Andrew MacLaren-Scott's Blog, page 58

Possibly my favourite photo

Heading back, hopefully (6,3,5)

1 January 2016

7,391,791,093 of us at 11:51, more than ever before, and more, and more...

31 December 2015

An estimated 7,391,613,035 people in this world today, at 17.07 UTC, then 7,391,613,565 at 17.09; with at least four being born each second and about two dying each second. So hello, hello, goodbye, hello, hello, goodbye...

Where will it all end, I wonder, as 2015 closes and the water keeps flowing under our bridge.

The young ones are laughing at me...

... just because sitting holding the camera high above and behind my head to get them all in shot seemed less bother than standing up.

Crieff

Adrig decides to decide

Edrig looked at Adrig sitting opposite him in the rather posh saloon bar and admired his elder colleague's fine light grey suit and purple open-neck shirt. Adrig's hair had been cut to about an inch and slicked back smooth, giving him an air of aged refinement. Edrig, quite similarly attired and also with what hair he had cut back, considered how far they had come since, together with Macrig, they had developed their business of simple machinery that to the denizens of 717 would seem like magic. Simple machinery that could weave notes and coins from the garbage they collected from many businesses in their van. Not genuine notes and coins, of course, but so perfectly passable that none had ever been detected, thus far. And the good people of 717 actually paid them to collect the raw materials too!

"Fraudsters," Edrig said, cradling his beer glass in his hand. "Fraudulent counterfeiters and crooks. Baddies. Criminals..."

"Huh?" said Adrig.

"That's what we have become," said Edrig. "Crooks, criminals, thieves."

"Do we do any harm, my boy?"

"That's debatable," Edrig replied.

"Do we hurt anybody?"

"No, we don't hurt anybody."

"Well drink up then," Adrig commanded, "and buy me another one."

"You've had enough."

"I know I have. That is why I want another one."

"Hah! You never change."

And Adrig shrugged a little and smiled at that, while Edrig stood up and walked towards the bar, pulling out his wallet stuffed full of mostly fake cash.

When Edrig returned with the beers Adrig looked across at him and said, "That's it. I have decided."

"Decided what?" Edrig asked.

"Decided what my decision is."

"About what?"

"About my plan."

"You have a plan?" Edrig asked, with a note of concern in his voice.

"I have a plan," said Adrig.

"Uh oh," was Edrig's only response.

(The first phase of our superior beings' adventures on their Sample 717 - your home - can be found in print and for e-reader by clicking here).

Under the dome

Adrig assesses

Adrig sighed and began to pontificate ponderously but, he felt, profoundly, in response to Edrig’s rather simple question: “Does everything happen for a reason? Ah… The big question my lad. Is everything determined by what comes before it? We acknowledge that events have causes, and for everything not to be entirely predetermined then a single event - a cause - would need to be able to lead to variable effects, or some effects would need to arise at random, or be willed by our own freedom, if it exists. We think we can find fate in many places, in the physics and chemistry and biology of events that must inevitably result from other events. But can we find chance anywhere? Real chance? Or real freedom - the ability to make something happen that was not inevitably going to happen anyway? And does fate really exist in any case? Is anything ever truly and completely determined? Our theory of quantumnyfiction tells us that all we can ever predict are probabilities, denying absolute fate, but are outcomes actually tightly defined in ways we do not know? Well, we do not know. Ha! So we don’t know if anything is determined, or if everything is determined, or if only some things are determined, or if we are truly free to change anything or if we are not. It is a pickle. A pickle that is hurting my head. I think I will seek out some of 717’s fine beer, regardless of whether or not I am truly free to decide to do so.” And Edrig, by means of a high pitched squeak (for they were conversing in Adrig and Edrig speak), agreed that beer was a fine idea. And he decided to decide what to suggest that he and his old accomplice should do next, but of course he couldn't decide if he really had the power to decide or not. But anyway, they drank beer. And as we know, Adrig and Edrig drinking beer was not always, is not always, nor forever will be always, inevitably a good idea...

(The first phase of our superior beings' adventures on their Sample 717 - your home - can, of course, be found in print and for e-reader by clicking here, but much more has happened since and is happening right now, as I am allowed to reveal, but slowly).

22 December 2015

“There is only one consciousness in this room,” said the oddball philosopher physicist as he addressed the packed hall, and suddenly I felt queasy, and also very alone. Again. It was as if myself was addressing myself, which perhaps I was, and all my youthful madnesses recurred in that moment in my aged mind. But how aged? Sixty years? Or billions of years? Am I really everything? Or at least a little part of it? Are we all? Am I the universe? Are we all? Are we one? And I recalled yet again the epiphanic moment when I had gazed with a manic and drug-induced grin into the eyes of my closest friend and realised that I was looking into my own eyes, for he was I and I was him, it seemed. We are the rising foam on the conscious sea, I thought again, after all those years, as the speaker continued with his hypothesizing. Bubbles rising briefly from the foaming deep. And I felt ill. But I recovered, literally, as I returned to “I”. I snapped back into being the individual, the one, the particle of thought that bursts from the field of universal consciousness, perhaps. The I. The me. The we. The all and everything of the conscious sea.