Dec 11
Oh solemn-beating heart of Nature! I have knowledge that thou art bound unto man’s by cords he cannot sever; and, what time they are slackened by him ever, so to attest his own supernal part, still runneth thy vibration fast and strong the slackened cord along. —Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The following is an excerpt from …
May 26
www.knowswhy.com /difference-between-ecology-and-ecosystem/ : Ecology is the study of the interaction between organisms and their environment. The word ecology comes from the Greek words “oikos” meaning house and “logos” meaning word or study. Ecology today can be divided into two broad domains. The author Christian Lévêque uses the terms population ecology and systemic ecology to refer …
Mar 19
J. B. MacKinnon: The rewilding of the tortoise in its ancient habitat represents not only the species’ slow drift away from extinction, but an overall movement toward a more plentiful world. What the bolson tortoise reminds us is that it is ultimately less important to choose a baseline than it is to choose a direction. …
Mar 16
Diana Kwon (Scientific American, March 2018, p 29): … recently, roboticist Angelo Cangelosi of the University of Plymouth in England and Linda B. Smith, a developmental psychologist at Indiana University Bloomington, have demonstrated how crucial the body is for procuring knowledge. “The shape of the [robot’s] body, and the kinds of things it can do, …
Feb 10
Marvel has just released a movie called Black Panther [This was written in 2018 of course], and this has got a lot of people, myself included, very excited because it introduces a whole new genre that invites us to imagine far futures for cultures and races that, at present, appear only as tokens of ‘diversity’ …
May 20
“If we do what it seems we must, in my opinion, it will be in direct violation of the non-interference directive.” — Mr. Spock (on Kirk’s plan to destroy Vaal) My wife just pointed out (Jan. 2024) that the Extremophile Choice message sounds a lot like Star Trek’s “prime directive”, and that this futurist ideal …
May 20
This is from the Extremophile Niche Design page: Given the consistent range of human nature persisting throughout history, it seems unlikely that promoting a wide-spread love of Nature as a prerequisite for saving the Natural world will be enough to get the job done. The good news is that this might not be necessary, for …
May 14
Jennifer Jacquet: Survivor guilt may also exist at a species level. That humans have helped bring on other species’ end times is not an easy feeling to deal with. Small farms on the tattered edges of second- or third-growth forest, where the whippoorwill’s vesper song can still be heard occasionally, are merging into horizon to …
Apr 11
This is the frontispiece from my new book (pdf and epub versions for sale on the Extremophile Publishing page; Kindle version available on Amazon), Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice: If, in understandable frustration over the effort involved, you were to ask me why I think it’s important to learn about something as intuitive as …
