[FRIAM] Ralph Abraham, Rob and Chris Shaw (was: Re: Zoom Friam)

Sat Oct 15 12:05:44 EDT 2022

The Days are Just Packed: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection (Volume 12): 
Watterson, Bill: 9780836217353: Amazon.com: Books

Some "days" in the FriAmVerse are "Just Packed"... and this week is one 
of them!

I had forgotten about Chris's work with Ralph... and neglected to 
mention the first time I encountered him when he penned an Escher Ruboff 
for the 1985?  "Evolution Games and Learning" 
announcements/T-Shirt/Agenda at LANL.     I had my T-shirt for decades 
but it slipped away sometime in the last 20 years.   It was the classic 
Escher  "hand drawing hand" but with one hand a *robotic* one.

Drawing Hands” large poster – M.C. Escher – The Official Website

The *last* time I actually saw this image was sitting at el Parasol in 
Pojoaque when it appeared on a tall, lean, blond nordic young man.   He 
was the spitting image of Steen Rasmussen ( who attended the Evolution, 
Games, Learning workshop as well).   Of course it was his (now 20ish) 
son Leif who I hadn't seen since he was 12!   We chatted briefly but I 
didn't get a picture (it was surely before cell-phone cameras... maybe 
2002?)...  I saw Steen 3 years ago in Copenhagen on my way back from 
Merle's gig in Stockholm.

Thanks for more Landau links...  the Cuban thing was very... "very"...

- Steve

On 10/14/22 8:15 PM, Stephen Guerin wrote:
>
> *On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 3:45 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:*
>
>     *THE Ralph Abraham
>     <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Abraham_(mathematician)>?  Or
>     the OTHER Ralph Abraham
>     <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Abraham_(politician)>?  Or
>     Yet Another... ?*
>
> Yes, the first :-)
>
> *On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 3:45 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
> *
>
>     *The Trialogues
>     <https://www.sheldrake.org/videos/trialogues-at-the-edge-of-the-millennium>
>     comes to mind...  I didn't realize how young McKenna was when he
>     passed just a few years later.  I still can't get past most of
>     Sheldrake's hyperbolic-woo-pseudoscientific framing, and do wonder
>     at how Abraham sorts all that out internally.   It isn't
>     surprising to find a pure Maths guy engaged in very mystical
>     thinking, no fundamental contradictions required I don't think.*
>
> Ralph credited some high-dimensional math insights to hallucinatory 
> experiences with DMT - an interest shared with McKenna. As you know my 
> interest in Transactional Intepretation of QM 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interpretation> with 
> "advanced" reverse-time waves "handshaking" time-forward "retarded" 
> waves, Sheldrake's morphic resonance fields aren't too many nodes of 
> crazy away from me - though, I prefer the duality of woo-oow science :-)
>
> *On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 3:45 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
> *
>
>     *I don't think I've ever met Ralph and I could never quite suss
>     out how much influence he had directly (certainly indirectly?) on
>     Shaw/Farmer/Packard/Crutchfield's "Chaos Cabal"... *
>
> UCSC Faculty Bill Burke and Ralph were supporters of the Cabal as they 
> worked on their PhDs with some shared pub credits.  Rob refers to 
> Burke as the Godfather to the group. (mentioned in the Gleick's 
> chapter on Santa Cruz that you linked to).
>
> Last time I saw Ralph in Santa Fe, I asked him about the group and 
> that Rob was with us at SFx. He said "Rob was the smartest one" - high 
> praise given the other three :-)
>
> Full disclosure: I once slept with Ralph's brother, Fred, director of 
> theBlueberry institute <http://www.blueberry-brain.org/>. They were 
> out of hotel rooms at the SCTPLS 2002 Portland conference, and Fred 
> asked to bunk with me :-)
>
> *On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 3:45 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote: *
>
>     *Does anyone know how to find Julia Landau's strange documentary
>     tangenting "Strange Attractors <https://vimeo.com/129239092>"? *
>
> Such a cool project.You can see it trying to get off the ground in 
> 2008. 
> <http://reelchanges.org/projects/show/ef3718b0-4176-012b-7345-005056c00008/>  I 
> emailed Rob in 2013 to find out status and he said Julia was still 
> looking for funding to complete. Beyond the trailer, did you notice:
> Clip 1 Intro <https://vimeo.com/344238322>
> Clip 2 - Imagining Rob, Meeting Howard <https://vimeo.com/344238191>
> Clip 3 - Finding Rob in Chaos Theory <https://vimeo.com/344238021>
> Finding Rob in the Chaos <https://vimeo.com/136946323>
>
> I ran into Rob in Honolulu in 2017 - I asked him about it again and 
> still the same status.
>
> BTW, check out the other couple of clips on Julia's Vimeo. I found her 
> father's "will the real terrorist standup 
> <https://vimeo.com/125292604>" somewhere online about the Cuban Five. 
> When I was in Havana with Tom Johnson for ABM Workshops he helped 
> organize, I learned more about the Cuban Five and for a couple years 
> followed all news stories and histories I could find on 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Posada_Carriles and 
> Americam-sponsored terrorism in Cuba. Pretty f&#ked up.
>
> *On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 3:45 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
> *
>
>     *Gleick's book
>     <https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4822680> was the
>     first time I realized that Doyne and Norm came from Silver City,
>     and then I discovered that my sister with to Kindergarten with
>     Norm's brother Vance...   Rob used to hang out at SFx from time to
>     time and his brother Chris would drop through and talk about his
>     Haptek-sponsored "chatterbot"/avatar/PeoplePutty work:
>     https://aidreams.co.uk/forum/haptek/chris-shaw-talk-at-chatbots-3-2/
>     which was pretty advanced, considering what we are getting excited
>     about with deepfakes/AI-art these days.   I knew Haptek when it
>     formed originally to develop haptic hardware interfaces for VR a
>     decade earlier... *
>
> Cool, hadn't seen Chris's chatbot video. And in addition to 
> illustrating Rob's papers and books, I think you know about Chris and 
> Ralph Abrham's collaboration on the four volume classic Dynamics: 
> Geometry of Behavior 
> <https://www.amazon.com/Dynamics-Geometry-Behavior-Ralph-Abraham/dp/0201567172> with 
> Chris providing beautiful technical illustrations of attractors and 
> dynamical flow fields.
>
>     On 10/14/22 12:56 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
>>     What did everyone think about this last hearing?  I watched it
>>     with Ralph Abraham, whom some of you might know of.  He is
>>     visiting me for a week here in Santa Fe and had some interesting
>>     perspectives on our present politics.
>>
>>     Of course Ralph and I are also having fun conversations about the
>>     ever-present and unknowable electromagnetic field.  Life is good,
>>     despite the possibility that I am but a hologram in a random
>>     universe heading down a Black Hole.
>>
>>     On Thu, Oct 13, 2022 at 10:56 AM Frank Wimberly
>>     <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>         Several people, including me, want to watch the hearing. 
>>         When I left Dave West and Jon Z were the only ones there.
>>
>
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