In particular read <div>"Shall we bet ? " among the Cosmicomics stories: </div><div><br></div><div>"This situation began to change when, in the protogalaxies, the protostars started condensing, and I quickly realized where it would all end, with that temperature rising all the time, and so I said: "Now they're going to catch fire."<div>
"Nuts!" the Dean said.</div><div>"Want to bet?" I said.</div><div>"Anything you like," he said, and wham, the darkness was shattered by all these incandescent balls that began to swell out.</div>
<div>"Oh, but that isn't what catching fire means. . ." (k)yK began, quibbling about words in his usual way.</div><div>By that time I had developed a system of my own, to shut him up: "Oh, no? And what does it mean then, in your opinion?"</div>
<div>He kept quiet: lacking imagination as he did, when a word began to have one meaning, he couldn't conceive of its having any other.</div><div>Dean (k)yK, if you had to spend much time with him, was a fairly boring sort, without any resources, he never had anything to tell. Not that I, on the other hand, could have told much, since events worth telling about had never happened, or at least so it</div>
<div>appeared to us. The only thing was to frame hypotheses, or rather: hypothesize on the possibility of framing hypotheses. Now, when it came to framing hypotheses of</div><div>hypotheses, I had much more imagination than the Dean, and this was both an advantage and a disadvantage, because it led me to make riskier bets, so that you might say our probabilities of winning were even.</div>
<div>As a rule, I bet on the possibility of a certain event's taking place, whereas the Dean almost always bet against it. He had a static sense of reality, old (k)yK, if I may express myself in these terms, since between static and dynamic at that time there wasn't</div>
<div>the difference there is nowadays, or in any case you had to be very careful in grasping it, that difference."</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Old Dean (k)yK, fairly boring sort, without any resources and imagination reminds of somebody, same for you?</div>
<div><br></div><div>Giovanni</div><div> </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 7:49 PM, Giovanni Santostasi <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:gsantostasi@gmail.com" target="_blank">gsantostasi@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span style="line-height:18px;text-align:left;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-size:13px;font-family:'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif">Not sure if you have ever read these stories, but even if not exactly transhumanist in theme, they talk about how existence can embody different forms and places, in the vast cosmic play. I think somebody should write similar stories to descr</span><span style="line-height:18px;text-align:left;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-size:13px;font-family:'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif;display:inline">ibe how consciousness would be embodied in higher forms of being as the universal saga continues from existing all crowded in One Point at the Big Bang times to the time we will play with galaxies like if they were chips on the cosmic casino: here the complete Italo Calvino 's Cosmicomics:<a href="http://irenebrination.typepad.com/files/calvino-italo-cosmicomics.pdf" rel="nofollow nofollow" style="color:rgb(59,89,152);text-decoration:none;outline:none" target="_blank">http://irenebrination.typepad.com/files/calvino-italo-cosmicomics.pdf</a></span> <br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="h5">On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 7:29 PM, spike <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:spike66@att.net" target="_blank">spike66@att.net</a>></span> wrote:<br></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div><div class="h5">
<div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"">>… Behalf Of </span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"">Giovanni Santostasi</span></p>
<div><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] He's Back - Carrico's continued ranting<u></u><u></u></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1f497d">>…</span>Next project is to write a transhumanist version of Italo Calvino Cosmic-Comics.<u></u><u></u></p>
<div><div><p class="MsoNormal">The critics should not be the only ones that can laugh at our expenses we should laugh about ourselves too.<span style="color:#1f497d"> </span>Giovanni<span style="color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
</div></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"> <u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d">Giovanni, I had to look up your reference to Italo Calvino, and saw he is a comedian of some sort. I have been thinking of comedy as a vehicle for ideas. Your reference reminded me of a brilliant comic strip character we had here in the early 90s, Calvin and Hobbes. The strip ended 17 years ago, but I still see people reading the complied books to this day. Watterson introduced plenty of thought-provoking ideas through those characters. Cartooning seems like such a terrific way of aiding meme penetration.<span><font color="#888888"><u></u><u></u></font></span></span></p>
<span><font color="#888888"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d">spike<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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