violins with a jewel-shaped heart

Source: WIRED . Link below

One way to look at string theory is that everything is made of  vibrating strings/ music.

And now...what if  we found that a jewel was at the heart of it all?
  
"The amplituhedron looks like an intricate, multifaceted jewel in higher dimensions."


See:

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER A JEWEL AT THE HEART OF QUANTUM PHYSICS

An "exotic and exquisite" worship service: "I feel like a fraud, but I know that I'm not" . I'm actually just looking for my "inner human condition" and the God Particle in the City of Blinding Colliders

photo credit, Shawn Farmer

Here are some of my thoughts, pics and videos  (some by others) of  U2's " Innocence and Experience" tour  5/19/15 San Jose (second night) stop.

It's only four nights into the tour, and as Gavin Friday quipped, "It usually takes six nights for the Baby to become Achtung."

I think this time the Mojo is  already in the house, as is the Baby.
Premature, but healthy.

Also...Second nights (or third, fourth...of fifth)  by U2 in the same city are often characterized as "walking all over the first night."  (see "U2 is good, not great in San Jose"night 1) .  This  sometimes reminds me of what Mark DeRaud used to call the fourth (of our four Sunday church  services (they went from very traditional to traditional to contemporary to...uh, very contemporary): "the exotic service."   For U2, it's a bit looser (as far as nerves),  tighter (as far as music) , and sometimes that results in  more  Spiritaneous setlist moments.  Tonight was, as Tim Neufeld tweeted me below, exquisite.

Tim N  also catches  a  liturgical phenomenon that can happen with the night one vs night two: "Where the first night in Vancouver reminded me of the fallenness of our humanity, the second restored a sense of hope. "   Bono once told Rolling Stone, "They call it the rhema. It’s a hard word to translate from Greek, but it sort of means it changes in the moment you’re in. It seems to do that for me."
Edge:" It's funny how you take an old song, but it in a different part of the set, and it suddenly has a new meaning."


Sitting next to me was another Tim,  my son --a Periscope  broadcasting star who had  hundreds of viewers from all over the world!  (Check to see if his video is still viewable).

@davewainscottHH So that's who @Tim4Jesus is! A real hero to many! Glad you could go w your son. Lifelong memories and an exquisite show!

— Tim Neufeld (@timneufeld) May 20, 2015

It's impossible..and should be illegal.. to unpack a concert by U2.
(I still haven't come home from my first!)
I won't even try.
Just a few highlights this time..

I won't even go in chronological/liturgical order..

But I know which song to start with:

"Bad"..

...but where to start in commenting on this Bad 6.0 version.? 
(Note that in The Matrix,  Neo was the sixth..and final.. iteration in a series of candidates to be "The One")

As Tim Neufeld noted:

On past tours, U2 challenged crowd on political fronts. The #U2ieTour is much more about inner human condition. #surrender #youarefree #AB

— Tim Neufeld (@timneufeld) May 21, 2015

Bad, which the other night (Second night, Vancouver) had the amazing addiction-recovery altar call (see this), tonight's version (unplanned, as you can tell by the first moments..) had  this tearful "Into The Mystic" intro followed by the "This is a song of surrender..Whatever it is you want to let go of tonight, let it go ..be free!..you are being freed. ...Our music, God gave us it.."   invitation/prelude,,   (Not sure what he says at 27-30 sec mark. Anybody? "it's just dissonance"?):
 



A vintage interview:

WENNER:

 Do you occasionally lose control when you’re singing? Not get out of control, but you just get so transported into the song.

BONO:

 That’s when it’s good. When it’s good you don’t know it’s happening. It really is an extraordinary thing because it seems to require no effort. And of course the other side of it is you can bump into some aspects of your character that you’d rather not have bumped into.

WENNER:

 What are you trying to do with the audience?

BONO:

 To lose my own sense of self, self-consciousness – and theirs. It’s an amazing thing. We’re not really a rock & roll band. We’re pretending to be a rock & roll band, and sometimes we get away with it.

Sometimes a song like “Desire” or “Vertigo” will arrive, and you go, Whoa! That’s rock & roll! But what we actually do is something completely different. Our set list is designed in a kind of three-act structure, to get people out of themselves and to get ourselves out of ourselves. And to get to that place where everything feels possible and you want to call your mother, leave your wife, start a revolution or crack open the piggy bank and go on holiday for a year. link

----

Hmm..Second night; fourth service; third act..
or as Edge just said:
"There's really four different phases within the show of quite different feelings. Then we're tying it together. Making the emotional arc of it work is the real challenge."

At one point, it sounds like they were plotting a lot more moments  (technological and lyrical) throughout the songs and show  where the older Bono(or band) would talk to their younger selves, and vice versa) . Even though Bono  obviously "talked" to his younger self at one point "Song for Someone" (which took the song to a whole new level (of many) meanings,  some of the moments would be harder to catch..like these new lyrics in the "Bullet" rant:

So this boy comes up to me,
His face red like a rose on a thorn bush,
A young man with a young man's blush,
Young boy looked a lot like me.

And he's pulling the dollar bills outta my hand,
Patting me down, patting me down,
Says you have more than you need!
You got 100, you got 200, 300

And I can see those private planes,
I can see those private planes,
And you're in one of those private planes aren't you?
And he's right.

And I'm off a flight in Davos, Switzerland,
I'm in the lobby of the Belvedere Hotel,
Where a jazz-man breathes into his saxophone,
While everybody stares at their cell phone,
And in my ear the young boy groans,

Outside it's America!
Outside it's America!

[Solo]

As I step outside, snow is falling like a curtain of silence
I'm on the other side of the barricade now,
I'm on the other side of the barricade to myself, aged 19, n-n-n-n-nineteen

And I try to tell the young man,
that ideas deserve a plan,
And to build a better world,
It's gonna take every woman and man

It's gonna take you, me,
The reds and the greens,
The nows and forevers and the yet-to-bes
The "where ya going?"
The "where ya been?"
The living and the dead, and the unseen
The somebodies,
The nobodies,
The who's who,
The Gentile and the Jew,
The gays and the straights,
The sevens and the eights,
The nines and the tens,
The Dollars and the Yens,

And I feel like a fraud, but I know that I'm not,

I try to do my very


best,
with everything I've got, which is not a lot,
to not get caught,
with my pants down,
 my hands up, my hands up

Any second now,
Things are going to get rough,
So I run, I run, I run,
Into the arms, of America  link

Sherry said:

Bono’s channeling his inner hypocrite, changing the lyrics from “fighter planes” to “private planes,” shifting the focus from military interest to the Occupy Wall Street movement. “You’ve got more than you need” is part of Bono’s rap. It’s a conversation he’s having with his 19-year-old self who would see him now and condemn him, and his 55-year-old self is explaining the purpose behind it all. He’s trying to reconcile that he’s become the thing he protested all those decades ago. The reinvention of this song is outstanding. - See more at: http://www.atu2.com/news/column-off-the-record--vol-15-671.html#sthash.R51Fpw2Z.dpuf

Bono:

The core idea behind the Innocence + Experience tour is this movement from "them and us" to "there is no them, only us."

When we were younger our enemies were clearly drawn, very visible to us. They were very real, they weren't imagined. And we organized against them, whether that's with Amnesty International or anti-apartheid groups. As you get older, you start to discover that the greatest enemy you will encounter in your life is often yourself. You are the biggest obstacle in your own way. Suddenly then the landscape changes. I don't know who wrote the line, "I have met my enemy and it's partly right," but it's a great line. It's a book title. When there's no clearly defined "us" and "them," the world changes shape. It's harder to negotiate. It's really your own hypocrisy in the crosshairs. We started that journey with Achtung Baby and Zoo TV. It continues today, but what's happened recently is that I've personally been revisiting the black-and-white monochrome days, because I miss that person.

I'll give you a lyric from [the upcoming U2 album] Songs of Experience. "I was living a lie. I was calling it a compromise. I was making bad deals in front of everyone's eyes. Deals now everyone denies. I was giving evidence in the court of the hearts desire, falsifying documents, virtue thrown in the fire. Sometimes I wish that I was stupid and you were not so smart. Overcome the head will always overcome the heart." The chorus goes, "Lead me in the way I should go. I'm running out of chances to blow. That's what you told me and you should know. Lead me in the way I should be. Unravel the mystery of the heart and its defense. The morning after innocence." The song is called "The Morning After Innocence."

Then it goes, "Is that your fountain pen? Navy with a nib of gold. Could you write your name again and do anything you were told in 10 Cedarwood Road. I'm your older self, the song of experience. I've come to ask for help from your song of innocence. Lead me in the way I should go. I'm running out of chances to blow. That's what you told me and you should know."

So, the older self is coming and asking the younger one for hope. It's interesting. It's a reverse. That happens in this show. What happens in this show is the younger self harangues, harasses, the older self. That's what we were just practicing out there trying to figure out in "Bullet the Blue Sky." The guy who used to be on the barricades in black and white comes up to the guy who is on the other side of the barricades and says, "What are you doing here?" He says, "It takes everybody. It takes the blues, the greens, the me's, the you." He goes into this rant. That's the dialectic at the heart of the tour from a lyrical perspective.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/inside-u2s-innocence-spectacle-a-backstage-q-a-with-bono-and-edge-20150521#ixzz3ao7tTqMF 
|---
In  a delightful, cross-framed moment during "City Of Blinding Lights,"the boy  ("innocence" incarnate) Bono brought up on stage (as promised  earlier in the day, see video here.. start at 2 min mark), teased Bono about one of his trademarked and "experienced" grownup bad self poses.>> 


Sherry caught this:

video footage from the Higgs Boson Collider appeared to be used for “City Of Blinding Lights,” a song with overtones about heaven, with visuals of a collider trying to find the God particle - See more at: http://www.atu2.com/news/column-off-the-record--vol-15-671.html#sthash.R51Fpw2Z.dpuf

Photo: Tim N

Tell me about it.  To me, the film on the screen   during "Streets" showed creation/our current city-creation..including the Joshua Tree... with a  collider/transmitter/transporter to  New Creation/heaven/heavens..

..or something like that. (:

photo Tim N

Someone captured this, see 3:37ff...and the rock(Rock)/mountain (Mountain) at 5:32ff? Love it:

--
Some of my brief clips:

Posted by Dave Wainscott on Wednesday, May 20, 2015

U2 "End of the World"
San Jose 5/19/15..a new twist on the Jesus and Judas scene
Posted by Dave Wainscott on Wednesday, May 20, 2015

U2 "Where the Streets Have No Name" intro
5/19/15
Posted by Dave Wainscott on Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Posted by Dave Wainscott on Wednesday, May 20, 2015

U2 Cedarwood Road
Bono inside the screen, walking the road he grew up on. "Come with me, see the road I should've grown up on.."
Posted by Dave Wainscott on Wednesday, May 20, 2015

The Great Attractor

As you probably know, we are being summoned by a mysterious force/object, which is sucking/pulling us toward it at millions of miles per hour.  Have a nice day.

PS. It's the object in the top photo, not the bottom photo..

The ‘Great Attractor’ A Massive Mystery In Intergalactic Space and We’re Flying Towards It! (Video below

There’s something out there, it’s on the other side of the Milky Way, so we can’t see it, but it is SO massive that it’s pulling on every object within hundreds of millions of light years.

They call it the Great Attractor and we’re flying towards this unseen object at 14 million miles an hour.

The Great Attractor is a diffuse...continued

• Great Attractor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• cosmology - When will the Milky Way "arrive" at the Great Attractor?
• An unknown force is pulling the Milky Way and all towards it at 14 million mph
• What Is The Great Attractor? 
• "The Great Attractor" --What's "Pulling" the Massive Galaxy? 
• Voyage to the Great Attractor: Harvard PDF
• Ten of the Most Interesting Structures in the Universe

The sweet spot to avoid time travel in your space travel

"Time Travel Is Real. Here Are the People and Spacecraft Who Have Done It" BY SETH KADISH , Wired  Magazine:

To get ahead in life, spend some time on the International Space Station. Why? Well, according to the theory of relativity, astronauts on the ISS age more slowly due to the spacecraft’s high orbital speed. It’s called time dilation, and it means that when they return they’re a bit younger than they would have been—as if they’ve traveled into the future. (The effect is very small—it would take more than 100 years on the ISS to warp ahead by just one second.) But not all space travel will keep you young. Like speed, gravity also slows time, so your clock revs up as you get farther from a large mass like Earth. As a result, satellites in higher orbits age more quickly. Got your heart set on space travel but want to age at a normal, earthly pace? Good news! There’s a sweet spot, 3,174 kilometers above Earth’s surface, where the effects of increased speed and reduced gravity cancel each other out. You can hang out there as long as you like without fear of relativistic shenanigans.  link

God and Quantum Physics - Sarah McGee, PhD

Joel Green: Reframing Original Sin: A Frontier for Theology and Science

By Joel Green:

•  Reframing Original Sin: A Frontier for Theology and Science (Part 1)
• Reframing “Original Sin”: A Frontier for Theology and Science (Part 2) 

"Literary Forms/Physics Formulas": chapter of 20 of "Art and Physics" by Shlain

other chapters here

Jewel Theory: the new String Theory?

Scientists Discover a Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics:

"Physicists reported this week the discovery of a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality..." link

Polkinghorne on Trinitarian theology as Theory of Everything

Polkinghorne:

As a quantum physicist, I have been concerned with how that subject's veiled account of created reality might influence theology's understanding of God's relationship to the physical universe. Yet I have also wanted to make clear, as opportunity offered, that the central source of my own belief in God does not lie in such matters. Rather, it is to be found in my encounter with the figure of Jesus Christ, as I meet him in Scripture, in the Church and in the sacraments. For me, it is Trinitarian belief that is truly persuasive belief. Of course, that belief is much more complex than the simple recognition of the Mind of God behind the order of nature, just as modern quantum theory is more complex than Max Planck's original idea that energy comes in packets. Yet, Trinitarian belief is complex in ways that seem to me to be necessary to match the depth of experience and insight recorded in the Bible, and continued in the ongoing life of the Church.

I...make  what some of my scientific colleagues might think was an over-audacious claim, that a deeply intellectual satisfying candidate for the title of a true "Theory of Everything" is in fact provided by Trinitarian theology.

The exercise on which I... engage is somewhat similar to that which an earlier age might have been called the search for 'vestiges of the Trinity'. Of course, I am not claiming that the earth is full of entities stamped 'Made by the Holy Trinity'. God's work of creation is rather more subtle than that. What I shall claim is not that we can infer the Trinity from nature, but that there are aspects of our scientific understanding of the universe that become more deeply intelligible to us if they are viewed in a Trinitarian perspective. It seems to me that it would be perplexing for the Christian believer if no such indications could be found, but I also acknowledge that they will not prove to be of so unambiguous a kind as to force the minds of everyone necessarily into seeing things the way that I do. It is to be expected that God is neither totally hidden nor totally manifested in the works of creation.  -John Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter with Reality, pp. xiii, 61.HT Alan Bevere

"without a parable": Jesus and physics

"Without a parable, Jesus  spoke not to the multitudes" - Matthew 13

"Without a parable, modern physics speaks not to the multitudes" -C.S. Lewis
 (from the epilogue of "The Discarded Image")
----------

Found in John D. Barrow's "Between Inner Space and Outer Space," p.207

the pope of physics: Francis on "Time is greater than space"

In a section  of his  "The Joy of the Gospel" (APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION
EVANGELII GAUDIUM) called
The common good and peace in society,

Rock star Pope Francis covers four "greater than"s:

• Time is greater than space 
• Unity prevails over conflict  
• Realities are more important than ideas  
• The whole is greater than the part 

It's the time/space item I want to repost here, though do read the whole section to get the flow.
Some helpful connections between the pope's comments and Russian filmaker's  

Tarkovsky's thoughts  here.

Francis:

Time is greater than space

222. A constant tension exists between fullness and limitation. Fullness evokes the desire for complete possession, while limitation is a wall set before us. Broadly speaking, “time” has to do with fullness as an expression of the horizon which constantly opens before us, while each individual moment has to do with limitation as an expression of enclosure. People live poised between each individual moment and the greater, brighter horizon of the utopian future as the final cause which draws us to itself. Here we see a first principle for progress in building a people: time is greater than space.

223. This principle enables us to work slowly but surely, without being obsessed with immediate results. It helps us patiently to endure difficult and adverse situations, or inevitable changes in our plans. It invites us to accept the tension between fullness and limitation, and to give a priority to time. One of the faults which we occasionally observe in sociopolitical activity is that spaces and power are preferred to time and processes. Giving priority to space means madly attempting to keep everything together in the present, trying to possess all the spaces of power and of self-assertion; it is to crystallize processes and presume to hold them back. Giving priority to time means being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing spaces. Time governs spaces, illumines them and makes them links in a constantly expanding chain, with no possibility of return. What we need, then, is to give priority to actions which generate new processes in society and engage other persons and groups who can develop them to the point where they bear fruit in significant historical events. Without anxiety, but with clear convictions and tenacity.

224. Sometimes I wonder if there are people in today’s world who are really concerned about generating processes of people-building, as opposed to obtaining immediate results which yield easy, quick short-term political gains, but do not enhance human fullness. History will perhaps judge the latter with the criterion set forth by Romano Guardini: “The only measure for properly evaluating an age is to ask to what extent it fosters the development and attainment of a full and authentically meaningful human existence, in accordance with the peculiar character and the capacities of that age”.[182]

225. This criterion also applies to evangelization, which calls for attention to the bigger picture, openness to suitable processes and concern for the long run. The Lord himself, during his earthly life, often warned his disciples that there were things they could not yet understand and that they would have to await the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn 16:12-13). The parable of the weeds among the wheat (cf. Mt 13:24-30) graphically illustrates an important aspect of evangelization: the enemy can intrude upon the kingdom and sow harm, but ultimately he is defeated by the goodness of the wheat.  link

Brian Greene: Free will may be illusory

a follow-up to the "Electrons have free will" post several years ago..
Brain Greene suggests they (and we) may not:

the disordered hyperuniformity of chicken eyes

story here

Rush Limbaugh needs to study quantum physics before he says "nope" to pope

This article and video

Rush Limbaugh: Pope is preaching 'pure Marxism'

  ..reminds us that Rush (and everyone) should read:

                  The Quantum Pope

--

Responses:

• Rush Limbaugh Knows Nothing About Christianity
• The pope as Marxist: Is Limbaugh right? (CNN)

• Would Someone Just Shut That Pope Up?

  Go Home, Mr Novak

   

   

----------- 

See also: 

• "train wreck" or quantum evangelism? Pope's interview with atheist

• Is the pope conservative or liberal?"

• Sarah Palin, Lawrence O' Donnell, James Martin, and the "quantum pope" as "conscientious objector in the culture wars"

 

 

 

On (mis)understanding and (mis)undertaking the pope

Photo credit

As the great theologian  Cheech Marin once said, 

 "Listen doctor, don't misundertake me"

There is another Hispanic theologian who needs to be not misunderstood.  ("Oh, Lord..")

Pope Francis must be read prayerfully/carefully:

POPE BLASTS ABORTION AFTER DECRYING FOCUS ON RULES

Related, great article on undertaking an understanding of this simply complex pope and his situation (Maybe a little physics will help):

The Quantum Pope

And don't miss his real bombshells, which can be overlooked in the culture wars debate:

Father James Martin on the Pope’s Interview: “We Knew We Had Spiritual Dynamite” The story behind—and the real message of—the Pope's first official interview

By Rev. James Martin S.J. 

Physics as language/law and flaw of the excluded middle

When someone like Brian Clegg says..

"I am decidedly in awe of this book. It is simply the best, straightforward description of physics I have ever read."

.. .then I have already bought the book (Inventing Reality: Physics as Language by Bruce Gregory)

..even though it's out of print!
(sad, but the good news is it's a penny on Amazon_

See Clegg's review of the book here.

In a blog post: (Is there a law of the excluded middle?)

Clegg picks up Gregory's argument re: the law of the excluded middle, which of course got my attention due to my work with Paul Hiebert's FLAW of  the excluded middle.

I recommend Gregory's book highly already, and I haven't even read it  (:

(at least i didn't post an Amazon review of a book I haven't read...like many do) 

The Quantum Pope

Did the Pope really say that gay atheist priests are going to heaven if they follow him on Twitter? Perhaps modern physics can untangle this mystery.

by John Raines

Related;

Why Was Pope Francis’s Statement on Gay Priests Misrepresented?

"Bursts" video :Albert László Barabási

The Science of God - Gerald Schroeder

Watch the whole series here, or here... or below:
 Related:
Genesis:

"Understanding How the Brain Speaks Two Languages"

"Understanding How the Brain Speaks Two Languages,"  By Jeffrey Kluger

Learning to speak was the most remarkable thing you ever did. It wasn’t just the 50,000 words you had to master to..

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/23/bilingualism/#ixzz2RzkKCdWT