-
Is there really a whispering gallery at the Great Ballcourt at Chichen Itza, Mexico?
A "whispering gallery" (WG) at the Great Ballcourt (GBC) was first reported during its excavation in the 1920s by American archaeologist Silvanus Morley (1883-1948), Director of the Carnegie Institution's Chichen Itza project. In his 1925 National Geographic article Morley wrote: "Standing in this temple one can speak in a low voice & be heard distinctly at the other end of the court, 500 ft away." Around 2000-2001, queries on AZTLAN, a semi-official Mesoamerican archaeology Internet discussion group, found little or no belief in a WG by mesoamericanists. Some opined that any WG would surely be a design accident or an artifact of ballcourt ageing or reconstruction. They stiffened at the suggestion that the ancient Maya might have possessed the requisite knowledge for intentional design. Was Morley mistaken? Or are modern mesoamericanists missing something? During a tour of Chichen Itza following the fall 2002 joint acoustical meeting in Cancun, Mexico, the author and two of his colleagues convincingly demonstrated a GBC WG to about 100 acousticians and their companions. This paper describes WG phenomena observed at the Great Ballcourt and suggests physical models to explain them. He also presents evidence for intentional design.
-
“We are responsible. There is nothing being done to us apart from what we are doing to ourselves.” ― Lujan Matus, The Art of Stalking Parallel Perception: The Living Tapestry of Lujan Matus
-
Regulatory Breakdown
All those screaming for more top down regulation as solution to wicked problems (AI, Econ, etc) clearly have not looked at the state of the regulator lately, which is globally in a historic state of disarray - fluctuating between bad clown show & full collapse 🤡
-
"When a thing is funny, search it carefully for hidden truth." ~George Bernard Shaw
-
Landauer's principle is a physical principle pertaining to the lower theoretical limit of energy consumption of computation. It holds that an irreversible change in information stored in a computer, such as merging two computational paths, dissipates a minimum amount of heat to its surroundings.
Scientists show how to erase information without using energy (2011)
-
Control theory is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with the design of control policies for actuated dynamical systems.
-
Classes of manifestation in the user generated reality
- WHAT: I want THIS to happen HERE and THEN
- HOW: Serenity, Fortunes succeed, well-being (Gelassenheit, Wohlempfinden, Fortunes Gelingen)
What is control? What are its effects and cost? What is a river?
How does a river work?
