Blog Stats
- 2,909,856 readers since June 2008
Recent Comments
- Evelyn Stone on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Bible says beastiality is ok on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Stan on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Tess on In 1935, Were Cary Grant and Randolf Scott Sex Partners? No, But These Images Look Rather Camp
- Tess on In 1935, Were Cary Grant and Randolf Scott Sex Partners? No, But These Images Look Rather Camp
- geirsmith1 on Barack Obama: The Leopard in the Book of Daniel?
- Christian on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- nothingbutthepub on Evolution v. Creation Metaphor Watch: Is Nature “Red in Tooth and Claw”?
- Anonymous on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Carol Dickinson on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Bradley on Bonobo Liberals? Chimp Conservatives?
- Bill on Shakespeare, James Joyce, and the Dirty Encoding in Britney Spears’s “If U Seek Amy”
- godisreal2017 on “Male and Female Created He Them!”: Was Adam a Hermaphrodite? And Does That Explain How Eve Could Be Taken from Adam’s Body?
- godisreal2017 on “Male and Female Created He Them!”: Was Adam a Hermaphrodite? And Does That Explain How Eve Could Be Taken from Adam’s Body?
- godisreal2017 on “Male and Female Created He Them!”: Was Adam a Hermaphrodite? And Does That Explain How Eve Could Be Taken from Adam’s Body?
Top Posts
- Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Clit Rubbing Bonobos: A Clue to the Evolutionary Origin of Human Homosexuality?
- What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Ludwig Wittgenstein for Beginners
- Walt Whitman: "To be indeed a God!"
- Aquinas and Superstition: Thomist Philosopher Edward Feser Is An Aquinastitionist. What Is That?
- "Courtly Love, Or, Woman As Thing": How To Do Lacanian Analysis Like Slavoj Zizek (Or, At Least Understand What He's Getting At When He Does)
- Judge William Adams Alludes to the Bible as He Beats His Daughter, Hallie
- What is an Etiological Narrative? And Might Confusion About Its Nature Be the Source for Fundamentalist Religion?
- Willard: "You made me hate myself!"
-
Recent Posts
Recent Haiku Tweets
- @abrahampiper Yahweh as a frustrated deity, much to be pitied! Abraham Piper's insight here, if thought about as a… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 year ago
- RT @tbonier: More than 80M votes cast and we're not done yet. Thoughts: - It's too late for an "October surprise" to have a significant imp… 2 years ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: 1. Want to thank @DanielNewman for using his HUGE platform for this work. I want to clarify what this is. In the voter… 2 years ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Tell me again about how old and feeble Joe Biden is??? twitter.com/ProjectLincoln… 2 years ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Remember when you had a chance to choose country over party and you chose party @SenatorCollins? Well, @ProjectLincol… 2 years ago
-
Tag Archives: nature
Monet’s Waterlilies and Some Free Association
A nice image of Monet’s waterlilies, c. 1915, via Wikipedia Commons: __________ The feel of this image for me is not of tranquility and coolness, but of heat and melting. First there is the white flower echoing a fried egg; … Continue reading
Would Nietzsche Have Liked the New Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas?
Look at this quote from Friedrich Nietzsche’s essay, “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” (1873). It is Nietzsche’s description of the Dionysian forces that lurk beneath our artistic and “illusory consciousness” (our Apollonian dreams of coherence and control; the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Apollo, Charles Darwin, Dionysus, evolution, nature, Nietzsche, Perot Museum, science
Leave a comment
While We’ve All Been Sleeping
This alarming little paragraph was recently posted at the New Yorker by Elizabeth Kolbert: We are now seeing changes occur in a matter of years that, in the normal geological scheme of things, should take thousands, even millions of times … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged civilization, climate change, cool, global warming, hot, nature, oil
Leave a comment
Is Evolution Not Just True, But Good (Something To Be Embraced)?
Jared Burton has written a beautiful and soulful folk song capturing humanity’s uncomfortable and ambivalent relationship to evolution. I find the lyrics emotionally and intellectually challenging. But I can’t decide if I agree or not with the orientation to Nature … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheist, capitalism, competition, evolution, Jane Austen, Jared Burton, music, nature, philosophy, sex, vegan
2 Comments
Donna Haraway’s Question: Would I Rather Be A Goddess Or A Cyborg?
Donna Haraway (b. 1944) teaches feminist and science studies in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California at Santa Cruz. In addition to taking a degree in English, she also studied biology at Yale. In 1985 she … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged biology, cyborg, ecofeminism, feminism, Marxism, nature, Politics, society, technology
Leave a comment
Charles Darwin’s Thinking Path
I love this image from Wikipedia Commons. It’s the path that Charles Darwin frequently trod at the grounds of Down House, his home. Darwin called this his “Thinking Path.”
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Charles Darwin, critical thinking, evolution, natural selection, nature, reason, saints, science, solitude, thinking, walking
Leave a comment
Blogging David Goodsell’s “The Machinery of Life” (Evolution, Scale, and the Counter-Intuitive Nano-Realm)
David Goodsell is a molecular biologist at The Scripps Research Institute in California, and he has written a hippie-beautiful introductory text to molecular biology, The Machinery of Life (2nd edition, Springer 2010), which Scientific American calls “an impressive and original book.” I call it “hippie-beautiful” because … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged beauty, biology, blood, cells, complexity, david goodsell, design, evolution, life, nanotechnology, nature, science
Leave a comment
A Dog Pauses to Remember the Ground of Being and Seek Its Assistance in Love
This dog, I think, is doing three things right: he’s remembering the Ground of Being; he’s feeling gratitude at his very existence; and he’s seeking help in his progress toward greater love (not chasing cats so much). One could do worse … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged animals, atheism, atheist, cats, dogs, God, gratitude, life, love, nature, prayer, thankfulness
2 Comments
Going Green by Driving Your Car?
Are human carbon emissions actually greening the Earth? According to the UK’s Independent, a new study says that trees today are growing faster in Maryland than they did 225 years ago (the oldest trees in the study), and the researchers attribute … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged autos, cars, climate change, earth, ecology, gaia, green, greenhouse gas, maryland, nature, thoreau
Leave a comment
With Regard to the Internet, What Would Gandhi Do?
I found this Gandhi quote several years back while perusing an undated letter of his that I found in volume 49 of his Collected Works. At least that’s what I wrote down. My local branch library in Lancaster, Ca. just happened to … Continue reading
The Indifference of Generation-Spanning Stones to the Vissitudes of Human Experience
An introduction to Camus’s notion of the absurd, circa 1966, and a kind of theodicy prayer to the stones of Winchester Cathedral. And is the singer holding his nose?
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged 1966, atheism, Camus, Darwin, evolution, God, indifference, life, nature, religion, Tennyson, theodicy
Leave a comment
Quote of the Day
Henry David Thoreau: Let us settle ourselves, and work, and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheist, cathedral, God, Henry David Thoreau, nature, philosophy, the universe, truth
Leave a comment
Counting Ants—or Ants Counting?
A bizarre story from National Public Radio. Desert ants appear to count their steps from nest to food source, and then count their way back again! Yes, you read that right. Some ants count. Here’s the link to the story: … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged ants, biology, desert, evolution, experiments, intelligent design, math, music, nature, numbers, science
2 Comments
Maybe
Or maybe not. Good music, though: To this rather breezy video—which makes abiogenesis seem so easy-peezy—I offer British chemist John Walton’s recent letter to the Times Literary Supplement: Sir, – The resilience of the “prebiotic soup” myth, in spite of torrents of … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged abiogenesis, biology, chemistry, Darwin, evolution, God, life, nature, origin of life, science
Leave a comment
Charles Darwin on the Problem of Suffering
In a letter to Asa Gray (22 May, 1860): With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.– I am bewildered.– I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, Charles Darwin, evolution, God, Hamlet, Jesus, life, nature, nature red in tooth and claw, suffering, the problem of suffering, theodicy
3 Comments
Ants Eat a Gecko. 21 Hours. Time. Lapsed.
“Because I could not stop for death . . .” Emily Dickinson would have written a disturbing poem about this: Do you suppose she would have laughed at the ants carting off the skull? There’s something funny about it somehow, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apollo v. dionysus, biology, death, Dionysus, Emily Dickinson, Halloween, life, nature, Nietzsche, poetry, skeletons
Leave a comment
Mental Health Break
I made this video a few months back. I still kind of like it:
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged mental health break, nature, picnic, psychology, Sartre, science
Leave a comment
Evolutionary Psychology and War: Are We Chimps, Bonobos, or Something Else?
Is war, in some sense, natural? Here’s an example of a recent book (reviewed by the Washington Post) that makes the argument that it is: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/06/AR2009030602021.html And here’s the book at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Sex-War-Biology-Explains-Terrorism/dp/1933771577/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243042063&sr=8-16 And, of course, there is always Desmond … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged biology, death, evolutionary psychology, life, nature, psychology, science, social psychology, violence, war
4 Comments
Poem for a Weekend: Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish”
I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth. He didn’t fight. He hadn’t fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, battered and … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged elizabeth bishop, fish, fishing, lakes, life, nature, ocean, poems, poetry, rivers, science, water
Leave a comment
Giant Trilobites Found in Portugal!
No need to hide the kids. They’re fossilized. But so reports the science journal Geology: Large quarrying surfaces of roofing slate in the Arouca Geopark (northern Portugal), formed under oxygen-depleted conditions, have yielded a unique Ordovician fossil lagerstätte that reveals … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged biology, cambrian explosion, cambrian period, geology, life, nature, portugal, science, trilobites
Leave a comment
Prometheus Unbound 