Revelation

"Did you ever talk about a movie with someone who read the book? They're always so condescending, like "oh the book was much better than the movie." I say "Oh really? What I enjoyed about the movie was this: no reading. It only took two hours, and then I took a nap." […] Every now and then I'll read a book and be so proud of myself that I'll try to squeeze it into conversations. People say "Hey Jim, how are you doing?" and I'll say "I read a book that was two-hundred and fifty pages!" and they'll say "that's great, what was it about?" I say "I have no idea. It took me two years to read it!"—Jim Gaffigan (link)

"Many warnings have been uttered by eminent men of science and by authorities in military strategy. None of them will say that the worst results are certain. What they do say is that these results are possible, and no one can be sure that they will not be realized. We have not yet found that the views of experts on this question depend in any degree upon their politics or prejudices. They depend only, so far as our researches have revealed, upon the extent of the particular expert's knowledge. We have found that the men who know most are the most gloomy."—Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein (link)

"One of the best established facts in sleep regulation in mammals is that slow-wave activity increases in proportion to the duration of prior wakefulness and progressively decreases during sleep. […] Is such slow-wave activity a mere epiphenomenon, or does it have some functional significance? According to the [synaptic homeostasis] hypothesis, slow waves occurring in the cortex during sleep would actively promote a generalized depression or downscaling of synapses. In this way, the total synaptic weight to neurons would progressively return to a baseline level, thus effecting a kind of synaptic homeostasis. […] A need to rescale synaptic weight after learning, in order to preserve a constant level of synaptic input without obliterating memory traces, confer stability to neuronal firing, and prevent runaway potentiation or depression, has long been recognized in computational models of synaptic plasticity. […] Provided there is a threshold below which synapses become ineffective or silent, synapses contributing to the noise, being on average weaker than those contributing to the signal, would cease to interfere in the execution, and the [signal-to-noise ratio] would increase."—Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli (link) via RadioLab (31:20)

Knowledge

"The single great existential fact of plant life is... well, they can’t locomote. They can move with the wind and water, but they can’t pick themselves up and go. So what they’ve worked on, what they have, are chemicals instead of legs. Cannabis works on our minds in order to borrow our feet, basically. And plants have developed this incredible variety of molecules either to attract or repel other species. They have to rely on chemistry for their defense and for their propagation: for their movement. And they’ve gotten really, really good at this."—Michael Pollan (link)

"If I sit back and say "what's the purpose in life? Why should anyone care that I live here and you live here and so on?" In the end, after many drinks, I've come to the conclusion that the goal in life is to acquire knowledge, and to make sure that knowledge is preserved. […] We're now finding earth-like planets that are "only thirteen light-years away!" Isn't that great? I think that's wonderful, but how long would it take to get a human there? Will they survive? Probably not. If we want to explore the universe, then I think we have to do it with machines that don't breathe oxygen and are not sensitive to the things we are sensitive to. And so in the end here I think this is all about accelerating knowledge accretion, and intelligent machines are an amazing tool for accelerating that."—Jeff Hawkins (50:00)

"Other seeds are able to remain alive for astonishing periods. One of the most remarkable examples comes from an archaeological site in Japan. Two thousand years ago, a small settlement stood at a place called Asada. The people who lived here had only just begun to master the art of working metal. They were also among the first people in Japan who knew how to plant and reap rice. They stored this in small pits in the ground. In one of those pits scientists found a magnolia seed. They took that strange ancient seed, planted it, and it grew. In its tenth year it produced its first flower buds. Magnolias typically have six petals on their flowers, but this plant had a variable number of petals on each flower. Could this be an ancient species that has only survived with that one lone seed in an archaeological ruin? This is surely a marvelous example of the fact that plants with their seeds are not only extraordinary travelers in space, but incomparable travelers in time."—David Attenborough The Private Life of Plants (45:00 or 00:00)

Accidental

"A Canadian tourist whose body was discovered in a water tank atop a downtown Los Angeles hotel four months ago died in an accidental drowning, coroner's officials said Thursday. A maintenance worker discovered the body of Elisa Lam, 21, on Feb. 19 after residents of the Cecil Hotel complained about low water pressure. Lam had been missing for three weeks before being found. During that time, detectives with the LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division appealed to the public for help in the case that included the release of video of her inside a Cecil Hotel elevator. In surveillance footage, Lam could be seen pushing buttons for multiple floors and at one point stepping out of the elevator and waving her arms."—Andrew Blankstein (link)

"According to the report, 31- year-old Chad Wolfe "suffered complete dislocation of cerviical vertibre 5 & 6, with spinal cord laceration due to blunt impact to head and neck." Investigators have determined that shortly after midnight on the 15th, Wolfe entered an elevator on the third floor of the main [Tampa International Airport] terminal that stopped on the seventh floor of the Short Term Parking Garage. Later, Wolfe apparently forced open the elevator door to gain entry. He fell and landed on top of the elevator."—WFTS (link) "But on Thursday, 10 News obtained surveillance video from inside the airport that captures Wolfe's bizarre behavior just minutes before his death."—WTSP (link)

"The Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office told The Valdosta Daily Times that 17-year-old Kendrick’s Johnson’s body was found upside-down, lodged inside a wrestling mat at the Lowndes High School gym. “At some point, Kendrick Johnson either reached into the center of one of the rolled mats or fell into the center opening of the mat and became lodged,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement to the Daily Times. “We feel like he was trying to reach a shoe that was down that hole, but no one knows (why he reached into the mat) but him and the good Lord.” The sheriff’s office says that the rush of blood to Johnson’s head over a period of time caused him to pass out and eventually die. Despite what authorities have said, Johnson’s family believes the teen was murdered."—CBS (link)

Intentions

"Hilltops have been leveled to make room for the [California marijuana] crop. Bulldozers start landslides on erosion-prone mountainsides. Road and dam construction clogs some streams with dislodged soil. Others are bled dry by diversions. Little water is left for salmon whose populations have already been decimated by logging. The idea that the counterculture’s crop of choice is bad for the environment has gone down hard here. For the professed hippies who moved here decades ago, marijuana farming combines defiance of society’s strictures, shared communal values and a steady income. “These grow sites continue to get larger and larger.” […] “There is a gold rush, and it’s a race to the bottom in terms of environmental impact.”—Felicity Barringer (link)

"Three to five percent of the long sisal leaf consists of a tough fiber demanded in temperate zone countries for use as twine in baler and binder machines operating in grain fields. For a variety of reasons, the world price for hard fibers rose to an unparalleled high in 1951. This price stimulus combined with government incentives led to the establishment of the first extensive sisal plantations in the states of Paraiba and Bahia [Brazil]. Subsequent boom years in 1960-62 further stimulated expansion of the crop, and, in some areas as much as fifty percent of the total land was planted in sisal. […] A concomitant of the introduction of sisal was the widespread abandonment of subsistence agriculture. This was particularly true of small landholders who, in the years of highest prices, were motivated to fill all or most of their small plots with sisal plants. […] The process is nearly irreversible because sisal, once planted, is very difficult to eradicate." —Daniel Gross (link)

"From Figure 1 we can see that something very dramatic happened in the late 1960s. This was the availability of low cost synthetic competition in the form of Polypropylene slit film twine. Its use as a sisal substitute in cordage started to take off around 1970 and its growth has scarcely paused during the past thirty years. I have little doubt that this pattern will continue during the next decade, as projected in Figure 2. Polypropylene, having penetrated sisal's core markets in agricultural twine and cordage, in effect capped the price possibilities for sisal. This, in turn, forced raw sisal prices down."—Gordon Mackie (link)

Complacent

"A University of South Florida engineering professor who often warned his students about the dangers of lightning died a day after he was struck by a bolt while walking on campus. Richard Stessel, an associate professor who had been at the school since 1982, died Saturday without regaining consciousness. "He was very aware of lightning issues. He was always warning us," said Maysson Sallam, a doctoral candidate. Stessel, 44, was walking near tall trees when he was struck as a thunderstorm approached Friday."—Orlando Sentinel (link)

"The work of the Kraffts [documenting lava flows] was highlighted in a National Geographic video which featured a large amount of their footage and photographs as well as interviews with both. Maurice is famous for saying in the video that "I am never afraid because I have seen so many eruptions in 23 years that even if I die tomorrow, I don't care", coincidentally on the day before he and his wife's death in the Mt. Unzen [volcanic eruption]."—Wikipedia (link)

"On 9 April 2004, a DEA agent (who has not been identified by name in press accounts) delivered a presentation on gun safety to about 50 adults and students at an event sponsored by the Orlando Minority Youth Golf Association. Partway through his lecture, the agent picked up his .40-caliber duty weapon and held it up for the audience to see as he announced: "This is a Glock 40. Fifty Cent, Too Short, all of them talk about a Glock 40, OK? I'm the only one in this room professional enough that I know of to carry this Glock 40." Seconds later the gun discharged, wounding the agent in the thigh."—Snopes (link)

Control

"The real danger of psychedelics is not so much neurological as political—that 'turned-on' people are not interested in serving the power games of the present rulers. Looking at the successful men, they see completely boring lives. In the Epilogue I shall make it clear that psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. When you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope; he goes away and works on what he has seen. Furthermore, speaking quite strictly, mystical insight is no more in the chemical itself than biological knowledge is in the microscope. There is no difference in principle between sharpening perception with an external instrument, such as a microscope, and sharpening it with an internal instrument, such as one of these drugs."—Allan Watts The Joyous Cosmology 1965 (link)

"Some people say brains can't understand brains. Very Zen-like. Whoo. It sounds good, but why? I mean, what's the point? It's just a bunch of cells. You understand your liver. It's got a lot of cells in it too, right? I don't think there's anything to that. Some people say "I don't feel like a bunch of cells, I'm conscious. I've got this experience, I'm in the world, you know. I can't just be a bunch of cells." Well people used to believe there was a life force to be living, and we now know that's not true at all. People just have a disbelief that cells can do what they do. And so some people have fallen into the pit of metaphysical dualism, and some really smart people, too. But we can reject all that. There's another reason we don't have a good brain theory, and it's because we have an intuitive, strongly-held, but incorrect assumption that has prevented us from seeing the answer. There's something we believe that's obvious but wrong. It turns out it's really hard to think of [theories], but once you've thought of them, it's easy to understand [phenomena]. The answer was there all along, but we ignored it because it was an intuitive, strongly-held belief that was wrong. […] We all intuitively know the Earth isn't moving. Do you feel like you're moving a thousand miles an hour? Of course not. And if someone said it was spinning around in space and it's so huge, they would lock you up, and that's what [we once did]."—Jeff Hawkins (7:15)

"Addiction, drug abuse, are the [diseases] that are the most stigmatized. They are diseases of the brain that produce a loss of your ability to exert control, or what we call "free will." Free will is not something that's spontaneous, it's a product of the biology of the brain, and there are certain circuits that enable you to do it. Drugs disrupt those specific circuits. As a result, even though you are aware that you shouldn't be taking drugs, you cannot stop it."—Nora Volkow (4:00)

Fate

"Civilization is a complex human society that has advanced to the point of establishing dysfunctional political structures, unfair social hierarchies, and economic systems that clearly do not work. A civilization is often characterized by its shoddy public education and its decrepit mass transit. In some fields of modern scholarship, the term is associated with “culture,” which refers to the unreadable literature, overwrought paintings, and mindless, lowest-common-denominator music that together make up the arts."—The Onion Book of Known Knowledge (Page 42)

"Fate will give you a lot to do next week, and you had better do exactly as you are told or Fate will start executing hostages."—The Onion Horoscope (link)

"Billions of years from now, the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will collide, marking the end of the galaxy as we know it"—Elizabeth Landau (link)