Centripetal Notion: category

Click through for larger images and a lot of variations. Drawings were collected from 250 participants in a research project who were asked to draw what various emotions felt like, what direction that emotions travels, etc. The result is revealing.
LINK/IMAGES Emotionally}Vague website, via infosthetics

Neuroscientist Jill Taylor describes her experience with a stroke.

Put a bunch of humans on a tiny ship on a 6 month trip to Mars and, you can imagine. Astronauts need to do it like anyone else, especially if the mission counts on their mental and physical well-being.

Give enough of a tug and you can stretch outside your body, at least enough to induce a nonlocal perspective. Think solar flares, jet lightning, Wooly Willy …

“If we, as a society, have religiously idolized sex while placing it on a restricted, Victorian pedestal, and if our backlash has been to make sex compulsive, wild and unrestrained, then the balance might be found in managing our big O’s and finally finding peace between our sheets.”

The lake, once connected to the ocean through a tunnel, has long since been shut off by limestone. The jellyfish, with no natural predators save sea anemone which pose no serious threat, are trapped inside the lake and have grown to incredible numbers. They follow the sun and feed on algae harvested inside their bodies, and due to the safety of the lake have lost their sting.

“Could pond scum solve the world’s energy and global warming crises?

University of Hawai’i professor Pengchen “Patrick” Fu thinks it can, with a little push from biotechnology.

Fu has developed strains of cyanobacteria — one of the components of pond scum — that feed on atmospheric carbon dioxide, and produce ethanol as a waste product.”

You probably definitely want to check the full size version. I wish I knew
who the artist was, where it’s located, etc. — all those really
interesting/useless things us monkeys like to keep track of.

“We travel through life as in a ‘time ship,’ which ‘has a prow and stern and room inside for us to move around.’ The problem is that the notion of the ‘extended present’ is fundamentally incoherent to the commonsense mind.”

National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis, here speaking at TED 2003, has some excellent insight to share from his travels. Here he discusses world cultures, dying languages and unique spiritual practices including tribal psychoactive rituals.