Top Ten Tenth Dimension Blogs - February Report

Previous lists:
. April 08 . May 08 . June 08 . July 08 . August 08
. September 08 . October 08 . November 08 . December 08 .
. Top 100 Blog Entries of 2008 . May 09 . June 09 . July 09
. August 09 . September 09 . October 09 . November 09 .
. December 09 . Top 100 Blog Entries of 2009 .
. January 10 .

Based upon number of views, here are the top blogs for the last thirty days. As always, the number in brackets is the entry's position in the previous month's report.

1. Monkeys Love Metallica (new)
2. Placebos Becoming More Effective? (new)
3. Dancing on the Timeline (new)
4. Nothing is Real (new)
5. Dark Flow (new)
6. Playing Games in Extra Dimensions (new)
7. I'm You From the Future (new)
8. Noein (new)
9. Crop Circles (new)
10. Greetings from the Grids (new)

And as of February 28th, 2010, here are the twenty-six Imagining the Tenth Dimension blog entries that have attracted the most visits of all time. Items marked in bold are new or have risen since last month.

1. Jumping Jesus (1)
2. Creativity and the Quantum Universe (2)
3. What's Around the Corner? (4)
4. Augmented Reality (3)
5. An Expanding 4D Sphere (6)
6. Just Six Things: The I Ching (8)
7. The Holographic Universe (5)
8. Slices of Reality (7)
9. Roger Ebert on Quantum Reincarnation (10)
10. Mandelbulbs (18)
11. Poll 44 - The Biocentric Universe Theory (9)
12. Polls Archive 43 - Is the Multiverse Real? (14)
13. Alien Mathematics (12)
14. Urban Garden Magazine (11)
15. Seeing Time, Feeling Colors, Tasting Light (13)
16. When's a Knot Not a Knot? (17)
17. The Quantum Solution to Time's Arrow (15)
18. Modern Shamans (16)
19. The Big Bang is an Illusion (21)
20. Beer and Miracles (23)
21. Poll 46 - Big Bang an Illusion? (24)
22. The Comedian (19)
23. Scott McCloud and the Brothers Winn (20)
24. The Shaman (22)
25. Norway's Reverse Deja Vu (new)*
26. Our Non-Local Universe (25)

Which means that this worthy submission is leaving our top 26 of all time list this month:

26. Astrotometry (26)

* It's worth noting an unusual occurrence this month - "Norway's Reverse Deja Vu" first appeared on our top 26 list in October 2009, but was bumped out last month. For some reason it has picked up steam and made it back onto the list again this month, something that hasn't happened before in the couple of years since I've been keeping track of these lists.

By the way, if you're new to this project, you might want to check out the Tenth Dimension FAQ, as it provides a road map to a lot of the discussions and different materials that have been created for this project. If you are interested in the 26 songs attached to this project, this blog shows a video for each of the songs and provides more links with lyrics and discussion. The Annotated Tenth Dimension Video provides another cornucopia of discussion topics to be connected to over at YouTube. And as always, here's a reminder that the Tenth Dimension Forum is a good place to converse with other people about these ideas.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: Holograms and Quanta

expandAR - Augmented Reality

For the last month or so we've been keeping things lighter, looking at some extra-dimensional games, a Japanese anime about the multiverse, a humorous video about time travel, and some songs of mine recorded with my friends Roberta Nichol and Bob Evans. Let's finish off this series by talking about a new Augmented Reality visual toy we've just launched here at Talking Dog Studios: "expandAR". You can try it out yourself at expandar.com.


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FToeYWCAoYk

Here's what it says on the website:

"expandAR" is a visual toy that uses face tracking and augmented reality for some hilarious and mind-altering effects. Once you've made note of the keyboard combinations for the effects you like you can call them up whenever you like. You can also play with this toy with more than one person - with practice you can play "ExpandAR Pong" and throw the effect from one face to another and back again.

Share your best expandAR photos with us! Just email your pictures to us and we'll put them in our gallery of crazy pictures made with this site. And once a month, the person who sends in our favorite picture will win a prize!

If you watch the above video for a few seconds at the 0:45 mark, you'll see an effect that's reminiscent of the video feedback effects we've used in quite a few of my video blogs. This one in particular reminds me of the effect we used in Randomness and the Missing 96 Per Cent.


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBDaZiMF8jg

The subtitle for expandAR says "Expand Your Reality". Since Imagining the Tenth Dimension is all about visualizing the hidden patterns that connect things together, this toy does seem to have some resonances with this project. There are also some effects within expandAR that temporarily alter your perception of the world around you in ways similar to the "waterfall illusion", which we discussed in Illusions and Reality.

But first and foremost, what we're looking at is an open-ended plaything, something to stimulate your creativity and let you explore the possibilities. So have fun with expandAR, and enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: Holograms and Quanta

3 Books That Could Change Your Life

You know the old question - if you knew you were going to be stranded on a desert island what three books would you like to have with you? Have you ever tried to narrow it down to just three? I would find that very very hard, there's so many books that I love.

Today I'm reminded of the time a couple of years ago when I came across a LiveJournal entry created by Violet from Liverpool, who, in trying to explain how diverse her interests are said this about the three books she likes to keep around:

normally on my desk i have copy's : # the art of war (Sun Tzu) # the prince (Machiavelli) and # imagining the ten dimensions (Rob Bryanton)

And there's this blogger from Singapore who was celebrating the arrival of their birthday wish list for these three books:

The books are The Art Of Deception by Kevin Mitnick, Imagining The Tenth Dimension by Rob Bryanton and A Brief History Of Time by Stephen Hawking. PURE AWESOMENESS!!

Hey, what can I say? I'm human and it makes me amazed and proud when people say things like this. Now. here's a very short video someone posted to Youtube a couple of days ago that tickled my ego for the same reason. The video is called "3 books that could (possibly) change your life":


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9AnpweIywk

A few weeks ago I went out on Bit Torrent to see how my book is doing there: it appears that almost 100,000 people have downloaded copies of the pdf version of my book now! Isn't that amazing? That would put me on the New York Times Best Seller list if these weren't all free downloads. I trust that there's lots of people out there who are getting some entertainment and having their minds opened to new possibilities as they look at all those downloaded copies. And just a reminder, if you'd like to purchase your own copy of the book in either hard cover or soft cover you can get it at my store, or you can download a pdf from my digital items store.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: expandAR - Augmented Reality

More Slices of Reality

Two weeks ago, in Dancing on the Timeline, we looked at some fanciful ways of imagining what our spacetime reality might look like from "outside" the tiny planck-length window of our arrow of time. And a while back, in Imagining the Omniverse: Addendum we looked at some of the other visualizations that are out there to help us imagine how the interplay between the granular nature of spacetime and extra-dimensional waveforms might result in the reality we see around us. In one of my earliest blog entries, Death?, and again in Magnets and Souls, we looked at moire patterns and a fascinating physics demonstration people like to call the "corn starch monster": two examples of what happens when one pattern and another pattern interact, and the complex, fluid, and sometimes even life-like patterns that can result as a result of constructive interference. Here's a video I came across not long ago which shows a really creative use of constructive interference:


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5xtRdLOopU

There's a series of kids' books out that use the same technique pictured in the above movie, if you watch the following video for Imagining the Omniverse: Addendum from about the 1:15 mark you'll see a demonstration of one of those books.


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MptYznkv14

More and more theories of reality are agreeing that our universe is defined by the non-continuous nature of our 4D spacetime. This is what I was talking about in Slices of Reality, here's the video for that entry again:

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nheaNclVe2Y

Holograms are created by interference patterns, as we said in The Holographic Universe, and some theories very specifically tell us that our non-continuous 4D spacetime universe is the shadow of a fifth dimensional hologram. Again, it's important to keep in mind that holograms need an interference pattern to come into view, and the 5th dimensional hologram that defines the wave function of probabilistic outcomes for our universe comes into view for us as a result of the one-planck-length-after-another nature of our spacetime. In You are the Point, I recently suggested that this non-continuous nature of our spacetime is akin to a rapidly vibrating strobe light, creating interesting patterns in ways very similar to the interactions we see with the thin black lines in the above "optical illusion" video, or with the seemingly life-like motions created by the rapid oscillations applied to a corn starch solution - they reveal the nature of underlying extra-dimensional structures.

Ernst Chladni was a German physicist and musician, who published a book in 1787 demonstrating his discovery of the nodal patterns that can become visible when fine particles such as sand are sprinkled on a vibrating metal plate. In Chladni's time, he would use a violin bow to cause his "Chladni Plate" to vibrate. In modern times this is usually done with a signal generator hooked to a speaker mounted under the plate, and the interesting figures that emerge are sometimes called "Chladni Patterns":

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wmFAwqQB0g

In 1967, Hans Jenny published a book called Cymatics: the Study of Wave Phenomena which developed Chladni's ideas much further. Keeping in mind that quantum mechanics tells us that the underlying mode for matter is that it is a wave until it's observed, Cymatics has far-reaching applications. The following two videos relate to Cymatics, plus in both of these videos our old friend the corn starch monster makes an appearance once again.


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaYvYysQvBU


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4shodbQMcmM

As I mentioned, it seems the holographic nature of our reality is being talked about more and more these days. New Scientist magazine recently published a story called "The Entropy Force: a New Direction for Gravity" which describes an exciting new approach from string theorist Erik Verlinde of the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Dr. Verlinde bases his ideas upon the information equals reality paradigm that I'm always promoting, and invokes the underlying holographic nature of our spacetime as part of a new explanation for gravity.

We'll talk about interference patterns and gravity some more next week in an entry called Holograms and Quanta.

Enjoy the journey,

Rob

PS - You should follow me on twitter here.

Next: 3 Books That Could Change Your Life

My Computer is My Friend

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtwmqNB2gyk


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZEZzqJaA9E

We've talked before about Kurzweil's Singularity, and the Transhumanist movement: both are examples of a belief system which says technology will eventually lead us to our salvation, perhaps even to immortality!

On the other hand, we all have days when computers just seem to not want to co-operate, and it would seem that trusting our futures to these obstinate beasts is a recipe for disaster. Did my computer just crash on purpose to show me who's boss?

That's the tongue-in-cheek viewpoint of this song about that love-hate relationship all of us have from time to time with technology, in a world where just about everything has some kind of a chip in it these days. Bob Evans takes the lead vocals on this foot-stomper, while the video above shows some vintage footage from a time when the computer in my cell phone would have filled an entire room, and might have been used to start World War III.

My Computer is My Friend
- words and music by Rob Bryanton (SOCAN)

Oh whenever I need something in a hurry
And whenever I need something done right now
When those deadlines have got me oh so worried
There's one thing on which I can always count

My computer -- is my friend
My computer's out to get me in the end
My computer -- is my friend
My computer's gonna get me in the end

And whenever my files have not been backed up
My computer knows to put me in my place
That's the time my hard drive's gonna pack up
My reputation's gone without a trace

My computer -- is my friend
My computer's out to get me in the end
My computer -- is my friend
My computer's gonna get me in the end

Everything takes longer than it used to
Nothing's ever simple any more
By the time I've booted up to Windows
Can't remember what I turned the thing on for

Every month I'm spendin' all my money
On more RAM, more drives, more speedy CPU's
But the faster my computer says it's runnin'
The slower my bloated software seems to move

My computer -- is my friend
My computer's out to get me in the end
My computer -- is my friend
My computer's gonna get me in the end
My computer -- is my friend
My computer's out to get me in the end
My computer -- is my friend
My computer's gonna get me in the end


So, in the last couple of weeks we've looked at music videos for Crop Circles, Forty Below, Greetings from the Grids, Gimme the News, and now My Computer is My Friend. These five songs have been a bit of a diversion from the usual fare here at this blog, I hope you enjoyed them and accept them in the "just for fun" spirit in which they were offered. Next time around, we'll return to our discussion of how reality is not continuous with More Slices of Reality.

Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton

PS - You should follow me on twitter here.

PPS - As I've said in previous entries, this music comes from a set of ten songs I performed "live-to-tape" with my friends Bob Evans and Roberta Nichol back in 1997. If you'd like to purchase high-quality mp3s it's only five dollars for the whole collection, go to the Tenth Dimension Digital Items store if you're interested. And just another reminder while you're there, check out the O is for Omniverse pdf, which we've reduced to $10 as a special for the month of February.


A direct link to this video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjR69ddBK78

Gimme the News

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-Azgc7Lf4

In my most popular blog entry of all time, Jumping Jesus, we talked about the constantly accelerating flow of information that each of us have to deal with. More recently, in entries like Monkeys Love Metallica and Placebos Becoming More Effective, we've talked about how this acceleration might be changing us. Nova Spivack calls it The Stream: and tools like the Semantic Web and Mr. Spivack's Twine are part of the ongoing efforts to provide us with tools to filter out the signal from the noise. In Connecting It All Together, I said this:

Like predictions of the end of the world, predictions that change is happening more and more quickly are really not unique to today, people have been saying such things throughout history (this is where we can cue a sound montage of parents through the ages complaining about "kids today, where do they get these crazy ideas"). This is not to say that accelerated change is not happening now, but rather to say that this has been an ongoing process of slowly accelerating growth for thousands of years which we may or may not see the culmination of within our lifetimes.

My song Gimme the News, written as a satire back in 1997, encapsulates today's 140-character Twitter world quite effectively, even though it predates that service by a decade. As the old saying goes, "the only thing that stays the same is nothing stays the same", and no matter where you are along the curve that is always more true today than it was the day before.

Gimme the News
- words and music by Rob Bryanton (SOCAN)

Gimme the news and make it real quick
Keep it simple, that's the trick
Give me a soundbyte I can call my own
And quote to my friends, show 'em I'm in the know

Gimme the news, and make it real short
Want the world's events in a two minute report
Got no time for facts that just slow me down
Already feel like I'm about to drown

In an ocean of info that I don't want to see
Got way too much input, more than I need
Everywhere I look, every place I go
It's information overload
Information overload
Information overload

Gimme the news, don't make it real deep
I've got miles to go before I sleep
Banal and superficial, that'll suit me fine
Edit it down until it fits on a sign

At the edge of the highway like a wonderful ad
That sticks in my brain, just another quick fad
A jingle to rattle round inside my head
Like "Big bomb, 200 dead
Big bomb, 200 dead
Big bomb, 200 dead"

Gimme the news
Don't give me the blues
Just gimme the news


Next: What Happens if Kurzweil's Singularity never arrives, and the Transhumanists are wrong, and Mike Judge's Idiocracy becomes a chillingly real vision of the future? We're going to look at one more Rob Bob and Roberta song from that ten-song collection next time that talks about our love-hate relationship with modern technology: My Computer is My Friend.

Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton

PS - Don't forget, this is just one of a ten-song collection of songs, if you'd like to purchase these ten songs as high-quality mp3s it's only five dollars for the whole collection, go to the Tenth Dimension Digital Items store if you're interested. And while you're there, check out the O is for Omniverse pdf, which we've reduced to $10 as a special for the month of February.

You should follow me on twitter here.

A direct link to this video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjR69ddBK78

Forty Below

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzAmOfq8dSs

Last time, in Greetings from the Grids, we talked about the supposition that growing up on the wide open expanse of the prairies might affect a person's point of view. Another of the things that is remarkable about the prairies is that it's not unusual to have periods of extreme cold in the wintertime. Have you ever experienced forty below? Fahrenheit or Celsius, doesn't matter, it just happens that the two temperature systems cross over each other at this point. There does seem to be some kind of a dividing line as you approach minus forty, it's a whole different kind of cold and it's really hard to convey just how different it is to someone who hasn't personlly experienced it. In entries like Anime Gaming and Cusps and Seeing the Big Picture 3, we've talked about how there are moments in each of our lives where important branches take place within our probability space. Without getting too melodramatic about it, every time you go out in forty below you are dealing with weather conditions that could kill you if you're not careful or unlucky, and it's not a good idea to ignore those possible cusps that are all around you when you deal with extreme weather conditions such as these.

So: other than showing you the lyrics to this song and having you watch the above video, I want to make one important point: just because it was fun to add to the visuals, I put in some shots of dogs out in the cold. The fact of the matter is, at forty below exposed flesh freezes in minutes, and much faster than that if there's any wind, so conscientious pet owners do not leave any but the most furry of their furry friends out in this bitter cold for longer than it takes them to do their business and get back inside.

Does adversity build character? Does what fails to kill you make you stronger? Or do you have to be a little bit crazy to want to live in a place where the temperature actually hits this extreme? Hard to say, could be a mixture of all three. Here's the lyrics to this song, lovingly assembled from a lifetime of observation of this intense slice of life on the prairies:

Forty Below
- words and music by Rob Bryanton (SOCAN)

When it's forty below, snow sounds like styrofoam
It squeaks beneath your boots, high and chirpy
When it's forty below, Fahrenheit and Celsius become one and the same
It's just too damn cold, everyone agrees completely on this one

When it's forty below, your gob freezes in mid-air
Makes a round little marble that rolls across a frozen snowbank
When it's forty below, you go outside grim and fierce, a warrior
Or stay huddled inside, defeated by wind and temperature

Oh, and the frost on your front window turns thick as a blanket
A fuzzy white candy coating, can't scrape it away
And dogs'll soon start walking on three legs, switching
To keep whichever foot's coldest up close to their furry little bellies

When it's forty below, sound gets brighter
A distant jet sounds like fabric endlessly tearing and tearing
When it's 40 below, your car feels like a stranger's, your wheel stiffens
Anything plastic's probably gonna shatter

When it's forty below, jumpers carry lifeblood
From one vehicle to the next, red to red, black to ground
When it's forty below,the test of your samaritan spirit comes
When a perfect stranger in a parking lot asks if you've got cables

Yeah, and out on the highway, unless you're a fool
You've got a candle and a cup and some matches
A bit of candy and a shovel, all packed away in your trunk
Insurance for some terrible day of reckoning that could come...

When it's forty below
When it's forty below
When it's forty below
When it's forty below.


I hope you enjoyed this song, which I performed "live-to-tape" with my friends Bob Evans and Roberta Nichol back in 1997. Just a reminder, this is just one of a ten-song collection of songs we performed back then, if you'd like to purchase these ten songs as high-quality mp3s it's only five dollars for the whole collection, go to the Tenth Dimension Digital Items store if you're interested. And while you're there, check out the O is for Omniverse pdf, which we've reduced to $10 as a special for the month of February.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: Gimme the News

Greetings from the Grids

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmErRRezTk0

Over the next couple of weeks we're going to be looking at other videos from this collection of songs performed by myself, Bob Evans, and Roberta Nichol, which we started looking at with my song Crop Circles. Just a reminder, these songs are available for download as a ten-song package at the Tenth Dimension Digital Items store if you're interested in owning high-quality mp3s of these recordings.

Greetings from the Grids presents a romanticized vision of the system of gravel roads found throughout the southern half of my home province of Saskatchewan. This grid system was originally laid out two miles apart north and south and one mile east and west, but not all of the roads are developed, and of course sometimes geographical irregularities like valleys or rivers keep the system from continuing uninterrupted. But nonetheless, there really are large sections of land that are, as the song says, "carved up like a checkerboard".

At the 1:12 mark in the above video, and again towards the end of the piece, I superimpose an aerial photograph of Saskatchewan over the sky. When I look at the checkerboard pattern defined by these grid roads, I start thinking about Digital Physics and how, when you look at the underlying structures of our universe, information equals reality: but hey, maybe that's just me!

Greetings from the Grids harkens back to the old prairie mythology that there's something different about people who grow up out here on the prairies. For the last six years my company Talking Dog Studios had the good fortune to be doing the sound and music for the most popular Canadian-produced scripted series of all time, Corner Gas. I've played this clip from the pilot episode before, but it ties in so nicely here that it's worth viewing again:

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Veu-Cm7aHMw

I imagine that every place on the planet has groups of people who have lived there all their lives and feel that the unique qualities of their surroundings have affected their point of view: and I'm certainly not suggesting that the prairie point of view is superior to these others, only that it might be different.

In Saskatchewan, there's lots of different geographies, but many people across Canada know us only for the wide swatch of extremely flat prairie through which the Trans-Canada Highway happens to connect us to our neighboring provinces. This opening scene of the very first episode of Corner Gas plays with some of the beliefs that have sprung up around that extraordinary flatness:

Brent: Hey Hank! This guy says Saskatchewan is flat!
Hank: How do you mean?
Brent: Topographically, I guess. Says there's nothin' to see.
Hank: There's lots to see. Nothin' to block your view.

Craig Northey's theme song for the show continues the discussion with this old prairie joke:

You can tell me that your dog ran away
Then tell me that it took three days

Does growing up on the wide-open prairies somehow change your point of view? Greetings from the Grids was written and performed in 1997, nine years before Imagining the Tenth Dimension was published. But as I've mentioned before, this way of visualizing reality was something I developed in the early 80's, so even when I'm not specifically talking about our probability space of "next possible outcomes" coming from the fifth dimension, or the relationship between the observer and the observed in the wave function of our universe, it's always been something in the back of my mind. I'm hoping that the Tenth Dimension graphics I've overlaid on the prairie scenes in the above video help to show some of those underlying connections. Here are the lyrics to the song:

Greetings from the Grids
- words and music by Rob Bryanton (SOCAN)

I come from the land of grid roads
Of endless flat prairie, carved up like a checkerboard
Every square a mile on a side, love to go out for a drive
And that's the land of grid roads

I come from the land of grid roads
Of people changed wholly by livin' on a checkerboard
The next decision you can make, is always just a mile away
I love the land of grid roads

The prairie makes you different
And those gravel grids do too
Five thousand feet away from here
You can switch to something new
Or proceed straight on forever
The choice is up to you
The prairie makes you different, yeah
It's in your point of view

And I come from the land of grid roads
Of people made holy by livin' on a checkerboard
When we look out we can see all those possibilities
That's how it is with grid roads
It keeps you hoppin', on your toes, keeps you steerin', goodness knows
You're in the land of grid roads
And that's the land of grid roads
I love the land --- of grid roads.


Another part of the prairie mythos is that our long cold winters have generated a disproportionate number of excellent musicians - not wanting to go outside when it's bitterly cold has encouraged many to stay at home and practice their instrument. Statistically speaking, I have no idea if that's really true or not. There are certainly a disproportionate number of professional hockey players from Saskatchewan when you realize that our population is only a million, but that stands to reason since so many small towns here still have hockey rinks. Next, we'll be looking at another Rob Bob and Roberta song that examines the extreme side of our winters - that scary part of the year when the temperature hits Forty Below.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

PS - As an amusing bit of synchronicity, I opened this morning's paper to read the front page news that my city has just adopted a new slogan that obviously ties into the wide open possibilities I'm talking about in the above entry. The new slogan is "Regina: Infinite Horizons". Cool!

Dancing on the Timeline

We've asked this question before - what would the 3rd dimension look like if you could observe it from outside of the limited "now" of our arrow of time perspective? Here's a trippy video that (in a way) plays with that idea. Check out "Dancing on the Timeline":

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmWljCI_4Ok

In When's a Knot Not a Knot, we looked at the following video and I made this comment:
"How would our own reality look if you could see more than just 3D? Watch this interesting video and think about how similar it is to watching a rotating hypercube."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yPkGJMizOY

In Playing Games in Extra Dimensions, we talked about a new iPhone/iPod game called Hipercubo that asks you to manipulate a hypercube (or "tesseract"). And in Hypercubes and Plato's Cave we looked at a classic animation of a rotating hypercube. Now, here's a new, better quality rotating hypercube animation put up by a techno artist calling themselves f(x), the soundtrack for this animation is a cut from their new album. The description for this animation says:

The tesseract is a four-dimensional object, and is rotating on the Y and W axes in this animation. Even though it looks like it is morphing, all the edges are the same length, and all angles are 90 degrees. (Thanks to Jason Hise for the image!)

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4BbHBBZ3hU
The youtube channel this clip comes from is Kyodo8, I'm sure you could contact them if you're interested in purchasing their f(x) music tracks.

Finally, speaking of buying music, here's the new video again for my song Crop Circles, but this version has lyrics superimposed. If you'd like to buy a high-quality mp3 of this song, as performed by Rob Bob and Roberta, it's part of a 10 song package available for download from the Tenth Dimension Digital Items Store.


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4-hYg3bTME

And while you're there, take a look at the downloadable pdf of my new book O is for Omniverse, which for the month of February is on special for $10.


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjR69ddBK78

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

PS - Thanks to my friend Frank, who suggested I go to CropCircleResearch.com to see what some of the "Crop Circles are Real" researchers have to say about the topic.

Next: Greetings from the Grids

Crop Circles

While we continue in a lighter vein with this set of entries, here's a video for a song called Crop Circles which I performed live in 1997 with my good friends Bob Evans and Roberta Nichol. I go waaaaay back with Bob and Roberta, we first played together forty years ago and have been in a large number of different bands playing different styles of music over the years. We started out playing folk music, and Crop Circles comes from a ten-song set that harkens back to the styles of music you might have heard us play at the Regina Guild of Folk Music back in the day. I wrote eight of the songs, Roberta wrote two, and the three of us took turns singing the lead vocal from song to song.


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3keLd3Gh5vM

Are some crop circles fake? No question! But I'm amazed to see comments on youtube for this song saying this is me pandering to the establishment and mainstream science, or me trying to convince people that every single crop circles is fake. Is there something at the core of the crop circle phenomenon that is real? As the lyrics to this song say, "I love a good paranoid conspiracy, alien mystery just as much as any Average Joe", and I'm willing to keep an open mind on this topic.

Sometimes a conspiracy really is a conspiracy, or a mystery is a hoax. But sometimes mysterious things (like dark matter and dark energy!) happen for which the mainstream doesn't have a good explanation. I like this song because it's got a great groove and it makes me smile, and it makes its point about how sometimes we don't know what's really going on without taking itself too seriously. My popular youtube video for my song Secret Societies also looks at such things from a deliberately over-the-top perspective, saying that absolutely everything is a conspiracy:

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Br3lpVmids

Other blog entries that have looked at how conspiracies tie into the Imagining the Tenth Dimension approach include Beer and Miracles, When's a Knot Not a Knot?, and Daily Parrying. I'll be posting a version of the video for Crop Circles with lyrics superimposed in a few days... in the meantime, here's the words if you want to sing along.

Crop Circles
- words and music by Rob Bryanton (SOCAN)

I stand before you today as a fraud
A fraud of miniscule proportion perhaps
Compared to the great frauds of the century
But a fraud nonetheless, now blessed
With newfound confirmation that
Mankind is indeed a creature who searches
Searches for deeper truth and inner meanings
And a sucker is indeed born every minute

Now being a prairie-born, prairie-raised prairie boy
I too have heard the tales
Of miraculous appearances of unexplained phenomena
Out in the middle of our golden fields
I'm talkin' 'bout crop circles, and who hasn't marveled
When the local papers break the news
Of a mystified farmer out standing in his field
Trying so hard to explain the latest

Crop circles, another mystery for the ages
Crop circles, another wonder to behold
Crop circles, history writes its pages
Now another wondrous story can be told

Now being a prairie-born, prairie-raised prairie boy
With two close personal friends
Late one night when the moon was bright
We concocted ourselves a plan
To drive way out and sneak into some farmer's field
And perpetrate a little prank
Hopin' for anonymous vicarious fame of some sort
We intended to make ourselves a few

Crop circles, another mystery for the ages
Crop circles, another wonder to behold
Crop circles, history writes its pages
Now another wondrous story can be told

You take a big piece of rope and a good long stick
And you find yourself a field
With some tire tracks that'll hide your path
As you walk out to the middle
Where one of you stands with the rope at the center
And another grabs hold and walks around
And you flatten out the wheat with the side of your stick
Make yourself three or four of them

Crop circles, another mystery for the ages
Crop circles, another wonder to behold
Crop circles, history writes its pages
Now another wondrous story can be told

Now I'm not sayin' that every single circle
They find out there's a scam
And I love a good paranoid conspiracy, alien mystery
Just as much as any Average Joe
But when I surf the web and I buy the books
And our circles are proudly displayed
Right next to all them other circles from around the world...

Well, it makes me just a little sad

Gimme some of them
Crop circles, another mystery for the ages
Crop circles, another wonder to behold
Crop circles, history writes its pages
Now another wondrous story can be told

Crop circles, another mystery for the ages
Crop circles, another wonder to behold
Crop circles, history writes its pages
Now another wondrous story can be told


If you'd like to buy the mp3s of this ten-song set, I'm selling them as a package for only $5 at the Tenth Dimension Digital Items store. And while you're there, check out the O is for Omniverse pdf, which we've reduced to $10 as a special for the month of February.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: Dancing on the Timeline

PS Here's a little bonus for you: Bob Evans is a great musician with a dry sense of humor who always makes me laugh. For more about Bob go to bobevansguitar.com, or check out his youtube channel, AcousticTonic. Here's a couple of videos from him in concert that will give you a sense of how much fun it is to see Bob perform, the first is his introduction to the song, the second is the song.


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9BCSgXlupk


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RvLfhFgK_0

PS - Don't forget, "Crop Circles" is just one of a ten-song collection, if you'd like to purchase these ten songs as high-quality mp3s it's only five dollars for the whole collection, go to the Tenth Dimension Digital Items store if you're interested. And while you're there, check out the O is for Omniverse pdf, which we've reduced to $10 as a special for the month of February.

A direct link to this video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjR69ddBK78

I'm You From the Future

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.ucbcomedy.com/videos/play/2235

Last week, in Noein, we looked at a Japanese anime series that took its plot ideas from Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics and the many branching parallel universes that result from that. Of course, this easily relates to my project and we have talked about traveling through this "probability space" as I sometimes call it from a number of perspectives.

I've been noticing a lot of TV commercials lately that show a version of this idea: a person sees themselves right there beside themselves, but in slightly different circumstances as a result of some good or bad decision they've made - just last night, for instance, I saw a Nicorettes commercial where a guy in the bar sees himself right there in the room but he's smoking: so the guy pulls out his Nicorettes and the "other" version of himself disappears. I thought I'd go out on the net and post a few of these new commercials as part of this entry, but didn't have any success finding them. I was then thinking about a much older ad that might be the grandaddy of all these, the "who are you?" "I'm you from the future, retired and living the good life because you invested your money wisely" series of commercials, which have gone on to be widely satirized. I tried to find one of those commercials and ended up with the above amusing piece from the Upright Citizen's Brigade, which I thought was fun to watch even though by now we're completely off the rails of any serious discussion!

For a more scientific exploration of these ideas, check out How to Time Travel. I also recently came across a couple of great blogs from physicist Sean Carroll: 11 Rules for Time Travelers, and in honor of the beginning of its final season this week, a discussion of the different kinds of time travel used in LOST.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob

Next: Crop Circles