Sunday 15 April 2007

Cambrian

Originally Posted March 3, 2007

Miss Scarlet’s Dream ~ March 3, 2007

This dream was about a mall in Cambrian Heights which is a community in Calgary. The mall in question is just a strip mall with maybe 4 businesses, on the corner of 14 Street Northwest & Northmount Drive. This mall in real life is really no big tourist attraction or anything. Unless you know the area well you probably have never heard of it. In the time I lived in that neighbourhood, the stores changed ownership over and over again, I saw lots of businesses come and go in that mall. I did play pool there once but I think that's the only time I've been there. I just told BWB about this dream and he knows that mall well, he said there used to be a burger joint there called CB Burger and he always had the Centennial Burger. Our Centennial was in 1967; don't know if that has anything to do with anything.

In this dream I was on my way to work, sitting in traffic, and I see the mall only it now has a 3-storey parking garage. There was a ramp into the garage, I saw a car drive up the ramp, then the ramp lifted and disappeared inside the garage. I came to the conclusion they did this at a certain time every morning to prevent theft. Once you were in the garage and the ramp went up, you couldn't leave until the end of the day when the ramp came down again. And if you missed the ramp in the morning, you couldn't get in.

I just happen to look over when I see this black Mercedes sedan with black tinted windows come out of one opening next to the garage, in the mall portion, and into the garage opening on the third floor. I thought holy crap that guy is nuts! If he missed that opening he was a goner! The way he did it was so smooth, like he'd been doing this a lot. I thought he must be late for work often.

I somehow knew this building was all doctors and lawyers and that's why they were so concerned about theft. And I also knew for this car to make this maneuver he would have to know a lot of stuff. Like at what speed should he be going, when does he make the turn, the incline of the ramp and all these other calculations. And he seemed to know all this because I was gobsmacked by the fact he came out of one opening and went into the other and hit nothing; he was smack dab in the middle of that opening.

So I get to work (I work for an engineering firm in the transportation department) and I start talking about this to the gang in my work area and I kept saying to JC (a friend and co-worker), “It was that mall in Cambrian”. I said mall and Cambrian a lot. I was trying to describe it and name which stores were there because he didn't seem familiar with it. All I could remember was a Rogers Video store.

I was so amazed by this stunt but nobody else seemed to be. I knew being engineers they would have been amazed if they saw it happen, so I took a bunch of them to the mall to show them.

All of a sudden we're inside the mall trying to figure out where this guy came from, there didn't seem to be an opening anymore. There was a small window in a bathroom next to the garage opening, but no way was it big enough for a Mercedes to exit through without a lot of damage. I was looking around trying to figure this all out. If this was where he came out, how did he get in there? The hallways weren't that wide and the doorways into different rooms were normal sized. I looked down the hall wondering if he could gain enough speed to do this trick, and even if he could, how did he get around the corner? There was a ramp in the hallway that I knew he used, painted red and orange with a big spring under it, but it didn’t seem nearly big enough to gain the altitude he needed. It reminded me of a gymnastics springboard.

All the engineers were doing the same, making notes on paper and looking for their calculators to figure this out when I woke up with the Pink Floyd song Vera playing in my head.
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After I got up I came in the computer room, BWB had just turned on my computer. I went to the menu bar to open Google to look up Cambrian and it was 1:11.

This is the second time in a week I have woken up with Vera playing; the first time was February 28th:

I dreamt just before I woke up that I opened my email and there were a bunch of emails, some I had already opened and 2 that weren't open yet. The weird thing is I have my email in waking life set to sort by date received, but these were not in that order. There were the ones I had read in regular text, then one from you (Purpleaura) near the bottom in bold text, and one near the top, but not right at the top, from "OTHER", also bolded but in capital letters. I wondered who it might be from and was curious to open it when I woke up with the Pink Floyd song Vera playing.
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For as long as I can remember I wake up with a song playing in my head on a regular basis. For many years I disregarded them as just my sometimes obsessive interest in music. Once in a while the song I woke up with was the same song playing on the radio when I got into the car. I thought it odd, but it was forgotten as soon as the beginning chords of the next song started. Until Katrina. Now I pay very close attention to this radio.
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Miss Scarlet ~ April 30, 2005

I woke up early this morning with one line from a song going over and over in my head;

“New Orleans is sinking and I don't wanna swim”

Then I fell asleep and woke up a few hours later with the same line going through my head
.
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The song is New Orleans is Sinking by the Tragically Hip, and this dream had a huge impact on me even before the tragedy. I searched all over the place wondering what it could mean. On top of that, Purpleaura was getting all kinds of vibes for New Orleans as well.
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Purpleaura ~ February 17, 2005

…then she starts chatting and the next minute she says she is heading off for vacation and you guessed it, yep, NEW ORLEANS, this Saturday. OK I get it someone is trying to get me to New Orleans for what I don’t know. But that’s 2 people in 1 1/2 weeks that have mentioned it. I will see what's up in New Orleans that’s got me going.
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There were many other instances of us discussing New Orleans. I guess the point I’m trying to get across as it relates to this dream is how music sometimes speaks to us, and this Vera Lynn thing has me a little freaked.

For those who don’t know, Pink Floyd’s album The Wall and the subsequent movie is full of World War II associations. For 29 years I kept meaning to look up Vera Lynn, but it wasn’t until I woke up with the song playing the other day that I finally did:
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Dame Vera Lynn, DBE (born March 20, 1917) is a British singer whose career flourished during World War II, when she was nicknamed "The Forces' Sweetheart". She is best known for the popular songs "We'll Meet Again", written by Ross Parker and Hughie Charles, and "The White Cliffs of Dover", words by Nat Burton, music by Walter Kent. She is one of the last surviving major entertainers of the war years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Lynn

Interesting her birthday is coming up shortly; she’ll be 90 years old.
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What stood out in this dream were of course Cambrian as well as North, Engineers and the calculations, particularly of the incline. The car was not at all new, definitely an early year, but it looked new. It was very shiny and very black. It reminded me of Hitler’s Mercedes. I did not have a good feeling about the car.
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Here’s what I learned this afternoon about Cambrian:

The Cambrian period of the Paleozoic era was characterized by a diverse eruption of life in the seas. Life had not yet evolved on land. The highest forms of life existing at this time were the trilobites, which reached lengths up to two feet. Green and red algae started to appear as well as sponges, gastropods, and segmented worms.

http://www.prehistory.com/timeline/cambria.htm

The Cambrian explosion is the geologically sudden appearance in the fossil record of the ancestors of familiar animals, starting about 542 million years ago (Mya). In addition, a similar pattern of diversification is seen in other organisms such as phytoplankton and the various colonial calcareous microfossils grouped together as calcimicrobes. The base of the Cambrian is also marked by strong geochemical perturbations, including excursions in carbon and sulfur isotopes.

The Cambrian explosion has generated a great deal of interest and controversy among scientists and the public. Darwin saw it as one of the principal objections that could be lodged against his theory of evolution by natural selection ("The fossil record had caused Darwin more grief than joy. Nothing distressed him more than the Cambrian explosion, the coincident appearance of almost all complex organic designs..." Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda’s Thumb, 1980, pp. 238-239.), as have modern-day Creationists.

Scientists have also long been puzzled by its abruptness, and the apparent lack of obvious predecessors to the Cambrian fauna. Three questions in particular are of importance currently: I) is the “explosion” real? II) what does it tell us about the origin and possible evolution of animals? and III) what were its causes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion

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Well, that was all very interesting, but I didn’t see any signs of the Theory of Evolution in that dream. This definitely felt like a war dream. However I did see a reference to dinosaurs somewhere along the way and found that interesting considering Purpleaura’s dream a few weeks ago. And the mention of the worms. That kind of ties together BWB’s nuclear explosion/bunker dream, Purpleaura’s virus dream the same night, and the Pink Floyd song also from the Wall, Waiting for the Worms.
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I also found out there is a Cambrian Mall in Sault St. Marie, Ontario (Sault is pronounced Sue for those who don’t know), located on Great Northern Road. Why that stood out in that link is, a new TV show premiered last week that’s a spin off of one of our favorites, Corner Gas. A character in the show is named Sault St. Marie. There was a scene discussing her name and how it was pronounced…salt?...salute?...that we got quite a chuckle out of. For some reason Sault St. Marie has been on my mind since.
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And then there’s this lithograph depicting two ships named the Cambrian and the Glasgow in the Battle of Navarino on October 20, 1827. That one seemed to stand out as it was done on January 18 (118), 1828.

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And there’s the C-Class ship, commissioned during the First World War:

The C-class were light cruisers of the Royal Navy, and were built in a number of sub-classes known as the Caroline (six ships), Cambrian (six ships), Centaur (two ships), Caledon (four ships), Ceres (five ships) and Carlisle (five ships) classes. They were built for the rough conditions of the North Sea and proved rugged, and capable, vessels, though they were quite small and cramped.

http://www.ibiblio.org/maritime/photolibrary/index.php?cat=1297

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This link was interesting as it talks about a library designed by a railway engineer and mentions a railway on a 2-1 incline.

Not only a popular holiday resort, Aberystwyth is also one of the most important cultural centres in Wales. Here the first university in the principality was established in 1896, and fifteen years later the first phase of the National Library of Wales was opened in a former hotel. Designed and built in 1860 by railway engineer Thomas Savin for a hoped-for influx of tourists which took some time to materialise, the Gothic building is a striking feature of the promenade.

But the history of the town goes back much further. Atop Pen Dinas, south of the town, is one of the largest Iron Age forts in West Wales, its site now marked by a relic of a relatively modern conflict: an upturned cannon from the Battle of Waterloo.

Until the coming of the railway, Aberystwyth was an important port on the Cambrian coastline. The harbour and pier are now put to pleasure use.

The view to the north is dominated by 485ft Constitution Hill, which has a funicular railway that hauls visitors up a 2-in-1 incline for some of the most spectacular views of Cardigan Bay.

http://members.aol.com/Walesrails/ct.htm

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Northwest

Northmount

Great Northern

North Sea

View to the North
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The word “Iron” was also emphasized for me in the above link. After the Starman dream, where I was certain the star was constructed of iron, Purpleaura sent this link:

A root race begins at the start of a sidereal year. The Golden Age begins while the Earth is in Aquarius, and, as the Earth moves through the zodiacal belt, the ages also progress: from the Golden, to the Silver, to the Copper, and finally to the Iron Age. By the time the Earth enters Pisces and then returns to Aquarius, the Iron Age of a civilization has begun.
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So now we have another Theory of Evolution…sort of. Why does this dream keep sending me in that direction when it so clearly felt like it was about something else? This link may have explained it all:

Just two days ago we talked about the JASON panel, named after Jason and the Argonauts of Ancient Greek legend, and its piece on information war. This month we also saw the passage of the Defense Science Board's Strategic Communications paper into the clear. At the end of November, there was this article on the "Cambrian Project," whereby DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) intends to use evolutionary theory and state of the art computer systems to project threats and responses.

These three groups are part of a parallel structure for the "life of the mind," one directed pointedly at the preservation of America and the furthering of our national aspiration of a world based on human liberty. JASON overlaps with academia, but DARPA and the DSB are largely independent of it. Add to those the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), far larger and more successfully secretive than the better-known CIA; the military services' intelligence agencies (AIA, MCIA, etc.); the NSA (National Security Agency); the military academies, the War College, and a host of lesser-known players.

http://grimbeorn.blogspot.com/2004_11_21_grimbeorn_archive.html

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The Cambrian Project

It all started last year when the US assistant secretary for defence and other senior officials within the Pentagon read In the Blink of an Eye, a book I wrote on the Cambrian explosion. It triggered a series of meetings in Washington and Britain, involving all manner of political and military figureheads, as well as defence analysts, computer programmers, tacticians and statisticians. Their hope was to see what a knowledge of evolution could do for national security. They emerged with a plan to create an extraordinary piece of software. Dubbed the 'Cambrian program', it will take perhaps the broadest overview of the world's social and defence systems, and use evolutionary theory to predict possible threats and outcomes. I and a team of experts at the [British Ministry of Defence]'s defence science and technology laboratory have already begun work on the program in Britain, and a similar consortium is planned at the Pentagon under Tony Tether of the Defence advanced research projects agency (Darpa).

If DARPA is involved, we can expect a brilliant but extremely complicated and expensive computer system to show up somewhere... ah, here it is:

At the heart will be a neural network, itself a piece of software, that must first be trained to handle the disparate information it will be fed. This is where the Cambrian explosion comes in particularly handy. The fossil record of the event documents how major advances, like eyes, and myriad minor changes in creatures, put pressure on other animals to evolve responses, be they new defences or different attack strategies. To train the Cambrian program's neural network, it will be fed data from the fossil and genetic record of life just before the explosion. It will then be given data from the very end of the explosion. As the program runs, the neural network will look at both sets of data and work out what connections lead from life before the great arms race to life afterwards. Once it has achieved this, the program can be fed hypothetical new data, for example the early emergence of an electrical sting as a weapon, to see what impact it might have on other creatures.

The notion seems to be that, by first plotting and then tracking how life evolved to deal with particular threats, we can predict probable routes for humans faced with similar threats. That can both be useful for defensive purposes (given a weapon using chemical X, what kinds of natural defenses can be employed?) and offensive ones (if we design a weapon using electrical bursts, what kinds of defenses can we expect to be raised against it that we'll need to overcome?).

http://grimbeorn.blogspot.com/2004_11_21_grimbeorn_archive.html#110156851455526905

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And there’s another Cambrian Project which may not seem all that interesting, but considering I found it on the British equivalent to the North American Institute of Transportation Engineers, head office Washington D.C., and a group every engineer in my place of work belongs to, it seemed relevant. However at this point I have no idea why, nor can I explain all the instances of North

The Cambrian Project will bring cabsignalling with ERTMS/ETCS to Britain, supporting the business case for a national programme that will deliver major benefits, reducing delays and enhancing safety. Technical challenges addressed by the project give an early indication of how the project will help ensure those benefits are realised.

http://www.iee.org/oncomms/sector/transport/Articles/Object/2A08F1F3-08FE-72DF-
C9643F6989F503
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So what does this all mean? Well my preliminary feelings are, something to do with the theories behind the beginning of life may be the reason behind a war. And that’s certainly not any huge revelation. Religious beliefs have been the cause of many, many wars. So why am I dreaming this now? Could it be the recent discovery of the so-called graves of Jesus and his family? If so, this leads to another popular topic of discussion, Operation Bluebeam, which “coincidentally” has been on my mind a great deal lately. Does anybody else find it strange all the new technology coming out is blue? Bluetooth, Blu-ray, Bluebeam?

When I first heard about it, it seemed so real to me. Like this was truly going to happen some day. The first part, or Step One, I have especially been on the lookout for, and every single time I hear of a new archaeological discovery, I wonder if it’s the one that’s going to trigger the whole crazy show.

The first step concerns the breakdown of all archeological knowledge. It deals with staging earthquakes at certain precise locations around the planet where supposed new "discoveries" will finally explain (for them) that the meanings of the basic doctrines of all the world’s major religions are "wrong." This falsification will be used to make the population believe that all religious doctrine has been misunderstood and misinterpreted.

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/6583/project079.html
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To be Continued…
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Vera ~ Pink Floyd

(Background: Where the hell are you?)
(Radio announcer: Over 47 German planes were destroyed with the loss of only 15 of our own aircraft)
(Background: Where the hell are you Simon?)
Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?
Remember how she said that
We would meet again
Some sunny day?
Vera! Vera!
What has become of you?
Does anybody else in here
Feel the way I do
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New Orleans is Sinking ~ The Tragically Hip

Bourbon blues on the street loose and complete
Under skies all smoky blue-green
I can forksake the dixie dead shake
So we dance the sidewalk clean
My memory is muddy what's this river I'm in
New Orleans is sinking and I don't want to swim
Colonel Tom What's wrong? What's Going On
You can't tie yourself up for a deal
He said "Hey north you're south shut you big mouth
You gotta do what you feel is real"
Ain't got no picture postcards ain't go no souvenirs
My baby she don't know me when I'm thinking about those years
Pale as a light bulb hanging on a wire
Sucking up to someone just stoke the fire
Picking out the highlights of the scenery
Saw a little cloud looked a little like me
I had my hands in the river
My feet back up on the banks
Looked up to the Lord above and said hey man thanks
Sometimes I feel so good I gotta scream
She says Gordie baby I know exactly what you mean
She said, she said I swear to God she said
My memory is muddy what's this river I'm in
New Orleans is sinking and I don't want to swim