(via tikrit dot com )


Plan*tocopia. (via M*tafilt*r) "Move Mars where Venus is now, and put Venus is Mars's place, or perhaps a bit further out, toward the inner edge of the asteroid belt. Assume they were there from the beginning, and estimate their current surface temperatures! You'll find that life on Hot Mars probably would develop early, when the sun was cooler. Life would suck up CO2 and keep the planet from runaway greenhousing. ...Meanwhile, our Cool Venus, swathed in a thick atmosphere, would be warm enough for life but lacks enough water for large seas. With the air so rich in CO2 and water as the limiting factor, sparse plant life might be all we'd get, but who knows?"


" "If you're a poet," he said, "you don't just remember dreams, you remember how dreaming works. You can do it in the daytime: mapping from one set of states of affairs to another, so that there arises this thing called 'meaning.' I couldn't tell how 'how,' no more than I could tell you exactly how I put one foot in front of another. You don't 'how' it, you do it. You can do it with suggestive abstract patterns as easily as with shaped sound... In fact, you can't stop. It's because you and I are addicted to the thing called 'meaning' that we use words, and have responsibilities, and people who depend on us." "

--Whit* Qu**n