I got a bunch of questions about “water-striders”, the life-span of turtles, and the function of tails. Frankly, I loved responding, liked my response, and love sharing this biological awesomeness.
Water striders are some of the coolest organisms imho.
This is such a cool biological adaption. They utilize COHESION TENSION. this is so frickin cool I love this stuff.
Finally, the best article on (anti) Christianity that I needed to read to reaffirm my new intentions, emerging beliefs, and values (Basically I’ve realized that all religions are just clever cult-worshipping myths. They’re just elaborate myths, fables. Jesus isn’t any different from the Hare in the tortoise and the hair or Buddha isn’t any different from Prometheus (the god of fire from ancient greece). Religions are myths. They are not true. Jesus, Buddha, Allah…they never existed. That however is not condemning hope and faith. Hope and faith are very strong great things and MANY myths teach the lessons of hope, faith, discipline, etc. Religion is merely a myth. It’s astonishing how BLIND so many people are in regards to how obvious it is that those figureheads truly did not exist, but they blindly go on believing…people that easily duped (i.e. devout christians) are frankly quite frightening because if they could be deluded into believing that a mythological figure like Jesus had as much evidence for existing as Paul Bunyan (see this great article on that) then…wow.
Some quick medical jargon.
Myocardial Infarction (MI). Sound familiar? Well how about “Heart Attack”. The same. Infarction is the diseased state of a temporary (or permanent) loss of blood to tissue. The heart, composed of myocardial tissue, that doesn’t get enough (or no) blood for a period of time experiences a Myocardial Infarction, or Heart Attack. Nifty to know; not nifty to experience.
In 1976, Julian Jaynes took a break from his Princeton instruction to write the ground-breaking “Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, in which he detailed specific accounts on the nature of consciousness from a variety of civilizations — the Sumerians, Mayans, Asians, Hebrews, and most significantly, the ancient Greeks. In his account of the mind’s consciousness, Jaynes references ancient texts, saying that characters in the Iliad “possess no general consciousness” (Jaynes 69). Additionally, he drew psychological connections between the language centers of the brain –Broca’s area, Wernick’s area, and the supplemental motor cortex. According to Frank Wallace, his conclusions “will rank among the five most important books ever written by the year 2000″ (Wallace 1).
Julian’s comments of the Greeks and Hebrews possessing no consciousness is highly debatable because in Homer’s account of the fifty days of the tenth year of the Trojan war, there had to have been at least some intelligent consciousness to construct the Trojan Horse contraption and for the heroes of the Iliad to perform some of the feats described in the epic. Similarly, many could argue that characters in the Bible — such as Cain choosing to slay his brother, Abel — acted out of their own volition.
However, Jaynes provides scintillating evidence illustrating how ancient characters, specifically the Greeks, seemed to be controlled by something other than their own consciousness. After all, the writers of the Bible, despite the profoundly evocative evidence of which they describe, do not appear to have a conscience or, at the least, introspection. It is not until later writings of the Old Testament, like in Ecclesiastes do the writers take up a distinctively introspective tone. In the first verse of Ecclesiastes, the writer states how his studies revealed him that wisdom is meaningless: “I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heaven burden God has laid on men! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun, all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind” (Bible Ecclesiastes 1:13). I would have to strongly disagree with this writer because he then on to say that, in addition to wisdom, pleasures, toil, and advancement are meaningless. Sure, maybe toil could be labeled as purposeless, but wisdom can generate knowing which can help others in their process, and pleasures can provide temporary satisfaction.
