Islands of bacterial activity

Everything else has a restricted set of interactions with its immediate living space, chemical or atomic, depending how small you go… Small things ingesting and spitting out chemicals. It’s very direct and relatively easily observable; you can see what every one does, what their function is. Cogs in the system. Even the animals have a fairly regulated set of activities. The fox doesn’t seem to wonder about his options, about what to do next.

And what of us? Maybe we’re the same: ingesting and spitting out chemicals, but it’s all obscured by our variety of manual (really, MANUAL, manipulated, hand-based) activities. Just elaborate versions of germs. It’s hard to see it past of egos but if you could step outside for a minute, isn’t earth just overrun… And what does it add up to but filigreed slime?

Just a note. Not a question, doesn’t need an answer. Not negative. I think filigreed slime is wonderful.

Will I ever be friends with math?

I’ve always processed it in weird ways. I get distracted by things that others overlook, or are happy to simply memorize. I take round-about routes to a solution when something simpler will do. Why? Because it makes sense that way. I didn’t even think of the simpler idea.

When I was very young, I had this problem with addition (or was it subtraction?) where I’d end up with one too many (or one less?) because of some “logic” wherein being “on” a number — say, 6 — when adding, meant that it was actually 7 because for some reason I had to add 1… I have a vague notion of this but can’t even explain or make sense of it anymore. Like a dream.

I don’t know. It’s partially visual (almost synaesthetic), and partially just convoluted. Stupid mistakes.

acalc:

Last night, I was watching a basketball game I could hardly see, after having scratched my right eye earlier; it was kind of blurry. But, at the same time, there was something interesting happening. I could still follow the action and who was doing what fairly well. The interesting part is that…

A great post. I love your description of sightless basketball.

It seems like I always have to oppose, doesn’t it? But I have to offer this, because so many people are of the same opinion (albeit sometimes true) that we’re missing something by not having in-person conversations, and it’s mostly group think (not that yours is, also). Just like everybody tends to think this or that is “unnatural” without even questioning it or thinking about what that word, natural, means.

So you say we miss out on the quirks of each-other’s movements, the body language. But I’ll say this: I’ve had a number of distance relationships (both friendly and romantic), without the options of always seeing, hearing, smelling, or touching the other person. Even with an Anon, just like you’re experiencing with Basketball, it’s possible to become attuned to the intricacies of even just someone’s writing. Everybody has a way they say things, and things they say… it’s interesting. Ways they take pauses, process thoughts, ideas they have or pictures they share. It becomes a different kind of dance: sometimes with a “persona”, and other times with someone more “real” than that person allows themselves to be in “real life”.

So it’s not necessarily a counter to your point, but it can be intimate — if we allow for that idea, and don’t simply latch on to the internet-is-so-impersonal bandwagon of thought.

(via wildcat2030)

Irving Kenneth Zola, “Medicine as an Institution of Social Control” (via badfuckingpuns)

All things in moderation, no? Even living. Gotta die sometime…

(via epistephilia)

wildcat2030:

See on Scoop.it - Philosophy everywhere everywhen

Even some of the more faithful might have wondered over the last few days whether there truly is a God.

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking would like to help. Let’s imagine there isn’t, seems to be his preference.

Indeed, in a speech at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., on Tuesday night, he made jokes about God’s supposed power and omnipresence.

“What was God doing before the divine creation? Was he preparing hell for people who asked such questions?” asked Hawking, clearly not afraid of meeting a reddish man with a fork and a tail.

Being a scientist, Hawking has faith only in scientific explanations.

As NBC News reports, he discounted a repeating Big Bang Theory (even though he’s appeared on the show).

Instead, he thinks: “We are the product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe.”

I certainly feel like the product of quantum fluctuations on many days of the week, don’t you?

New research shows that the speed of light may not be fixed after all, but rather fluctuates.

Interesting!

Questions:

• Is it a big deal? If vacuum is not true emptiness but “filled with continuously appearing and disappearing particle pairs such as electron-positron or quark-antiquark pairs” then doesn’t it make sense that the SOL would fluctuate when traveling through a space/substance that, itself, fluctuates? Like through water vs air? Do I misunderstand?
• Are the fluctuations large enough to matter (to us, at our scale)?
  

The Transdisciplinary Studio: Amazon.co.uk: Alex Coles: Books (via iamdanw)

••••••

Like many things, true in theory.

The reality is that the title “Artist” is still most often met with the question “What do you paint?”

(via wildcat2030)

News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier | Media | The Guardian (via wildcat2030)

insta-gratification institutional manifestation #97646425789

(via epistephilia)

(via epistephilia)

Google Instant (& Auto-Complete) is like someone annoying standing over your shoulder and talking while you’re trying to think.

Did you mean this?
Or this? How about this?
Or this too?

No, Google. Shut up.