Candide

roman catholic by birth; scientific atheist by choice; sinner by merit. blogging on brains, evolution and language. gaidhlig-speaking neuroscience student at oxford. likes to Question Everything!

“False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.”
—   Charles Darwin

“Suppose that every memory, written word, and piece of technology on earth was destroyed all at once, leaving humanity to start completely from scratch. Everything we have come to know about science would eventually be discovered again. Given a few thousand years, people would figure out chemistry, and rediscover all of the same elements we know about now. people would once again understand biology, including its evolutionary origins. People would eventually see the motions of other galaxies in the sky, and work out the details of the big bang. This is the glorious part about science, it can and would all be replicated. I can assure you, however, that your story about a talking snake would be gone forever.”
—   Unknown

Sofistikashun: The Consolations of Sociobiology By Bill Knott

whatnarcissismmeanstome:

(to JK)

Those scars rooted me. Stigmata stalagmite
I sat at a drive-in and watched the stars
Through a straw while the Coke in my lap went
Waterier and waterier. For days on end or

Nights no end I crawled on all fours or in
My case no fours to worship you: Amoeba Behemoth.
—Then you…

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
—   Carl Sagan

“As Mary said that, Lyra felt something strange happen to her body. She found a stirring at the roots of her hair: she found herself breathing faster. She had never been on a roller-coaster, or anything like one, but if she had, she would have recognized the sensations in her breast: they were exciting and frightening at the same time, and she had not the slightest idea why. The sensation continued, and deepened, and changed, as more parts of her body found themselves affected too. She felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn’t known was there, a house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, deep in the darkness of the building she felt other doors opening too, and lights coming on. She sat trembling, hugging her knees, hardly daring to breathe, as Mary went on.”
—   Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass, Lyra Silvertongue comes of age

“

Between them they helped the ancient of days out of his crystal cell; it wasn’t hard, for he was as light as paper, and he would have followed them anywhere, having no will of his own, and responding to simple kindness like a flower to the sun. But in the open air there was nothing to stop the wind from damaging him, and to their dismay his form began to loosen and dissolve. Only a few moments later he had vanished completely, and their last impression was of those eyes, blinking in wonder, and a sigh of the most profound and exhausted relief.


Then he was gone: a mystery dissolving in mystery.

”
—   Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass, on the Death of God

“I brought you here because you make my brain cum, my heart jump, and my prick hard.”
—   

Luke to Franky, Skins

What a charmer, eh! =L

As a prospective neuroscientist, the notion of an ejaculating brain fills me with glee…

“There are some interesting connections between science and magic. They share a belief, as one mathematician put it, that what is visible is merely a superficial reality, not the underlying “real reality.” They both have origins in a basic urge to make sense of a hostile world so that we may predict or manipulate it to our own ends.”
—   Roger Highfield, The Science of Harry Potter

“

Sometimes, I try to deny a part of their beauty,

Setting them against

Other gifts the God of Grace gave us

But notwithstanding my tribulations

I’ll admit and It’ll be said to me

That there was nought ever as handsome without soul

As the little flower of the desert.

”
—   from Flowers by Domhnall Eirisgeach, translated from Gaelic by Candide

“Until Friday arrived, Robinson Crusoe had no need of morality.”
—   Candide