"Aja" is the title track of Steely Dan's 1977 album, and its meaning has been a subject of interpretation rather than a straightforward explanation from the band themselves, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who were known for their cryptic and layered lyrics. The song doesn’t tell a linear story but evokes a mood and imagery that fans and critics have analyzed over the years.
The word "Aja" is often speculated to refer to a person, place, or concept. One popular theory ties it to the name "Aja," which Becker and Fagen reportedly chose after learning of a Korean woman named Aja who married a friend of theirs. This fits Steely Dan’s tendency to draw inspiration from real-life fragments and transform them into something abstract. The lyrics—"Up on the hill / People never stare / They just don’t care / Chinese music under banyan trees"—suggest an exotic, serene escape, possibly a romanticized or imagined refuge from the complexities of modern life.
Musically and lyrically, "Aja" blends jazz-rock sophistication with a sense of longing or detachment. Lines like "Angie and Aja / Double delight / I’m never alone / With them in my sight" (from some interpretations of the song’s vibe, though not all lyrics are explicit) hint at companionship or fantasy figures, while the instrumental sections—featuring standout performances like Steve Gadd’s drumming and Wayne Shorter’s saxophone—convey a journey or meditation. Critics often see it as a reflection of the band’s fascination with perfectionism and escapism, themes recurrent in their work.
Ultimately, Steely Dan rarely provided definitive meanings, preferring ambiguity to let listeners project their own emotions. "Aja" could be about a woman, a utopia, or simply a state of mind—its beauty lies in that openness. What do you think it evokes for you when you listen?
At this scale, it is easier to see that the trees are not under the influence of "artificial" gravity. It is real.
🌎🌐
The gravitational field around each blade of grass and tree is the same as the field around each blade of grass and tree on the surface of Earth.
Notice that if you drive on a road perpendicular to the cylinder axis, you will increase gravity driving one way and decrease it driving the other. If you drive opposite to the spin and at the radial speed, your gravitational field turns Minkowskian, and you are in a "free fall" or inertial coordinate system. That is, you and the car become "weightless."
That means this: The value of a gravity field can go from a surface-of-a-planet value to a free-fall value by a coordinate transformation among systems that are moving at a constant velocity with respect to each other.
At any instant of time, a car moving at the radial speed is in a Minkowski field, and a system at rest on the cylinder is in a planet-surface field. A ...
"Deacon Blues" by Steely Dan, released in 1977 on their album Aja, is a richly layered song that invites multiple interpretations, blending the band’s signature irony, cynicism, and romanticism. Written by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the lyrics follow a narrator who seems to embrace a life of reckless abandon, yearning for a kind of mythic, self-destructive freedom often associated with jazz musicians or countercultural figures. Let’s break it down:
The title "Deacon Blues" itself is intriguing. It’s been suggested that it references football—the "Deacon" could nod to Wake Forest University’s Demon Deacons, a team whose colors are black and gold, though Fagen and Becker have said it’s more about vibe than a literal connection. "Blues" ties it to the musical genre, evoking a sense of soulful melancholy. In a 2003 interview, Fagen described the song as being about "a broken dream of a broken man living a broken life," but delivered with a sardonic twist typical of Steely Dan’s ...
How does @Michell06017336 propose a new Law of Physics? What is the Law? Is it really Physics? I say yes. Let me explain.
First, read her X post.
Note that the validity of her post rests on a new Universal hypothesis. It is based on "Man," but it is proposed as a law of both society, psychology and biology. Mainly:
Valdez Law: "If a person Y has ever worked for another person Z in a business relationship, then , for any future policy or activity A that person Y performs, person Z necessarily agrees with the policy or activity A."
It is not known how this can be. Just because I worked for Bob 10 years ago, how does that manipulate the Universe so that no matter what Bob does or says today, I automatically will agree with it? Can one of the known forces of nature explain this entanglement?
Has anyone ever tested this hypothesis?
