Love? I will tell thee what it is to love! It is to build with human thoughts a shrine, where hope sits brooding like a beauteous dove; where time seems young, and life a thing divine. All tastes, all pleasures, all desires combine to consecrate this sanctuary of bliss. Above, the stars in cloudless beauty shine; around, the streams their flowery margins kiss; and if there’s heaven on earth, that heaven is surely this.
Charles Swain (1801 – 1874)
The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driving sleet and mist.
Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm.
Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors’ wives and widows.
A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm.
Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable.
The chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on either side the pulpit.
Moby Dick, Chapter 3 – The Chapel, by Herman Melville
Music is the only religion that really delivers the goods.
Frank Zappa
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times over many years and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers.
The introduction begins like this:
“Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space. Listen…”
and so on.
In order for a physical system to generate experiential qualities, it must exhibit a certain kind of interconnectivity and recursiveness, whether among neurons or among other similarly networked things (such as electrophysiological signaling in plants).
Consciousness is not restricted to brains. Any physical system properly configured to integrate information is, to some degree or another, theoretically conscious.
A World Appears (2026) by Michael Pollan
When I went to sleep, I closed my eyes with this last thought in my mind, that even when I remain unconscious in slumber the dance of life will still go on in the hushed arena of my sleeping body, keeping step with the stars.
–Rabindranath Tagore
NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration and Artemis. SLS is the only rocket that can send Orion, astronauts, and cargo directly to the Moon in a single launch.
Update 2026: Artemis
Be not merciful unto them that offend of malicious wickedness. They grin like a dog and run about through the city. But thou, O Lord, shalt have them in derision. Thou shalt laugh all the heathen to scorn.
–Psalm 59
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
–FrederickDouglass