If we could read the secret history of our enemies,
we should find in each [person's] life sorrow
and suffering enough to disarm any hostility.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
If only you could hear the sound of snow falling late at night from the trees of the old temple in Shinoda!Hakuin Ekaku, d. 1768
When it comes — just so!
When it goes — just so!
Both coming and going occur each day.
The words I am speaking now — just so.Musho Josho, d. 1306
The scientific picture of the world around me is very deficient. It gives me a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but is ghastly silent about all that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell a word about the sensation of red and blue, bitter and sweet, feelings of delight and sorrow. It knows nothing of beauty and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.
Science is reticent too when it is a question of the great Unity of which we somehow form a part, to which we belong. The most popular name for it in our time is God, with a capital “G.” Science is, very usually, branded as being atheistic. After what we have said this is not astonishing. If its world picture does not even contain beauty, delight, sorrow, if personality is cut out of it by agreement, how should it contain the most sublime idea that presents itself to the human mind.Erwin Schrödinger
Even when we’re perfectly healthy, we have trillions of viruses inside of us. Scientists are only beginning to survey this viral ecology, but some suspect that it may actually be essential to our health.“Germ Warfare”, Wired, April 2012
Memory == Belief in the pastAlvin Plantinga
I recently came across philosopher Alvin Plantinga’s proposition that memory is more-or-less belief in the past, and the idea really has my mind whirring…
Although water in an ice-cube tray will turn solid around 32°F, pure liquid water in clean air never freezes at that temperature…. Clouds at -30 or -35°F are often entirely liquid because they do not contain any efficient ice-nucleating particles.“The Clouds Are Alive”, Discover, April 2012
I saw this New Yorker cover while waiting for an appointment the other day:

As a follow-up to my annual book review, I thought it would be fun to look back at some of my favorite movies from 2011 as well (technically-speaking, the majority of these are from late-2010, but I didn’t get around to watching them till 2011).
So that’s a look back at 2011…and I’m super excited about 2012′s offerings: Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, and of course, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. Woohoo!











