scientific sentimentalism, with vaguely revelant icon!

'Put the heart beside the brain and see the difference. The brain is neat, segmented, divided into two halves as we imagine the heart should obviously be. You can deal with the brain, you think; it is a receptive organ, one that invites comprehension. The brain looks sensible. It's complicated, to be sure, with all those wrinkles and frowns and gulleys and pockets; it resembles coral, making you wonder if it might be surreptitiously on the move all the time, quietly adding to itself without your noticing. The brain has its secrets, though when cryptanalysts, maze-builders and surgeons unite, it will surely be possible to solve those mysteries. You can deal with the brain, as I say; it looks sensible. Whereas the heart, the human heart, I'm afraid, looks a fucking mess.

...

It will go wrong, this love; it probably will. That contorted organ, like the lump of ox meat, is devious and enclosed. Our current model for the universe is entropy, which at the daily level translates as: things fuck up. But when love fails us, we must still go on believing in it. Is it enclosed in every molecule that things fuck up, that love will fail? Perhaps it is. Still we must believe in love, just as we must believe in free will and objective truth.'

- Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters

there is a light that shines on the frontier

Q: What does Fahye do when she's heartily sick of her nutrition notes?

A: GIP

(With bonus themesong! Tori Amos - Pirates)

So...ask me anything about cancer, AIDS, SARS, tuberculosis or mad cow disease? Don't make me go back to the bloody hormone regulation feedback loops. I DON'T CARE HOW MEN MAKE SPERM. NO, REALLY. GO AWAY, HELPFUL AND OVERLY GRAPHIC DIAGRAMS.