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Masaru Emoto has photographed water crystals that result when persons focus their emotions on the water. The result is evocative. There is a lot of art in these photographs, so bear in mind this is not a scientific experiment.

This documentary examines the question whether dreams are meaningful or not, from a scientific point of view.

It turns out that sleep is a process that proceeds in stages from wakefulness to the deepest level of sleep, level 4. Sleep cycles among those stages:

* Dreams occur during all stages, but they differ in quality. REM dreams are the longest, and the most complex.

Je pense souvent a cette expression. La force de cette promesse, sa magie aussi me laissent reveur - il faut dire que j'ai tendance a rever !!

Mais la foi est un sujet qui me revient souvent. Nous vivons une epoque ou la foi en une religion, en un dieu, est violemment remise en question. Un conflit existe entre ceux qui "ont la Foi" et ceux qui ne l'ont pas.

Mais j'ai l'impression que ce debat, qui prend des proportions tragiques, en cache un autre qui serait peut-etre plus fructueux : qu'est-ce la foi ?

Is there an Arabic equivalent to English Internet acronyms, such as the ones listed here?

Here are the ones I use:

• AFAIK - as far as I know - على حد علمي او على قدر علمي - ع ح ع لو ع ق ع
• IIRC - if i recall correctly - ان كانت ذاكرتي صحيحة او على ما اتذكر - ان ك ص او ع م ا
• IMO - in my opinion - في رأيي - ف ر
• WYSIWYG - what you see is what you get - anyone?

Please help out on a live site!

Early humans considered everything around them as gods: rain, fire, the sun, the moon, animals, you name it. As humans came to understand, one by one, each of these things, the awe they originally felt towards them faded, because understanding is grasping, almost controlling.

All material things thus lost their perceived god-like quality. But still, the **designs** of these things were beyond human understanding: rain, for example, was given by a god to whom one should show reverence in order to obtain rain. When science explained rain, we stopped rain-dancing.

I feel like all the layers are being peeled off
one by one, each dimension resolving into its simplest form, nothingness,
because they all converge towards the same core.

What is art but the expression of our upheaved emotions,
and science but a problem-solving tool, extended into the real world by technology.

Reality itself is malleable, we mold it into what we want, need, desire, indeed will.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375920/

• Johnny Depp does it again! This is the most eccentric of the libertine-type movies also exemplified by Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears, 1988).

• Funnily, John Malkovich who plays the king here played the libertine in the 1988 variation.

• The sexual obsession is emphasized to fantastic proportions. The play that Rochester delivers is burlesquely pornographic - and correspondingly self-destructive. Earlier, we see Rochester dream that he traverses a foggy wood where an orgy is taking place. His assistant is called Alcock.

We are pillaging the universe's intellectual property without a hint of remorse. Did the universe come with a non-reverse-engineering clause? Did we ever bother to ask? Who can we ask?

The hippies tell you it's public domain, while the fundies enforce God's alleged claim. The greedies take it for free and sell it for a profit.

Shape of Life at CBS

• The sponge turns out to be an animal - and the oldest / most basal one at that too! That means we (humans as part of the animal kingdom) all descend from the sponge! Congratulations everyone.

• Although the doco doesn't say so, I will advance the conjecture that the sponge is in fact the **link** between plant life and animal life. Witness the Wikipedia introductory paragraph about animal characteristics where the sponge is singled out.

• The sponge is a living filter.

"Kin-Dza-Dza" at Wikipedia

How to return home when you get stranded on an alien desert planet populated with telepathic sociopaths using rusty, advanced technology.