William Neil Howell
William Neil Howell
Hosted Sites:
Note that material in the following "Sub-sites" does not imply that the hosted
individuals agree with my opinions and themes, and visa-versa...
Paul L Vaughan's webpage - Paul does a huge amount of work on astronomical and
Earth process datasets, coming up with unique, insightful, and powerful results,
often leaving the experts in the dust, in my opinion.
He both develops and applies advanced wavelet transforms
for the spatio-temporal analysis of complex systems.
Steve Wickson's webpage including : "A Galactic Theory of Climate"
- mass extinctions, glaciations etc over the last revised paper 16Oct07,
first posted 05Jul07
Neil Howell's webpage almost 400 of approximately 500 oil paintings produced by
the author. first posted 16Mar08
New Material!!:
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14May12 Immanuel Velikovsky : Quack or genius? -
Velikovsky is probably one of the most controversial scientists of the last 100 years
or so. He was repeated attacked and denigrated by entire scientific communities
(geology, astronomy, physics, archaeology, paleontology, etc) over decades, including
ORGANISED attacks (orchestrated as a debate, for example) by the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Part of the problem relates to the seemingly
outlandish concepts that he proposed (eg, that Venus was ejected by Jupiter within
historical times), and another problem for essentially all scientists is that a great
deal of Velikovsky's inspiration and data came from ancient mythology. I have read a
substantial number of Velikovsky's books, plus books and articles attacking Velikovsky,
plus analysis of the attacks against Velikovsky.
(first posted on this site 14May2012)
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13May12 The Ark of the Covenant
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Is the “Ark of the Covenant” shown explicitly on an engraving of the Temple at Karnac,
and labelled as “Item #9” in Figure 8 (a drawing by W. Wreszinski) in Immanuel
Velikovsky's “Ages in Chaos I: From the Exodus to Akhnaton”? According to
[Velikovsky 1952] this drawing was made as a recording of the loot taken from the
Temple of Solomon during Pharoah “Shishak's” conquest of Jerusalem.
(first posted on this site 13May2012, revised 14May2012)
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24Mar12 Solar-Terrestrial Resonance, Climate Shifts, & the Chandler Wobble Phase Reversal, Paul L. Vaughan
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Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP) uncompromisingly emphasize that solar-terrestrial
relations don't work the way most (whether lay, academic, mainstream, eccentric,
alarmist, skeptic - or whatever) have assumed. In a coupled oscillator spatiotemporal
network synchronization framework, there are an infinite number of coupled terrestrial
annual cycles. When Earth is thrown locally, regionally, or globally for hydrologic
spatiotemporal flips, this isn't well-characterized by temperature anomalies. According to
EOP, the synchronization illustrated in the Tsonis framework indicates global constraints
of solar & lunisolar origin. This will be the subject of a more detailed article educationally
emphasizing some of the nuts & bolts of complex wavelet methodology & interpretation.
(first posted on this site 27Mar2012)
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24Mar12 The Solar Cycle's Footprint on Terrestrial Climate, Paul L. Vaughan
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The solar cycle's footprint on terrestrial climate manifests as anomalies in the seasonal
switching of the hemispheric westerly winds, as indicated by semi-annual lunisolar-
integrated variations in the rate of change of length of day. North-south asymmetry (due
to the current distribution of continents) is evident.
(first posted on this site 25Mar2012)
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14Feb12 Venus et Mars - au dela d'une histoire d'amour (video 240 Mbytes)
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Voici une presentation de Saint Valentin en francais, decrivant les concepts mythologiques
de David Talbot et d'autres, et fonde sur des idees d'Immanuel Velikovsky. Venus et Mars
c'est beaucoup plus d'une histoire d'amour, raconte par presque tous les civilisations.
Bien que les detailes different et se transforment avec le temps, les archetypes originaux
des mythologies se ressemblent. L'approche est mi-chemin entre Powerpoint et un format video,
presentant certaines avantages, surtout la voix pre-enregistre, pour ce qui donnent des
presentations dans une langue autre que leur langue maternelle. Bien que ce travail n'est
pas finit a point, l'effort demontre des possibilites, et l'effort ne depasse pas de
beaucoup l'effort pour monter un PowerPoint. (first posted 08Mar2012)
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30Dec11 Social graphs, social sets, and social media (1 Mb)
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[Social graphs, social sets] represent relatively new foundation concepts for building
workplace [toolsets, applications, processes, systems]. One might consider
[Client Management Systems, Contact Managers] as early precursors of “things to come”,
but at a very primitive level. This paper discusses a random selection of potential
[themes, implications] of [social graphs, sets] for social media in the workplace,
organized according to readers of a variety of not-necessarily-overlapping interests,
namely [applications users, conceptually-oriented, tool builders, system designers,
star gazers]. (first posted 10Mar2012)
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17Nov11 How to set up & use data mining with Social media (168 kb)
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A very large and diverse set of data-mining tools and systems are available for a
wide range of needs, and it is not the intent of this document to overview the toolsets
for data-mining. Instead, several “under-the-hood” capabilities (HOW) are discussed as
are WHAT we might be seeking to achieve with Data-mining and Social Media.
(first posted 10Mar2012)
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12Oct11 Systems design issues for social media (early stage outline, 165 kb)
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In discussing social media with IT/MIS professionals, it has been my experience that they
tend to look at the new capabilities as yet another relational database system to fit
into the Management Information System, Enterprise System, Business Plan and standard
systems analysis tools that they have become
accustomed to. To me, these approaches are well suited (or well-practiced, which isn’t
the same thing) to “stagnant, established” technologies that are extremely well
understood, and which are highly predictable. But they are poorly suited to breakthrough
technologies with very different conceptual and theoretical capabilities and impacts, and
which by definition are immature and rapidly changing.
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12Oct11 Semantics beyond search (354 kb)
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While “Semantics” is the concept central to this paper, the overall objective of this
paper is not to provide a review or roadmap for semantics experts who are building social
media toolsets and systems, but rather to greatly expand the awareness of the social
media and
collaborative communities concerning the “larger world of capabilities” beyond improved
search engines that semantics will help to enable. Furthermore, it is my gut feel that
there are fundamental limitations to semantics (and logic), so it is important to be
aware of these, and to be aware of completely different concepts and toolsets that pick
up where semantics and logic fall apart.
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17Jul11 Natural Philosophy Alliance conference, College Park Maryland 05-08Jul11
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As I could not afford to go to my annual IJCNN neural network confernece this year, I went to the NPA conference,
which this year accomodated the "Electric universe" community, which I have beeen looking
at for both Historical modeling and Solar system - Earth Sciences modeling (especially climate).
Many (not all) in the NPA are critical of Secial Relativity (SR) and General Relativity (GR), as I am,
and hosts a great diversity of concepts on gravity, structural physics, and other topics.
This documents summarizes many key points that interested me, and is dedicated to my
mother and father's 60th wedding anniversary in September 2011.
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17Jul11 END of Backlog of "Lost Material" - From approximately October 2009 through January 2011, I lost two computers
and three or four hard drives. I was too busy rebuilding my systems and dealing with
the July 2008 purchase of an old "fixer-upper" house to update my website. As a result,
there is a huge backlog of material that will take some time to post.
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24Aug11 Confabulation Theory for Cognition: "Next Plausible Sentence" survey
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Confabulation is a biologically-inspired theory for cognition that was developed by
Robert Hecht-Nielson of San Diego. It is described in an overview fashion in Section I,
and in much greater detail in his 2007 book “Confabulation Theory: The mechanism of
thought”
As a gross overview, Confabulation Theory assumes that information is held within
“attribute classes” in roughly 4,000 thalamocortical modules (carrying information
about “mental object attributes”) and roughly 40,000 cortical knowledge bases
(establishing “meaningful co-occurrences” between thalamocortical modules).
Confabulation DIFFERS from Bayes theorem in statistics, and these simple
differences make confabulation a superior form of reasoning for the real world,
where information is often incomplete, erroneous, or event misleading (predator – prey).
The “Next Plausible Sentence” exercise as presented in Part II of this paper was a
critically important eye-opener for me, and gives a very strong “hands on” sense
that while technology has a very, very long ways to go, it is a very, very long ways
further along than commonly thought.
(This survey and compilation was finished in Nov2008, but was cleaned up and first posted in Aug2011, re-posted with changes 10Mar2012).
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30Dec10 Lies, Damned Lies, and Scientists
Something is rotten in the state of science. Or perhaps what is dreadfully wrong,
and what scientists illustrate in a spectacular fashion, is that there is something
rotten with our image of ourselves, or more to the point, with how we would see others see us.
We are not GENERALLY good at [rational, logical, and scientific] thinking,
and there are very good reasons for that. For example - [rational, logical, and
scientific] thinking isn't GENERALLY appropriate, especially outside ofthe realm of
[simple, dead] systems, and certainly not in GENERAL for living or human systems.
While my analysis may initially appear dark and ugly,
I actually think that this leads to a more realistic, encouraging and ultimately
positive view of homo sapiens and the "small worlds" we've built.
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27Sep09 START of Backlog of "Lost Material" - see 17Jul2011 END note.
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27Sep09 The Sun and civilisations - Echos of the 2012 end of the Mayan calendar Great Cycle of 5,126 years?
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Here is a revised, high-detail chart relating the sun-barycenter hypothesis for solar activity
to the rise and fall of civilisations. Radioisotopes carbon 14 (C14) and berylium 10 (Be10)
are used as proxies for solar activity. (Note: slight upgrade 04Oct09 - put in radial graphs and
table of climate/temperature periods).
It is interesting to note that the Mayan Great Cycle period of roughly 5,126 years is one-quarter of the
Mayan Grand Cycle of 25,630 years, which is approximately the precessional cycle of the Earth's axis,
which is one of three cycles commonly associated with Milankovic cycles
(Earth orbit eccentricity (~100 ky and 400 ky), Earth axis obliquity (40+ ky) and precession (26 ky)).
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25Sep09 The End of Enlightenment?
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To suggest that we could lose Enlightenment in our era is madness. With perhaps tens of thousands of
universities, tens of millions of scientists, and billions of people aware of the ongoing successes
of science, together with wonderful and astounding advances in genetics and all other fields, there would
seem to be little chance of falling into a Dark Ages. But that is probably what the ancient Greeks thought as well,
and it took 1,500 years to get it back. The "Strategically Evil Scientists" suggest in this presentation
that not only is the Loss of Enlightenment a possiblity in the "near future" (0 to 200 years), it will likely
be caused by the behaviour of scientists and NOT by religious groups, most likely during a period of great
societal stress. I may be right, you may be crazy, but it just may be lunatics we're looking for...
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19May09 Anthony Peratt's theme of Petroglyphs and Auroral phenomena
- Here's
an interesting hypothesis regarding high-energy auroral phenomena as an
explanation of petroglyphs (rock drawings)around the world.
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21Aug08 Solar activity, climate and history over the last 7 ky using Charvatova's
hypothesis and 14C & 10Be radio-isotopes
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Will we be able to forecast solar activity 3,000 years into the future??
Climate?? The course of human history??
Probably not with what we have at hand, but we can try.
This paper and its supporting files are in a very incomplete, preliminary draft.
However, Figure A.2 in Appendix A is especially interesting, as it suggests at
least a "phase synchronization" between Solar Inertial Motion (SIM) and solar
activity, with the 2,402.2 year Charvatovan "long cycle".
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15Jun08 An Independent verification of Charvatova's Solar Inertial Motion (SIM)
hypothesis
- I've provided a detailed, but
non-quantitative, verification of Charvatova's graphs of SIM curves
from 1990, 2000, and 2008, plus of the timing of susnpot series related
to distinct SIM periods. While the hypothesis that planetary motions
has been re-proposed for 150 years without a solid statistical and
phenomenological base, the relations are still suggestive, and
Charvatova's approach is exciting.
16Mar08 Neil Howell's web-pages
- this is a "hosted website" (see the permanent link below), which
currently contains pictures of most of the artist's oil paintings.
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11Dec07 Climate and food production
- this is based on preparations for a presentation to the Alberta
Potato Growers Association 13Nov07. Only a third of the slides were
shown during the meeting, given the time available, and several slides
have been updated. A solar-centric perspective dominates (again given
the time available), and key failures of the Kyoto Premise are pointed out,
which leads into a questioning of
"thinking versus belief systems"
by a vast majority of scientists.
24Oct07 A Preliminary note on Holocene climate
- sun-solar system barycenter
motions and a rough, initial estimate of the insolation changes that
implies on Earth. As suggested by Charvatova and others, many
known climate and solar short-term "quasi-cycles" (< 1000 years) seem
to relate well to sun-barycenter movements (visually at this stage).
23Sep07 Glaciation models for the last 6 million years
- draft and very
incomplete paper, but at least it gives you an idea of the direction
my recent work is going to provide background to the "Mega Life" paper
(now on hold to Q1 2008)
23Sep07 Glaciation models - data, software, and results - -6 to +1 MyBP at 1 ky intervals, from 45° to 90° latitude North & South.
The extensive data tables could save you some programming and digging around?
23Sep07 Solar insolation from Milankovic cycles
- software from Laskar etal ported to the QNial programming language
08Aug07 Mega Life, Mega Death, and the invisible hand of the sun: Towards a quasi-predictive model for the rise and fall of civilisations.
This is an update of our document first posted ~05May07, still in early draft, incomplete stage but lots of fun stuff!
The underlying theme in "poetry form" is "Butterflies in the clouds, and the Milankovic
wandering of greener pastures and glaciers"
Forget that little butterfly in Indonesia that destabilized the
thinking of a whole generation of scientists merely by flapping its wings :-),
and find out about the real "Monster buttlerfly of solar chaos" and
other chaotic processes that compliment more regular,
predictable astronomical processes.
04Jul07 A Galactic Theory of Climate
- by Steve Wickson. mass extinctions, glaciations etc over the last
540 million years or so!
05May07 Pandemics and solar activity - by Tapping,
Mathias, & Surkan. This is an unpublished, expanded version of their
2001 paper on influenza pandemics since ~1730. Quite the subject,
and there is more elsewhere on my website - bubonic plague, malaria,
cholera etc..
05May07 Pandemics, health, and the Sun. webpage updated from 06Oct06
Current home projects: -
Computational Neuro-Genetic Modeling - neural networks and non-gene DNA,
RNA, epigenetics etc
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International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) & BioNorth conference
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The Kyoto Premise - promoting all science, but challenging abusive scientists,
on anthropogenic Green-House Gas emissions and climate change
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Climate and the sun - astronomy, geology and evolutionary biology as
primary climate drivers
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Civilisations and the sun - an old "new" theme on the rise and fall of
civilisations (or is it a new "old" theme?)
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Pandemics, health, and the sun - a solar imprint on pandemics and other health
issues
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Canadian Solar Forecasting Initiative – solar models & predictions; math (chaos theory etc); climate change; pipelines,
electric grids, satellites & communications; vector-borne pandemics
and radiation-induced cancers
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Charvatova's Solar Inertial Motion (SIM) hypothesis for solar activity
Will we be able to forecast solar activity 3,000 years into the future??
Climate?? The course of human history??
Probably not with what we have at hand, but we can try.
This paper and its supporting files are in a very incomplete, preliminary draft.
However, Figure A.2 in Appendix A is especially interesting, as it suggests at
least a "phase synchronization" between Solar Inertial Motion (SIM) and solar
activity, with the 2,402.2 year Charvatovan "long cycle".-
Galactic rays and evolution - the origins of life, the development of the mind,
civilisation, economics, financial markets
Crazy themes and stories:
Background Information:
Contact information:-
Bill .at. BillHowell .at. ca
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P.O. Box 57023 RPO Gladstone, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1R 1A1
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1-613-265-5606
Unsponsored links (a few personal reference points):
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QNial prototyping language. Beautiful child of a marriage between the
LISP and APL programming languages.
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International Neural Network Society (INNS) - theoretical and
computational understanding of the brain, and applied to machines
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National Post newspaper - Canada's only major media
capable of challenging political correctness of all types (sometimes including its own).
Last updated:
16Mar08 added Neil Howell webpage, with paintings
23Dec07 new contact information, moved from Calgary to Ottawa
24Oct07, 29Aug07, 27Jan07, 08Dec06, 05Oct06, ...missing dates of many interim updates...,
original ?1998?