This post is a meditation on what makes you you and what makes me me. Where to start? Please excuse me while I mull. It took me just under three seconds to write that and inform my unconscious that I wanted it to gather information from previous experiences, list comparisons and contrasts, and begin to … Read more
Last week was Holy Week, and this, I just learned, is called Easter Week. Boy, did the disciples of Jesus learn something in those days! They didn’t learn everything, that’s for sure, because we humans can never learn everything. We constantly make the mistake of thinking we’ve got the entire picture. In our self-satisfaction, we … Read more
You can go to People Magazine for coverage of the famous ones, and there’s Instagram nowadays, not to mention many other ways. They call them VIPs, but I’ve always considered that to mean “Very Important Puppies,” such as the Basenjis, Kili, and Jaro. The lives of ordinary folks, we only learn about if we happen … Read more
In this post, I appeal primarily to Christians who underestimate the harm caused by the mistaken beliefs driving Intelligent Design. But this article may also be of interest to others, as it partially explains prevalent anti-science behaviors of today. What is Intelligent Design, and why does it matter? Wikipedia has several articles, but you could … Read more
Another insight from Jules Henri Poincaré is worth considering, to finish this review of Sean Carroll’s The Big Picture. Recall that Poincaré was a first-rate mathematical physicist in the late 1800s who also contributed to the philosophy of science. He said the only objective reality humans can get any sense of is “the internal harmony … Read more
For the second installment of this review and in the spirit of “poetic naturalism,” I refer now to one of my favorite books of all time: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a 1974 novel (which covers neither of those subjects). Here is only one story detail: the narrator travels real roads in an … Read more
If you have read Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, you know the novel is long, and the author goes off on numerous tangents. These can be engaging, depending on the reader’s personality. None of them make it into the movies. One side story is how the evil innkeeper, Thénardier, had previously been at Waterloo with … Read more
People come in many shapes, sizes, and colors. And with widely varying music tastes. I’m a boomer, so Taylor Swift doesn’t do much for me. Yet, that might not be the only reason, O Reader, that you may avert your eyes or click away from this post. I will try to keep you here a … Read more
If you have ever felt that previous times were pretty good, maybe great, you might long for them with a sigh and mention the good ole days. Probably many of us have no such experience unless we want to include the least bad days. But you’d be short-sighted to feel deserving of pity. No matter … Read more
A glaring human failing underlies two seemingly unrelated global problems: planetary degradation and war. We cannot unite as a human family enough to change either threat. Easier of the two, environmental degradation might have a built-in fail-safe mechanism: humans cannot sustainably live off the land. They will kill themselves before recovery goes beyond a tipping … Read more
I am nirtog. In this reflection, I give blog readers a sense of my spiritual point of view. Even regarding ourselves, we must admit to a limited ability to assess comprehensively what we think and why, but we probably have the best chance of anybody. I claim to have aesthetic sensibility within a science and … Read more
(Originally written 20 Nov 2022) The poem takes a lot of concentration for me in order to try and ascertain its meaning. I think I got most of it without your commentary, but was ultimately frustrated by the phrase temporal reversion. Your commentary helped clear up or confirm my understanding of that phrase as well … Read more
This poetry by T.S. Eliot may be just the antidote we need for dealing with the crazy, mixed-up world in which we find ourselves. So many people seem incapable of using the most rudimentary thinking tools to sort out what might be true from what is unlikely. And many professed Christians seem content to ignore … Read more