RipRap

Scale

When I began my studies in vision (computer vision and animal vision) I learned of techniques in searching images that were based on developing a resolution pyramid. Each layer down in the pyramid contains more detail and has four times the pixels. This was an introduction to scale.

I then began looking at the universe as an exorcise in looking at things at the right scale. When one looks at very small scales, micro biology level or at the subatomic level, the universe becomes unbelievable. And when looking at the grand scale, the very macro level of the starts and star systems, again things become unbelievable. Stunning.

However on the level of the world to which we have become accustomed, things look ho-hum.

This notion in scale applies to time as well as to space. Do plants act? Maybe not on our time scale. Look at them over a period of years rather than milliseconds and they do infact move and act.

What have we missed due to our habit of scale?

Intellegence in Nature: The Second trip

Reading Jeremy Narby's "Intellegence In Nature" he questions (as do others) if plants can have intelligence. He sites cases like the ground ivy that extends across areas and when the optimal locations are found, puts down roots. This as an example of behavior of an individual that acts to optimize for a problem.

This brings up the question, "What is intelligence?"

Intellegence in Nature

In the mid eighties I worked at the University Of Rochester as  a research programmer in computer vision. One day a scientist from the medical school asked if I wanted to come over and look at working for him on the side in helping with some experiments. I went over and he took me to the lab where he had a monkey strapped into a chair. The skullcap had been partially removed. Sensors were placed into the brain and the monkey was awake and shown visual stimuli. Would I help with the experiment. I had a small child and really needed the money at the time but I did not need it that much.

I am currently reading Jeremy Narby's "Intellegence in Nature" and he is mentioning Descartes's disbelief that animals felt pain and his dissecting on them while alive. It makes me shudder and reminds me of the day in the lab.

Now, do plants feel pain?

Molecular Recognition

A connection between Molecular biology and Buddhism:

In Buddhism, especially in Dzog Chen, or Atiyoga, recognition is everything. To see ones own true nature and to recognize it, is the key to enlightenment. I have based so much on this notion of recognition. From my path to enlightenment, to handling relationships. One can not find the way through, the path, without recognizing what one perceives. It seems to be the very core of microbiology as well. At a molecular level.

"The principle of molecular recognition.  A typical cell contains a number of molecules exposed to the environment and in communication with it. These molecules act as the "eyes, ears and nose" of a cell. They contain, as part of each molecule, specific portions called RECEPTORS or BINDING SITES. Other molecules in the environment contain specific components called LIGANDS. Ligands are sections or regions of a molecule that have the characteristic of binding or attaching (docking) specifically to unique receptors on the cells. Following this attachment a message is passed to the interior of each cell involved as to the situation it has found. This information, in turn, triggers the COMMAND CENTER of each cell to carry out a series of preprogrammed responses based on the data it has received. We will discuss some of these responses throughout the course." ...more...

slow burn

When her father died
I spent some time with her,
the funeral and the wake.

She gave me his heavy
incense burner,
that holds the stick
that smolders today.

digging

Looking back into my family tree I find my microbial past. Eukaryotes evolved from Prokaryotes that formed symbiotic relationships. This is a journey in long chains. They join and break apart and interact as coopetition blazers. From here it is another dance down spirals of recombinant DNA to this human platform. What will leap off from here? I fear we are a dead end and that the bacteria will be here long after us. Long after cockroaches too.

4th rain

drizzle on the fourth of July
open window
cascade of drips through leaves
waft of incense
steak sizzle
of passing car tires
ripping rain water from asphalt
p-funk on the laptop
one nation under groove

Symbiosis

having always heard that evolution was about competition, which is true enough, I feel I have been ill-informed about the role of cooperation in evolution as well.

"The majority of all plants on earth is living in symbiosis with fungi in the mycorrhizal symbiosis. Both plants and fungi are dependent on the symbiosis. The plants get their nutrients from the fungi and in return they get their major energy source from the plant partner. The ecological importance of the mycorrhizal symbioses is obvious. ...more

Haibun - a traditional poetic form

I have been experimenting with traditional Japanese forms for quite some time. Haiku as most people know is a short poetic form typically shown in two or three lines and being less than 17 syllables.

Haibun is a form that combines prose and haiku, interspersed, such that the haiku augments but does not illustrate or paraphrase what the prose already says. This has traditionally been used for travel journals (See Basho: Journey to the interior).

for a more complete description, some samples and some pointers to resources see rays web .

To see an example of my haibun mythology see Contemporary Haibun Online.

For world class publications in print see Red Moon Press .

Looking for experts? {Jim Kacian, Bruce Ross, Ray Rasmusen}

Red Balloon

There is a red, heart shaped balloon on the hill today. It dances and bobs in the cool breeze of a clear morning on the first of July. A small balloon but a large shadow hangs over the field. Ribbons, flowers, messages from friends dapple the dried grass near the large numbers "07," for this is the hill beside the High School just over a week after graduation. There are a few people walking on the hill between the mementos, stopping to look at one or the other. They seem slow and meandering, taking time to read the messages and breath the morning in deep, to receive the imprint of the weight of the day.

 

When he was twenty one, he was away at college and woke up groggily to a phone call from his mother. He had been partying the night before and was not really ready to deal with her but there it was, his mother on the other end of the line. "…Jim….dead…. So sorry honey.." He shook his head a bit and tried to concentrate on what she was saying. "I am so so sorry honey. I know how you cared for him. He was such a good friend…." The message was starting to get through, he slumped down the wall. She was telling him that his best friend was dead.

 

At twenty one, death is never that real. It is always a distant thing, receding back to the horizon as you walk towards it. It is that black bear that you know still roams the mountains but is never really encountered. More of a rumor, an unlikely but possible moment that seems so remote as to barely hover in the dim fog at the base of the skull. "They found him in his car in the parking lot of St Francis Hospital," his mother continued. "He seems to have died from carbon-monoxide in an open air parking lot. I don't even see how it could happen."

 

It was true, Jim, his best friend in the world had died in an outside parking lot. The fumes from his Datsun B210 had drifted up through the floor boards as he smoked a joint and listened to the radio. Jim was famous for pulling off to the side of the road to listen intently if the NY Mets were playing or if the Miami Dolphins were playing. He was also known to keep the windows closed all the time. His life ended before it really began, and the shock was enormous to the community. Everybody that ever went to high school or community college with Jim showed up. The average age of people at the calling hours and funeral was way too young. And nobody knew what to do with themselves. For weeks they were lost in a haze and locked into a continual reliving of the same moment of death. This was when death became real for him, the day it transitioned from myth to reality in an instant.

 

Today, twenty six years later, his community is rocked by the deaths of five young women who graduated last week with his daughter Ellen. The five were all well known, heart of the community kinds of kids. Four were cheerleaders, one went on the tsunami relief trip to India with Ellen last year. All of them were happy and excited to have graduated and to be going on to college. Driving at night to a family cottage in the finger lakes, there was a tragic collision with a industrial truck, eighteen wheels carrying tons of paper. The SUV the girls were riding in, crashed head on with the truck, and burst into flames. The flames were high enough to completely burn through the power lines and cable television line above the incident.

 

This was the call that all parents dread. After midnight, the phone rings and you hear the police at the other end. The world stops, words travel slowly through molasses and come out muddled at the other end. We have all seen it on T.V. As young people, it is a moment in a movie, as parents, it becomes embedded in our gray matter, haunting.

 

For three days now there has been no end of it. The conversations at work and on the sidewalk with neighbors. Consoling teens who are trying to handle the grief. Constant on-the-scene coverage of students coming to the high school to find each other. There was a candle light vigil on the hill overlooking the school. Five hundred or maybe eight hundred candles under the lone voice of a saxophone, played by the jazz teacher. A bluesy goodbye, and tears. This is the moment when Ellen and her generation are discovering reality of the fleetingness of life, the conditionality of our existence.

 

This morning is the last calling hours before the funerals begin. The high school is more crowded than during the football season. The parking lot is full and has overflowed to neighboring streets. Couples, triplets, and larger groups of people are walking in Sunday best in the bright morning sun. He drives by in his car, windows open, glancing at the hill with tears in his eyes so that all he can really focus on is the one red balloon.