Trying to understand the noise/music discussion in the language of other/self: traditionally (e.g., Jacques Attali), music is to the self as noise is to the other. The primary deficit in this analogy is the non-consciousness of sound. One sound cannot approach another sound and have the realization of the "other", but an external entity is required to create and collapse distinctions.
Clouds are perhaps the most timeless noise source ripe for induction, but with the advent of accurate mapmaking and satellite photography we can look to geography as well.
From God's Geography:
Spiritually speaking, the Australian dog doesn't have eyes to see or ears to hear (Isaiah 6:9-10). Additionally, most of Australia's interior is desert or outback, so this dog's head doesn't have much for a brain either.
Also see The Afro-Latinosaurus Rex
Fold a single piece of paper down the center, length wise. Open it up, and fold two corners from one short side to the center, so that the short side is parallel to the center line. Fold the two corners this creates to the center in the same manner. Repeat this once more, but folding in the opposite direction. A section of the structure should create a T shape. Throw the piece of paper with the smallest end facing forward, and it will glide.
This is the most elegant repurposing of an everyday object I know: the paper airplane.
Hofstadter's strange loops are a very accessible subset of coherentism. I say "subset" because self-reference, at first glance, seems to be a only one type of reference. This is only true if you make claims from a perspective. If you make non-perspectival claims, there is only self-reference (meaning is only established recursively).
One of the reasons I appreciate Java is the way the documentation is written. Consider their definition of e from java.lang.Math:
static double E The double value that is closer than any other to e, the base of the natural logarithms.
Charles Manson had an intricate interpretation of Revelations 9 that predicted he was the returning Jesus Christ, and that the Beatles were somehow involved in the coming apocalypse. From Wikipedia:
Verse 17: "And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone."
breastplates of fire = the Beatles' electric guitarsA reminder that some more ambiguous prophetic texts are notoriously difficult to discuss in a non-coherentist manner.
fire and smoke and brimstone out of their mouths = the Beatles' powerful lyrics, the power of their music to ignite Helter Skelter
From the Wikipedia article on the Japanese painter Hokusai, some thoughts on understanding and sharing the natural world:
"From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention. At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am eighty-six, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at one hundred and thirty, forty, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive. May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie."
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