Arthur Clark on Intelligence

 A post from Facebook by Richard Sutton: 

I stole this because I couldn't resist sharing it with y'all.

 . . . recently stumbled across an extended 1995 interview with Arthur C. Clarke, including the following: "In fact, one of the arguments for searching for intelligent life in space, elsewhere, is that we have no evidence that intelligence has any survival value. The most successful creatures on this planet are the cockroaches. They've been around, what is it, 100 million years or so and I suspect they'll still be there 100 million years in the future. Maybe intelligence is an evolutionary aberration which dooms its possessors in the way armor may have doomed some of the dinosaurs."
http://lareviewofbooks.org/interview/science-fiction-and-prophecy-talking-to-arthur-c-clarke

How can the minds of five billion humans ever begin to compete with what must be a 'community consciousness' of a billion billion cockroaches? That's what I wonder

My Novel - A Universal Knowing -

I

I have written 78,000 words attempting to make the point that Lao Tzu makes in eight.
Wouldn't you just know!

Every Author's Truth

The Traveling Sunrise

Words, words, words

Complications That Enhance

Two Hundred Calories - What they look like :)

 

 mini bell peppers 26.1 oz

 

baby carrots 20.1 oz

 

tootsie pops

peanut butter 1.2 oz

 

medium cheddar cheese 1.8 oz

Here's the link if you would like to see a longer list:

http://www.artfido.com/blog/photographic-series-showing-what-200-calories-looks-like-in-different-foods/

Destiny

Leaches

He strode back, turned me around, and plucked two black pencil-lead wiggling leeches off my shoulders. Overhanging the lovely bench were rain forest ferns onto which several black devils clung, waiting for some unsuspecting tourist; dinner for a month.

“Euuuuuu,” every muscle in my body twinged, goose bumps blossomed on my arms. I stood, feeling the perspiration of fear wet my armpits. Finally, my vocal chords found sound. “Thank you, how did you know?”

'”I've been on this track before. Leeches thrive here; they particularly like Americans,” he deadpanned.

Only three centimeters long as they began their attack, they had the ability to grow into full-on blood syringes.

We walked on. Every muscle shuddering, I found myself less impressed with the scenery and far more involved in checking out who was dangling from which plants. Wait-a-while vines turned into possible homes for interlopers. Low lying ground clover became a perch for tiny Draculas.

Sunrise At Watarrka -

Reality

Distance Doesn't Matter . . .

Marble Canyon - The Colorado River

Yesterday I was kayaking in Marble Canyon on the Colorado River  (mostly all alone) and the mysticism inherent in the natural scene allowed me to feel the presence of that which earlier Rick referred to as the divine.  One yellow wildflower, thirteen steel blue herons gliding over the water, and an ephemeral lizard flicking his tail to tell me to keep off his territory, a trout jumping entirely out of the water to catch a gnat, riffles in the midst of calm waters, red rock walls a thousand feet high, blue skies, and the sun blocked by miraculous clouds reaching so far one couldn't quite see where they began - just being in such a place is tantamount to communing with majesty, divine majesty..and I don't need a god nor a goddess to understand how small and insignificant,alive or dead, my place in the universe is..