Carl Sagan - gods as dreams

"It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men." 

Carl Sagan - Cosmos

Hercule Poirot - belief

 

"Belief, monsieur le doctor, is good, but it is not good enough."

Hercule Poirot, The Case of the Missing Will (1993)

Remembering Carmen and Corina

 

Abhay Ashtekar on Gödel Universes, Buddha's Poison Arrow, Time Travel, and Loop Quantum Cosmology

 

 

Abhay Ashtekar - from Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhay_Ashtekar

Abhay Vasant Ashtekar (born 5 July 1949) is an Indian theoretical physicist. He is the Eberly Professor of Physics and the Director of the Institute for Gravitational Physics and Geometry at Pennsylvania State University. As the creator of Ashtekar variables, he is one of the founders of loop quantum gravity and its subfield loop quantum cosmology. He has also written a number of descriptions of loop quantum gravity that are accessible to non-physicists. In 1999, Ashtekar and his colleagues were able to calculate the entropy for a black hole, matching a legendary 1974 prediction by Hawking. Oxford mathematical physicist Roger Penrose has described Ashtekar's approach to quantum gravity as "The most important of all the attempts at 'quantizing' general relativity." Ashtekar was elected as Member to National Academy of Sciences in May 2016.

Abhay Ashtekar is an atheist, though he enjoys reading on Indian and other eastern philosophy, namely the Tao and the Zen traditions. Furthermore, he believes to be inspired from the Bhagawat Gita as regards his attitude towards work.

Overwhelmed by nonsense, Teodosie's microphone commited suicide

Yes, that's the one and only bishop Teodosie, Putin praiser, anti-vaxxer, misogynistic, and former Security collaborator.

IPS Teodosie, supărat după ce organizatorii i-au tăiat microfonul la Ziua Marinei: „Înaintea lui Dumnezeu vor răspunde”

Salman Rushdie: The idea of the sacred is...

“The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.” 

Salman Rushdie, “Is nothing sacred?”, Penguin (Non-Classics),1990

Anybody said cancel culture? Conservative book banning

The Guardian, Fri 5 Aug 2022:

US library defunded after refusing to censor LGBTQ authors: ‘We will not ban the books’ 

Residents of Jamestown, Michigan, voted this week to shut down town’s library rather than tolerate certain LGBTQ books

Never mind the book bans in Florida and Texas... 

  Good reading: 

Conservatives claim to hate "cancel culture" — but it's the heart of the right-wing agenda Real "cancel culture": The right's decades-long campaign to stifle progressive ideas, protest and democracy itself 

By Paul Rosenberg - SALON - Published May 1, 2021