November 2011
19 posts
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I think that’s right. In just the same way that addicts are never cured, and only find a counterbalance in renewed human engagement and self-knowledge, I think the desire for approval and popularity can’t be done away with. The best we can do is not judge ourselves for having it, and try to add stones to the inner counterweight that keeps us from tipping out into empty satisfaction. I think...
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Blackout Beach - Broken Braying of the...
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We have more moral, political and historical wisdom, than we know how to reduce into practice; we have more scientific and economical knowledge than can be accommodated to the just distribution of the produce which it multiplies.
The poetry in these systems of thought, is concealed by the accumulation of facts and calculating processes.
There is no want of knowledge respecting what is wisest and...
Whipple: We've documented through our research that women who have complete transection -- interruption of the spinal cord -- can experience orgasms.
Komisaruk: The nerve pathway for that is via the vagus nerve, which can go directly from the cervix and uterus to the brain, passing outside the spinal cord. Women with spinal cord injuries told us that their doctors told them it was impossible to experience genital sensation, it was impossible to experience genital pleasure. They thought something was wrong with them when they experienced it, and they were troubled by it.
WN: What is the vagus nerve?
Whipple: "Vagus" means wanderer -- the nerve wanders through the body. Previously, it wasn't thought that it goes as far as the pelvic region. But our research and that of other laboratories is showing that it does in fact go to the cervix and uterus and probably the vagina. It carries the impulses from those regions, travels up through the abdomen, goes through the diaphragm, through the thorax, up the neck outside the spinal cord, and into the brain.
Komisaruk: Men and women have described an orgasmic experience from stimulation of the skin region around the level of the spinal cord injury. The injury creates an area of heightened sensitivity. They've told us if the right person stimulates that skin in the right way, it can produce very pleasurable sensation, including what they describe as orgasms. We studied one such woman who had a spinal cord injury near her shoulders. She stimulated her neck with a vibrator, and she said that elicited an orgasm for her. We observed her blood pressure and heart rate, and they became elevated just as if it were a genital orgasm.
WN: Professor Whipple, you had a very emotional moment with one subject who had a spinal-cord injury.
Whipple: That particular woman had not tried any sexual stimulation, either with herself or a partner, in the two years since she had an injury. When she was in the laboratory, this woman experienced six orgasms through self-simulation. It was extremely emotional. She was crying, I was crying. She didn't think this was possible, and she was so pleased that she had volunteered to be a research subject. This had helped open up her essential pleasure again.
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In the millionaire Undershaft I have represented a man who has become intellectually and spiritually as well as practically conscious of the irresistible truth which we all abhor and repudiate: to wit, that the greatest of our evils, and worst of our crimes is poverty, and that our first duty, to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.
‘Poor, but...
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Imagine you are lifted out of your house through a window. Your body rises above the roof and soon the outlines of your neighborhood come into view. You begin to recognize where you live from the satellite images on Google Maps. Maybe you figure out which way is north. Everything assumes the miniature quality of the view from an airplane’s window. You can see most of your city. Rising...
