Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[WT Sharpe]

Fruit flies, Patricia Churchland says, also sleep. They show sleep rebound when awoken, are sensitive to caffeine and anaesthesia just as we are. They may even dream, as evidenced by rapid leg movement.
— Amanda Gefter, Physics & cosmology writer. “Existential vertigo over human origins”, New Scientist (8 April 2009).

[covingtoncat73]

"I worry primarily about whether there are night clubs in Heaven."
~Tom Waits

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

"I worry primarily about whether there are night clubs in Heaven."
~Tom Waits

[WT Sharpe]

We know the brain contains some 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons - by coincidence, that's about the same quantity as the number of stars in a typical galaxy - and we know that each of those neurons can make some 10,000 synaptic connections with other neurons. And from those connections the brain does - well, everything. Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, called this the "astonishing hypothesis": the fact that this sea of neuronal activity endows us with our sense of self, our awareness of the world, our consciousness. And that would include, presumably, our awareness of the passage of time.
— Dan Falk (1966 - ), Canadian science journalist, broadcaster, and author. In Search of Time: The Science of a Curious Dimension (2008; AKA In Search of Time: Journeys Along a Curious Dimension and In Search of Time: The History, Physics, and Philosophy of Time).

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

We know the brain contains some 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons - by coincidence, that's about the same quantity as the number of stars in a typical galaxy....

I love that near equivalence of neurons and stars.

[kennyc]

I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice. We can sit all night with our friend while he talks about the end of his marriage, and what we finally get is a collection of stories about passion, tenderness, misunderstanding, sorrow, money; those hours and days and moments when he was absolutely married, whether he and his wife were screaming at each other, or sulking about the house, or making love. While his marriage was dying, he was also working: spending evenings with friends, rearing children; but those are other stories. Which is why, days after hearing a painful story by a friend, we see him and say: How are you? We know that by now he may have another story to tell or he may be in the middle of one and we hope it is joyful."
- Andre Dubus from 'Marketing' in Broken Vessels

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I love that near equivalence of neurons and stars.

That was the main point that stuck with me, also. I started to cut the quote off at that point because it is such a stunning coincidence to contemplate.

Here's one for today from a play about waiting for someone who never shows:

We are all born mad. Some remain so.
— Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish writer. Waiting for Godot act 2 (I952).

[kennyc]

"Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
..."
- Emily Dickinson, Born on this day 1830 - 1886

[WT Sharpe]

Every living thing is an elaboration of a single original plan. As humans we are mere increments—each of us a musty archive of adjustments, adaptations, modifications and providential tinkerings stretching back to 3.8 billion years. Remarkably we are even quite closely related to fruit and vegetables. About half the chemical functions that take place in a banana are fundamentally the same as the chemical functions that place in you. It cannot be said too often: all life is one. That is, and I suspect will ever prove to be, the most profound true statement there is.
— Bill Bryson (William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, December 8, 1951 - ), American author. A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003).

[WT Sharpe]

This is a quotation I painstakingly copied off a Ted Talk. Transcribing speech is not easy for me, and I had to restart the video several times to get it all down.

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What did Darwin say? I know you know the idea of Natural Selection, but let me just paraphrase The Origin of Species (1859) in a few sentences. What Darwin said was something like this:

* If you have creatures that vary, and that can't be doubted; I've been to the Galapegos, and I've measured the size of the beaks, and the size of the turtle shells, and so on and so on, and a hundred pages later...
* And if there is a struggle for life, such that nearly all of these creatures die, and this can't be doubted; I've read Malthus and I've calculated how long it would take for elephants to cover the whole world if they bred unrestricted and so on and so on and another hundred pages later...
* And if the very few that survive pass on to their offspring whatever it was that helped them survive; then those offspring must be better adapted to the circumstances in which all this happened than their parents were.

You see the idea? If, if, if, then. He had no concept of the idea of an algorithm, but that’s what he described in that book, and this is what we now know as the evolutionary algorithm. The principle is; you just need those three things: variation, selection, and heredity; and, as Dan Dennett puts it, "If you have those, then you must get evolution or design out of chaos without the aid of mind."

— Susan Blackmore (Susan Jane Blackmore, July 29, 1951), British author, lecturer, parapsychologist turned sceptic, and broadcaster. "Susan Blackmore on memes and 'temes'", TED Talks, TED2008, February 2008.

[covingtoncat73]

The Peace of Wild Things
BY WENDELL BERRY

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

[WT Sharpe]

With special relativity, we can no longer declare two events to be simultaneous in any absolute sense. Instead, we can only say that they may appear simultaneous from some particular frame of reference. (Physicist Brian Greene calls this "one of the deepest insights into the nature of reality ever discovered.")
— Dan Falk (1966 - ), Canadian science journalist, broadcaster, and author. In Search of Time: The Science of a Curious Dimension (2008, AKA In Search of Time: Journeys Along a Curious Dimension and In Search of Time: The History, Physics, and Philosophy of Time).

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

With special relativity, we can no longer declare two events to be simultaneous in any absolute sense. Instead, we can only say that they may appear simultaneous from some particular frame of reference. (Physicist Brian Greene calls this "one of the deepest insights into the nature of reality ever discovered.")
— Dan Falk (1966 - ), Canadian science journalist, broadcaster, and author. In Search of Time: The Science of a Curious Dimension (2008, AKA In Search of Time: Journeys Along a Curious Dimension and In Search of Time: The History, Physics, and Philosophy of Time).

I agree. Very Deep.

of course Tori Amos has different perspective on 'deep thoughts'

[covingtoncat73]

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain

[WT Sharpe]

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of Virtue or mischief.
— Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English jurist and philosopher. The Essays (1625); "Of Marriage and the Single Life."