Apr 27
Good morning fellow conservationists, climate activists and rewilders! Well, I think I’ve shot my last bolt for now from the extremophilechoice.com website. There’s nothing new I can feed into our shared new(s)-hungry cyberspace, so I invite you to look over any previous post that interests you, and to engage with me in its comment section …
Dec 27
“I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man’s power of selection. We have seen that man by selection can certainly produce great results, and can adapt organic beings to his own uses, through the accumulation …
Dec 24
A Christmas message from a Buddhadharma practitioner. At this time, when the sun is returning after deepening darkness, we are being invited to reach into our own silent depths, and here to find the embers of sharing and love. We are invited to find and nurture them, that they might contribute to a Global Spirit …
Oct 21
Here is what you need to know about the lobster fisheries issue currently playing out in Nova Scotia: https://www.thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/local-perspectives/megan-bailey-mikmaw-fishery-isnt-a-threat-to-conservation-say-scientists-511572/? My personal position is this: Although what I have been calling “The Extremophile Choice” would ultimately phase out ALL human dependence on wild species for a livelihood, in favour of hi-tech but maximally non-invasive farming, this …
Sep 27
At the end of a meditation session, practitioners will often formally repeat something like, “May all beings live in harmony and be free from harm.” But what does this ‘metta phrase’ actually mean, coming from the one being who is free of the harmony of beings eating each other? In a time of species die-back …
Sep 22
I don’t know why I have been avoiding this technical underpinning to the Extremophile Choice hypothesis in this blog. But here it is. Perhaps, for the evo-eco geeks anyway, it will help make better sense of it all. On the importance of structure vs function from Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice: fifty short essays on what it means to be human …
Aug 04
Extreme temperatures in the Arctic. Extreme flooding in Bangladesh. Extreme wildfires in Australia and in California. Extremely low water-tables in Syria and in California. Extreme rates of glacier melting. And, most alarming for biologists, extreme rates of species extinction and ecosystem collapse. All caused by human activity over the years. It is becoming more and …
Jul 27
If I am too cold for human friendship, I trust I shall not soon be too cold for natural influences. It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature. Those qualities which bring you near to the one estrange you from the other. — Henry David …
Jun 24
Ok, in case you thought that last post from Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice was too metaphysical, here is the physical prequel: four Our Platonic heritage prompts us to view means and medians as the hard ‘realities,’ and the variation that permits their calculation as a set of transient and imperfect measurements of this …
Jun 21
[five] Now let us suppose that … a being, who can see the individual molecules, opens and closes the hole, so as to allow only the swifter molecules to pass from A to B, and only the slower molecules to pass from B to A. He will thus, without expenditure of work, raise the temperature …
