27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus

 Infective Hallucination in "Martian Chronicles"

The psychologist shut his eyes and scratched his nose. “This is the most incredible example of sensual hallucination and hypnotic suggestion I’ve ever encountered. I went through your «rocket,» as you call it.” He tapped the hull. “I hear it. Auditory fantasy.” He drew a breath. “I smell it. Olfactory hallucination, induced by sensual telepathy.” He kissed the ship. “I taste it. Labial fantasy!” He shook the captain’s hand. “May I congratulate you? You are a psychotic...
Folksonomies: science fiction
Folksonomies: science fiction
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An alien psychologist on a planet of telepaths believes visitors from Earth are insane and their insanity is contagious.

27 DEC 2013 by ideonexus

 Exercise of Directing a Child's Focus

OK, Nicole, while you’re lying still, move your eyes around the room. Even without moving your head, you can see the lamp over on the table. Now look over at your baby pictures. See them? Now look at the bookcase. Can you see the big Harry Potter book there? Now look back at the lamp. Do you see how you have the power to focus your attention all over this room? That’s what I want to teach you about, but we’re going to focus your attention on what’s going on inside your mind and body. ...
Folksonomies: parenting attention focus
Folksonomies: parenting attention focus
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An example of teaching a child how they can direct their attention at will.

23 JUN 2013 by ideonexus

 Why You Lose Weight While You Sleep

Here's a simple question: Why do you weigh more when you go to sleep than when you wake up? Because you do... You can check this yourself. Somehow, while doing absolutely nothing all night but sleep, you will wake up lighter. [...] All night long, every time you breathe out, a bunch of carbon atoms, formerly inside your body, leave your insides and take off into the night air. You breathe in oxygen, O2. You breathe out carbon dioxide, (two oxygen atoms with a carbon atom attached), so there...
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Over the course of the night, through respiration, you lose a pound of weight to the carbon atoms in Carbon Dioxide.

09 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 Biology and Civilization are Analogous

Every breath you draw, every accelerated beat of your heart in the emotional periods of your oratory depend upon highly elaborated physical and chemical reactions and mechanisms which nature has been building up through a million centuries. If one of these mechanisms, which you owe entirely to your animal ancestry, were to be stopped for a single instant, you would fall lifeless on the stage. Not only this, but some of your highest ideals of human fellowship and comradeship were not created i...
Folksonomies: evolution civilization
Folksonomies: evolution civilization
  1  notes

In that our respiration depends on many biological features and our civilization is built on similar foundations.

25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus

 Science Builds Up, Opinion Does Not

Signs also are to be drawn from the increase and progress of systems and sciences. For what is founded on nature grows and increases, while what is founded on opinion varies but increases not. If therefore those doctrines had not plainly been like a plant torn up from its roots, but had remained attached to the womb of nature and continued to draw nourishment from her, that could never have come to pass which we have seen now for twice a thousand years; namely, that the sciences stand where t...
Folksonomies: science foundation opinion
Folksonomies: science foundation opinion
  1  notes

Ideas rooted in reality may be built upon like a solid foundation of truth, while opinions do no grow upward, but spread out thin and varied.

20 MAY 2011 by ideonexus

 The Heat of Our Bodies is Sunbeams

Breathe upon your hand, and feel how hot your breath is; well, that heat which you feel, was once in a sunbeam, and has travelled from it through the food you have eaten, and has now been at work keeping up the heat of your body.
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Taken in through the food we eat and working to keep us warm.

04 MAY 2011 by ideonexus

 A Complex and Majestic Universe

To discover that the Universe is some 8 to 15 billion and not 6 to 12 thousand years old improves our appreciation of its sweep and grandeur; to entertain the notion that we are a particularly complex arrangement of atoms, and not some breath of divinity, at the very least enhances our respect for atoms; to discover, as now seems probable, that our planet is one of billions of other worlds in the Milky Way galaxy and that our galaxy is one of billions more, majestically expands the arena of w...
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The complexity of our Universe and our existence "majestically expands the arena of what is possible."

01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus

 Ecclesiastes 3:19-21

19 Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath [a] ; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. 20 All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. 21 Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal [b] goes down into the earth?"
  1  notes
Man and animals share the same fate.