Quote of the Month... December 2004

... Starting medical school was like entering a strong current that guided me steadily through a series of interlocking channels. I was never good at taking lecture notes or memorizing by rote, so, out of necessity, I developed a more intuitive method by reading all the texts and papers that I could find on a particular subject. In a way, this process was not unlike the popular Swedish sport orienteering, a game in which the participants are given a map and compass, and then race through the forest, navigating a triangular course. No trail exists, and, to succeed, you must be both a strong runner and a skilled navigator. I have always enjoyed this sport--the feeling of running alone through the pine forest, finding my way--much like the approach I have taken to solve scientific questions. ...

--Torsten N. Wiesel, in Brain and Visual Perception: The Story of a 25-Year Collaboration, Chapter 2

Quote of the Month... November 2004

[When the time comes when we can submit the dream to a methodical examination, when by methods yet to be determined we succeed in realizing the dream in its entirety (and that implies a memory discipline measurable in generations, but we can still begin by recording salient facts), when the dream's curve is developed with an unequalled breadth and regularity, then we can hope that mysteries which are not really mysteries will give way to the great Mystery. I believe in the future resolution of these two states -- outwardly so contradictory -- which are dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, a surreality, so to speak, I am aiming for its conquest, certain that I myself shall not attain it, but too indifferent to my death not to calculate the joys of such possession.]

--André Breton, Le Manifeste du Surréalisme