XPost: alt.dreams.castaneda   
   From: aon2@hotmail.com   
      
   Hi Laura,   
      
   > What's this?   
      
   indeed, what was it:   
      
         ### Slider:   
         > Laura (to Ann but responding to Slider's post, go figure):   
      
         ### - lol, don't mess with (sure-shot:) 'Annie Oakley' heh heh   
             heh...  she'll shoot your buttons off, t' raas :)   
      
         > What's this?   
      
   Now you tell me "what's this", or did you not notice you weren't   
   technically replying to my 'questionnaire' but to Slider's   
   comprehensive repost thereof who just happened to add too innocent   
   lines at the bottom.  Of course, in reality you were talking to me all   
   the way through, but with that awkward question at the very end you   
   suddenly hold me accountable for something I did not write. Or was it   
   not meant for me, switching back to slider-mode or something   
   (subconsciously:).   
      
   Anyway, now's the time to sincerely thank you for your honest answers   
   and quickly return to discussing substance :), in particular I liked   
   your sceptical ending so much that I'll use it as an introduction to   
   the main talk (on genetics, I'm afraid, "in the search for knowledge"   
   still striving to verify the exact nature of 'reality' we and   
   micro-biologists are living in now: dream or other:). Here is that nice   
   paragraph of yours:   
      
   > Of course I, too, am only human, and therefore I have to be very   
   > careful of succumbing to belief. ... Ultimately, nobody knows   
   > anything for dead sure. Everything may have an explanation which is   
   > not the immediately obvious one.   
      
   {What's left out, collapsed into the dotted ellipses, was something "I   
   believe is irrelevant", since I believe that "What I believe is [not]   
   irrelevant. Reality is [not] as it is, regardless of what you or anyone   
   else believes" or says. Take it as a jest for now.}   
      
   Let me first duly appreciate your shrewd observation that there might   
   have been some "well-laid traps" along the way of my 'questionnaire   
   survey', and to be entirely honest with you you proved a discerning and   
   skillful navigator, exceeded my expectations by "very carefully"   
   circumventing almost all "traps" (that's why your "What's this?"   
   lapse surprised me so). There remained only a handful of most stubborn   
   beliefs you could not avoid or hide or just chose to "succumb to" :),   
   perhaps subconsciously so, although "everything may have an explanation   
   which is not the immediately obvious one."   
      
   For example, notice how much of your Logos ('energy', certainty:)   
   concentrated on the "A-C-T-G" code remark, while with few exceptions   
   preceding items were sort of omitted or just casually answered like the   
   witty "Maybe, maybe not." (Which until further notice I'll take for   
   'Odds fifty-fifty':). So we jump now immediately to this bone of   
   contention.   
      
   > Laura:   
   >> Ann:   
      
   >> Dreams just a hippocampal activity consolidating our day   
   >> memories/residues.   
   >>   
   >> However, Jung's Archetypes are real too, and as deeply ingrained   
   >> in all of us (and our dreams:) over countless generations.   
   >>   
   >> And the same with the fundamental physical and functional unit of   
   >> heredity, as real as it can get.   
   >>   
   >> There is this tiny yet all too corporeal information carrier that   
   >> ought to convey traits from parent to offspring.   
   >>   
   >> That is, the four-letter code, the g-e-n-e, is not just an   
   >> abstract concept but truly exists in independent reality outside.   
      
   > It's A-C-T-G, actually. Adenine, Cytosine, Thymine, Guanine.  DNA has   
   > been extensively analyzed, and the way it works is well understood.   
   > Pictures can be taken of it, revealing the double-helix structure.   
   > It truly exists "in independent reality outside", and anybody who   
   > denies that is being silly.   
      
   :) Which leaves one "actually" wonder: who's that "silly anybody who   
   denies", is it me, you or somebody else entirely. Though you shouldn't   
   worry much, the "silly [remark] was well understood" and received, after   
   all I too know first hand how difficult it can be sometimes to tell   
   facts from fiction (or simple nature from complex one:). I for example   
   choose to not accept without proof, guess we still have the human   
   (skeptical:) right to doubt anything we're told. If gurus want us very   
   much to believe some thing/word for real (e.g. that fancy objects like   
   "black holes" exist; where:), fine, but theirs is the burden of proof,   
   their job to convince the uninitiated of their true knowledge or   
   righteousness. Which in many important cases may not be as easy as it   
   seems, as we both well know :).   
      
   As to our mythical heroes Adenine, Cytosine, Thymine and Guanine,   
   thanks for the precious information, so then gene's four letters stand   
   for A, C, T and G, felt good to know that fact, yet aren't there still   
   four of them, so again the intuition didn't lie to me :). Though   
   speaking of gene's reality (the one outside/independent of our   
   educated, pre-conditioned minds:) you already know what I'm going to   
   say: only personal subjective experiences count with me. Thus in   
   general I'll focus on humans ('gene'), leaving the poor rats and other   
   'guinea pigs' alone. Alas, often inductively inferential scientists   
   prefer instead to "analyze extensively" some tiny, singe cell organisms   
   or viruses, and then even generalise, draw bold conclusions from the   
   objective evidence. Which to me, I'm afraid, is but evidence, or else   
   there's plenty of counter-evidence around the corner waiting to be   
   discovered once we start looking for it.   
      
   To start but from where, I personally prefer to start from "know   
   thyself", there could hardly be anything more inspiring (or devastating   
   as the case might be:) than a personal 'ET' encounter of a first kind.   
   So then the next "silly" question is this: Have you ever seen the gene   
   yourself, preferably not just in a book?  I'll admit that strictly   
   speaking I haven't, not that I haven't tried to (you know how curious I   
   can be) but simply failed to see what I was supposed to see, lacked the   
   necessary imagination perhaps. I'm not blind though, nor was I dreaming   
   (as usual:), my eyes were wide open for the occasion, yet the Cunning   
   just didn't seem to have the same solidity (validity:) as your desk or   
   chair. Of course, I'm playing a bit naive now, we both know that this   
   (gene:) is a highly non-trivial matter, that seeing it (say, the gene   
   for height or obesity:) is a complex procedural enterprise: after all,   
   and looking at history, isn't it the reason why the discovery (of the   
   corporeal heredity transmitter) took us so long in the first place,   
   millennia had to pass, or at least decades (lost:) of "seeking the   
   genetic messenger". And are we sure that search is over.   
      
   {The "seeking" quote was from   
   http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/photo51/before.html Further down there you   
   may stumble across Schrödinger's 'quantum' answer to "What is life?: A   
   matter doing something", e.g. simply a matter.. of avoiding non-doing   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)