Old fart's comments, experiences and insights

[lasermaster1977]

Douglas Adams was the best-selling British author and satirist who created The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In this talk at UCSB recorded shortly before his death, Adams shares hilarious accounts of some of the apparently absurd lifestyles of the world's creatures, and gleans from them extraordinary perceptions about the future of humanity. [5/2001]Douglas Adams was the best-selling British author and satirist who created The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
In this talk at UCSB recorded shortly before his death, Adams shares hilarious accounts of some of the apparently absurd lifestyles of the world's creatures, and gleans from them extraordinary perceptions about the future of humanity. [5/2001]
Share & Enjoy.
😎

Good share point, dude. He does thread the needle well.

[lasermaster1977]

Something laserist said caught my attention.

Thinking back to "the primitive control methods" when using multi-line ion gas lasers as the projector's light source AND before we threw money at a problem to solve it...we took what we had and innovated.

We had hard beam flags to turn beam paths on or off, things that flipped into or out of the path of the beam on its way to a scanner pair or diffraction or lumia effect.

BUT, the ion laser's huge power supply had a simple 270 degree knob to increase/decrease the current flowing through the tube. As the current rose, typically first the red wavelength came up dim then brighter and as red's brightness rose then the yellow wavelength would start fading up, a bit more current drive brought in the several green wavelengths and finally the blues.

The beam flags could be judiciously used to reveal up to a four way combination of colors and their effects (scanned, diffraction, scanned-diffraction, lumia, etc.) The laser's PSU current knob allowed the laserist to fade up and down the wavelength rainbow in singles, doubles, triples or four colors AND pop-up a color and fade it down or pop-up two colors then fade the higher wavelength one down first on then the next lower.

On the downside, it demanded one hand if there was but one laserist, but if there was a laserist and an assistant it took only one of four hands for doing beam intensity control.

[Greg]

Something laserist said that caught my attention was mentioning that, if I'm remembering the comment correctly, Ivan talked about Cosmic Awareness. I can imagine two quite different meanings for this term. One being the idea that the cosmos has an awareness. The other being a sense of awareness of the cosmos as experienced by an individual. An idea on which perhaps Douglas Adam's Total Perspective Vortex was based. I'd like to know more about what Ivan meant when he used the term.

[lasermaster1977]

Something laserist said that caught my attention was mentioning that, if I'm remembering the comment correctly, Ivan talked about Cosmic Awareness. I can imagine two quite different meanings for this term. One being the idea that the cosmos has an awareness. The other being a sense of awareness of the cosmos as experienced by an individual. An idea on which perhaps Douglas Adam's Total Perspective Vortex was based. I'd like to know more about what Ivan meant when he used the term.

It could be as simple as what Carl Sagan said, "We are made of star stuff.", or to understand who we are, where we are, why we are one must have cosmic awareness.

[Greg]

It could be as simple as what Carl Sagan said, "We are made of star stuff.", or to understand who we are, where we are, why we are one must have cosmic awareness.

You're right. That's a third meaning I hadn't thought of. Like, simply knowing the cosmos is the standard model and general relativity emerging from a singularity, rather than being crystal spheres or a stack of turtles.

[TheHermit]

Something laserist said that caught my attention was mentioning that, if I'm remembering the comment correctly, Ivan talked about Cosmic Awareness. I can imagine two quite different meanings for this term. One being the idea that the cosmos has an awareness. I'd like to know more about what Ivan meant when he used the term.

It's a mental state of consciousness, like being 'far out', Bro.
Back in the days of hippies, young folks were searching for alternative guidance and divine purpose for the existence of mankind (Other than the religious teachings of their old fogy parents. Of course, it is every teenager's duty to rebel against their parents, because they're so much more evolved and intelligent.), such as the ancient wisdoms of astrology, Hinduism, guru teachings, Buddhism, Chariots of the Gods, etc. including hallucinogenic drugs, like LSD & mushrooms. Thus came Deep Thought's answer of life, the Universe, and everything being '42'.
LSD can create an amplified sense of inner awareness and an over inflated ego that feels god-like, as if an individual is 'at one' with the universe, aka 'cosmic awareness'.
That's why some 'trippers' believed they could fly and even jumped off buildings, which was totally awesome, except for the final few inches of harsh reality.
Others 'experienced Laserium' to increase their awareness of the cosmos, observe the intriguing cosmic beauty of krypton clouds and unforeseen cycloids dancing in the night sky.
"Sit back, relax, and experience Laserium, the world's greatest cosmic laser light show, at a planetarium near you." <queue the square wave sweep of the synth during takeoff>
Great marketing, back in the day.
Of course no one really knew what 'cosmic awareness' actually meant, but everyone wanted to find out. It's like achieving 'enlightenment' or 'nirvana'. One only needs to empty the mind and keep meditating... or keep returning to Laserium. 😎

[laserist]

I think "cosmic awareness" was just a placeholder for something Ivan felt that he could never quite communicate even to himself. Here we are in a universe that started out with hydrogen and a little helium, and now diamonds and graphite and wood wood oh my! Maybe the evolutionary nature of Laserium shows is part of that sense of the universe as something that has fought entropy since it's beginning. A Laserium show evolves - it's never finished...

[lasermaster1977]

World view...possibly the 1st step toward cosmic awareness.

I was exposed to this concept in an anthropology class (along with several years of astronomy, taught in a 40' planetarium at a community college) just a couple of years before I embarked on becoming a laserist/entertainer.

[lasermaster1977]

No offense, but you are barking up the wrong beam.

[lasermaster1977]

...is because it too artsy-fartsy as a descriptor name (even though it goes way back to Thomas Wilfred, or Tom as we liked to call him, but I digress) and could be confused with a Microsoft phone or vitamin D deficiency pill, bold life coach training or worse, whore, hooker. Let's face it "Laser Amorphousisms or LA for short" on a scale of 1 to 10 is a far better descriptor, saves THREE letters in its abbreviation spelling...but is still so pretentious.

In the old planetarium laser show days, we kept it simple and called them what they were...laser cloud effects or simply laser clouds. We also didn't feel the need to elegantly name their different amorphous churning styles like meteorologist do with moisture laden water droplets aggregated in the sky on or above us like rain, fog, cumulous, stratocumulus, stratus, alto stratus, lenticulars, alto cirrus, cirrus, contrails.

We were more practical with our references. "Use the ripply disk" or "do the ripply disk shooting through the shower glass disk" or "the flatter ripply disk" or the "glass tube one" or "the best glass tube one" with the flatter ripply disk! We did sometimes use the terms "wispy", "ripply", "wavy", and "churning" but only in quiet company.


Laser cloud life is more simple now because they just say, "look at this lumia" or "wait, this lumia will blow you away" or "I've got several other lumias, too" and "hey did you see David's new lumia?"

Okay then, well I just heard someone call "Lunch" from the McDonalds across the street.