Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

A scientific theory is a calculating machine made of simian mouth-noises designed and tweeked to spit out world-view consistent outputs to world-view consistent inputs.

“What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”---Virginia Woolf

Happy Earth Day! Celebrate our Mother!

"I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom."
-- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

“Only the tiniest fraction of mankind want freedom. All the rest want someone to tell them they are free." ~ Irving Layton

"The rain falls upon the just
And also on the unjust fellas
But mostly it falls upon the just
Cause the unjust have the just's umbrellas."----Cormac McCarthy

Life is nothing if not ruthlessly predatory and murderous. We have only to wander into a thick jungle or dive beneath the sea to observe this heartless carnage firsthand. And we ourselves as a species are hardly exempt from this mandate. Sure we may be spared being hunted down now that we have progressed to the top of the food chain. But globally speaking, an estimated 3.4 to 6.5 billion animals are slaughtered daily for our food. It's just not something many of us prefer to think about. But that's the situation. And not eating meat is not going to change it.

"Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?” ― Tennessee Williams, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore

“You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or the person you loved.”
― Stewart O'Nan, The Odds: A Love Story

“Most anecdotal evidence concerns ESP between members of the same family. I find that very significant. It obviously has something to do with physical contact. A hell of a lot of ESP involves mothers and children. They were once part of her body. That seems to me to fit right in with Bell’s theorem: the idea that things once connected remain always in contact even though they are separated.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Coincidance: A Head Test