Comments on: Hearts

By: Sunday’s comic links (#15) « Unisyc.

Sunday’s comic links (#15) « Unisyc. — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:17:26 +0000

[...] The Flowfield Unity: 1st October [...]

By: Brandy

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:16:44 +0000

Considering our collective attention span and wallet depth, a short book would probably be best.

By: Roo

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:15:53 +0000

Does it have to be a long book?

By: The Great Joe Bivins

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:08:22 +0000

I promise to thumb through a copy at Borders and then sadly not buy it because I have no money.

By: The Great Joe Bivins

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:07:03 +0000

On the contrary, she drives me insane. She has a Masters in Biology yet can’t pronounce the word “nucleus” or any variant thereof. Every time she mispronounces something it’s like she’s driving a sharp stick in my eye.

By: Brandy

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:23:33 +0000

Someone here needs to write a book and title it “Concepts Have No Need for Sky Pixies”. I promise to buy a copy.

By: Adam

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:05:51 +0000

So, to sum up,

One could just get a new heart… or you could attempt to fix the old one with epoxy or bodily fluids… either is cool.

Concepts have no need for sky pixies, although Mr Bivins does.

And the lack of love, it is generally agree upon, leads to some form of murder.

By: Brandy

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:08:59 +0000

What Matt said.

By: Matt`

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:42:41 +0000

Humans minus love =! killing your partner. We’d still be social animals, we’d just be more promiscuous and not form such a strong attachment to one person. The evolutionary purpose of love is to bond us together long enough to raise a child, because that’s a more successful strategy than the mother trying to raise a child on her own.

On chemical level, love makes your chosen partner seem more attractive than everyone else, and/or everyone else look less attractive than them. Basically a stat bonus to your significant other to encourage you to stay with them.

By: Brandy

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:17:26 +0000

Repression and expression both have their pros and cons. I’d just rather deal with the pros and cons of repression.

By: Joseph Hewitt

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:09:02 +0000

You mean he hollers real good?

By: Roo

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:02:37 +0000

Are you saying you’re in love with your biology teacher? …cause that’s kinda weird.

By: The Great Joe Bivins

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:07:19 +0000

I suspect my biology teacher is secretly a pixie. No human being could have such a pixieish voice.

By: Adam

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:39:26 +0000

That’s a little melancholy, a little sad.

Sounds like you could do with a change of heart.

By: Adam

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:38:18 +0000

The repression thing, it’s tricky. Surely facing facts helps you to get over it quicker… in a more brutal way. Like ripping an elastoplast from a hairy arm.

Time… it’s a panacea.

By: Adam

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:37:14 +0000

Do you think they go for part exchange?

By: Adam

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:36:54 +0000

eeew, that’s not exactly the superglue I had in mind.

Still interesting though, I hadn’t considered the origins of the shape. It gives valentines day an interesting connotation.

By: Ben

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:50:18 +0000

Love needs not the blessings of a magical sky pixie to be profound, but nor does anything else.

By: Joseph Hewitt

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 02:36:30 +0000

That should have been mechanistic instead of materialistic. Drat.

By: Joseph Hewitt

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 02:35:24 +0000

I’ve never understood the idea that in a purely materialistic universe, love would be meaningless. Like anything it has the meaning we give to it, neither more nor less. Concepts do not need the blessing of a magical sky pixie in order to be profound.

By: Ben

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:48:09 +0000

Love is a very interesting concept.
If you believe god, then you can believe in love as a pure emotion. How ever, if you really believe in evolution, then love is just a chemical concoction our body uses to prevent us from killing our breeding partners.
Well, that is a pessemistic outlook, but essentially correct IMHO.
Seeing as life is about reproduction and reproduction is about sex, it makes sense that the love heart would be modelled on genitalia.
Of course, if you believe in god, you repress all this and can live in a happy love infested world.
Some times delusion is better then the truth

By: Ben

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:42:11 +0000

The second is the more traditional approach taken by the larger majority of humans.

By: ema nymton

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:37:28 +0000

My heart isn’t broken, it’s just atrophied from lack of use.

By: Joseph Hewitt

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:52:51 +0000

Superglue should not be used to fix a broken heart. You should really use a flexible epoxy instead.

It was either that, or:

Superglue should not be used to fix a broken heart. Try buying some real drugs instead of huffing.

But that’s just bad.

By: Roo

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:35:14 +0000

Did you know that it’s quite probably that the stylized ‘heart’ shape used to symbolize love probably has its origins in the female genitalia, rather than the blood-pumping organ? I always thought that said some interesting things about the cultural evolution of the concept of ‘love’ in a general sense.

So: in response to your question, the only thing I can think to do is quote the good man Charles Stross. (can you tell I’ve read him recently?)

“Afterward, she reaches down and massages him until he begins to spasm, shuddering uncontrollably, emptying the Darwinian river of his source code into her, communicating via his only output device. She rolls off his hips and carefully uses the last of the superglue to gum her labia together. Humans don’t produce seminiferous plugs, and although she’s fertile, she wants to be absolutely sure. The glue will last for a day or two.”

The answer, at least in this case, appears to have been “yes.”