Cortically Magnified

Today I visited the National Natural History Museum in Taichung, and I found the exact location where I was introduced to the music of the Beatles! It was a school excursion when I was a boy. In the anthropological hall of the museum, there was a display of the site in Ethiopia where Donald Johanson discovered Australopithecus. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was playing because that’s the music Johanson was listening to while his team dug up Lucy.

This is an illustration of the “Brain Sea”. I found it near the end of a comic book by the Taiwanese artist Push. What is the Brain Sea? In Mandarin Chinese, “Brain Sea” (腦海) is a common expression that refers to the mind. This is the end scene of the “Nine Lives Man” saga, where the protagonist (who has been reincarnated into countless life forms in the 3-volume Sci-Fi series) asks the ultimate question: What is the point of all this?