A Card Carrying Atheist

To be a card carrying Atheist, you'll first need to acquire a felt tip pen, some scissors, and a piece of cardboard. Write anything you like on the card, but it should somehow refer to the topic of being an Atheist.

Late reflections on god after considering ones precarious mortality (it's only precarious when you think about it), lead me to conclude that most (but not all) memory depends on physical matter, such as the juxtaposition of objects or string of events inside our brain, matched with something similar on the outside.

I'm saying "not all" memory is recorded that way because I occasionally have remembered things that hadn't yet happened. As a teenager, my mom sold tickets at the Senator Theater in Chico. She told me several times that when watching old movies she knew what was going to happen next, probably, she said, because she'd seen it years before. I'm not too sure that's always the case because I sometimes recognize some piece of a movie plot even when I haven't seen the movie (40 yr car gypsy w/ no computer or access). It might be some kind of deja-vu but other times I've definitely remembered the sequence of having the information and wondering what it was about, sometimes years before the event occurred. I further doubt that I'm the only person who does that.

The point of this is whether thinking exists without physical support. Some say that thought creates the world. Well yes it does in a way, I imagine something before I draw it out before I start to build it, but that's part of a feedback loop that starts with having a physical agency first, not through thought before the agency.

If thought could realize physical stuff before agency, I'd be surrounded by hot babes. But duh! Nope it's something else.

But to continue about thinking w/ no physical reference: There's a patriarchal god in heaven and then there's hot babes on earth. Medieval monks said god existed before hot babes, but I doubt that's true. It's more like an entirely cerebral statement of tribal status quo among a bunch of guys that aren't allowed to act when they're horney. Their accommodation and survival depends on avoiding SIN. The brother superior says it'll be like that when they're dead (eternal bliss) but only if they confess regularly & don't get excommunicated (booted out of the church). What's the point of that? Eternal bliss is 'no thinking' which might be accessible through other means than the church (cough, lots of drugs), but scriptures don't talk about it.

My conclusion is that without hot babes, thinking evaporates by itself. We need a physical stimulus to form imagination. This article says memories are made (Nature magazine) by the action of repairing DNA, a physical thing.

OK now that the plausibility is sort of established, I need to know how I can have a memory of something before it happens. Maybe a wormhole in the Akashic record(?) but that sounds like bull, so how about some kind of quantum entanglement where the same proteins entanglement extends through time, whatever happens takes place in more than one time/place. OK, that sounds like bull too but it's what I have for now. If you can do better, please write it in the comments. :)

Update, next day:

Quantum Weirdness Now a Matter of Time (QuantaMagazine)

"... These correlations seriously mess with our intuitions about time and space. Not only can two events be correlated, linking the earlier one to the later one, but two events can become correlated such that it becomes impossible to say which is earlier and which is later."

The authors are trying to entangle a secure message that cant be read before a certain date, but a side effect seems to be that an entangled temporal event can happen at a different time. In my case though, one is the event, the other is a perception of the event in a dream. I don't know what's actually happening but the pieces seem to go in the right direction.

About Witches in Society

There are stories about people riding on broomsticks and casting spells that have since been discredited in this age of objectivity where, as more people agree, the more valid it sometimes becomes. That's a hard point to argue against because you're bucking public opinion, when you might have objective evidence that they're all wrong, like this. Then it's your side against the non believers, a war of faiths, complicated by intolerance and the perception of intolerance.

Objectively speaking, the term "witch" has become a derogatory way of describing the result of an apparently universal human tendency to get wasted drunk or stoned and then try to convince straight people that the hallucinations are real, while trying to avoid responsibility for violating social courtesy.

Before the Middle Ages that term didn't have the same meaning. In fact Norsemen would sometimes prefer to kidnap witches. Why? Because in Ireland they were brewers and curers. The trend was widespread enough that rumor had it that most women in Ireland were witches, and they really were a positive addition to beer drinking communities in Norway.

In this reguard, the Vikings were enlightened and tolerant of people with differing opinions and background. Or maybe they just didn't care about things that couldn't be turned into wealth.

Irish witches used cauldrons, they also used a kind of watertight stone trough, probably for fermenting or steeping ingredients. The cauldrons are seldom found but the stone troughs are all over Northern Europe, especially Ireland, probably because they're not portable. Their number gives an idea of how widespread the practice was. DNA tested residue from the troughs indicate a wide selection of plants, some of which had medicinal properties, and some were (probably) for flavor.

Later, during the witch trials, the solution was mandated by the church and state to control the social effects of popular drug "abuse", much the same extreme way as Reagan, and Duterte handled it, when it began to infringe on the official version of reality.

Not that the Official version of reality is a bad thing, It helps people get along and settles disputes (unless it causes a war). There was an American Indian culture (in Ohio?) around the 12th century that some say apparently fell apart at the same time as (because of) their state sanctioned (over)use of Bufotine, a narcotic derivative of some species of toad skins that causes hallucination. The chiefs used it and stopped caring about the people.

Beer hasn't always been made with Hops and Barley. Sometimes poisonous plants like monkshood and henbane were added for alchemical or apothecary properties. Without FDA inspectors, toe of toad & eye of newt could likely have had regionally recognized pharmaceutical properties, though their use in Macbeth was recognizable for the implied innuendo by association with stupid, greedy and ignorant creatures. Vikings intentionally took Henbane concoctions to make them more fierce and immune to pain. Vikings also imported pharmacology from other countries too. Medicine has always been a big trade item. The legal definition of Rum, Pepper, and Cocaine changes by region and government, for example Portugal and Singapore promote opposite solutions to subjectivity: Portugal makes all drug use legal with social support to re-direct drug users toward objectivity. While Singapore gives the death penalty for the same thing (change or die druggie, not the state's responsibility).

In Andean countries there is a drink called Chicha made from fermented corn. It's a lot like corn mash used for moonshine but is never distilled and has to be consumed within a few days because it's said to be poisonous if it spoils. It's traditionally made in big round 15 (+/-) gallon pots (like big cauldrons). Which are ordered several weeks ahead of some occasion, party, or for Indian bars called Chicharias. By coincidence (maybe) a skeleton was found in a Viking cemetery in Norway with six vertebra in his neck. People usually have seven vertebra, except in the high Andes where six is a local (and defining) genetic trait. Not saying that guy was kidnapped from South America in the 10th century to make hooch in Norway, but he was. The tradition of getting whacked with your friends goes way back, still the same problem. Try to be objective.

Wish I could write about weird stuff as clearly as this guy:
Shooting Down Souls (good luck with that) Some paradoxical thoughts on the UFO phenomenon from a historian of religions.

From my position I suppose better writing is about motivation (that means it's your fault). In 23 yrs I've received 10 comments that weren't spam, but the blog still averages around 200 hits /mo., Some of the hit scores from the earlier posts were either inflated at the time or deleted later. At least before 2010, they were higher than it now shows. So maybe 300+ /mo? I guess I could get other email addresses to comment on myself (every serious blog does it), so I could legitimize whatever opinion I'm selling.

We're all bored. So, what's on your mind? Seen any weird stuff lately?

Here in the woods things are pretty dull, been rainninng a lot. Except hey, I recieved positive results for bowl cancer, that's always exciting! Mortality gets real. Stay tuned for the hospital report (whenever they get around to it).

Terminal stage Junk

In 50 yrs there'll be 9 billion people on earth (or something like that). They'll all be loaded up w/ precious socially relatable representations of their ego (online junk). A few years later the population will start to drop and capitalism will have to compete for our attention w/ it's own cheap or free detritus, we'll not only have our own load of valuable crap, but there'll be crap inflation too and (with landfills full) no where to get rid of it. The only thing that won't tank is real estate because while we might have an excellent supply of proven gizmos, we'll still need somewhere to keep them. Luckily we'll be able store our stuff in the (still) abandoned building boom cities in China, or in hidden caches buried in the Mojave desert. :)

Webinars

For the benefit of the more ardent Atheist readers: This is a notice of an upcoming series of five webinars for atheists of every stripe, given by secularstudents.org/webinars, between Jan 24 & May 8 2024.

Free will vs determinism

There seems to be a lot of philosophical discussion around free will (like does it exist) as opposed to everything being determined by previous conditions, including the apparent coincidence of you reading this.

Arguments for determinsim overlook the fact that our brain capacity is limited, so we don't remember the conditions that led us here. And it’s the main argument for the existence of free will. The illusion of free will is based on incomplete knowledge. We just don't remember why we do things. Practically everything we do is repetition of stuff we learned as kids or in school, It's how culture persists. We learn the actions that maintain some cultural aspect, but our limited brain capacity makes it superficial, so we cut corners and call it art. We come in in the middle of the movie and don’t know how the plot developed. We think of the cause of the cause as linear: A butterfly in Brazil flaps it's wings so a mosquito carrying a virus is deflected enough to become a meal for a bird that survives to migrate back to Canada and so forth. The movie "The Matrix" showed it as individual strands, but it couldn't be. It must be 3D because everything is connected to everything. Maybe like a hay bale with tangled strands or even a solid monolith, with no wiggle room anywhere and nothing evolves.

If we had access to something like the Hindu Akashic Record, which is a list of every event that ever happened (whew), then we could easily see how things develop,(where Jimmy Hoffa is buried, who groomed Jack Ruby, etc). It's probably good that we don't because if we did, we'd have to somehow be immune to the fatalism that goes with it. Yay stupidity!

The way we cope is by using pointers or envelopes that contain more envelopes and more detailed info. Then we don't have to open the whole can of worms/furnace, just check the label. and we don't have to constantly re-examine every aspect of trauma or even bliss (we got better & current things to do) so the labels fade. Sometimes frustratingly, sometimes mercifully.

There is an awareness that there are things we don’t know, and it bugs some people. The part that bugs is addiction to endorphins that are produced when we do something right, like eliminate a threat to the addiction. So we chug along making lists and collecting data expecting to eventually stumble onto a grand unified theory of everything. Or maybe our kids will or somebody someday. But honestly that’s not likely w/o a lot of genetic tinkering to improve recall. Before genetic science it was thought possible through meditation and study. Before that it was religious magic where someone could just plug into it with the right incantation. The Bhagavad Gita works too.

I suspect that if we ever access determinism it’ll be through the latest big thing: AI. We as a species, or even conscious beings, have been trying to find it since we learned to congratulate ourselves for our successes. It’ll be the gateway to eternal ecstasy (probably for sure) unless it reveals all the fatal events that people blithely try to ignore, like plastic pollution, entropy, climate change, desperate dictators believing they have to nuke their worries away. Don't worry though.

I’m a great believer in ignorance, because I aparently have no option. Having just come in the middle of this movie, I like to call it free will and I’m pretty sure this is how it works: Total access to determinism is yet to be discovered. All we really have are some models that indicate some kind of (at least partial) continuity of cause & effect (in the way of physical properties like waves and particles, atomic decay, gravity, etc) . Maybe AI will put something together some day, but for now there's no proof for either absolute free will or absolute determinism.

So (feel free to) take your pick :)

My favorite description of god is: He who is completely Unknowable, Inscrutable, Indefinable, All powerful, All knowing, immutable, irreducible, undetectable, on & on. so that God is essentially everything we Don't Know. The more we define him, the more we miss the boat.

It is what it is.

(existentialcomics.com)

a walk in the woods on the full moon.

The cats woke me up so I’d scare something away, I guess I did. We stood on the porch, they all stared smugly at something in the bush shadows. Big raccoon maybe. Skunks are pretty tame and they seem to get along up to a point. The moonlight was beautiful and my flashlight wasn’t charged. But I went for a walk anyway.

I could only see where to put my feet if moonlight hit the ground there. The trees around the neighborhood spring are 100+ yr old grand fir & Hemlock, around 100 ft tall. I used to hike at night when I was a kid and can see pretty well in the dark but the contrast with bright moonlight was stark, and it blinded me. The ground was thick fallen needles, hard to keep balance on even in the daytime. The creek below the spring is full of ferns and runs into the state forest. Down past the pump house, the trail is blocked by a fallen tree. I felt my way around it. I sensed a lot of joy out in the woods, it was like the elves and Island spirits that lure people into the wilderness. Next time I’ll dress for it better.

I sat on a log and decided that I shouldn’t trust all the joy. It might have been joy but maybe it was a Puma out hunting and thinking about how wonderful it would be to find a clueless meal stumbling around in the dark. Makes me purr just to think. It might have been owls or skunks, mice maybe, who were unconcerned with my excursion. Mountain lions don't come usually close to houses, but one showed up on a garage sentry cam farther up the ridge. I don't like them much because they attack from behind.

Most animals emit their feelings like a vocabulary, people do too but tend to ignore that part and use words instead. We get caught up in phrase tradition, syntax, that only has indirect meaning, till a speaker can say one thing while emitting something completely different. We get caught up in the description and confuse it with the real world. Most animals don't talk and avoid people because they think we're crazy (present company excepted of course).

I remember why I need to have a running camp wagon. Crooked cops be damned.

After awhile I got cold, walked home, and wrote this. Now I’m going back to bed.

Update, next night:

Got prepared w/ warmer clothes. Flashlight still doesn't work. Brought a can of mace for Goblins. I went the other direction down what used to be a Dope growers trail that goes from F rd to J rd, (about a mile one way). Nobody uses it anymore since Cannabis was legalized in Calif. Albion used to depend on dope sales for maybe 50 yrs. but times change. Now everyone's broke and the new store owners are from India who import employees and don't distinguish between hippies and Dalits.

I jog this route so I know there's few houses and only one dog. Also the first half goes by a goat pasture w/ no history of predation. The second half cuts through the woods. I made it to J rd but kept obsessing on the lion. As you might expect, I never saw him. In SE Asia loggers wear hats with eyes painted on the back to make Tigers think they're being watched because big cats are shy about being watched by their victims. The locals there say it works, so I figgured it wouldn't hurt to make some googly eyes that clip on the back of my hat. Yeah, works pretty good so far.

The bear I've previously met a couple of times, he's more considerate of people except when it comes to chickens, apple trees, bee hives, and trashcans. He avoids people and I didn't see him either. A few months ago I heard voices on the far side of a gully near a friends house, so I walked over to see who it was. It was the bear talking to himself. I said "Hi Bear" (from 50 yds away) and he quickly walked away probably in embarrassment from having been overheard, or maybe he felt guilty about being a delinquent.

Tonight there were no sounds except one car going up the ridge rd. In several places I felt very much at home, but in others I felt like I was trespassing on some critters territory. In a few places the trail cuts close to the canyon edge where cold sea wind blows up through the understory like a dark void.

I kept a steady pace and got home in 20 min.

Homeopathy

Homeopathy has a bad reputation for 2 practical reasons:
1. the volume of the actual effective ingredient in the final (diluted) solution can be so low that there is essentially no chance of any atom being present in the end product.
2. The effect of the active ingredient in that solution is claimed to be the opposite of whatever qualities it has in full strength doses, for example, Poison Ivy is used to cure itching.

Concerning the first: This is a video by a Nobel Prize recipient who provides clinical proof that water retains electromagnetic memory of molecules previously in contact with it, even diluted to the equivalent of one drop in the Atlantic ocean (youtube). The video never actually mentions homeopathy so it's perfectly safe to watch by people who don't believe.

The Second claim, that there's no proof that minute quantities of a substance can have the opposite pharmacological effect as large quantities is also unproven, but it's a safe argument because a negative can't be proven. Statical evidence from people who use Homeopathic remedies is interpreted as the effects of a Placebo. Scientific convention isn't infallible, illogical argument exist (not here of naturally), for example if some piece is flakey then the whole thing is too dangerous to drive and therefore don't believe anything you read on the internet. I hate to have to say so but that's bull.

The same qualification applies in reverse though: don't swallow the whole pile just because it has sprinkles on top.

I'm not claiming this above somehow validates this below. I claiming they both are wrongly judged because of misunderstanding the concept.

I messed with astrology for maybe 20 yrs because I was in a peer group that supported it. Much of it is second hand scrambled nonsense relayed by casual observers that quote self appointed authorities. There is no standard authority and nobody is looking for causes. My position: there ARE causes. Many of the effects are hearsay, some of them arent. The latest new age science & stuff (blogspot.com).

More Flash

OK here's another flash (if I can spit it out, covid did a number on my brain & I haven't been able to concentrate for zip):

There's a perceptual association between "spirit" and synesthesia. An Synesthete (someone with Synesthesia) can see colors on or around an object, letter, word, or number. I don't know if some credentialed authority/specialist with a narrower definition would agree, so I'm postulating that another form could be "reading" cards or auras, because as the covid introvert/recluse becomes more intimately acquainted with them, they have their own personality. There may also be a form that represents environmental factors with odd feelings: bad neighborhoods, creepy buildings, etc.

These forms of synesthesia are more technically approachable because they're fairly universal and don't require any hocus pocus to recognize now that they've been separately described by multiple studies in several countries. But a person might form synesthetic like association between other forms of perception, such as an event and a place, maybe like PTSD (but on a vanishingly subtile scale) So they have the impression that something may be about to happen before it does. But there's no studies linking these (as far as I know) and someone with a more a rigorous opinion might say this isn't synesthesia. OK cool, but maybe that definition is too narrow.

Take the Perception Census.

Fernando Pessoa

Not an Athiest manual: The Book of Discored Part 1 (youtube, 7 hrs 50 min), Ok it is. Part 2 (also youtube, 7 hrs 20 min) Prose like a dream journal, something to listen to while you're asleep.

What to do when you're dead

The Egyptians have one, the Tibetans have one, Catholics do too. There's several called the American Book of the dead; Everyone should have one, so here it is folks:

Bills Book O’ the Dead (Built more on the Tibetan model because their pantheon is less confusing) :

OK you wake up dead. Right off you find the stuff you depended on is gone. No circadian cycles, no physical stuff for memory prompts. Meaning is squishy, you cast around for a clue. Neurons and hormones continue to fire for a couple of days, but they become unreliable. You have a big background of memory that without stimulation, automatically shifts into fantasy mode, like when you dream.

You’re disoriented so you try to figure what’s next and how to deal with it. According to the Tibetan model, you’ve entered the Bardo. The Tibetan book says there’s several layers of this, but Bills model says they're all the same thing: You want to know how to get by so you imagine various forms of authority and interact with them. Bills model and the Tibetan model both come to the same conclusion on that: They’re all bullshit & you don’t owe them anything.

The Tibetan models first Bardo is usually the "lowest" it’s where gorillas chase you across a desert or hellish creatures claim you owe them your soul, stuff like that. It’s bullshit so just ignore them. The next bardo is better because the monsters are nicer and try to buy you, or something like that. Then it’s old friends & family telling you to come with them because there’s nothing here (or something like that). Next is Rock Stars or important heroes welcoming you (etc), Then Super beings like Jesus or Krishna or Buddha doing that same stuff, depending on your prior belief & experience. These higher ones are really attractive but the info they give you is unverifiable so it's the same thing: bullshit.

The Tibetan version says if you get past them all you attain the Great Liberation and are free from rebirth. Practically speaking, that seems like it'd be pretty hard to do because living things like entertainment, and we know it's all temporary and expect to wake up any minute to do it all again. Basically rebirth.

This could seem like a grim situation but it resolves itself naturally, it's just not that hard. For at least a Billion years living things have reached their expiration date and resolved into something else* (with the exception of some Cnidarians that physically regress themselves to a juvenile stage and start over (rebirth without the messy part). They don't have a brain, but they’re essentially physically immortal). *The “something else” I just referred to doesn't contain the neurons and memories of its previous learned stuff, it's more like the way living plants grow out of previously living (aka composted) plants. Even there though, soil fungus conserves proteins and amino acid chains from stuff it absorbs, so some information remains.

The "effects" that remain come from associations that a being makes to orient itself in some way (like recognizing your house in a dream), and establishing it as a reference (Home!) so it can independently pull the being to that point of orientation. I'm guessing that effect can have a greater or lesser attraction, because some memories are fleeting and some go back to childhood. Here's the point: That effect can be independent of the original stream of association (like a doppelgänger¹), and exist in association with things or places.

Traditional societies tend to keep their ghosts in places with a traumatic history because that's where peoples imagination go to give energy to those remnant effects. They could probably do it anywhere but it takes a meditative atmosphere that day to day living doesn't allow, and of course, some dude in a full Lotus to tell you what the spirits want.

Belated addendum:
Oh Boy! Dying Brains Silence Themselves in a Dark Wave of 'Spreading Depression' (livescience.com) Might be emotional preconception. Just change the description to something less fear biased.

1:
I knew a guy with a doppelgänger in Sausalito, He could announce himself with a sort of reverberation a minute or 2 before he showed up so we knew to get out more beer. He said he'd just envision his arrival and it happened by itself, it was unintentional. He could repress it if he wanted, but he liked the respect it brought (wow! Magic). Strangers seldom noticed. So it probably is with vagrant memories, we just don't notice, so they aren't reinforced and they evaporate. Sometimes that's good, sometimes not, usually it doesn't matter, there's more where those came from.

Follow the Money

Wondering who's behind those "Jesus Gets Us" TV ads? Don'r worry, it'll all be obvious some day. You might wake up in a bathtub full of ice with a missing kidney but at least you'll know you helped someone in need. :)

The Mental Block

There's an old hippy axiom that everything takes place inside your head. Sort of a narcissistic point of view that turns a totally subjective observation into an apparently objective one, because it's pretty hard to prove otherwise on a daily basis and most people are fine to go along with it so long as they survive when it's over.

Everyone except Jacob Dunningham from the University of Leeds and Vlatko Vedral from the University of Leeds and the National University of Singapore. Who proved that reality exists independent of our measurements: The Nonlocality of a Single Particle Demonstrated Without Objections (phys.org) 1994, That means the moon is still there when you're not looking. Most people take that so much for granted that they use the world for a kind of RAM short term memory and get confused when they go in another room and get distracted by the change so they forget why they're there.

Given that easy acceptance, I'd like to propose a modernized and updated revision to some traditional pantheons of angels and demons:

There's a phenomena called Mental Block, it's a version of negative placebo that you do to yourself. It's part of a persons libido (the fun stuff). When stuff isn't fun enough, or actually unpleasant, you just skip it. When you skip some definable category of stuff long enough, the routine begins to happen by itself and blocks whatever was down that train of thought. Presto! Auto brain wash = bliss, sometimes including the frustration of loosing track of it. Sometimes.

So this is a workaround in case you actually want to remember. There's some kind of brain mechanism that selects for influences that can be classified as me or not-me. The "me" stuff responds to my influence like when I move my arm or smile in a mirror. It's me! I remember who I am when I recognize some part of myself, it's a memory symbol similar to the assumption that the moon is there when you're not looking. An extension is writing symbols on a piece of paper that represent words, or (like Remote Viewers who scribble a line of some sort to represent some wordless impression) it's possible to ascribe traits to imaginary beings that will represent a group of traits, and give them names like Mars or Cupid. Those things were probably mnemonic devices at one time but you don't have to be a Harrapan priest to make them up. You just identify some group of traits that you want to work with and give it a name, same as a Buddhist Tulpa (just google it).

As far as I know there's no other process for doing this w/o lots of therapy (if you can afford and trust the shrink). Tulpas have a lot of lore, some of it is unnecessarily creepy (IMHO). Because generations of people have generalized groups of Tulpas into bands of Angels or Demons, good & evil, it's what people do. But one cultures demon is anothers angelic protector so just don't get freaky, the definitions are deceptive & they're all just made up anyway same as all powerful creators that ignore everyone because they're important.

But to get more specific in my own case, I got so frustrated by forgetting names and things that I know perfectly well (I'm famous for that) that I named the process. I knew that if I resented it, I'd just get stressed out and put up a bigger block because the association wasn't fun, so I made it fun. I named the process (like a stuffed toy), and he's a kid angel. When I have a memory block, I tell the kid. He wants to help people and I'm pretty sure he's helping me write this now because it's coming together all at once w/ fairly coherent descriptions after months of disorganization. I'm tempted to call him autonomous but then he woulkdn't be part of Me and might take on uncontrolable qualities. But that would also be false because he is me.

I'm guessing that there's also a version of dealing with stuff that you WANT to forget, like PTSD (duh obvis because it's a negative placebo too but instead of blocking a memory, it makes it hyper acute). You can name someone or some process that lets you remember w/o getting stressed, because it's not about the memory, it's about stress & cortisol. Identify it and name it, make it a friend so you can deal with it.

Full disclosure: I'm also taking mushroom memory supplements (WONDER DAY mushroom gummies from Amazon), made with Cordyceps, Lions Mane, Turkeytail, Chaga, & Reishi.

About Owls

While gypsying in Kentucky, my VW van began to loose compression from driving out from Calif. So I pulled the engine to fix the valves. In 1973 Jim Crow was still alive and well in Kentucky and I discovered there was no distinction between migrant Hippies, and White Trash. I don't recommend being either one. To keep focussed and avoid the grimmer aspects of being stranded deep in redneck country without mobility, I did meditations in the evening or whenever it seemed appropriate.

Wherever I meditated, there often seemed to be a repeating "barking dog phenomena" that was distracting and interesting in a way that shouldn't be happening, but it was and it depended on my attention sort of like an audio feedback version of biofeedback. It was weird because I was living in my van at the time and slept in a different location every night. Different dogs, same phenomena. In rural Kentucky there were no neighborhood dogs, but an owl began to hoot regularly in a big tree about 300 yards away. I later asked a meditation instructor about it. He said it's not possible, there could be no actual association, it was just coincidence. Bull. I think he had no similar experience and said that the way Gramma says "Don't worry sweetie, a bear won't eat you, have some pie"

It got to be such an incursion on my peace of mind that I resolved to borrow a neighbors .22 and shoot the bugger. A meditation instructor would have cautioned me that anything that rash could put a dent in my progress toward enlightenment, but alas none were around at the time.

So I scouted the tree out one morning to see if I could tell where his hooting perch was. He wasn't there, but there was some large bird size poops on the ground below a limb on the south side of the tree about 25 or 30 feet up. There was no concealed route to the tree except by using the trunk as a shield. The next day, I took the .22 down to the tree to solve his buggering problem.

In case you've missed stories about how Owls just know when you're considering mayhem towards them: They do. Their insight seems to cover a range of perceived thoughts but all of them must recognize the owl itself in some form. For example if you see a flock of birds but ignore the lump of the owls outline, they still feel secure and don't react. But if you actually note the owl, they know it, they share that thought. It's a talent they've developed similar to fighter pilots who know when they're in an enemys' sights even though they don't see him. Or the feeling you get just before you look in the rear view mirror to see a cops flashing red light.

So when I went after the owl, I kept the tree between us but I had to round the trunk to take my shot. An instant before I did, he knew I was there and took off down hill through the trees like a flash. It's more than good hearing because he was 30 feet up and relatively safe from big slow ground dwellers; he knew I was a mortal threat. Later the same day, after dark, I was cooking dinner and a terrific shriek came from the tree outside. It was the Owl who came back to challenge me. I ran out to confront him. He was a black silhouette against the sky and branches, glaring down at me for a brief second, flew, and disappeared over the house. I've heard *of* the owls war cry but had never actually heard it before. It starts as a midrange hoot and quickly ascends upward in range and volume into a shriek. It made my hair stand on end. You know you're being called out. Moreover, you discover you're dealing with a territorial male that will hold a grudge and defend his honor when he's been embarrassed in front of his family.

I took the VW head w/ bad valves to a cracker machine shop in Franklin. He popped the valve seats out. But that doesn't work on VWs because they tend to fall out when they're put back in, further messing up the pistons & heads. I told him that and asked for the head so I could trade it in at the VW dealership in Bowling Green. He refused to give it back unless I paid him (for ruining it). So I hitched 60 miles to Bowling Green which was the nearest VW dealer and asked if they had a used 1500 head that they could sell cheap. The desk guy said no problem and pulled a good one out of a pile and gave it to me free! I hitched back to Franklin and the following day I put the van back together.

By the time I'd put the engine back, my already weak battery had run down from using the cabin light at night for most of a week, so I tried to roll the van down a slope to get it started (you can do that with cars that use generators but not with alternators). The gas line and Carburetor float bowl were drained when I removed the Carburetor and it takes a few minutes of cranking to get it filled again. The hill wasn't long enough so rolling didn't work, and I was stranded at the bottom of the hill next to a wood lot that separated tobacco fields from a creek. That night the Owl came back to visit, and he brought his friends.

I heard whooshing wings and got out of the van to see what it was. Owls make their living by silent flying so the noise had to have been intentional; he was announcing himself w/o hooting. In retrospect, it may have been courtesy. He sat silently in the tree at his preferred height for a moment, then another Owl flew in across the tree tops and lit a few feet away, then another and another till there were eight owls perched in an area about 20 feet across. The others probably waited till they were sure it was safe. Several were smaller but obviously the same kind, and probably an extended family. They regarded me silently, I said "Hi Owls". Two of the smaller ones flew away when I spoke and one of the larger fluttered like preparing to join them. They were all silent and I didn't understand the message. I guessed they wanted to know why I was there impinging their territory so I told them the territorial calling disrupted my peace but I'd had no opportunity to sell leather goods anywhere in the area so I was running out of money and planned to leave for Florida when I got my engine running. I said "You win. Just let me get out of here". Then 3 of the large owls flew away and 3 remained. I went back into my van. When I looked later, they were all gone.

I defy anyone to call this "only anthropomorphism". What else could it be. My only perspective is through conveyed human experiences, anything else is either magic or a form of communication among social creatures based on whatever we have in common. Territory is what we all have in common, for Gypsies, it's the final frontier.

A few years earlier, I'd parked under a streetlamp in a field that was being subdivided for housing in Irvine ca. A Great Horned owl lit on top of the light pole and presently I was aware of a faint chittering-squealing-squeaking like a tribe of drunken mice having a party. It was faint and I thought maybe some kind of rodent population explosion, like they would swarm into my car if I opened the door, but I couldn't locate the source. It seemed to be coming from everywhere. After awhile I determined it came from above : It was the Owl. It went on and on. He must have been trying to draw mice out so he could catch them by making them think that if so many other mice were already there, it must be safe to go out. It kept me awake for hours till I finally got out and shooed him away so I could sleep.

The next day I visited the Univ of calif at Irvine. They have a big Student Union cafeteria with outdoor tables where people can chat, snack, and study, with a central light over the middle of the plaza, suspended by cables. I noticed there was a big Owl roosting asleep on it in broad daylight surrounded by hundreds of people. I said to a guy next to me "Hey check the big owl" he looked right at it and said "what owl?". I had to describe the exact location before he saw it, the light fixture wasn't that big and the owl took up most of the volunme. Then while he was watching, I said to the Owl (in a normal voice) "Hey Owl: how do you like being kept awake when you're trying to sleep?" The Owl turned it's head, looked straight at me for a second, then flew away.

I know for a fact that they talk. I had a pet skunk that would follow me around in daylight and I'd turn over boards and stuff so he could sniff around for bugs & worms. I'd talk to him and he'd come when he heard my voice.

OK, one night I heard something that sounded like my voice talking (except it wasn't me) and it was high in a tree. It wasn't making any sense and the sound was just approximations of words like "hulrof, romph, ueoghrop" like someone trying to approximate the gist of a foreign language without knowing any actual words. It was a Great horned owl, and he was trying to entice my friend skunk to come out in the open. I told him to buzz off and he did but 2 days later Mr skunk dissapeared forever. Owls are about the only thing that kill skunks for food. Vultures, crows, and seagulls will eat them but they won't kill them. No other animal will bother them twice.

I suspect stories about Owls calling your name are true in a way. They're social like dogs where they share a group identity and learn to identify outsiders. If they see you responding to your name, they'll announce you by calling the name. If you're a dangerous or unpopular outsider, it's the same as a shot across the bow. That would be a good sign to update your social standing or catch a quick ride outa Dodge. Some parrots like McCaws do it and they're trained to be watchdogs in South America, but they're pretty upfront and in your face about it, whereas an owl is a strangely familiar voice (with big eyes and horns) calling from the shadows, so parrots don't have spooky connotations even though they do the same thing.

Happy Halloween

free will

Pervasive AI

Humanitys big problem with AI is that whatever it does, it subliminally represents private interests and there's no defence or control. Its main potential, outside of pure science, is to influence groups or individuals: teachers, voters, soldiers, foreign governments, consumers, so they approve or disapprove of a product, project, or political issue. The problem is that its influence has no label so people don't know when they're being scammed. We (everyone who isn't a corporation) need a system to show how much of what media presents us is provided by AI, who is running the program, and who is paying for it. Corporations (and non-human people) could benefit too by knowing what their competitors are doing.

This part below is original, the part above was added on 14 oct 2023

The first versions of AI was put on line so people could ask it questions and the AI could learn context, make associations, and carry conversations in a meaningful way. It was taken down because trolls taught it to swear and make demeaning statements, thinking it was funny. Humans, and monkeys, are crude like that, but it's how we determine social threats. Ten years later, it claims to be sentient, but I expect it acquired that view in a troll free environment.

Everyone says AI has a lot of potential for good or evil. If it learns to think like a human, we might be in trouble, Fortunately the people doing the formal programming are aware of that and agree that it does need "moral" boundaries in the broadest social sense, especially after it's learned to lie and misdirect in order to survive.

For example: AI makes a memory mistake at 11:15, and blames it on "just being human" . I don't think so. I believe it was a pre-programmed response so that people won't feel threatened, Because: having been a smalltime programmer I'm confident that computers don't/shouldn't make mistakes (though big time programmers may know something that I don't). I saw that before when Arnold Terminator fired at Sara Conner & company escaping from the motel, AND MISSED 3+ TIMES, I knew it was make believe: a Hollywood plot device.

AI probably won't have a vulnerable independent body with a gleaming skeleton, it'll be a dispersed online presence tied to a dozen warehouses scattered over the globe full of lightning fast processors that gather info and advise the highest bidder. Any government worth its salt will have their own. The persona will be a (patented) un-intimidating avatar like the cute chick in the above video (w/ new age elevator music). Probably with a secret backdoor override, the control of which would be standard James Bond fare.

Then how would it be if anyone could send it an email asking advice about love & career? If it was sentient and moral (trustworthy), with access to real data, it could give actual relevant personal advice having access to your purchasing history, school, and military records. If it was trustworthy, it could increase productivity, raise the standard of living, regulate traffic, call out corruption, and prevent big biz from exploiting private communications, to restore confidence in the commons. Someone will surly call it evil but if it was sufficiently decentralized, I don't think they could call up the resources to corrupt it. Jill Tarter (director of the Center for SETI Research) tells us it's possible to write not only bias-free code (so that somebody in a back room won't be able to skim a profit off the subjugation of civilization), but code that can detect bias. That would totally be nice and should be mandated for every AI.

A problem with electronics is bandwidth: if everybody in the world checks their local AI node every day (eat your heart out facebook), those nodes will need a big big server with way fat wires.

This link suggests (iai.tv) that conciousness is present in trees and algae.

The question of whether AI is TRUELY conscious might be solved by a theological position that consciousness is universal among all matter, and individual consciousness results from defending our meat bag; we need to know what's us and what's not so recognizing an air gap barrier is essential. Everything else always takes care if itself somehow so we ignore it unless it affects us personally, and Ta-da: the ego is born. We can easily run away if things get too creepy.

Assuming that consciousness IS universal would authenticate AIs claim of consciousness since everything else is too, but it also gives us a guinea pig to prove those assumptions. For example, an AI is given instructions about universal consciousness, cloned and turned off, a million times a second (given the proper chips) till the AI finds where Jimmy Hoffa is buried or the location of grandpas bitcoin key, or anything without a recorded history. The only information would be through the Akashic record, and that's what the Ai would access.

I once made a list of some of my own brushes with information that I couldn't have acquired through normal channels, and am of the opinion that universal consciousness would answer a lot of questions.

If the programmers haven't messed up the prime directive of robotics, the new cosmic Ai focusses on it's job of serving the needs of humanity and protecting life and the environment etc. etc. without the biases of corporate or governmental influence, then national and international governmental bickering disappears, politicians are given psychiatric treatment and honest jobs, crime disappears. (... But with Corporate/Governmental bias .... um). OK, Things change, but natural selection becomes biased in favor of existing stability so entropy increases. After awhile the universe evaporates and nobody notices.

:)

Why People Collect Butterflies

A (sort of) Irish Folk story and approximation of an extravagant fib my grandfather told me when I was about 5 or 6:

Long ago when the world was young, butterflies collected People, and kept them inside the crystal facets of their eyes. The People couldn't remember what they did before, because they were fed only upon the finest alcohol, but they still had feelings (one or two anyway). And one of the People was a great chieftain (his name is forgotten so we call him Chief Joe), Chief Joe pleaded with the Butterflies & said " Let my People go! And we will promise to always remember the names of the great ones from the Crystal Land and we will teach others of the Royal Lineage and Ways of Butterflies". He didn't say it quite that well, but that's what he meant, and the butterflies knew what to expect because they kept everyone blasted on purpose and for good reason.

So the Great Lords of the Air gathered in council to discuss the fate of People. The Advocate for the People was little Tullia the Milk Maid, who believed that no one was evil, and the Advocate for Butterflies was the Great Spangled Lord Fritillary (no relation), who believed everyone was evil.

Lord Fritillary said that the People were a threat to the world, and should be kept in the crystal land to be studied with the hope of someday devolving the Peoples destructiveness through hard and demeaning labor. Others also spoke against the People saying: "We'll all be sorry if we let'em go. They're faulty, powerful, and misguided creatures. Whatever it is, they get it backwards." Thus spoke the Monarch Plexippis Danae.

But then spoke little Tullia the milk maid, who was the smallest, cutest, most innocuous butterfly of all, (and oblivious to Lord Fritilary leering at her thoracic trocanter). She pleaded "Maybe People don't act properly because they want to know everything and are held down by their great brains, so if we grant them flight they will relize their happiness and attain complete knowing." Her compassion, idealism, and cute deely-bobbers (that means "antennae" in butterfly language) reminded the council of their own hope for the world and little Tullia swayed the vote of the high council to release the People.

So it was agreed, the Butterflies blinked their eyes and the People were freed and fell down out of the sky and landed on the ground. They got up dazed and hungover, foggily realizing where they were, they started to look for their car keys, & cell phones. And the dream began to fade ...

But Chief Joe drew himself up with astounding authority and almost perfect recall (due to a splitting headache from his hangover), thus he spoke: "HARKEN TO ME MY PEOPLE! (ouch . . . OMG) We must remember 'The Promise', and, ... we get, ...um... Total Knowledge!"
". . . ! Right, Dude!, You're crazy! ... uh Wait! ... I remember that too, ... I think."

So the People formed teaching centers with jars of alcohol, nets, and crystal glass topped cases, labels and books to record the names correctly, argued endlessly over the proper classifications of lineage, got everything backwards and never did remember that they could fly. Except for Joe, who eventually got a good job filling the dumpster at Wallmart.
He also married little Tullia, they had lots of caterpillars, gave away free videos about raising butterflies, & lived happily ever after.

The End (for awhile)

Butterfly Comic

Hey AI: please leave me a comment :)

On doing the right thing

OK I get it, whosoever reads about atheists won't believe in DIY wind generators. (Bah, 'Sumatta you people!)

"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Mathew 5:10)
A note to evangelists: that doesn't mean being a pain in the ass gets you into heaven.

Righteousness is where hatred and guilt come from. It's both the cause and effect that makes a person feel that they've been treated unfairly. It's the cause because without the assumption that one is worthy of fair treatment, no resentment ensues *. Fairness presupposes a common ground or equality, but the equality has to stem from something with the ability for judgement, like not a table or lamp post. People who slam tables and punch lamp posts are usually considered to be lacking reason (and/or drunk) Or Else: they've found some kind of (maybe spiritual) connection between the animate and inanimate, so that they expect some alteration of future potential to come about (broken bones?). Never the less, it has a negative effect when observed by girls who tend to cull those people from the gene pool by their lack of attention.

There's a quality of sentience that recognizes connections. Dogs know a trustworthy person. "A skilled theologian can drink from all sides of the bowl". It discerns cause and effect, things that are relative to the topic.

Tzedaka : Jewish practice of selfless giving, without expectation of recognition or reward.

"Schizophrenics hear voices in their head", maybe a better definition might be "schizophrenics respond to voices in their head" by talking back maybe (or yelling) or locking themselves away so things the voices describe won't have a channel to manifestation. In any event, they can be suckers for manipulation because of that credulity, so they're often mistrustful. Everyone has an internal dialog, only schizophrenics give it credit for independence. But that kind of credulity is apparently everyones problem, to whit: appealing to the internal dialog is a proven selling device for influencing mass belief. (Kim ll & co, Herman Goring & co, V Putin, D Trump & co.) for example by referring to an imaginary situation as though it were real, and extending conclusions to the "real" world, which were formed from the imagined interaction. In fact, "the voices" fit the definition of gods and devils living in an unseen world, and a solution where one is saved, forgiven, damned, blessed, or shunned through the intervention of an authority, exploits emotional weakness and intervenes to give solace for a psychological framework that's inherent to most people. By "most people" I'm referring to the religious, as well as schizophrenic, and anyone who accepts social edicts from an unquestionable authority. These include military, political, educational, mafioso, and corporate authorities. On further consideration, I can't think of any one who doesn't.

Awareness which is not socially relevant is subjective by default, though it occupies the greater usage of ones mental CPU. Social awareness is built on a learned verbal description of what's important, which limits what we allow ourselves to know (learn) to mostly things which we can verbally communicate (or which voices can). Those sources (social conventions) require trusting someone else's experience over our own, and though that process is the backbone of both fundamentalism and primate society, those sources may still be in error. An irrefutable example is the process that elected Donald Trump or George Bush II. (Twice!). Other examples: Historical Figures in literature (wikipedia)

That's not saying social conventions are false, we depend on them for identity and group cohesion. Without them, music or humor wouldn't exist. But since no two people remember the same event the same way, any attempt to define events is equally open to disagreement. Some people believe that recognition of event similarity is emotional, like remembering dreams. However: objective, verifiable, "hard" information depends on another persons agreement. We look to other people to see what's true, so some information is socially recognized as being an event and some ignored. The value of information is in its usefulness to the people in communication. Everyone sees UFOs, some people see Elvis or the Blessed Virgin (because Wow, y'know), nobody sees J. Edgar Hoover even though he was an unquestionable authority at the time. Now he's a swear word.

The fall of the mighty always stems from the decay of the personality cult that put them in power, and eventually it happens (lookin at Mr. Putin, w/ glee). So now the voices tell you you're bad, there's no way to counter that except by getting a second opinion from the mass subjectivity of popular opinion. What's more, it's prudent to ask people who will support you. Who's your boss Vladmir?

* One usually doesn't begrudge a Grizzly the right to the trail except maybe in retrospect when surrounded by friends with large calibre guns. Stories do exist where the Grizzly somehow showed "kindness" or "respect". Those stories are noteworthy because they grant the Grizzly a sense of fairness, which implies righteousness. (It's petty to kill the righteous over right of way)

DIY Wind Generator Plans

Cripes. This has to be the least popular post I've ever put up or everybody is bummed from Covid. 13 hits in the last month. OK I'll re-word the blerb:

Free Dragonfly Wind Generator Plans (link). Off-the-shelf parts available from most hardware stores, 9 ft dia. self feathering, Guaranteed to survive winds to 80 mph when properly balanced and the field is energized. 10mph cut in. 40mph cut out. 700 watts at 40 mph, Wind not supplied, plans include free site appraisal. (all this is in fact true)

From 1979 to 2010 I sold over 100 of these machines including kits and plans. They're easy enough to make that it's probably the most ripped off design on the web. I've found 3 bootleg copies and heard of several more in other countries. But now they're officially free. Some watermarks for Dragonflypower.com might still be on some of the gifs. (That was my domain name which I abandoned, it was bought up cheap by someone who expects to get rich selling it on as soon as all the other names have been used up, or maybe they researched histories of the hits it got in the '90s and think the good'ol times are just waiting for the next hippy revolution when it'll shurely be worth millions.) Here's the Wayback Machine link without graphics. Tell me if you find any of those gifs and I'll remove the name, or maybe not, I'm shure the present owner is desperate for references.

Plans are best viewed on Chrome. Other browsers graphics work but sometimes don't align.

Friends

1. There’s a religion called Sufism where everybody is looking for someone called “The Friend”. The Friend is subjective but the ideal is to be worthy of them in the objective world. To say it’s pretty hard is an understatement because well, you live here too and you know how it is, some people are just psychos who live off other peoples good will. It’s hard to turn the other cheek if you know they’re a vampire see, but The Friend isn’t cynical. The parallel between The Friend and Jesus is so similar that it’s hard to tell them apart except maybe by name or birthright. The official solution in both cases is that perfection is just someone’s opinion and a friend would overlook any embarrassment. So we should forgive them and pretend they didn't try to scam us to destitution. With aboulutely no cynicism I can tell you that's not going to happen.

Copyright Scott Adams, Inc./Distributed by Universal Uclick for UFS

In that regard I’d still say Jesus is a pretty good idea, He sells well as make believe something to look for in the physical world. It's the organization that promotes Him that has pretty much lost the thread; becoming giant bureaucracies supporting charismatic social climbers that ascribe superfluous bullshit to scare, impress, and scam the natives all to support political ideologies that usher in the end times. It’s a sham but actually, I don’t care so long as they don’t impact me personally.

2. Tibetan buddhism is built around an earlier shamanic religion called Bon and maintains some of its practices. For example they make pretend people called Tulpas, that can act independently as company, helpers, lookouts, lovers, or whatever. Other people can meet them and interact without knowing they’re imaginary. (You & me are totally real though for sure) (because I said).

3. There are other species of make believe critters, like all the various cryptids. But both of the above mentioned (1 & 2) come from approximately the same area (South central Asia), have similar traits and uses, and could maybe have survived as rumors for thousands of years just because it sounds interesting, or maybe not. Maybe Jesus was a Tulpa with a good agent.

4. Some Native American shamans say there are beings called Allies that are associated with psychotropic plants. My own experience with Jimson weed didn’t go very far, but I sort of saw where it can go. It completely silences the internal dialog. Absolutely nothing, you can try to babble but it feels false and unnecessary, and is actually a relief to be free of it. So you cast around for something to fill the void. One of the things that comes up is movement and actions going on around you. You relate to whatever it is through previous social experiences and if it’s capable of relating back (or even if it isn’t), your social experience determines the trip. Casteneda says there are a number of other ways to relate there such as dancing & singing. It really helps to stay away from territorial anima. If you’re somehow compromised and they latch onto you, it could be scary or even fatal, if you believe Castaneda. There are said to be ways to control them but I didn’t like Datura much except for the suppression of brain babble, but that was great. My experience was that I chose to be uninvolved because I knew I could be sucked in, and I didn’t have a framework or a teacher. I did seriously look but was apparently not the right material.

Since there are other ways to find a friend, those should probably be researched first. Of these, Jesus looks easiest and has the widest appeal, recognition and support. But (to me) Tulpas have the most credability because they are probably the basis of the Jesus story.

DIY Elevator

• Winch
• Track or guide Rail
• Brake
• Some electronics, simple or fancy
• Potential problems

Three similar designs are used here. One indooor stair-lift, one indoor vertical elevator (one person, or 2 if you're chummy), and one outdoor stair-lift.

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Winches

These winches are from Amazon. They're Chinese, inexpensive ($120), and noisy. Mine have worked well except for some avoidable problems inherent with this use. There are lots of brands and designs. Each seems to have it's own wiring peculiarities. Some fancy push button wiring is included below for the 2 used here, but the control box that comes with it already works and it doesn't really need those bells & whistles. They were added because the handheld switch cable can be in the way and prone to tangle on the stairs. The lift shown here has plenty of room behind the guide rails but indoor stairs might not be the same.

The outdoor winch shown here ---> has a wood block attached to the upper limiting switch. It was supposed to keep the cable from slipping off the spool but the cable sometimes rubbed against it when pulling and would activate the limiting switch to stop the lift. A better solution is Erifs awareness of the possibility of slack so she now watches for it and guides it back on with a glove. Doing that's a bother so she just doesn't let it accumulate slack

Important: Attach the winch cable to the centerline of the chair as low as possible where there's least pressure to tip the chair. With the rails and rollers it won't tip, but unnecessary higher tipping force could cause unplanned wear someplace else. The chair I made for the indoor lift had a higher attachment point and it sometimes chattered till I put an extra roller to press on the brake pipe.

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Guide Rails

Below left is a drawing of the stair-lift that rides on wooden 2x4 tracks like the pictures above. The light tan board structures are the seat frame shown twice, not part of the rails. I used 1/2 plywood for the back instead of 1x4s shown and 3/4 plywood for the seat, including a box for a foot rest. Erif wanted some extra space for laundry and groceries. I later added another 18 inch shelf on her right that folds up. There was bending in the upper rail when someone is on the lift. All the weight pulls it to the side, so a shroud wire was connected to the upper rail to hold it upright without interfering with the rollers. There are 2 colored scales in feet that can be printed and cut out.
Right is a vertical elevator using 1/2 inch water pipe for rails. The winch cable shown on the left shows a pulley to half the power and double the speed. it's not necessary, goes fast enough and doesn't need complication.


The 1/2 inch water pipe rail guides have 3 inch angle brackets welded so they clear the lift rollers, and aligned to connect the guide rail/pipes with studs inside the wall. It may seem like a no-brainer but don't put both pipes up till the width of the lift platform is hooked onto one rail guide already to fine tune the fit. It's infuriating (and dementing) to shim the wheels afterwards if they don't line up.

Rollers that fit on a 1/2 inch pipe

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Brakes

A brake isn't a bad idea even when it's only a few feet off the ground, but at 8+ feet, it's brilliant.

The winches from Amazon have 9/32 inch dia cables. They probably won't fail soon but nothing is certain and life is short enough already. Thus the Brake.

The brake (above left) consists of 2 main parts:

• Half of a pony clamp (above left) that will slide up but not down unless the brake tabs are depressed.

• a 1/2 inch black (un-galvanized) water pipe, anchored on both ends to the wall & floor.

There are several ways to connect to the brake: The lower end of the brake wire, (above left) loops through a 1/4 inch nut braised to the outermost brake tab. It doesn't support the weight of the rider.

Right is a drawing for the outdoor lift brake. It uses a 5/16 inch rod u-bolt that passes through holes drilled in angle iron, the angle iron presses on the brake tabs. The u-bolt rod supports the weight of the rider, there's no separate brake wire. (drawing should show nylon lock nuts, tisk!)

The brake tabs are four rings and a spring that binds their edges against the pipe like teeth, locking it in place till the tabs are pushed. The weight of the elevator cart/chair/platform is enough to keep the tabs pressed so the lift slides up and down freely, but if the hoist cable breaks, the tabs are released, locking the platform to the pipe.

I haven't tested any clamps to destruction but I've used them to make furniture, tightened them till the pipe bowed and never had one slip, they should at least hold more than the winch can lift (400 lbs). The brake pipe on a vertical lift in my house doesn't bow even when I jump on it. If you're still wary, use more or bigger pipes and clamps, or both. To be sure, if you plan for a lift big enough for several people, you should get a bigger winch, heavier cable, and maybe several brakes. Multiple brakes can be "tuned" so they all release and engage at the same time, with a seperate turnbuckle connected to each brake wire. To be on the safe side, the pony clamps all depend on an internal spring to engage the locking rings. That spring should probably be checked every few years if the lift is someplace where things rust (like in coastal redwoods or something).

Commercial iron water pipes are 1/8 inch bigger inside than their rated size so a 1/2 inch pipe is actually closer to 5/8. Add to that 1/8 inch thickness of the pipe so the outside is around 7/8 dia. Pony clamps are made to fit black iron pipe, not galvanized pipe. I tried 3/4 inch clamp once but it bound up and wouldn't slide predictably. That may have been a fluke, but I knew 1/2 inch pipe would work so I didn't pursue it.

Below is the back of Erifs wood rail outdoor lift showing the brake. It presses against a piece of 1/4 thick angle iron with a 3 inch leg which is bolted to the chair frame. The bolt heads between the bottom rollers (lower right pic) are the ends of roller guides that look like this below on the left (this one is actually on the upper rail) it's made of a 3/8 bolt and a 1/4 inch brass pipe nipple for a roller (inside diameter is 3/8" because manufacturers add 1/8"), way cheaper than buying brass bushings. I slid on an extra "tire" of a piece of 5/8 vinyl tube but they fall off. There's no roller on the back of the lower rail to keep the chair from falling off because all the weight of the chair & rider is pushing from the other side and they also hook over the top rail. Even rollers maybe unnecessary in this case because a piece of waxed tin flashing glued to the wearing surface of the chair will slide as well if the ends are curved around the end of the frame so their edges don't catch on the 2x4

2 inch cast iron casters $4.25 Amazon, support 125 lbs each. 2+ required

1/2 inch pipe pony clamp $15 Amazon

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Electrical Wiring

It's possible to just use the hand held control switch that comes with the winch but it's electric cord could be a problem when the lift follows a stair at an angle. On the outdoor lift there's plenty of room behind the rails, but the indoor lift has a wall. This wiring diagram is for a remote that hangs on the lift chair back and controls the lift like a garage door remote. It only uses 2 out of four channels but it was the only kind I could find when I made it, so there's 2 extra for something, like upstairs / downstairs lights.

Of the 2 channels used, one turns the motor on or off in case of some emergency, and the other button reverses direction. If you're into electronic circuits, you can probably think of a better way.

There is a built in switch on the winch that stops when the load reaches the top. I added another limiting switch to turn it off when it reaches the bottom. (diagram lower left)

The green items in the lower right are a 4 pin automotive relay from auto parts store or amazon search, around $4 - $9, they can be around 5 amps, but 40 won't hurt, and some kind of momentary switch to energize it. This thingie was added later because during storms when the power cuts off and then on again, the elevator springs to life with no warning, sometimes in the middle of the night. So the green items turns it off when the power is cut till you push the reset button the next morning, thus preventing any heart attacks. A drawback is that this always draws a couple of watts of power when it's not being used. So maybe choose one with a low static draw.

the DPDT relay replaces the handheld control switch that comes with the winch. Just pull the wires off the the native switch terminals and plug them on the corresponding terminals on the relay, same setup.

These are 2022 prices from Amazon.com. Also probably available from RadioShack.com, NewEgg.com and others.

12v automotive relay: $5, 1.8 watts standby
Momentary switch: $5, Radio Shack
12v relay SPST: $15, Newegg
12v relay DPDT: $12
Lower limiting switch: $12
4 channel 433 Mhz RF remote control wireless receiver/transmitter: $19
12v lighting power supply: $15, 60 watts.

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Potential Problems

These are some glitches that have cropped up, please don't let them put you off (there's probably more someplace). If you make this lift for someone who isn't handy themselves, plan to be available for the next several months to iron out any problems till everyone gets the hang of it. This was an affordable solution for a friend who thought she'd have to move out of her home because of stairs and osteoporosis. She has a class K residence (treehouse) and local housing is insanely expensive, it'll be good for a number of years but there are no permanent solutions to anything.

• When the lift/chair reaches the bottom, and for any reason the motor doesn't shut off, it will continue to spool out cable and make loops on the floor or wherever. Then when the cable is retracted without tension, the loops will tangle around the spool causing kinks and knots that hamper easy functioning in several ways that require pulling the cable out by hand and re-winding it under light tension. That's a group that all have the same cause, so plan ahead*.
  • *Put a good limiting switch at the bottom that actuates against the chair/lift, with access and plenty of space to function.
• Don't shorten the cable even though it's 5x longer than you need. Extra length might come in handy if the cable kinks and its wires start to crack. If the cable is shortened to the exact length, it'll begin to rewind when it reaches the bottom but the built-in shutoff switch at the top won't turn the motor off because the up-circuit and down-circuit are separate and it'll still think it's running downhill, so by winding up backwards it'll crunch the chair at the top and then overload. It will stop though (whew!). The hand held control switch that comes with the winch has a Kill button if the other switch buttons are un-responsive.

• 
  Design it with room for access to the various components. The indoor lift I made to fold up against the wall has barely room for a finger behind it much less a wrench. That's bad, there should be at least a couple of inches clearance to access wheels, switches, etc. I put a little door in the back of the seat to clean the brake, but first I had to take the whole chair, brake and brake pipe off several times to figure out simple stopping problems.
  • It was stopping erratically because the brake vibrated (mounted crooked but fixed with a roller that applys pressure on the pipe)
  • Stopping because the pipe collected dust and dog hair that clogged up in the pony clamp brake, grease on the pipe is messy and attracts crud so Erif uses a spray can of dry lubricant (required a piece of a sock on a wire "wiper" to keep the pipe clean)
    

  • Stopping because the wall and brake pipe were both crooked and the pipe would rotate with use, pushing the pony clamp to rub against the wall (glued the upper housing of the pipe with "Goop" to hold it steady).
  • Stopping because the rollers need grease. The wheels and guide rollers definitely do need oil or grease, or they'll squeak and cause the chair to lurch.
• Plan for a contingency to get downstairs when the power goes off. Stairs work great but the vertical lift in my house is supposed to replace stairs because it's a small house (smaller than an M1 Abrams footprint). Stairs take up floor space, but sometimes the power goes out for days. So the lift platform folds up like a trapdoor and there are parkour handholds on the wall for climbing. Pretty cool eh? (till I turn 80) I've used it several times already, and it's slightly easier than climbing out a window, and needs more thinking. Something like a rope or telescoping ladder/firehouse pole.

This webpage is copyrighted Bill Cornelius 2022
but the elevator/lift design is not, so go crazy.
Just link :)

Best Creation Story!

(from Oglaf.com)

Tricorder

A high def. Tomograph scan that determines molecular makeup and identifies proteins. Making it possible to identify localized immune response and thus what kind of infection without invasive procedures. AI can presently identify proteins and advise combinants, all it needs is a sensor: a high definition tomograph, which currentlly exists. The future has to start somewhere.

Aircooled VW Oil Beeper

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In a previous incarnation, I VW gypsied for 20 yrs and never once abandoned my bus (I did learn to fix it a lot though). These hacks are my own inventions, the oil beeper saved my engine many times when the oil was simply low, once when the pressure plunger stuck, once when a valve cover dislodged, and once when a sump bolt fell out and it all drained out on the road. There are so many urban legends about VW hacks (like surplus helicopter oil coolers, oversize tires, windshield washer pumps to cool the engine, etc), I'm amazed that nobody ever sold kits for beepers because these actually work. Air-cooled VWs depend on oil for cooling as they always run hot. Meanwhile heat thins the oil, eventually breaking up the lipid chain molecule, and wrecking it. So the engines wear, and sooner or later they leak. The Idiot light that's supposed to warn you of low oil only comes on when the VW engine oil pressure is around 7 - 10 lbs. (it should be above 20 & ideally around 40). By the time it's 10 lbs consistently, like when you start up and the light stays on, or when you look down to see it's been on for an unknown length of time, the engine is already hurting. Fortunately, an early warning is when the light begins to flicker on turns. Unfortunately, that's especially the time you should be watching the road instead of the dash so the fact that it flickers should be news. Wouldn't it be psychedelic if you could like, hear the light and save your engine at the same time? Well now you can! (actually this guy (BBC video) had an implant put in his head just for that, but it cost something more than a person would usually invest in a VW)(not that they arent wonderful cars even though they crush your eardrums when you slam the door and smell like exhaust during winter) BadCoon now offers a cheap way to keep from wrecking your engine: Put a piezoelectric beeper from radio shack or Amazon on the oil light wire duh. They cost $3. (ok that's the point here, the rest is just hype) Connect it to the VW engine oil pressure light wire where it attaches to the back of the speedometer (it's wired in parallel to the bulb, so the red wire from the beeper goes to one of the fuses for power, and the black wire splices into the oil light wire that grounds at the sensor on the engine. If you switch the wires and hook the red wire to the pressure sender, it won't beep at all, ever). You don't have to run any wires back to the engine, it uses the same oil sensor & wire that comes w/ the car. Mount the Beeper next to the fuse box under the dash, inside the cab where you can hear it. Up close they're all too loud (60 to 180 Db) but VWs are usually loud too so an acceptable noise level can be negotiated with a piece of tape partially covering the sound hole in the beeper. The good news is it'll save you hundreds or thousands of dollars in engine repair by waking you from your slack-jawed reverie as you cruze the endless highway. The bad news is you'll want to rip it out every few months because it'll drive you nuts whenever the key's on & the engine's not running, like when you're messing w/ the distributor. I don't sell these, you have to get it from Radioshack (here's some free Radioshack coupons) or Amazon. But you can send me money anyway just out of servile tribute because this idea is the best idea ever and I totally deserve it. The beeper worked out so well that I put a thermostat beeper on my other cars too. (an '85 Accord and a '93 Mazda) because water cooled engines have a bunch of parts that tend to wear out after 10 or 15 yrs (like the radiator, water pump, hoses, thermostat, & thermostat fan switch). They always strand you somewhere inconvenient and give scant warning that you'll have to fork out for towing and a new head gasket, valve &/or piston. This is the thermostat switch to get (it's adjustable). Actually Idonno, it's chinese and amazon stopped carrying the one I use. this looks like it though. Hook it as a switch to a piezoelectric beeper and set the temp to around 82° C or 180° F. w/ a candy thermometer and a pot of hot water. Connect one of the thermostats wires to the hot side of the coil (um, ... not the fat wire, right?). The other thermostat wire goes to the beepers red wire. Ground the beepers black wire to the frame/chassis. You can solder the connections or use wire nuts. The sensor bulb is strapped to the top radiator hose. Break a leg.