My life as a scrapbook ...
♫♫ on Blip.fm

Collage by Wilfried “Sätty” Podriech

Umberto Eco : ‘We Like Lists because We Don’t Want to Die’
“The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries..”
Dan Dennett: Consciousness, Magic and Illusions
“Philosopher Dan Dennett makes a compelling argument that not only don’t we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us.”

“… Even when we resort to the simple and standard dictionary definition of consciousness - as an organism’s awareness of its own self and surroundings - it is easy to envision how consciousness is likely to have opened the way in human evolution to a new order of creations not possible without it : conscience, religion, social and political organisations, the arts, the sciences, and technology. Perhaps even more compellingly, consciousness is the critical biological function that allows us to know sorrow or know joy, to know suffering or know pleasure, to sense embarassment or pride, to grieve for lost love or lost life. Whether individually experienced or observed, pathos is a by-product of consciousness and so is desire. None of those personal states would ever be known to each of us without consciousness. Do not blame Eve for knowing; blame consciousness, and thank it too.
… Consciousness is, in effect, the key to a life examined, for better and for worse, our beginner’s permit into knowing all about the hunger, the thirst, the tears, the laughter, the kicks, the punches, the flow of images we call thought, the feelings, the words, the stories, the beliefs, the music and the poetry, the happiness and the ecstacy.”
- from Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness (1999)
(Image source)

“The moon Rhea hangs like a pendant against Saturn and its rings.”
Image from Cassini spacecraft
via UniverseToday
Reblogged from nihil noetia.
Odilon Redon, The Sphere
1890, Charcoal.
Reblogged from Crashingly Beautiful.
♫ Cornelius – Tone Twilight Zone
(Clever vid, gentle tune)
China ink on paper
Laércio Soaresvia osso
Reblogged from arsvitaest.

Leon Spilliaert, The Open Door, 1945
The Secret You
“Professor Marcus du Sautoy goes in search of answers to one of science’s greatest mysteries: how do we know who we are? While the thoughts that make us feel as though we know ourselves are easy to experience, they are notoriously difficult to explain. So, in order to find out where they come from, Marcus subjects himself to a series of probing experiments.” via BBC Horizon

“Singular Effects of the Universal Vegetable Pills on a Green Crocer! A Fact!”, 1841, by Charles Jameson Grant
via Quacks, Quackery and Nostrums

Poster by Simon Page

Fantasy About Future, Russian kid’s book, 1962
Objectified : A documentary by Gary Hustwit about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, with the people who design them. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the designers who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability.” via Topdocumentary