Dec 13
I was at a local Green Party meeting the other day1 where we were all asked to identify ourselves and to say something about why we wanted to be involved in the upcoming election campaign. (I’m the sign delivery volunteer.) I tried to respond thoughtfully, which takes time as you know, but when this Old-Guy, …
Nov 22
As you can see from reading other postings on this website, my understanding of population evo-ecology doesn’t allow me to see humans as having a ‘place’ within coevolving Nature, not just because of the faster-than-Nature evolution of technology but mostly because of technology’s niche-transcending capacity.1 Modern humans are not a species (hence the quotation marks …
Feb 09
“The devil of complacency is in the ignorance of detail.” This is another post that I’ve resurrected, and updated, from four years back, because it places the Extremophile Choice hypothesis in the context of the broader, and not the currently fashionable, ecological discussion. The original has earned more attention from ecological nerdom than many of my other blogposts, so …
Aug 30
A short selection from Essay Fifty — one of the longer essays, and THE LAST — in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice The Great Way is not difficult; just avoid picking and choosing. —from the Hsin Hsin Ming [1] A Buddhist monk commits to pay attention to whatever “arises” in his or her daily life and, when it’s clearly helpful, …
Aug 08
A selection (not so short) from Essay Forty-one in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet, believing what we don’t believe does not exhilarate. —Emily Dickinson [1] So with the stage thus set, we are now finally ready to examine the benefits that flow …
Jul 17
A short selection from Essay Thirty in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. … and one day she slipped off the cover and looked in. Forthwith there escaped a multitude of plagues for hapless man—such as gout, rheumatism, and colic for his body, and envy, spite, and revenge for his mind —Bullfinch’s Mythology With the …
Jul 02
A short selection from Essay Twenty-Three in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] I now want to show that there is ‘plenty’ of room [at the bottom] … The biological example of writing information on a small scale has inspired …
Jun 28
A very short selection from Essay Twenty-Two in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. He moved very, very slowly and carefully. With the most slight and gentle movements, trying to catch at the sound he moved his head round what seemed like a billionth part of a billionth part of a degree, slipped behind a …
Jun 27
A short selection from Essay Twenty-One in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. —like one that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, and having once turned round walks on, and turns no more his head; because he knows, a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread. —Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1] Let’s …
Jun 24
A short selection from Essay Twenty in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. The man pulling radishes pointed the way with a radish —Haiku by Issa The wolf is tied by subtle threads to the woods he moves through. —Barry Lopez [1] Our inner cave-man can clearly see his world has changed, but despite the …
