Tag: Roger Jones

17 Chihuly

These are photos I took with Instagram on my cell phone of the Chihuly exhibit on a recent trip to Seattle. (August 2018)

SECOND LAW

The Second Law is even more important than water for the creation of life. The Second Law, in its simplest form, can be stated, “Matter and energy tend to spread.” What is so meaningful about that simple sentence. After all, it is not surprising that cream spreads into coffee when stirred. We think of disorder as matter and energy that are well spread. We give this disorder the name “entropy.” The Second Law states that the entropy of matter and energy increases or, at minimum, does not decrease. An implication of this law is that all the matter and energy in the universe will eventually become a uniform heated soup. There will be no structure to the universe. Physicists usually say, The Universe will die in a random heat bath.”

ABUNDANCE PARADOX

We live in a world of abundance, but is it really the land of Rainbow Pie? What surprises have we seen? How do we map out the land of abundance to understand the unintended consequences?

BIG IDEAS IN SCIENCE, ART, AND SOCIETY

Hello fellow space-time travelers. My name is Roger Jones. I am coming to you from steamy downtown Pensacola, Florida. It is 7:30 in the morning in late June, so you can see the morning sun streaming through the east-facing windows behind me. This is the first post on this channel, TheX-Press channel, so I thought…

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FAT AND LIFE

Today I want to talk about a very special set of chemical bonds that enable the actions of living things; that enable life to do something beyond existing. These bonds are called hydrophilic and hydrophobic bonds.

Water and Magic

Full fathom five thy father lies.

Of his bones are coral made.

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell

Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2

A FISH STORY

This video tells a story, a parable rather, about abundance of water and the consequences of abundant water. The setting is Pensacola, Florida. This video is part of the Abundance Project in which citizens are invited to participate in critical thinking to create tools for policy makers.

ABUNDANCE PROJECT

A price is paid for the abundance, however. The complexity of 21st-century life increased, making many people uncomfortable with their new high-energy environment. Gradients in the distribution of abundance annoyed many more people. A populist groundswell developed around the world with the stated goal to return to simpler times.

Finding Lost Children

The very first obstacle that must be overcome to reunite the children with the families is to remove the parents from detention. This can be done with a bond. A bond releases the parents from detention. Once free, they are allowed to seek out their children, which is another set of hurdles.

Thought Experiments

A thought, or gedanken, experiment is the creation of a simplified, often fanciful, world for the purpose of understanding the implications of a theory. One of the first was Plato’s allegory of the cave, in which Plato postulates that people are only able to sense a part of the universe about them. The allegory explores what that means and implies. The real value of thought experiments is to generate hypotheses that can be tested in the real world.