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February 26, 2005
do gnats dream of electric clowns?
i have all the focus of a gnat this morning, but i dare anybody trying to make coherent connections between quantum leaps & transactional reading theories to do any better.
quantum leap: the moment the both-possible solidifies, actualizes, becomes one, not both, & makes the other impossible... or maybe it's the many-possible (all-possible?) becoming one & thus denying all the others.
there aren't (are there?) any quantum leaps in network theory; possibilities increase or decrease the likelihood of other possibilities, but they don't eliminate one another. there are critical points, places from which movement, likelihood, & connectivity increase exponentially, but they're still arrays of options; there may be points at which one or another possibility is denied, but all the others remain open, creating instead of a yes & a possibly infinite array of nos, one or another no that actualizes, having little bearing on the overall array of possible yesses.
listening to:
this song has a repetitive electronic noise that sounds like maniacal clown-laughter in it, which is not helping solve the gnat problem. tricksy association games come full circle: quantum leaps are impulse-gnats, laughing like electric clowns. i'm blogging theory at 11:30 on a saturday morning. i think i hear the big white padded van turning onto the end of my street...
EDIT: theory-genius husband-person, while reading over the short paper the above puzzle was a part of, said "where'd you get 'both-possible'? who is that?" i'm sure i looked very sheepish when i said "it's me. i don't know. i didn't know what else to call it." i'm still sheepish about this. am i allowed to do that? make up terms? are the theory-police going to lock me up? rhetorical giants come after me with their thumb-wide sticks?
excuse me while i scurry back to the safety of the six degrees of kevin bacon.
Posted by ttobryan at February 26, 2005 11:02 AM
Comments
Why not make up terms, especially if they're better than ones we've got? I think the overlaps between 720 and 711 a really interesting too, and I think they'll become even more both-possible as we get into more of the distributed cognition stuff. So transactional reading and quantum leaps, eh? Sounds great, especially if it will update the vocabulary we use to talk about comprehension.
Posted by: Derek at February 27, 2005 09:01 AM
Thank you! Chinese Apes.
Posted by: Yellow Monkey at February 28, 2005 05:01 PM