this was Ken Kesey, as per this month's Wired magazine.

"The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer-they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."

I hear ya girl...sometimes i have to kick myself out of analyzation mode and just try to be comfortable with the fact that in my life time the answers will not be known to these huge questions that we so desperately ponder. I took two years of anthropology and meso american history and since then most of what i learned hase been refuted and heavily disputed. For example they just found a causcasian female skull that was dated 13,000 years old in  mexico city. Prior to this everyone thougth that the first humans there were mongoloid in descent and migrated from the north. Now all that theory is blown out of the water and every other thing that they thought they new about the development of mankind in the area. So yes I will have to make myself content in loving the mystery of it all and enjoying the info that science brings me without obsessiong over the answers...but i don't like it.

"the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious...."  (A. Einstein)

And certainly this hobby lends itself to experiencing ample mystery!!!  (Bet he was a hobbyist... he certainly wasn't one to begrudge himself the pleasures of female companionship!)

He took advantage of his fame and have many liaisons with young female admirers.

I believe it...those wacky science guys drive me crazy.

I have always been a bit of a science groupie...my biggest achievement in this hobby of mine was bagging a nobel prize winner...His Brain wasn't the only thing that was Big

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particularly interested in evolution (which I think is the most important factor in human behavior).  But the key is that when you find the answer, it always leads to another question, another mystery.  And so it goes on and on, with one mystery solved after another, and the quest for knowledge that makes life so interesting.

A plug for Kesey: Everyone should run, don't walk, and get a copy of his incredible book "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".

and add_Sometimes A Great Notion_ to your Kesey reading list... an all time great coming of age novel...

otoh... there are answers and there are Answers... he wanted to steer away from revealed truths that closed off thinking...

his incantation must have worked. here we are thinking about it.

looking for more more answers, they diminish their lives greatly.

Sometimes a Great Notion was of course also incredible, and highly recommended.  Not sure you and I would agree about the wisdom of using pharmaceuticals to open the mind, but the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was certainly amusing.

from today's NY Times...

"After the Columbine school shootings, Mr. DeLay suggested that the tragedy had occurred "because our school systems teach our children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial mud." Guns don't kill people; Charles Darwin kills people.

Mr. DeLay isn't an obscure crank; he's the most powerful man in Congress."

Me? I need to evolutionize myself over to Julie's and wallow in the primordial mud... Darwin shmarwin...

I mean... me too.... but Ken made a movement and life out of it... I was there on the outside looking in and, Mano... sometimes remembering myown name was a mystery.... kinda fun for a while.... but sooner or later, it's good to know who you are, where you've been and where your going. I love Captain Trips, miss the Bus Driver and That Mexican Kid.... The mystery is how some of us survived at all... circular..... !-D

On the Road

'Nobody knows where Slim Gaillard is'

'... one night we suddenly went mad together again; we went to see Slim Gaillard in a little Frisco nightclub. Slim Gaillard is a tall, thin Negro with big sad eyes who's always saying 'Right-orooni' and 'How 'bout a little bourbon-arooni.' In Frisco great eager crowds of young semi-intellectuals sat at his feet and listened to him on the piano, guitar and bongo drums. When he gets warmed up he takes off his undershirt and really goes. He does and says anything that comes into his head. He'll sing 'Cement Mixer, Put-ti Put-ti' and suddenly slow down the beat and brood over his bongos with fingertips barely tapping the skin as everybody leans forward breathlessly to hear; you think he'll do this for a minute or so, but he goes right on, for as long as an hour, making an imperceptible little noise with the tips of his fingernails, smaller and smaller all the time till you can't hear it any more and sounds of traffic come in the open door. Then he slowly gets up and takes the mike and says, very slowly, 'Great-orooni ... fine-ovauti ... hello-orooni ... bourbon-orooni ... all-orooni ... how are the boys in the front row making out with their girls-orooni ... orooni ... vauti ... oroonirooni ..." He keeps this up for fifteen minutes, his voice getting softer and softer till you can't hear. His great sad eyes scan the audience.

Dean stands in the back, saying, 'God! Yes!' -- and clasping his hands in prayer and sweating. 'Sal, Slim knows time, he knows time.' Slim sits down at the piano and hits two notes, two C's, then two more, then one, then two, and suddenly the big burly bass-player wakes up from a reverie and realizes Slim is playing 'C-Jam Blues' and he slugs in his big forefinger on the string and the big booming beat begins and everybody starts rocking and Slim looks just as sad as ever, and they blow jazz for half an hour, and then Slim goes mad and grabs the bongos and plays tremendous rapid Cubana beats and yells crazy things in Spanish, in Arabic, in Peruvian dialect, in Egyptian, in every language he knows, and he knows innumerable languages. Finally the set is over; each set takes two hours. Slim Gaillard goes and stands against a post, looking sadly over everybody's head as people come to talk to him. A bourbon is slipped into his hand. 'Bourbon-orooni -- thank-you-ovauti ...' Nobody knows where Slim Gaillard is. Dean once had a dream that he was having a baby and his belly was all bloated up blue as he lay on the grass of a California hospital. Under a tree, with a group of colored men, sat Slim Gaillard. Dean turned despairing eyes of a mother to him. Slim said, 'There you go-orooni.' Now Dean approached him, he approached his God; he thought Slim was God; he shuffled and bowed in front of him and asked him to join us. 'Right-orooni,' says Slim; he'll join anybody but won't guarantee to be there with you in spirit. Dean got a table, bought drinks, and sat stiffly in front of Slim. Slim dreamed over his head. Every time Slim said, 'Orooni,' Dean said 'Yes!' I sat there with these two madmen. Nothing happened. To Slim Gaillard the whole world was just one big orooni.'

Human life is precious. Everywhere. If this perception were common amoung countries, cultures, classes and castes there would be no Black Trenchcoat Mafia or a couple angry furstrated idealists with evil counsel would not have taken more than 3,000 people to hell with them.

Tom Delay has a point.... but there is a lot to be said for mud...

Reid you miss the point?

The late Stephen Jay Gould's interpretation of evolution was that it was not necessarily progressive, i.e. always proceeding from the primitive to the more complex and "advanced". The recent statements by Tom DeLay and Trent Lott tend to emphasize that point.

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'The truth,' I said. 'Can't any of you tell the truth? Do you always have to manipulate others doing your dirty work for you when the truth is so much simpler?'
'That's show business,' Guy said glibly.
'I don't like it,' I said.
'You better get used to it if you're going to stay in it.'
(from The Lonely Lady, 1976)

I guess history will recognize which was which.

And Tom Delay has about as much in common with Trent Lott as Albert Einstein has to Ed Bagley Jr.

Ah.... those with different ideals who are brave enough to speak them are evil, right? Joseph Vissarionovich though so too....

On the other hand, here and now, your God given right under Amendment in the First, you may express your opinion as validly as Delay or Daschle.

Funny, eh?

the thought of you smiling is...... nice.... kinda warm and fuzzy....... I like it...... I smile too....

new evidence and theories - don't they understand that I already
have the Answer!"  

I've got a theory that people who find the idea of evolution disgusting also tend to find sex disgusting.

ReeLay most definitely qualifies.

It's amazing that DeLay will soon be in charge of the House; sort of like "Crazy Eddy" running things. This probably isn't too far from the truth, since he was, in an earlier incarnation, a bug exterminator.

Evolution, of course, is the central organizing principal in all of biological and medical research. For example, you can't really deal with HIV resistance to drugs unless you first understand the evolutionary mechanisms for the AIDS virus.

Should be interesting to see what the DeLays do to NIH budgets, which funds most biological and medical research in the U.S. Especially since all these scientists are pretty much "Darwinists".

By the way, Jack, loved your work in the "Demon Princes."

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Fear is the mindkiller and as long as you focus on the differences, we're gonna be just fine.

I have a question.... what do you guys think of the genome project that shows man and mice as nearly equal... not apes... kinda weird, eh?

Evolution is just a theory.... remember? Taking anybody's dogma as the be-all-to-end-all fact is dangerous.... look at 14th century Cathilocs and present day Muslums.... The God of Their Understanding is "Right" just like the humanist "god" you've bought into.

Funny, eh? I find I get along with my fellow humans better looking for the similarities rather than differences.... "Give Peace A Chance" doesn't mean surrender.... does it? I guess it depends on who's issued the ultimatum.