25 APR 2017 by ideonexus
Bit chin Society Emissary
And it clicked for me. He was a missionary—one of those fringe-dwellers who act as emissary from the Bitchun Society to the benighted corners of the world where, for whatever reasons, they want to die, starve, and choke on petrochem waste. It's amazing that these communities survive more than a generation; in the Bitchun Society proper, we usually outlive our detractors. The missionaries don't have such a high success rate—you have to be awfully convincing to get through to a culture that... 1 
notes
notes30 DEC 2016 by ideonexus
Naysmiths
Magnus broods in his black tower, peering into the depths of the Great Ocean for validation, a sign that he was right to act as he did.
He will find nothing, for there is nothing to find.
His actions were never his own, for he forgot the first rule of the mysteries.
He let his ambition and hubris blind him to his flaws and the knowledge that there is always someone stronger and more powerful out there.
I will not make that mistake.
But we are still creatures of flesh and inclined to repe...Folksonomies: disputation contrarian
Folksonomies: disputation contrarian
1 notes
notes04 APR 2015 by ideonexus
Literature About Exploration
This is an infinitely marvelous and beautiful universe which we are privileged to
inhabit. Look inward to the molecules of life and the heart of the atom, or outward to
moon, sun, planets, stars, the Orion Nebula where new suns and worlds are coming into
being even as you watch, the Andromeda Nebula which is actually a whole sister galaxy:
it is all the same cosmos, and every part of it is part of us. The elements of our flesh,
blood, bones, and breath were forged out of hydrogen in stars lon... 1 notes
notes12 OCT 2014 by ideonexus
The Absurd Visions from a Post-Hypnotic Suggestion
I hardly heard him for trying to keep track of what was going on in my skull. I knew it was just post-hypnotic suggestion, even remembered the session in Missouri when they'd implanted it, but that didn't make it any less compelling. My mind reeled under the strong pseudo-memories: shaggy hulks that were Taurans (not at all what we now knew they looked like) boarding a colonists' vessel, eating babies while mothers watched in screaming terror (the colonists never took babies; they wouldn't st... 1 notes
notesA character debunks all the crazy things running through his head with rationality.
16 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
The Web is the Death of the Anecdote
Surveillance serves not just as a legal and historical
record but as a record of rep: proof that you’ve done
what you say you’ve done. You bark, and anyone on
the mesh can search to see if you also bite. It’s the
foundation of the reputation economy.
It’s not just video, of course, but surveillance of all
types. Ubiquitous, ever-present surveillance has become
the new public record in countless habitats. You’ve
seen the phrase, “Links or didn’t happen,” right?
Without footage... 1 notes
notes"Links or it didn't happen," if something is not on video, the oral history is worthless.
13 APR 2012 by ideonexus
The Bonds Revealed Through Taxonomy
From the most remote period in the history of the world organic beings have been found to resemble each other in descending degrees, so that they can be classed in groups under groups. This classification is not arbitrary like the grouping of the stars in constellations. The existence of groups would have been of simpler significance, if one group had been exclusively fitted to inhabit the land and another the water; one to feed on flesh, another on vegetable matter, and so on; but the case i...
1 Darwin notes how the exercise of classification of species reveals connections to other living things.
18 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
"Look for Me Under Your Bootsoles"
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
Walt Whitman comments on his demise.
09 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Look at the Total Form
If any person thinks the examination of the rest of the animal kingdom an unworthy task, he must hold in like disesteem the study of man. For no one can look at the elements of the human frame—blood, flesh, bones, vessels, and the like—without much repugnance. Moreover, when anyone of the parts or structures, be it which it may, is under discussion, it must not be supposed that it is its material composition to which attention is being directed or which is the object of the discussion, bu... 1 notes
notesAristotle from "Parts of Animals". Appears to be arguing that the parts of a biological being do not matter, but rather the animal in totality.
30 AUG 2011 by ideonexus
Joseph Addison on Homo Sapiens Omnivorous Nature
When I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal but man keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon everything that comes in his way; not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mushroom can ... 1 notes
notesAll the rest of nature sticks to one food, man eats everything, leading to illnesses.
21 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Proper Burial for a Naturalist
I will leave a sum in my last will for my body to be carried to Brazil and to these forests. It will be laid out in a manner secure against the possums and the vultures just as we make our chickens secure; and this great Coprophanaeus beetle will bury me. They will enter, will bury, will live on my flesh; and in the shape of their children and mine, I will escape death. No worm for me nor sordid fly, I will buzz in the dusk like a huge bumble bee. I will be many, buzz even as a swarm of motor...To have one's body placed outdoors or in a shallow grave so that it make give birth to thousands of insects that feed on it.
