21.4.10

Building A Mystery


"Those in the know, Know;
...to everybody else it's just a stack of hay!"--My Mother

I know, I know, getting through A Page In The Life must seem like one must have their 'vorpal sword' ever at the ready, but there is more to language and meaning and interpretation here than synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. A vorpal sword is a weapon used to slay the Jabberwocky and it surprised me that it recently made the Times Crossword puzzle a couple of days ago which brought to my attention another poem from Alice In Wonderland that was a spoof of the poem Speak Gently by American poet David Bates, the last two stanzas follow:



Speak gently! -- He who gave his life
To bend man's stubborn will,
When elements were in fierce strife,
Said to them, 'Peace, be still.'

' Speak gently! -- 't is a little thing
Dropped in the heart's deep well;
The good, the joy, which it may bring,
Eternity shall tell.

In some parts of the world, and I still think there are some parts of the world, the word 'Um', which can sound like 'Im' depending on one's accent, means 'Mother'. And if something has the attribute of being the 'mother of a thing' it means that it is the quintessence of the thing. Keeping this in mind the word 'im.possible' takes on a whole new meaning, and something that conveys no possibility whatsoever comes to mean 'the mother of all that is possible'---endless possibilities.
During the opening scene of The Bee Movie, Jerry Sienfeld's voiceover shares with the viewing audience that science says it is impossible for a bumblebee to fly based on the laws of aerodynamics, but the bee doesn't know that and it flies anyway. According to Wikipedia, this common misconception that bees "violate aerodynamic theory" traces its roots back to a 1934 French book Le Vol de Insectes by M. Magnan wherein he concluded that according to his application of equations for air resistance to the flight of the bumblebee, their flight could not be explained by fixed-wing calculations and that "One shouldn't be surprised that the results of the calculations don't square with reality".

But in fact this merely confirmed that bees do not engage in fixed-wing flight, and that their flight is explained by other mechanics, such as vortices and non-linear effects caused by the rotational rapid beating of bees' (and other insects' ) wings that are a vital source of lift. The vortices allow the bees to borrow energy from the swirls/vortices that form around their wings during flight.

It turns out that bees rotate their wings before starting the return stroke, and the wings are lifted by the eddies of air created on the downstroke and this high frequency oscillation of their wings means that many hundreds of vortices are shed every second to form symmetric vortex street patterns. Vortices inherently create drag and bees can recapture some of this energy and use it to improve speed and maneuverability.

Aerodynamics is simply a specialized study of general fluid dynamics, and on earth the most common fluids under flow are water and wind. Hydrodynamics explains water's action and the Aeolian processes describes wind's activity; more specifically, the winds' ability to shape the surface of the Earth and other planets. The wind erodes, transports, and deposits materials most effectively in arid environments such as deserts and in areas with sparse vegetation and a large supply of unconsolidated sediments. While water is a much more powerful eroding force than wind these types of aeolian landscapes are greatly influenced by the aeolian process and are ever changing and shifting with the wind; unless one can get the wind to 'be still'.

Wind blowing across the desert makes for shifting sand while wind blowing across a string makes music. The Aeolian harp is driven by the von Karman vortex street effect since the motion of the wind across a string causes periodic vortices downstream that cause the string to vibrate. The sounds from the Aeolian harp are random depending on how the wind blows.

In music theory, the Aeolian mode is the sixth mode of the major scale and has the formula 1, 2, ♭3, 4, 5, ♭6, ♭7; basically, five whole steps and two half steps. Led Zeppelin's Achilles Last Stand is arguably one of the finest contemporary examples of this classical music mode.

But our purpose here is not to harp on about aerodynamics, vortex streets, or aelonian music modes; eeeventually, as you may have come to expect, it all ties into what is really on my mind, and that is while many things may at first appear to be random there is no escaping that the apparent randomness may in fact be a ruse to disguise some very careful planning by an as yet Nameless One (let's call Him 'God'). {And Dear God, I know the fact that I am writing this means that I was forced into having to make a decision that Solomon himself could not adjudicate, but what the hay-- I will just keep on this track until I hear otherwise...}

قَالَ رَبِّ اغْفِرْ لِي وَهَبْ لِي مُلْكًا لَّا يَنبَغِي لِأَحَدٍ مِّنْ بَعْدِي إِنَّكَ أَنتَ الْوَهَّابُ 38:35
فَسَخَّرْنَا لَهُ الرِّيحَ تَجْرِي بِأَمْرِهِ رُخَاء حَيْثُ أَصَابَ 38:36

38:35 (Solomon) prayed: "My Lord, forgive me and grant me a Kingdom (Dominion) that will suit none other after me; for You are the Grantor of Bounties.
38:36 Consequently, We Subjected the Wind to flow gently at his (Solomon's) behest wherever he willed.

Controlling the Wind turns out to be quite a powerful force since with the proper guidance it can literally change the landscape; and the Quran depicts as much. Choosing to open with Chapters 25 and 42 and then follow with Chapters 47, 51, 56, 60 and 69 all in a row and then applying the method developed in an earlier post, A String, A Ring, A Modulos Thing, but proceeding by tens (decans) rather than singly, a similar table was established as the one for clock math in A String, A Ring, A Modulos Thing.

Surface charts and Line charts were drawn using Excel by choosing the parameters SModC, CModS, SModC/C and CModS/C in chapter order based on the decans in each chapter; 10, 20, 30..etc, depending on how many verses were in each of the selected chapters.

The data points used are the same for each chart, but the rotations for the first and third charts are x= 35 deg; y= 15 deg, z=0, perspective =5 deg; and for the second and fourth charts the rotations are x=140 deg; y= 15 deg, z=0 and perspective =15 deg.

Interpretation varies depending on the rendering, but the two surface charts resemble encampments and American Southwest landscapes (similar to the ones depicted in Eyvind Earle's lithographs) and the two line charts are remeniscent of buildings and pyramids, respectively.














And to make a long story short, this method was pursued for the first 20 chapters and the data was taken in sets of 19 until Something went Flying Off The Page.




---among others.
The Cummulative Summary charts for that particular excercise appear below as a line chart (music to my ears), Radar chart (see low order projective plane, affine transform) with the x-y axes switched (where have I seen that before?), and a Radar plot which looks like a dipiction of the 'All Seeing' Magic Eye (Iris).

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The results segregated in groups of 19 without rotation:












===========Alright, Who's The Wise Guy? ...


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