January 2012
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“And wait; surely we are waiting also.”
– Qur’an 11:122, translated by M. H. Shakir
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“The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega. It is God’s...”
– Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk
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Original antigenic sin, also known as the Hoskins effect, refers to the propensity of the body’s immune system to preferentially utilize immunological memory based on a previous infection when a second slightly different version, of that foreign entity (e.g. a virus or bacterium) is encountered. This leaves the immune system “trapped” by the first response it has made to...
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“(“Aely,” I repeated, “Aely, the elsewhere of an unimaginable...”
– Edmond Jabès, from Aely, in From the Book to the Book: An Edmond Jabès Reader
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December 2011
23 posts
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“Was this the silence of the void, or God’s silence?”
– Mark Salzman, Lying Awake
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“She could no longer remember what it felt like to live apart from God, to act...”
– Mark Salzman, Lying Awake
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“I have walked much to the sea, not knowing what I seek.”
– Loren Eiseley, “The Inner Galaxy,” from The Unexpected Universe
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“…most of my day was spent performing the strange verbs of bench science:...”
– Jonah Lehrer, Proust Was A Neuroscientist
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Excerpt from Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution by Holly Tucker:
Huygens speculated instead that something was fluttering around Saturn. “The ears of Saturn,” he wrote in 1658 in an encrypted letter intended for the Montmor Academy, “can be nothing other than what I put forth in my anagram”:
a c d e g h i l m n o p q r s...
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“The acute phase announced itself by nightmares of a grotesque and terrifying and...”
– Oliver Sacks, in a description of the symptoms experienced by Rose R., a patient who had fallen ill with a particularly virulent form of encephalitis lethargica, from Awakenings. Later in the text, Rose R. is described as “…she was simply — elsewhere (or nowhere).”
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“a neurology of the soul”
– Oliver Sacks, A Leg to Stand On
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“All at once I thought of God’s questions to Job: “Where wast thou...”
– Oliver Sacks, A Leg to Stand On
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Kourosh Yaghmaei — Paeiz (Autumn)
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“Never have I spent a night so awake, and so mindful of nothingness. Under the...”
– Jalal Al-e Ahmad, in a journal entry written in Mecca and dated 29 Farvardin 1343 (10 April 1964), from Lost in the Crowd.
His Hajj narrative was interesting to read, in part because he made his pilgrimage as a somewhat skeptic observer rather than as a participant seeking spiritual gain. In one of...
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“The concept of the unconscious posits nothing; it designates only my unknowing.”
— C.G. Jung, from a letter to Pastor Max Frischkeit dated 8 February 1946.
November 2011
20 posts
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“Time and space are my inheritance from my father and the star.”
– Loren Eiseley, “The Star Dragon,” from The Invisible Pyramid
توكُل
Tawwakul (توكُل) : an Arabic word for the concept of reliance on God or “trusting in God’s plan”. (via)
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“به سراغ من اگر ميآييد،
نرم و آهسته بياييد، مبادا كه ترك بردارد
چيني نازك...”
– Sohrab Sepehri, from “The Oasis in the Moment” — he chose this excerpt for his epitaph.