27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Measuring Progress by the Cost of Light
Time is not the only life-enriching resource granted to us by technology. Another is light. Light is so empowering that it serves as the metaphor of choice for a superior intellectual and spiritual state: enlightenment. In the natural world we are plunged into darkness for half of our existence, but human-made light allows us to take back the night for reading, moving about, seeing people’s faces, and otherwise engaging with our surroundings. The economist William Nordhaus has cited the plu...Folksonomies: human progress quantification
Folksonomies: human progress quantification
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notes
notes10 FEB 2018 by ideonexus
Microcosm of Imagination
Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down. 1 notes
notes30 APR 2014 by ideonexus
The Unlightable Candle
Armen the Acolyte cleared his throat. “The night before an acolyte says his vows, he must stand a vigil in the vault. No lantern is permitted him, no torch, no lamp, no taper... only a candle of obsidian. He must spend the night in darkness, unless he can light that candle. Some will try. The foolish and the stubborn, those who have made a study of these so-called higher mysteries. Often they cut their fingers, for the ridges on the candles are said to be as sharp as razors. Then, with bloo...Folksonomies: knowledge initiation
Folksonomies: knowledge initiation
1 A metaphor for the unreachability of some knowledge.
23 APR 2012 by ideonexus
Discoveries Open Doors to More Discoveries
Every discovery opens a new field for investigation of facts, shows us the imperfection of our theories. It has justly been said, that the greater the circle of light, the greater the boundary of darkness by which it is surrounded. Folksonomies: discovery
Folksonomies: discovery
1 Quote from Humphry Davy, "...the greater the circle of light, the greater the boundary of darkness by which it is surrounded."
23 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
If You Can Outlaw Teaching Evolution in Public School
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers... Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers ... 1 notes
notesYou can ban it everywhere and society will descend into darkness.
31 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Life is Anti-Entropy
Life, this anti-entropy, ceaselessly reloaded with energy, is a climbing force, toward order amidst chaos, toward light, among the darkness of the indefinite, toward the mystic dream of Love, between the fire which devours itself and the silence of the Cold. Climbing up and dreaming.
31 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Chemistry VS Biology
I came to biochemistry through chemistry; I came to chemistry, partly by the labyrinthine routes that I have related, and partly through the youthful romantic notion that the natural sciences had something to do with nature. What I liked about chemistry was its clarity surrounded by darkness; what attracted me, slowly and hesitatingly, to biology was its darkness surrounded by the brightness of the givenness of nature, the holiness of life. And so I have always oscillated between the brightne... 1 notes
notesChargaff relates how he was drawn to Chemistry for its clarity surrounded by the unknown and later biology for its lack of clarity but surrounded by the known.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Humphery Davy: Poem About a Weeping Monument
My eye is wet with tears
For I see the white stones
That are covered with names
The stones of my forefathers’ graves.
No grass grows upon them
For deep in the earth
In darkness and silence the organs of life
To their primitive atoms return.
Through ages the air
Has been moist with their blood
The ages the seeds of the thistle has fed
On what was once motion and form...
Thoughts roll not beneath the dust
No feeling is in the cold grave
They have leaped to other worlds
They are far above t...There are various versions of this early poem in the HD Archive: see Paris, vol 1, p29; Treneer, pp4-5; or Fullmer, p13
10 AUG 2011 by ideonexus
Freedom
The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations; The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up; The bones of death, the cov’ring clay, the sinews shrunk & dry’d Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing, awakening, Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst. Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into the field, Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air; Let the inchained soul, shut up in darkness and...Folksonomies: totalitarianism oppression
Folksonomies: totalitarianism oppression
1 notes
notesBlake describes freedom from oppression.
12 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
If We Only Saw the Stars One Night Every 100 Years
We lay and looked up at the sky and the millions of stars that blazed in darkness. The night was so still that we could hear the buoy on the ledges out beyond the mouth of the bay. Once or twice a word spoken by someone on the far shore was carried across the clear air. A few lights burned in the cottages. Otherwise, there was no reminder of other human life....
It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century or even once in a human generation, this litt...Everyone would come out to wonder at them. Instead we never look at them.
