Notebook 20 Pg 77

notes

• Inertia Man and Hermit Boy
• Sub quarks are Dom memes
• Have a drink it makes you different
• Your mind is the modem for accessing the web of life

commentary

Inertia Man and Hermit Boy

I remember having a discussion with friends to try and come up with un-super heroes and these two came out as our un-dynamic duo.


Sub quarks are Dom memes
Obviously here I have simply blended sexuality, Quantum physics and theories of the evolutionary transmission of cultural ideas.  As you do.

The following (taken from Wiki) may be of interest to both my regular readers as to the etymology of quarks as quoted by the Physicist Murray Gell Mann

"In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork". Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark". Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of the gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark", as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork". But the book represents the dream of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau" words in "Through the Looking-Glass". From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark", in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature."

I have always found it very curious that Finnegans Wake, very probably the very first truly post-modern book should be so entangled with the Quantum world. Both have been responsible for showing that we do not live in a binary Universe; both prove our choices are far more than  yes/no, either/or and that there are many ways of looking at something, that there exists no one definitive answer only stronger or weaker degrees of probability. 
They both demolish certainty which appears to be something that so many of the world's ills are all about: 'There IS a God, There IS NOT a god. This IS the best way. Abortion IS wrong.
Certainty is certainly something most people are petrified of loosing.

Have a drink it makes you different
As a man with a long and complex relationship with alcohol (we split up for good a whilst ago  moderately amicably considering) I do think this provides a key to how it works, it does indeed change your mind-frame.

Your mind is the modem for accessing the web of life
Sometimes, not too often, but sometimes, I quite like my metaphors. This is one of them. Alas most modems are now located inside computers so less and less people know what one is.  In'it always the way?