the following year), which may be used to represent the 13 weeks of the Quarters, which in turn may represent the 13 months of the year. Depends how we choose to use this tool.

The pattern lends itself to 6 days/weeks/months of preparation; planning, gathering resources, organizing people, implementing the plan, adjusting as necessary: 1 day/week/month for the event itself to take place: 6 days/weeks/months to record the results, the denouement, the rest and relaxation after the expenditure of energy, until the next period comes around. We don’t tend to give ourselves enough time to recuperate, and building it into the system would likely make us more efficient than we have been. Overworking doesn’t pay.

What’s in a Quarter?

91 days, as it turns out. Also 13 weeks. Another pattern in calendar observations (think I read it in Fractal Time), is the counting up of days. By that I mean counting one day, then two, then three, then four, and so on. It is a different way of organizing the days, and the Quarter is well suited for this as: 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13=91. A couple of sums of note: 1+2+3+4+5+6+7 =28, the number of days in a month. 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9=45, the number of days in half a quarter (with a single day between halves).

The days that fall midway in each quarter always fall on a Tuesday. They are circled in the calendar below in Months 1, 4, 8, and 11.

The four midway days occur on the Gregorian dates of February 5th, May 7th, August 6th and November 5th. If we divide the 364-day year into eight parts, using the beginning/end of each quarter as well as the midway days, the year looks like this:

 

Each quarter begins on or about one of the cardinal points, i.e. Solstices and Equinoxes. This is very similar to the Pagan Wheel of the year. The dates are off by a few days, as you can see below:

The key difference is that the periods in theAbysmal Calendar are precise measures, chunks of 45 days (which exclude the New Year’s Day, and the Four Midway days). We already celebrate these times of year as secular or religious holidays (depends where you live). Hereabouts, the Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Solstice Festivals are big in December. February sees Groundhog’s Day, March is the New Year in Iran and thereabouts, Passover, and Easter (which is varies, but is based on the Equinox). May is May Day, Mother’s Day, and Spring Fertility Festivals (and Victoria Day in Canada). The Summer Equinox is Aboriginal Day in Canada, and Father’s Day occurs in June. August has a civic holiday, which is the lamest name for any holiday ever. It requires a reboot. September doesn’t have a holiday coincident with the Equinox, although Rosh Hashana is typically around then. Then November, we have Halloween, Days of the Dead and Remembrance Day.

These aren’t perfect alignments by any means, but they are celebrations associated with the seasons, and the time of year is important. It wouldn’t be a huge stretch to shift current holidays to theAbysmal Calendar, but that’s another post, for another time. The point here is that the eight points of theAbysmal Year are equivalent to the Pagan Wheel of the Year, which proves theAbysmal’s links to natural cycles.

And living by natural cycles, in the end, is healthier. What could be better?

 

273 Days to Dec 21st 2012

Related articles

• Groundhog’s Day, Imbolc, Candlemas (theabysmal.wordpress.com)
• The Spring Hokku Calendar (hokku.wordpress.com)

End of the Quarter Report

New Year’s Resolutions, 13 weeks later.

I don’t normally make New Year’s resolutions, as I figure that if I need to improve something, start today. Plus, I generally hate January 1st as the time of the New Year, so I generally write-off the whole process. Cynical outlook aside, I figure I should at least look at what’s changed since then, to see if there has been any progress towards the healthier.

There certainly has been, although admittedly it’s incidental. Serendipity has placed many opportunities in my path, and have gratefully gobbled them up. It turns out there is a good deal of overlap, so hooray for that. Here’s some of what I’ve been working with in the past 13 weeks:

• writing a post a day. Not always easy, as I tend to repeat myself, even when I have something to say. I often don’t. 91 posts down, 273 to go. Thank you all who are bearing with me. The year promises to be very long and very short. That’s the nature of time.
• took an 8-week mindful meditation course. It put into practice what I already knew. It was invaluable. It really just anchored my attention back into my breathing, which has brought me back to my next two points:

• started playing the trumpet again. I had abandoned it, because I was unmotivated. But hell, the more I meditate, the more I breathe, the more I want to refine my breathing through a brassy horn. I can’t say I’m any good at it, but I enjoy it a great deal. My neighbours probably enjoy it less.

• Started my martial arts practice again. I think the meditation and breathing got my energy levels back up, and now I need to burn them off. That or I need to balance my meditative self by hitting things really hard. I practice Tai Chi for stretching and Muay Thai for the more technically demanding. I think I’m going to develop a hybrid: Muay Thai Chi.

• I’ve always wanted to take a native North American language, and discovered an 8-week Inuktitut class. I’ve been to two lessons already, enjoy it a great deal, although the pronunciation challenges are slightly greater than the syllabic one. I hope to visit the Canadian Arctic in the next couple of years, and this will be invaluable. I also read (in Arctic Dreams) that Inuktitut is a language better suited for talking about quantum physics than English. We’ll see. I’ve never been able to quite grasp quantum physics. And once again, breathing figures into it. Especially with Inuit Throat Singing.

So far, the quarter has ended far better than it has begun, and I’m grateful for family, friends, colleagues (I do have a day job, believe it or not), friends of friends, acquaintances and random strangers. I’ve also been spending more time singing and playing music to my plants, feeding the squirrels and crows, and appreciating the weather (even when it’s cold enough to freeze clouds down from the heavens).

I’ll revisit this post at the end of next quarter and see how the year progresses.

274 Days to Dec 21st 2012

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