Top posts
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The Will to Believe
As regards the world in general, both physical and mental, everything that we know of its intrinsic character is derived from the mental side, and almost everything that we know of its causal laws is derived from the physical side. But from the standpoint...
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Serendipity
I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle...
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Three circles of dance
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from...
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Cosmic Harmony
The three rings of Love and Light. Each for a maiden so pure and bright. Winter, Spring, and Fall. Happy is the Lady of Flowers to have the man of her dreams, her hair like black silk, her skin like golden sun flowers, her words that flow like crystal...
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Thoughtland
Never fear shadows. They simply mean that there is a light shining somewhere nearby. Ruth Renkel was a deaf writer from Elyria, Ohio, who died at the age of 68 in December 1983. In June 1973, the Elyria Chronicle Telegram published a piece about her....
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Theory of everything
Boulder, Goldsworthy, Glenstone The stream is burbling at the bottom of the hill outside the three little pigs houses: one with a globe inside, the other an empty square room and the third with a hole in the wall. The three little pigs listen to the water...
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Out of the Dark Ages
“How did the Universe come into being?” asked John Archibald Wheeler , “ Is that some strange, far-off process, beyond hope of analysis? Or is the mechanism that came into play one which all the time shows itself?” We understand, though, that first star-forming...
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Night Sky
Venus and the Moon (December 28) A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,...
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Timelessness
Winterberry Each new work is destined, in the mind of its author, to correct the preceding one, to complete a thought -- which will not be completed. He does his work over and over again, wherever his sensation or thought was rendered imperfectly in the...
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Taming Infinity
Mayapples Some flowers shy away from light, hidden at the ground level under the thick leaves of the mayapples. Others at the tip of the stems compete in their rush to rise above all. The mind, on its toes, steps into every breach. It crawls through every...
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Cosmic Sense
Poetry whispers sounds of freedom, transcends rules, turns ideas upside down, builds connections in the dark holes of one’s mind, and waits for the emergence of new ideas on the horizon. The full moon shined so brightly last week as if she was trying...
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Universalis Cosmographia
I am the statistician of insomnia, under my eyelids tallies grow. In recent additions an armada of icebergs invades the slow speed of night and leads the counting to calculations of length, width and projected direction. This new territory travelled does...
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Dreamings
Animal immune systems depend on white blood cells called macrophages that devour and engulf invaders. The cells pursue with determination and gusto: under a microscope you can watch a blob-like ... While science aims to understand which fundamentals of...
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The edge of knowing
When the shadow with fatal law menaced me A certain old dream, sick desire of my spine, Beneath funereal ceilings afflicted by dying Folded its indubitable wing there within me. Luxury, O ebony hall, where to tempt a king Famous garlands are writhing...
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Asteroids
Sometimes even writers who dwell too much on earthbound things feel a celestial pull, an invitation to a loftier perspective. Astérix and the Falling Sky, Goscinny & Uderzo Although the sky falling on our heads is not of immediate concern, fragments of...
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In search of Time
Thirty spokes share one hub to make a wheel. 三十辐共一毂， Through its non-being, 当其无， There is the use of the carriage 有车之用 We carry in our bones a foundational understanding of time, space and gravity. I picture them as three lines emerging from a single...
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Subtleties
Chamaeleon I molecular cloud viewed by Herschel and Planck (ESA/Herschel/Planck; J. D. Soler, MPIA) This blog flows like a river. Posts are waterfalls where words get caught upstream while others go over. The best way to conceive expansion of the Universe,...
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The process of Becoming
Imagination is a Monastery and I am its Monk I have found inspiration in myths and folktales. According to a legend , so “many moons ago” Native American tribes lived underground in total darkness. One of their animals, a ground mole, one day crawled...
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The Reign of Bubbles and Particles
The legend says that since Portland’s founding, sightings of small green archers have been reported throughout downtown. Along with the archers, a celestial stag, a phantom building, and a huge tree have been spotted, time-to-time, throughout Old Portland. A...
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On the nature of metaphors
As we envision the possibility of a human mission to Mars in a not so distant future, we are waiting on the spacecraft InSight to send out all the data on the planet’s vital signs after its landing on November 26th of last year. Its amazing bird’s-eye...
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Causation
The playful chipmunk with a mind of its own has come out of its burrow. Does a cicada know when it’s time to break out of its shell? Does a star know when it’s time to burst out of its collapsing cloud? In the Garden of Forking Paths, a game forbids the...
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All the many layers
Titan's many layers (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) Very well, you may smile at this; but you must admit that the model of the world developed here is at least a possible one… It also gives an incentive, not only to speculation but also to experiments… I...
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CrossOver
Like a cast listed in the order of appearance, we wonder whether time or space comes first. Or do the two main actors appear in tandem in the first scene? An ancient philosophical debate mirrors the current scientific discussion. If indeed, the Universe...
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Transitional thoughts
As time passes, an increasing number of praying mantises are spotted in the native plant garden. A friend of mine said the other day that it is a sign of a healthy ecosystem. “ Whenever I want to feel humbled,” writes Thomas about the ecological collapse,...
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Death as Resonance
... death is as much a part of life as the dark side of the moon is a part of the moon Hampered by a cloud of confusion, my moon-like mind can’t see the forest for the trees. An inexpressible feeling hangs off the tip of my tongue, a story I can’t convey...