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Showing posts from October, 2010

October 2010

" To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."      - Ralph Waldo Emerson " You can learn how to be you....  All you need is love ."      - Paul McCartney and John Lennon Sometimes, less is more. Imagine a dark June night in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and a hillside full of fireflies .  At first, each flickers independently.  Then pairs, then threesomes, flicker together.  Soon tens of thousands flash as one, in rhythm.  They have no leader, yet their synchronized light show couldn't be better.  Just individual fireflies being themselves.  As glorious as these creatures are, they aren't unique. Nature is filled with self-organized complex systems.  Rhythmic breathing synchronizes the heartbeats of a mother and her unborn child.  An athlete playing " in the zone " amazes onlookers.  Doctors use sandwiches of spontaneously synchronized superfluids ( Josephson ju