3 Jun 2012
Molly:
So you don't acknowledge the existence of the universe?
Ray Kurzweil:
No, I just said I do believe that it exists, but I'm pointing out that it's a belief. That's my personal leap of faith.
Molly:
All right, but I asked whether you believe in God.
Kurzweil:
Again, "God" is a word by which people mean many different things. For the sake of your question, we can consider God to be the universe, and I said I believe in the existence of the universe.
Molly:
God is just the universe?
Kurzweil:
It's a pretty big thing to apply the word "just" to.
(dialog in The Singularity is Near, by Ray Kurzweil)
3 Jun 2012

Scientists … are trying hard to understand the ways in which structures arise without the imposition of special requirements from the outside. In an astonishing variety of contexts, apparently complex structures or behaviors emerge from systems characterized by very simple rules. These systems are said to be self-organized and their properties are said to be emergent. The grandest example is the universe itself, the full complexity of which emerges from simple rules plus the operation of chance.

(

Murray Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar, 100

••••••

The Operating System.

(via olena)

(via fuckyeahexistentialism)

)
2 Jun 2012

(Source: loupgarou, via moonpedia)

1 Jun 2012

(via moonpedia)

31 May 2012

(Source: darkwiz29, via autviaminveniamautfaciam)

31 May 2012

Just made a trial preparation of my vegetarian pasta salad for my best friend’s baby shower next week.

Because, holy crap, we’re adults now and we do this shit.

31 May 2012

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.

( Emerson )
30 May 2012

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in those brief moments, which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than all other experiences.

( Emerson )
29 May 2012

The trick of love is to never let it find you; it’s easy to get over missing out.

Indiana - Jon McLaughlin

29 May 2012
the-star-stuff: Sifting through Dust near Orion’s Belt A new image of the region surrounding the reflection nebula Messier 78, just to the north of Orion’s Belt, shows clouds of cosmic dust threaded through the nebula like a string of pearls. The observations, made with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope, use the heat glow of interstellar dust grains to show astronomers where new stars are being formed.

the-star-stuff:

Sifting through Dust near Orion’s Belt

A new image of the region surrounding the reflection nebula Messier 78, just to the north of Orion’s Belt, shows clouds of cosmic dust threaded through the nebula like a string of pearls. The observations, made with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope, use the heat glow of interstellar dust grains to show astronomers where new stars are being formed.

(via uraniaproject)