I reach into the shadows behind the screen and retrieve a small, semi-transparent plastic bucket. I dip into the bucket and fish out a human brain. I have no idea to whom the brain belonged. I can't tell if it's male or female, black or white, or, with and…

On The Solar Anus : It is clear that the world is purely parodic, in other words, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form... all things would be visibly connected if one could discover at a single glance and in…

I have a terrible tendency to read several books simultaneously, causing much mental overlap and leaving the floor of my room a constant litter of half-read compendiums. At the moment, the book which has most prominently grabbed my imagination is Michael…

According to Samuel Taylor Coleridge the aim of art is to: ...transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which…

There are things which by their very nature are so dependant upon human caprice that they either exist or do not exist as soon as we desire that they should or should not exist... Humankind is almost pure potential as it emerges from the formative hand of…

I could do with one of these at the moment. From the Proceedings of The Athanasius Kircher Society : In 1588, the Italian Engineer Agostino Ramelli described a novel invention to facilitate the reading of multiple books at once: A beautiful and ingenious…

"...I received from Oxford the manuscript you have examined. I lingered, naturally, on the sentence: I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths . Almost instantly, I understood: 'the garden of forking paths' was the chaotic novel;…

On reading Stanislaw Lem 's Solaris - a rewarding activity - it might seem that the simulacrum-based goings on can be nothing more than convolouted allegory. So far-fetched are they that one would think their existence, as far as humanity is concerned, is…

Submit to the blog! Here be endless streams of symbols given birth in waves. As the seahorse father issues forth his young - disseminating, in the process, the patterns of parenthood - so shear activity in language breaks the corollary of meaning; necessarily…

I am currently reading British Philosopher John Gray's - Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions . I tend to be turned on by anything controversial, but throw religion into the mix, slide in a healthy dollop of political cynicism, whisk that into a…

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident…

Ever wished yourself Godlike properties? Ever wondered what it felt like to spawn universes from the slightest ounce of your being? Well now you can, with The Random Logline Generator ! Realising mythical universes is as easy as depressing your index finger.…

Pozzo: (suddenly furious.) Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall…

A minority of people with autism have one or more extraordinary intellectual talents, such as the rapid ability to calculate the day of the week for a given date, or to count large numbers of discrete objects almost instantaneously - they're often called…

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavour to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He…

Abstractions abound here on The Huge Entity . Thoughts multiply, recombine and surface anew as entities of shimmering complexity. After some of these thoughts grow shadows, luminous and independant, awaiting their own responses; dealing in their own echoes…

Infinity defies absolute definition. Perception of the infinite, for anything other than a mind which is itself infinitely composed, is an oxymoron. And yet, in historical conceptions of the infinite, or at least the imperceptibly extended, can be found…

The 'Other Half' is the word. The 'Other Half' is an organism. Word is an organism . The presence of the 'Other Half' a separate organism attached to your nervous system on an air of words can now be demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common…

...a straight identification of religion with any and every form of happiness leaves the essential peculiarity of religious happiness out. The more commonplace happinesses which we get are 'reliefs,' occasioned by our momentary escapes from evils either…

Imagination and creativity are the parts of our personal conscious lives most able to manifest themselves in the objective world around us. The variety of tools, both physical and cognitive , we use to channel those creative urges is truly astounding. The…

On the Exile of Mankind The people became numerous... The god was depressed by their uproar Enil heard their noise, He exclaimed to the great gods The noise of mankind has become burdensome... - from the ancient Sumerian epic Atrahasis Having come from the…

Philosophy is odious and obscure, Both law and physic are for petty wits; Divinity is basest of the three, Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible and vile, 'Tis magic, magic that hath ravished Mephistopheles ... - Sc. I of Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe The…

The Book: Know : Encounter : Own "My books and stories are intellectual and conceptual mazes. I am in an intellectual maze in trying to figure out our situation (who we are and how we look into the world, and world as illusion, etc.), because the situation is…

A Huge Entity presentation on the nature of identity... Featuring short musings from the most original minds in the blogsphere. Contents 1 2B ll ~ 2B by Cutie Programmer 2 Living in a Multiverse by Reality Carnival 3 The Tipping Point by BPS Digest /…

Mu Machinery by Daniel Rourke The Huge Entity The machinery concerned with human experience is a bundle of cells so intricate in its complexity that it took over 13 billion years for evolutionary processes to manifest its structure. We each maintain that the…

Pushbutton Automation by JK DunneIV There is a mystical “I” awakening. It is being stirred by events unseen and of uncertain origin. When it wakes up what will it be? Inexistence is a nice concept. It works in that soporific marketing kind of way because…

As 'You' Like It by Jaime Morrison The Nonist don't take this personally but your depth of sensation, though perhaps impressive echoing as it does in the enclosed space of your own mind, is stunted. comically so in fact. your five senses, on which you rely…

A Mind Program Called Ego by Thomas Herold Quantum Biocommunication Someone gave me a book from a famous Indian author entitled 'Who Cares?' . In this book Ramesh Balsekar explains the mystery around the ego and why it's all an illusion. Reading this book…

Compared to the Cosmos by Brian Hines Church of the Churchless BrianHines.com Like you, my goal every day is to make something of myself. A successful, knowing, active, loving, happy thing. The problem is, on the scale of the universe the value of each of us…

A Reflexive Everything by Daniel Poynter Hyperaware Consciousness 'You' do not exist, and you don't love Family Guy, lip syncing monkeys and free Internet porn. If you exist in the traditional Western way - dualistic and distinct from your environment/body -…

Our Baryonic Nature by Mac Tonnies Posthuman Blues Mactonnies.com Astronomers are learning that the vast majority of the universe's matter takes a form that eludes casual analysis. We've found that we're an anomaly; if there's such a thing as a "galactic…

Burden of Proof by Gerry Canavan Backwards City More Reasons Why You, The Reader, Don't Exist 1. Unitary consciousness is an illusion . As Daniel Dennett explains at length in Consciousness Explained , what you mistakenly think of as a single voice of…

The Tipping Point by Dr. Christian Jarrett Mind Hacks BPS Digest "That's not like you to behave like that!". How many times have you heard that exclamation? It's nonsensical of course, because 'you', in the sense of a consistent, predictable, reliable…

Living in a Multiverse by Cliff Pickover Reality Carnival Pickover.com In our own region of the universe, we've already developed computers and the ability to simulate lifelike forms using these computers and mathematical rules. I believe that one day we will…

"O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it all! A secret theater of speechless monologue and prevenient…

In our semantically governed, symbolic understanding of reality we often maintain that true -identity is possible, that the whirling sensations called 'you' somehow cease at the surface of your skin, all else being distinct. Of course the Buddhist conception…

"The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It…

On Duality: "...out of strangled Utopias is born a clown, a being divided between beauty and ugliness, between light and chaos, a clown who when he looks down and sidelong is Satan himself and when he looks upward sees a buttered angel, a snail with wings." -…

'String Theory' posits that our universe arises from the vibrations of tiny, infinitesimal and multi-dimensional strings of energy resonating in a higher dimension of reality. A beautiful, if complicated idea resting on the very tip of the physics…

The Huge Entity has traveled, rested and been reinvigorated. Regular posting to resume again soon... For the time being please feel free to use this post as an idea banner; a concave mirror focusing your musings to a penetrating, burning spear of intensity.…

In my hole in the basement there are exactly 1,369 lights. I've wired the entire ceiling, every inch of it. And not with florescent bulbs, but with the older, more expensive-to-operate kind, the filament type. An act of sabotage, you know. I've already begun…

The Singularity , The Transhuman . Words murmured from the lips of the geek elite? An entire generation of techno-babble is set to evolve from this imagined-movement's self perpetuating beliefs. Are we on the brink of a big shift in human - even planetary -…

As far as conspiracy theories go, this has to be one of the most interesting I have come across: "Predictive programming works by means of the propagation of the illusion of an infallibly accurate vision of how the world is going to look in the future".…

On Imagination: Midsummer Night's Dream - Act v. Sc. 1. The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shape, and…

Inspired in part by all lists everywhere here are the top 5 books that shifted my perspective on the world, on reality, on the self: Star Maker - Olaf Stapledon Spanning over billions of years of cosmological evolution and delving Godlike into the very heart…

...Baudrillard expanded on his theme. "We say that Disneyland is not, of course, the sanctuary of the imagination, but Disneyland as hyperreal world masks the fact that all America is hyperreal, all America is Disneyland," he said. "And the same for art. The…

"UC Berkeley physics professor, Raphael Bousso, is trying to break down the mysteries of the universe with a concept called the holographic principle. Physicists stumbled on the idea while studying black holes. It is a concept, which ultimately questions…

A belated birthday celebration today for super-all-time-rather-amusing-genius author Kurt Vonnegut , who coined my all-time favourite quote: Anyone who believes in telekinesis, raise my hand. For a compendium of inspiring posts by Vonnegut go on over to…

I've been in a very contemplative mood recently, mulling over the books I've read this year, and the notes that go with them, and feeling as if this website has evolved to the stage where its character has been realised. I keep aiming to start writing…

"Scientists have discovered that schizophrenia sufferers are not fooled by a visual illusion and are able to judge it more accurately than non-schizophrenic observers. The study by UCL (University College London) and King's College London suggests that in…

In the past year I have read a heap load of books (my job gives me a ridiculous amount of free-time) most of which were superb. And so in recognition of my affliction for thrusting information into other people's faces, here are some of my favourite quotes…

"Chinese and American people see the world differently - literally. While Americans focus on the central objects of photographs, Chinese individuals pay more attention to the image as a whole, according to psychologists at the University of Michigan, in Ann…

Sick to the back teeth of hearing about boy wizards and an enormously rich British woman? Here's my top 3 things to do other than read/talk about/consume/summon Satan with/throw off a cliff the new Harry Potter book : 1. Read 2. something 3. else...

How do we curb climate change and ecological implosion? According to the G8 nations preventative methods are not the key. Instead of analysing where and why we have messed up Earth's ecology and figuring out better ways to cut back it was decided this past…

Following my post last week about the infinity of Pi / π , the record for reciting its infinite sequence of numbers from memory has been broken, by a Japanese mental health counsellor no less! According to the BBC News website: "Akira Haraguchi, 59, managed…

" The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished,…

Ever wondered how best to make a fitting tribute to a legendary science fiction author? "Do androids really dream of electric sheep? Now you can ask P. K. Dick himself. This bust relies on 36 servomotors to mimic the sci-fi legend's facial expressions, and…

Oh dear, oh dear oh dear oh dear, oh deary dear dear dear... When M J Simpson (biographer of the late Douglas Adams , and author of numerous guides to the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ) says this movie is a stinker I start to sit up and take notice.…