User:Rachel Ayres

I'm not sure what a user page should entail, however I like the idea of...

=A few Wikipedia articles that interest me:= (Einstein was quoted as having said "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.")
 * The art of war
 * Synchronicity
 * The Book of Five Rings
 * Miyamoto Musashi
 * intelligence quotient
 * Brain size and intelligence
 * Flynn effect
 * Religiousness and intelligence
 * twin study
 * Nature versus nurture
 * Bluegrass music
 * pantheism
 * Benedictus de Spinoza
 * Parliamentary cats
 * History of Graffiti
 * Unsolved problems in biology

My Spatial Obsession

 * Sirius
 * Orion (constellation)
 * Triangulum

Interesting People
"A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms--it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."
 * Albert Einstein

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."

"I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war."

"It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind."

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly." "The fuse is lit and the cannon is set, and somebody is in for a frailin. I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet, unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle, and set down at the side of some shady lane, and say, nope, I aint a gonna kill nobody. Plenty of rich folks wants to fight. Give them the guns." -woody "And we hold these truths to be self-evident: Number one-- George W. Bush is not president. Number two-- America is not a true democracy. And, Number three-- the media is not fooling me." -Self-evident "Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man."
 * Buffy Sainte-Marie
 * Judas Thomas the twin -The Gospel of Thomas
 * Woody Guthrie --(hell yes)
 * Ani Difranco - in my humble opinion,one of the most talented lyricists and                    guitar players around.
 * Victor Jara
 * Aung San Suu Kyi
 * Bell hooks

"The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others." from Outlaw Culture - Resisting Representations, 1994 "Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. People who have been puzzled by the beginnings of mathematics will, I hope, find comfort in this definition, and will probably agree that it is accurate."
 * Bertrand Russell

"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show."

"The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge."

=quick links=


 * Wikipedia Userboxes

=Current Projects=


 * Charles Seife