20120109 (J, ON)
Journal: January 9, 2012 (My 66th birthday)
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Appearance and Reality                              Soul                              Thought Process
Journal    HAPPY 66th, Scott (66, the devil’s year, especially June 6, 66, 666, or 6666 if still using the same calendar)

Laminating Autumn Leaves: Despite the infinite unknown and unknowable, there is an infinite knowable also. I was trying, unsuccessfully to decipher the drying gradient of each of a stack of layered plastic (impermeable), paper (semi-permeable, anisotropic) and leaves, sources of moisture (also anisotropic to semi-permeable diffusion), and intervening connected and dead end passages, all except the plastic capable of diffusion and convection across a pressure gradient. Considering only diffusion, is the drying front concave or convex? Surrounding dry air is the moisture sink.
                                                                   Diffusion Options
                                                                   (drawing of convex (A) and concave (B) interlayer cross sections)

With my limited knowledge, or at least my attention, I could not get to certainty from particle motions but close, at least I know it is a drying wedge (or, inversely, intersecting moisture mounds) depending on your preference. Though I don’t know, I suspect the shape can be known by me or someone else, anyone else, perhaps many do, perhaps Bob Glass, my list hire at Sandia (who did quite well there and as an independent consultant, added August 15, 2016).

It’s “knowable”, along with infinite other things, a few of which I know, like a person is walking alone on the street outside my window and when pressed leaf my leaf collection will dry from the outside in.

I just pumped the stack to help things along, perhaps vainly for pursuit of “no” moisture excess remaining in the leaves. But I think not for the leaves are only months old in tightly pressed quarters. So when I laminate the leaves in nearly boiling plastic, do I want a slight amount of water vapor trapped in the laminate to, perhaps, preserve flexibility or equilibrate the vapor pressure with the dry, heated winter air, or perhaps to lessen the likelihood of bacterial or fungal or other life zapped by the heat in the steam if not the in the direct heat. The heat itself flash super-heated steam sterilizing the whole laminate.

There is sooooo, sooooooo much I don’t know that is knowable. DAMN! It seems I am condemned to stumble through the darkness of ignorance, groping my way among enticing alternatives, shining my faint lantern of knowledge a few feet into the infinite depth of the darkness. And WOW! What that darkness must contain based on the little I can see.

Meaning? Well, none that I can see, but perhaps we (life on earth) are the seed that will evolve with memory to reverse the entropy of the universe, or maybe we were created by an egocentric God to worship at his feet, or by “aliens” intervening in earth’s evolution. I don’t know, but I strongly doubt any of those, or any other story I’ve heard about the meaning, the teleology our “origins”.

In the mean-time, I have fun trying to separate cause and effect, and trace it, the difference, up and down the scale of complexity from electron momenta to thought. Sooooo, sooooo much I don’t know? SIGH!! Oh well, what I DO know is infinite also, so I guess I will just have to be satisfied with my infinite universe of “knowing” in a galaxy of ignorance. But, you see, since I know that my knowledge is limited, I have classified and encapsulated ignorance within my ken; a great “dumping ground”. Again, you see, I know everything, both what I know and what I don’t, even can’t know, but I always get confused by the details at the fuzzy margins or boundaries.

Me, me, me, me!! Just what the hell am I? A vital part of the entropic salvation of time or a cell in a virus or fungus-like pathogen ravaging everything else in its explosive growth? A cancer even on the earth, herself, for a seeming insatiable quest for ever more metals. Or perhaps am I a key link, perhaps the first successful link in the evolution of “life” to the very fabric of Gaia herself, silicon, iron and oxygen rather the heretofore carbon, calcium and oxygen. I don’t know, do you?

One Note The following demonstrates Aphorism 1 (copied Sinnocks and Kin database;note George Sinnock, b 1793)

Facts: George Sinnock is listed in 1841 as 50 years old (rounded to the nearest 5 years) in both the Catsfield and Ninfield census, towns less than a mile apart. George, 50, is shown in the Ninfield census with two children William and Mary, ages 8 and 5; these two children, at least identically named ones, are also shown in the 1841 census in Hooe, less than a mile to the south. George appears also at the Church House in the Catsfield census, less than a mile to the north. Nearby, just on the other side of Battle, Jane Sellens, 1, appears in both the 1841 Sedlescombe and Westfield census's with different families. The Sellens and Sinnocks were later in-laws.

Conjecture: about fact contrary to existing fact sources (theory, hypothesis, possibility, but certainly not certainty); I suspect George, William, and Mary Sinnock are members of a single family, and that Jane Sellens is but one person also.

Support by 2nd and nth order conjectures (reason, math, and some intuition, well maybe lots of intuition, but still compatible with fact). It is possible that after the census takers visited one house where George, William and Mary were counted in Ninfield, and another house in Sedlescombe where Jane was counted. As soon as the census takers left, runners hurried the children just up the road by shortcuts to the other houses, arriving before the census takers (who, for all they knew may already have been there, unless other-way runners informed them or they asked the census takers from whence they came upon arriving at the first house). Such movement of the children may have been intentional as a joke on the census, or may have occurred just during normal activities of the day, except the census was taken at night.

It seems odd that two related families, the Sellens and Sinnocks, people with rare names in rural settings of few people living along the same road within a few miles of each other would independently have children of the same name at the same time that show up in geographically adjacent census records, but not in subsequent census's. Perhaps, but I am beginning to doubt it. And note. all the "duplicates" were under 8, so no chance was left that the census could say we just missed 'em last time around in '31.

So, I suspect (1) George lived in Ninfield with two children, William and Mary; (2) after the census taker counted them in Ninfield, the children went to Hooe where they show up in the home of Jim and Maria Lewis, newlyweds, 20, with a 1 year old daughter who were perhaps the children's aunt and uncle; (3) George went to Church where he was counted in Catsfield; and (4) Jane Sellens, an infant, was similarly hurried down the road ahead of the census takers.

The joke scenario is supported by such similar goings-on in both the Sellens and Sinnock families, families that later were in-laws. It seems possible that this clan of Sinnocks with their friends and neighbors may have pulled a couple of fast ones on the census. I suspect a quite well-planned ruse cussed and discussed at length, tossed out as a joke, and planned with contingencies of which children would be moved based on where the census takers first showed up, with maybe a dare or two throw in for good measure. It appears we might have had a couple of takers. High fives, anyone? All conjecture from the scantiest of fact, all conjecture! and I think beyond ever knowing, but once the possibility consistent with the meager facts is put forth it can never be put to rest without more bearing fact, which may, but probably does not, exist, especially about God.