Here's a link to an interview with the resident astrobiologist at the Vatican, BrotherGuy Consolmagno, in Astrobiology Magazine. I put it up because I like some of what he has to say about the relationship between religion and science, and because they mention "The Sparrow," though very briefly. In another interview, this guy (teehee) called the belief in a 6-day creation a form paganism which caused somewhat of a stir in the community of the faithful, and I like it when things get stirred up. Anyway, there's also some stuff in there about the meteorite collection at the Vatican. I suppose those Catholics are still good for something. http://www.astrobio.net/news/article966.html


So, I was walking to biochem this morning, listening to some music. And it struck me just how much happens in our minds at any given moment, just doing something as mundane as walking to class. First, there's all the muscle coordination to get our bodies to walk: moving leg muscles, arm muscles, core muscles to shift our weight depending on the slope of the ground, etc. Then we have match images of the things around us to how they looked last time to make sure we're on the right path; to do this we have to ignore all of the images we know change too much to be reliable (the people we walk by and the weather, or the buses), and focus on the "stationary" objects we pass by. Then, we have to assess how close other people are to us, whether their trajectories will cross ours, whether they realize we are there, perhaps even making brief eye contact and watching for certain body movement to see which direction they're going to change to so we can pick the opposite and avoid contact. Of course, most of this happens completely in the background, and while that part of the brain is keeping out bodies on course, and out of harm's way, another part of our brain is interpreting the smells of buses, cars, people, perfume, trees, bushes, flowers, fertilizer. Another part is enjoying the sounds of the music being fed into our ears by headphones and watching out for any other sounds that might hold important information: the call of a name, or the screech of brakes. And to top it all off, another part of the brain is daydreaming about not going to biochem, but to the beach instead, or about beautiful people, or what the plans for today will be. Anyway, I'm fairly certain I left out a large number of other processes that occur, but even with just this, I feel it's so amazing that this is all coordinated, and constantly refigured in a matter of milli-seconds by our brains, and we really don't pay much attention to it at all. I suppose that's a good thing, cause otherwise we'd think about nothing else. But my point is, sometimes it's awe inspiring to really think about all of it, and the fact that it boils down to ions crossing a membrane.