Blessed with a mother who was an astronomer, I was introduced to the marvellous concept of infinity when very young. ‘Somewhere, there’s someone just like you saying everything you say up to this point in your life, but their next word will be different’, she imagined, and I imagined along with her, determined to trick those mischievous doppelgangers by choosing a random next word. The illusion of self is such that one can escape those paradoxes. Possessed of an eidetic memory and feyness inherited from my scottish grandmothers, I could relate with exactitude future events to an extent which alarmed my scientist parents.
Whilst immersed in a mosaic of Douglas Hofstader and Martin Gardner’s fascinating games in Scientific American, fractals and the mathematical art of Escher, I loved to contemplate the impossible, which felt imminently possible through acts of creation – music, poetry, literature, art and maths – and existential dreams. I longed to discover how inexplicable events occurring to me could be explained through the existence of parallel universes, where future events somehow leaked through to me. Altered states seemed mundane – where was the explanation for my very real experiences?
When brane theory emerged, I was ecstatic – here at last might be an answer to the peculiar prophecies which infest my existence. For the next challenge is how to vacate to another, better universe, where human rights and the environment are respected, where capitalism is regarded as a wrong turn and imperialism, exploitation and racism are regarded with the contempt they deserve and have been eradicated. Does one have to displace a gestalt me to do it? or can I rescue all my associated ‘selves’? If all universes are infinitely close to each other, the jump to my/our preferred destination might be infinitely close.
Here’s the poem I wrote for my mother.
The Physicist’s Dream
Elusive electron, quantum leap,
For I have only six hours to sleep,
Be improbable as quick as you can –
To the outer shell and back again.
Let’s fly on a fabulous photon trip,
To the edge of this universe we’ll joyfully slip,
On a heady black hole chase
Through the spires of hyper-space.
Tachyon, tachon, take me away
On a cosmic caravanserai,
And if we leave before the dawn,
We’ll be home by yesterday’s morn.
Related Links
Parallel Universes BBC transcript
Palestine / Israel Links
Dame Kiri asked to boycott Israel
Tunisia condemns Israeli calls for Jews to emigrate : denounces ‘ill-disposed’ call, which it warns amount to ‘meddling’ in Tunisia’s domestic affairs.
Kiri Te Kanawa asked to campaign against Israeli apartheid
UK: Festival rejects grant amid threats from anti-Israel groups
1 Apr, MELBOURNE: ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK – Boycott Jericho Action
Another intensive bout of genocide against Palestinians coming up? Israel eases steps to revoke citizenship
‘Quartet ‘parameters’ must address our needs’
Israel threatens to take action if UN recognizes Palestinian statehood
The single demand that can unite the Palestinian people
Gaza health ministry devises ‘emergency plan’ to counter Israeli provocations
10 days after Itamar murders, 100 residents of neighboring Awarta remain in jail. 60 arrested last night
Poll: Nearly 50% of Hispanic Americans believe U.S. too supportive of Israel
Strangely, the press release announcing the survey made no mention of appraising the existence of anti-Hispanic sentiment in the Jewish community. But 54% of American Jews surveyed reported that they support new anti-immigration laws passed in the U.S. state of Arizona, which are widely considered to be anti-Hispanic in nature.
Illegal Arrests by Israeli Army in South Hebron Hills
David Cronin: Israeli Apartheid & Beyond.
Rogue State: Israeli Violations of U.N. Security Council Resolutions
How the 2008/09 Gaza “war” should’ve happened
28 March ’11: B’Tselem Announces Formation of Public Council of Prominent Figures from Israeli Public, Intellectual, and Cultural Life :
A struggle is being waged in Israeli society over commitment to human dignity – whether it should be to the dignity of every person or to the dignity of Jews alone. In this struggle, it is imperative to stand with those who protect human dignity as a universal value.
Beit Ommar blockaded after settler attacks : The apartheid entity outsources its terror and land theft programme to its illegal ziocolonists.
McGill should cut ties with the Hebrew University : ‘The University itself has expanded onto occupied land in East Jerusalem and provided scholarships for those who participated in Operation Defensive Shield during the Second Intifada in 2002. The University also removed South African judge Richard Goldstone as an honorary member of its Board of Governors in 2010 after the release of his UN report, which found the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in violation of international law. In a direct tie with the Israel Defence Force, the Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus includes a military base on its land.’
Haneen Zoabi : “Any racist law will succeed within this Zionist and right-wing Knesset. Any law which any fool or any crazy or any hysterical and racist person could imagine, anything, he can pass it within this racist Knesset’.
Homes destroyed by Israeli Army in Amnyir, South Hebron Hills
More citizens of Awarta arrested in night raid
Seven Injured, 12 Huts Destroyed as Troops Attack Hebron Hills Village
The ‘Judaization’ of Palestine – Occupation, Theft and Racism Re-defined! – it’s apartheid!
IOF assaults six senior citizens during demolitions east of Yatta, raids Gaza
Israeli parliament passes citizenship/loyalty law
Interview: Mapping the disappearance of a nation
Palestinian ‘abducted’ in Ukraine due in Israel court
ATLAS OF THE CONFLICT : Israel – Palestine
Israel passes law revoking citizenship for spying : Lieberman: “Without loyalty, there can be no citizenship.” I have news for you, ziofascist. When government doesn’t serve the people, there is tyranny.
Libya Links
Obama Strongly Defends US Military Action in Libya – well he would, wouldn’t he, with an election coming on.
Tariq Ali : Libya is another case of selective vigilantism by the west
Iraq Links
The Secret Behind the Sanctions: How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq’s Water Supply
Papua New Guinea Links
The Observatory: Indonesia: Brutal attack against journalist Banjir Ambarita
Australia Links
Andrew Bolt offended by lawyer who linked Nazi race laws to his column
The extraordinary assault on Andrew Bolt
Bolt’s articles, Merkel suggested, could lead to genocide. Possibly Merkel didn’t mean genocide in the accurate sense of the term but in the more contemporary sense in which its original connotation of mass murder has been replaced with other, more postmodern forms such as cultural destruction, which has debauched the proper, devastating meaning of the word. But Merkel’s Holocaust reference seemed to suggest he was pretty directly linking Bolt to mass murder.
Andrew Bolt attacks ‘false, offensive’ claims
I will defend to the death Bolt’s right to wallow in the mire
Andrew Bolt on trial: ‘everyone makes mistakes’
After an extended back and forth, Bolt conceded his articles had caused offense to Behrendt: ”If you want me to concede that these articles would offend Ms Behrendt, then I will concede that.” …
.
The court also heard Bolt’s postmodern take on the idea of race, despite his suggestions in one article that the successful light-skinned Aborgines had chafed with “racial reality”.
“I have problems with the notion of race in that I don’t know that there’s much beyond a human race. I just think it’s a very fluid concept, it means different things to different people,” the Herald Sun associate editor opined.
“The notion of race is difficult and I find it uncomfortable; race was one this drop of blood thing and quadroons and octoroons and all these things that I’ve been accused of saying.” He said he found the concept of race “yuck”.
…
According to Bolt, “the central concern” of the four articles at the centre of the case was not a denigration of his subjects but a broader issue with “the stressing of race in terms of identity but also of positions of a kind that tends to stress what divides us rather than what unites us as human beings”. ”They hold positions on the public platform or race-based positions, so there are consequences to that … [and that] makes it more a matter of the public interest,” he said.
The Herald Sun scribe would prefer some self-identified Aborigines focus more on their commonalities with others. In one of the articles, Bolt said sartist Bindi Cole has a “distressingly white face”.
NT intervention violates human rights: UN
UN draft UPR recommendations to Australia [pdf] See 86.23=86.26 re racial discrimination. Also see Australia’s voluntary commitments at the end: 88.
88. The delegation took the opportunity to announce a number of new commitments from the Australian Government, including funding for the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Asia Pacific Forum, the establishment of a full-time Race Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission, a commitment to tabling in Parliament concluding observations from treaty bodies and UPR recommendations, and instituting a systematic process for review of Australia’s reservations to human rights treaties.
Know your rights: Racial discrimination and vilification
What is genocide?: Don’t call it ethnic cleansing
Australia PM urged to meet indigenous people
NT elders condemn intervention
Police break Aboriginal picket line
Growing up