Everything is Nothing and Vice Versa
Filed in: Everything is Nothing and Vice Versa
by Natalie Geld
WhyAreWeWhispering.com
When has the phrase ‘Oh, it’s nothing. Really.’ ever really meant ‘nothing?’
We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.
We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.
Verse 11, Lao Tzu’s Tao de Ching (Book of the Way) by Stephen Mitchell
The Hole in the Universe
How Scientists Peered over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything
K.C. Cole is the award-winning author of the internationally bestselling The Universe in a Teacup and First You Build a Cloud. She writes a popular science column in the Los Angeles Times and teaches at UCLA.
Book Excerpts:
“Understanding nothing matters, because nothing is the all-important background upon which everything else happens. Without it, the universe is theater without a stage. Without getting to know it we can’t understand the blank page on which the story of everything is written. We can’t trust our own perceptions because everything we see passes through it like a clear but distorting lens, like light from the sky skidding over hot pavement to create a shimmering mirage.”
“We are taught from childhood to shun the shadowy, dread the dark side, fill the void. People feel compelled to plug gaps in conversation, devise activities to do something (anything!) about dead (which is to say “empty”) time. We describe the deranged as “not all there.” We consider it shameful to think negative. No one loves a lack. And yet, nothing may be the single most prolific idea ever to plop into the human brain.”
“…Absences loom large in our attempts to understand just about anything…In fact, what we don’t say, don’t hear, don’t feel, don’t remember, don’t ask, don’t tell, in itself tells psychologists and neuroscientists more about the human mind and the tangled web of neurons and culture that creates it than perhaps any other category of evidence. We define ourselves by what we’re not as much as by what we are.”
“There are hints that nothing eludes us precisely because it is too featureless, like perfectly transparent glass. Perhaps “nothing” is perfect – too perfect to perceive…To make something from nothing, we must crack the glass, destroy the symmetry. When nothing shatters, everything can be born.”
“Potential, it turns out, is one of the most impressive properties of nothing.”
WhyAreWeWhispering.com
When has the phrase ‘Oh, it’s nothing. Really.’ ever really meant ‘nothing?’
We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.
We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.
Verse 11, Lao Tzu’s Tao de Ching (Book of the Way) by Stephen Mitchell
How Scientists Peered over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything
K.C. Cole is the award-winning author of the internationally bestselling The Universe in a Teacup and First You Build a Cloud. She writes a popular science column in the Los Angeles Times and teaches at UCLA.
Book Excerpts:
“Understanding nothing matters, because nothing is the all-important background upon which everything else happens. Without it, the universe is theater without a stage. Without getting to know it we can’t understand the blank page on which the story of everything is written. We can’t trust our own perceptions because everything we see passes through it like a clear but distorting lens, like light from the sky skidding over hot pavement to create a shimmering mirage.”
“We are taught from childhood to shun the shadowy, dread the dark side, fill the void. People feel compelled to plug gaps in conversation, devise activities to do something (anything!) about dead (which is to say “empty”) time. We describe the deranged as “not all there.” We consider it shameful to think negative. No one loves a lack. And yet, nothing may be the single most prolific idea ever to plop into the human brain.”
“…Absences loom large in our attempts to understand just about anything…In fact, what we don’t say, don’t hear, don’t feel, don’t remember, don’t ask, don’t tell, in itself tells psychologists and neuroscientists more about the human mind and the tangled web of neurons and culture that creates it than perhaps any other category of evidence. We define ourselves by what we’re not as much as by what we are.”
“There are hints that nothing eludes us precisely because it is too featureless, like perfectly transparent glass. Perhaps “nothing” is perfect – too perfect to perceive…To make something from nothing, we must crack the glass, destroy the symmetry. When nothing shatters, everything can be born.”
“Potential, it turns out, is one of the most impressive properties of nothing.”
The Female Brain
Filed in: The Female Brain
by Natalie Geld
WhyAreWeWhispering.com
Louann Brizendine's book, The Female Brain, is bloody brilliant!
Powerful insight written in clear, precise prose, she lays out the key
stages of life in eight juicy chapters. Here are a few book excerpts:
What Makes Us Women
“If a woman’s reality could change radically from week to week, the same would have to be true of the massive hormonal changes that occur throughout a woman’s life.”
“...The female brain is so deeply affected by hormones that their influence can be said to create a woman’s reality. They can shape a woman’s values and desires, and tell her, day to day, what’s important. Their presence is felt at every stage of life, right from birth. Each hormone state -- girlhood, the adolescent years, the dating years, motherhood, and menopause -- acts as fertilizer for different neurological conceptions that are responsible for new thoughts, emotions, and interests.”
Sex: The Brain Below the Belt
“It’s a delicate system, but the connection to the brain is about as direct as it gets. Nerves in the tip of the clitoris communicate straight to the sexual pleasure center of the female brain. When those nerves are stimulated, they boost electrochemical activity until it hits a threshold, triggers a burst of impulses, and releases bonding, feel-good neurochemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins. Ah, climax! If stimulation of the clitoris is cut off too soon, if the clitoral nerves aren’t sensitive enough, or if fear, stress, or guilt interfere with stimulation, the clitoris is stopped dead in its tracks.”
The Great Sexual Divide
“The sex-related centers in the male brain are actually about two times larger than parallel structures in the female brain. When it comes to the brain, size does make a difference in the way women and men think about, respond to, and experience sex.... Just as women have an eight-ane superhighway for processing emotion while men have a small country road, men have O’Hare Airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex whereas women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes.”
Praise ~ "Sassy, witty, reassuring, and great fun. All women -- and the men who love them -- should read this book." Christine Northrup, M.D., author of The Wisdom of Menopause
"I've found I can change the conversation at any social gathering by mentioning Louann Brizendine's book, The Female Brain." David Brooks, New York Times
Louann Brizendine, M.D. is a practicing clinician, best-selling author, public speaker and media commentator who specializes in the relationship dynamics that result from the neurobiology of male and female brains.
She completed her degree in Neurobiology at UC Berkeley, graduated from Yale School of Medicine and did her internship and residency at Harvard Medical School. She has also served on both the faculties of Harvard University and University of California at San Francisco. Now at UCSF, Dr. Brizendine pursues active clinical, teaching, writing and research activities, where she founded the Women’s Mood and Hormone Clinic in 1994 and continues to serve as the clnic’s director. Her first book, “The Female Brain,” is being translated into 26 languages and its follow-up, “The Male Brain,” in on the shelves now.
WhyAreWeWhispering.com
Powerful insight written in clear, precise prose, she lays out the key
stages of life in eight juicy chapters. Here are a few book excerpts:
What Makes Us Women
“If a woman’s reality could change radically from week to week, the same would have to be true of the massive hormonal changes that occur throughout a woman’s life.”
“...The female brain is so deeply affected by hormones that their influence can be said to create a woman’s reality. They can shape a woman’s values and desires, and tell her, day to day, what’s important. Their presence is felt at every stage of life, right from birth. Each hormone state -- girlhood, the adolescent years, the dating years, motherhood, and menopause -- acts as fertilizer for different neurological conceptions that are responsible for new thoughts, emotions, and interests.”
Sex: The Brain Below the Belt
“It’s a delicate system, but the connection to the brain is about as direct as it gets. Nerves in the tip of the clitoris communicate straight to the sexual pleasure center of the female brain. When those nerves are stimulated, they boost electrochemical activity until it hits a threshold, triggers a burst of impulses, and releases bonding, feel-good neurochemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins. Ah, climax! If stimulation of the clitoris is cut off too soon, if the clitoral nerves aren’t sensitive enough, or if fear, stress, or guilt interfere with stimulation, the clitoris is stopped dead in its tracks.”
The Great Sexual Divide
“The sex-related centers in the male brain are actually about two times larger than parallel structures in the female brain. When it comes to the brain, size does make a difference in the way women and men think about, respond to, and experience sex.... Just as women have an eight-ane superhighway for processing emotion while men have a small country road, men have O’Hare Airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex whereas women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes.”
Praise ~ "Sassy, witty, reassuring, and great fun. All women -- and the men who love them -- should read this book." Christine Northrup, M.D., author of The Wisdom of Menopause
"I've found I can change the conversation at any social gathering by mentioning Louann Brizendine's book, The Female Brain." David Brooks, New York Times
She completed her degree in Neurobiology at UC Berkeley, graduated from Yale School of Medicine and did her internship and residency at Harvard Medical School. She has also served on both the faculties of Harvard University and University of California at San Francisco. Now at UCSF, Dr. Brizendine pursues active clinical, teaching, writing and research activities, where she founded the Women’s Mood and Hormone Clinic in 1994 and continues to serve as the clnic’s director. Her first book, “The Female Brain,” is being translated into 26 languages and its follow-up, “The Male Brain,” in on the shelves now.
From Organs to Orgasm - Believe in Your Powers
Filed in: From Organs to Orgasm
by Natalie Geld
WhyAreWeWhispering.com
With the clarity, insight, and sheer exuberance of language that make her one of The New York Times’ premier stylists, Pulitzer Prize-winner Natalie Angier lifts the veil of secrecy from that most enigmatic of evolutionary masterpieces, the female body.
Woman: An Intimate Geography
Book Excerpts:
“This book is a celebration of the female body – its anatomy, its chemistry, its evolution, and its laughter. It is a personal book, my attempt to find a way to think about the biology of being female without falling into the sludge of biological determinism. It is a book about things that we traditionally associate with the image of woman -- the womb, the egg, the breast, the blood, the almighty clitoris – and things that we don’t – movement, strength, aggression, and fury.”
“I hope simply to show how the body is part of the answer, is a map to meaning and freedom. Mary Carlson, of Harvard Medical School, has coined the term ‘liberation biology’ to describe the use of biological insights to heal our psychic wounds, understand our fears, and make the most of what we have and of those who will have us and love us. It’s a superb phrase. We need liberation, perpetual revolution. What better place to begin the insurrection than at the doors to the palace we’ve lived in all these years?”
-- Angier offers optimistic alternatives and transcends feminist polemics with an enlightened subversiveness that makes for a joyful, fresh vision of womanhood.
-- An essential read for anyone interested in how biology affects who we are – as women, as men, and as human beings.
WhyAreWeWhispering.com
With the clarity, insight, and sheer exuberance of language that make her one of The New York Times’ premier stylists, Pulitzer Prize-winner Natalie Angier lifts the veil of secrecy from that most enigmatic of evolutionary masterpieces, the female body.
Woman: An Intimate Geography
Book Excerpts:
“This book is a celebration of the female body – its anatomy, its chemistry, its evolution, and its laughter. It is a personal book, my attempt to find a way to think about the biology of being female without falling into the sludge of biological determinism. It is a book about things that we traditionally associate with the image of woman -- the womb, the egg, the breast, the blood, the almighty clitoris – and things that we don’t – movement, strength, aggression, and fury.”
“I hope simply to show how the body is part of the answer, is a map to meaning and freedom. Mary Carlson, of Harvard Medical School, has coined the term ‘liberation biology’ to describe the use of biological insights to heal our psychic wounds, understand our fears, and make the most of what we have and of those who will have us and love us. It’s a superb phrase. We need liberation, perpetual revolution. What better place to begin the insurrection than at the doors to the palace we’ve lived in all these years?”
-- Angier offers optimistic alternatives and transcends feminist polemics with an enlightened subversiveness that makes for a joyful, fresh vision of womanhood.
-- An essential read for anyone interested in how biology affects who we are – as women, as men, and as human beings.
