Python Liberation Front

Our First Community Submitted Piece of Visual Art: from William C. Burns Jr.

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Speaking of entropy and breakage, ezboard is down for maintenance this morning (Wednesday April 28). Hopefully it will be back up by the time you read this. Anyway, send me an email at rdsteph@mac.com; or leave a message just saying hello on the

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By the way, you do *not* need to have a password to leave a message on the board, I know it asks you for one, (I can't make it stop that ;-))), but just skip that, but do enter a user name or pseudonym and leave password blank, that's as simple as I can seem to make it.

So, to summarize, please say "hello" publicly on the discussion board, privately by email, or request that a post or email be broadcast on this blog right in this space; but by all means do shout "hello" somehow...

Hello out there in radio land, now back to our regularly scheduled broadcasting....

An Open Forum, please say hello, Commentary, Discussion, Open Mike; Things Fall Apart, Entropy; End Times' Blues

Leave a message on any subject. If you want, I'll post it here on this Blog. Or, just put it in the

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Or leave me an email at rdsteph@mac.com.

Things have gotten to the point where stuff breaks on this website about at the same rate that I can fix it or add new stuff. Maybe that's a sign from above, I don't know? I hope not. But having slowly built up this little web site for some years now I wonder if I should keep on going or go in a different direction. I sure am busy at work and traveling...

It would be nice to hear from anyone who stops by. I wonder what you are thinking about. If you don't have a blog yet, or a web site, I'm willing to let you use this one ;-))). You'll have a ready made viewership, if not readership (see below).

Well, you can't do much worse than my stuff. I began writing this poem in 1971 at Depauw University in Greencastle Indiana. I came back to it a couple of years ago, and now I keep tweaking it, but its never quite right. In 1971, the world seemed to teeter on the edge of nuclear war. In a textbook of some kind, I saw a post modern picture of a painting of a stylized Pope on a throne with the most horrified face, I'll never forget it; the skeleton stood out, the hands clasped the ends of the throne arms, and the face screamed; now I can't find it, even using Google. Does anyone have any idea what painting I saw a picture of thirty some years ago? Some times I think we all feel a little like the Pope on that throne....

The poem seems strangely relevant again, with the Western World, or at least the new Rome, at war with a billion Muslims; just watch the news and you'll know what I mean. Here it is:

End Times Madness...

When quakes shall root out foundings to the core,
When bold Abora shakes with colic roar,
Then let the one in Abyssinia weep
That man so rashly lays him down to sleep.

How small a loss it were to lose a race
Of mighty mind and self assur'ed face,
Who write their songs with fingers in the sand
And like Sir Spens, go walking on the strand.

But what a pity should we lose our hope!
Questing, cursing, syllables of sorrow;

Before the solemn eyes of ag'ed Pope
Man holds the last spectacular at bay,
No more we weep; the moon is full again
Today; Eternity is then tomorrow.

...with apologies to the unknown artist of the Pope picture, to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan, W.B. Yates' The Second Coming, MacBeth's soliloquy, an anonymous early English poet's creation of Sir Spens and a whole race of men and women who have faced the horror daily, of annihilation psychic or physical, or both. I read the news today, oh boy...

This medium, the web, is a lot like a sandy beach where nymphs write their songs with fingers in the sand; nothing on the web lasts for very long. Well I don't know if this web site will lasts much longer, or should last much longer, but its officially open to (controlled) graffiti for now. Maybe it should become a Wiki???

But, in one last piece of my own doggerel, borrowed from memories of a poem I also wrote in college so many years ago, to a young lady,

A moment's quietly turned masterpiece
Stray straws together in the wind
More perfect since its destined soon to cease
More beautiful since its certain soon to end.

or something like that...

Early on, I was infatuated with young ladies. Now, I am infatuated with writing songs in the sand. I wonder if anyone will notice them? Maybe some one will write a reply? I think I'll check back here in few days and look...

Firedrop2 page_templates...and Please Contribute to the Discussion Forum (thoughts, not money ;-)))

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How Limited is the Mind of Man

It is surprising how limited the human mind is. As by far the most intelligent entity yet known, we are surprisingly limited. Think about it.

We can not even recall fully a single moment of our lives. When in an unusually good, joyful situation, we might try mightily to commit it to memory with perfection. But we can't. Never can we ever remember the exact events, moment by moment, with full and total recall of all the crucial emotions, sensory stimuli, and temporal flow of events. Rather, we simply commit to memory an approximation. This approximation will only be recalled if we recall it to mind later a few times, pondering and savoring the memories. In fact, most of our memories, if not all, are really memories of memories, rather then memories of the actual events. What really gives our memories meaning is the connections our minds make between and among various memories, concepts, images and ideas.

We also can hold only a limited number of concepts in mind at one time. Maybe seven, maybe more; but the human mind cannot keep a whole book in mind at once, including all the details. We are marvelous at data compression; but we lack a lot in mental equipment.

In fact, we can imagine intelligences much greater than our own. We would like to be able to have total photographic and encyclopedic recall of limitless amounts of data and thoughts. We would like to be able to perform much more complex mental manipulations in our heads. But we can't

The fact that we can imagine intelligences so much greater than our own may be our best quality. For we can help to create them.

To imagine that the human species as it now stands is the last and furthermost outpost on the evolutionary development of intelligence, heart, and soul is impossible. We are a way station, and we stand at the crossroads.

I strongly suspect that, for a long , long time, the future evolution of intelligence on earth and its environs will involve some combination of our own biologically based minds, in intimate symbiosis with computing machinery. To think that computing machinery can, all by its self, quickly duplicate the heart of man, the soul, the emotions, the love, the longings, is I suspect impossible. So I hypothesize an evolving society of humans in concert with "artificial intelligence", but merged into networks which we can not at this time anticipate.

In the longer run, who knows what form mind may take? We don't know. But it will continue to evolve. As it does, let us remember where we came from, our roots, our raising. There is much to cherish in our seemingly poor old human heritage.

An Open Ended Universe, or, God's Free Will Equals the Potential for Chaos

The future is open ended, unknown and unwritten.

God has free will. With God all things ar e possible.

What does this mean? It means that God does not constrain the universe. Not only does God have free will, but we have free will also. The universe has free will.

So we are helping to write the future of the universe, because we are part of the universe.

This is scary I suppose. The ending to the play is not written. We don't even know if it will remain a play. Good versus evil matters. Our choices matter. God will be what He will be...

Does this mean that th e universe is not bound by the will of God? No. God's will underlies the whole universe. Looked at from a temporal point of view (which is only one of an infinity of possible points of view), God created the universe in a big bang and wrote his Will into the script, into the underlying quantum field equations at the moment of the big bang. So, God's very Will extends its effects to all possible points in time and space, through the underlying quantum field equations. But God does not constrain the thinkin g people of the universe, nor the universe itself, through unnatural means. Unnatural means would be to take away the free will of people and the universe.

God will be what He will be...and we can't know the future. But we can help write it. And we can have faith that the future will be in accordance with the will of God, and that His presence is felt everywhere at all times.

So we must live our lives as if God does not exist, as if our actions, thoughts, and choices make all the differe nce in the universe. But yet we must live our lives with Faith that God does exist and His will be done.

Such is an apsect of the infinite Mystery of God.