Some favorite verses and quotes, please add yours too Options

[Maryada]

"Humanity is old, civilization is new: the mesh of cogs is by no means smooth and this is as it should be. Never should a man enter a building of glass or metal, or a spaceship, or a submarine, without a small shock of astonishment; never should he avoid an act of passion without a small sense of effort. We of the Institute receive an intensive historical inculcation; we know the men of the past, and we have projected dozens of possible future variations, which, without exception, are repulsive. Man, as he exists now, with all his faults and vices, a thousand gloriously irrational compromises between two thousand sterile absolutes is optimal. Or so it seems to us who are men."

-- Xaviar Skolcamp, Over-Centennial Fellow of the Institute, in The Killing Machine (book 2 of The Demon Princes), by Jack Vance

[Maryada]

Not The Doctor

I don't want to be the filler if the void is solely yours
I don't want to be your glass of single malt whiskey
Hidden in the bottom drawer
I don't want to be a bandage if the wound is not mine
Lend me some fresh air
I don't want to be adored for what I merely represent to you
I don't want to be your babysitter
You're a very big boy now
I don't want to be your mother
I didn't carry you in my womb for nine months
Show me the back door

Visiting hours are 9 to 5 and if I show up at 10 past 6
Well I already know that you'd find some way to sneak me in and oh
Mind the empty bottle with the holes along the bottom
You see it's too much to ask for and I am not the doctor

I don't want to be the sweeper of the egg shells that you walk upon
And I don't want to be your other half, I believe that 1 and 1 make 2
I don't want to be your food or the light from the fridge on your face
At midnight, hey
What are you hungry for
I don't want to be the glue that holds your pieces together
I don't want to be your idol
See this pedestal is high and I'm afraid of heights
I don't want to be lived through
A vicarious occasion
Please open the window

Visiting hours are 9 to 5 and if I show up at 10 past 6
Well I already know that you'd find some way to sneak me in and oh
Mind the empty bottle with the holes along the bottom
You see it's too much to ask for and I am not the doctor

I don't want to live on someday when my motto is last week
I don't want to be responsible for your fractured heart
And it's wounded beat
I don't want to be a substitute for the smoke you've been inhaling
What do you thank me
What do you thank me for

Visiting hours are 9 to 5 and if I show up at 10 past 6
Well I already know that you'd find some way to sneak me in and oh
Mind the empty bottle with the holes along the bottom
You see it's too much to ask for and I am not the doctor

Alanis Morisette, Jagged Little Pill, 1996

[Gerard]

I was at a conference in Portugal recently talking to a neuroscientist. I said something like, "Well, we know that nonlocality exists and that psi phenomena are at least compatible with the idea of nonlocality—it might not explain it, but it is consistent."

And he said, "Yeah, but we don't need nonlocality or to think in quantum terms in order to explain what is going on in the neurosciences."

I said, "Really? The brain is a quantum object. Any physicist would agree with that. Action in the brain is occurring at the level of ions and below, which is at the quantum scale, in which case we have to think of it as a quantum object."

He didn't like that at all, because one of the implications of a quantum brain is that you are no longer dealing with individual particles of matter in the head. Rather, you're describing a substance that has both particle-like and wave-like aspects. In its wavelike mode, it reaches out to infinity, and not only that, it goes out to infinity faster than the speed of light. So what we call gray "matter" in the brain is made of neurons, but it is also something that extends to the edges of the universe and plays fast and loose with concepts like time and space. This is not a popular idea in the neurosciences, because it requires a radical change in epistemological assumptions used in the neuroscience.


-- Dean Radin in Stephan Martin, Cosmic Conversations (2010)

[Brainiac]

Sounds like the folks at the Institute of Noetic Sciences is coming out with some fantastic stuff! Paradigms are ready to be overturned!!

[Gerard]

Sounds like the folks at the Institute of Noetic Sciences is coming out with some fantastic stuff! Paradigms are ready to be overturned!!

I'm not too fond of the people over at INS, too woolly for me, but that is not relevant here because in the above quote Radin only tried to explain to that neuroscientist - also with no result I presume - the bare basics of quantum mechanics, which was a little paradigm shift you seemed to have missed away from the Newtonian world view about a century ago.

[Brainiac]

I'm familiar with Radin and his work. Has earned something of a reputation, mostly as a maverick if I put it nicely, and is in a minority at that. To the best of my knowledge, most neuroscientists don't think too much about quantum mechanical understandings of neuroscientific processes. Many good reasons for that, one of which is that they're getting far too ahead of themselves.

[Gerard]

I'm familiar with Radin and his work. Has earned something of a reputation, mostly as a maverick if I put it nicely, and is in a minority at that. To the best of my knowledge, most neuroscientists don't think too much about quantum mechanical understandings of neuroscientific processes. Many good reasons for that, one of which is that they're getting far too ahead of themselves.

As fas as I know Radin was dismissed from the University of Nevada Las Vegas recently but that was not really the point here. The point was the use of quantum mechanics in neuroscience.

Could you expand a bit on "they're getting far too ahead of themselves"?

[Brainiac]

Could you expand a bit on "they're getting far too ahead of themselves"?

Oh sorry. I meant that since quantum physics is still a very little understood science that baffles even the quantum physicists who study it and do experiments etc., and even though it has uncovered fascinating things that lead to exciting/confounding implications, I think it's a little too far to apply those understandings to neuroscience, or indeed any other field. For instance, what purpose would it serve? Generally, neuroscience deals with understanding neural functions (psychology as well to a smaller extent) as well as the possibility of recovering from traumatic injuries and so on. Where would quantum physics fit in with this? Brain functions are all about trans-membrane ion fluxes and synaptic activity - biochemistry and electrochemistry. If at the quantum scale a substance has both wave-like and particle-like behaviour, how much of a difference would that make to the bulk of neuroscientific research today? Just from my own following of the issues, it seems that the whole thing of "quantum physics" is a sort of bandwagon with which all sorts of ideas are being expressed and seeking acknowledgement, but whether such ideas (in relation to brain function) can have some support would likely be known, perhaps a hundred or two hundred years into the future when (or if) quantum physics has advanced sufficiently enough to contribute something substantial to neuroscientific endeavours.

[Gerard]

Could you expand a bit on "they're getting far too ahead of themselves"?

Oh sorry. I meant that since quantum physics is still a very little understood science that baffles even the quantum physicists who study it and do experiments etc., and even though it has uncovered fascinating things that lead to exciting/confounding implications, I think it's a little too far to apply those understandings to neuroscience, or indeed any other field. For instance, what purpose would it serve? Generally, neuroscience deals with understanding neural functions (psychology as well to a smaller extent) as well as the possibility of recovering from traumatic injuries and so on. Where would quantum physics fit in with this? Brain functions are all about trans-membrane ion fluxes and synaptic activity - biochemistry and electrochemistry. If at the quantum scale a substance has both wave-like and particle-like behaviour, how much of a difference would that make to the bulk of neuroscientific research today? Just from my own following of the issues, it seems that the whole thing of "quantum physics" is a sort of bandwagon with which all sorts of ideas are being expressed and seeking acknowledgement, but whether such ideas (in relation to brain function) can have some support would likely be known, perhaps a hundred or two hundred years into the future when (or if) quantum physics has advanced sufficiently enough to contribute something substantial to neuroscientific endeavours.

I see what you mean, thanks. In electrochemistry and biochemistry q.m. might not be very applicable yet. When applied in consciousness studies some people seem to arrive at some sort of brahma-vadi type of concept of the interconnectivity of everything. Although I know next to nothing about it, I find it exciting to see that there are scientists who, reluctantly, have to start to express themselves in terms reminiscent of mysticism but then without all the cultural trappings.

[metamorphosis]

'Thou shalt not kill any living thing,' for life is given to all by God, and that which God has given, let not man taketh it away. ~Jesus, Gospel of the Holy Twelve, (earliest known recorded words of Jesus)

[Brainiac]

"Light travels faster than sound, and isn't that why some people appear bright until you hear them speak?"

- Steven Wright

[Gerard]

Hate and fear are two sides of the same coin.


--H.P. Blavatsky

[Brainiac]

"Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth,
beauty and wisdom will come to you that way."

Christopher Hitchens
(1949-2011)

[Dhyana]

Hitchens waterboarded

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/feature.../hitchens200808

[ePiTau]

Lisp has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow
humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.

——Edsger Dijkstra

[metamorphosis]

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks." comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act III, scene II.

[ePiTau]

"A later Pafnuty noted by Davis en passant was St. Pafnuty of Borovsk, the son of a Tartar noble, who entered a monastery at age 20 and stayed there until he died, aged 94, in 1478. Says the hagiographer of this Pafnuty: 'He was a virgin and an ascetic, and, because of this, a great wonderworker and seer.' (In the middle of writing this chapter I got an e-mail from a reader of my web column asking me to suggest a name for her new dog. There is now a Pafnuty chasing squirrels somewhere in the Midwest.)"
——John Derbyshire, in "Prime Obsession, Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics"

[Gomer]

May he prosper and be well. Woof!

[Nrismhadasi]

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. -John F. Kennedy

[kalki]

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. -John F. Kennedy

this is why they shot Kennedy...the Illuminati. it is better to keep your tail between your legs if you are the president of the US.

members of GR are also advised to keep their tail between their legs, at least that is what I have been advised to do.