It seems you’ve never met

This was originally going to be included in an earlier post, but it never fit in well with it and needed its own dedication, so let’s start with another frequently-seen internet meme that illustrates an all-too-common perspective:


Hmmmmm.

And what if I told you that you should stick to subjects you have the faintest knowledge of, and stop spreading your idiocy around like herpes?

Let’s read more

Not all at once

Hmmmm, I have a choice between a rant semi-continued from another post, or a kinda-long exposition that explains some curious traits. What to do, what to do?

I would like to give credit for this photo, but it’s one of the millions on the internet that were lifted from somewhere and make the rounds without attribution – oh, you internet! Anyway, it looks pretty bizarre and definitely read more

Podcast: Nothing in particular 2

It is, inexplicably, still winter here, and so little to do except projects that really don’t result in photographs. I’m still working on some other possibilities, so hopefully something will be along shortly. And as I say out loud below, I’ve got several things planned for later on in the year, actually scheduling photo opportunities rather than taking them as they come, read more

The measure of humankind

I’ve had this topic sitting in the background for quite a while now, waiting for me to sit down and put the thoughts into a more coherent narrative. I’m not saying that I succeeded, and it’s likely that further development of it will show up later on. Regardless, I wanted to bring up the idea that we’re, as a society (and maybe even as a species) pretty poorly guided towards read more

Too cool, part 36: Better than a lava lamp

And I like lava lamps.

This video comes courtesy of NASA, and the Astronomy Picture of the Day. It’s an elaborate computer simulation based on satellite and weather data, and shows the wind activity in the north Atlantic just a few months ago, during the peak of hurricane season.

It’s surprising to see such detail so soon after the season occurred, but it gives us a good view of how the read more

But how? Part 23: What would it take?

I’ve kind of covered this in portions of several different posts, but expanding on it seems warranted, as I change perspective a little just to highlight something. So let’s look at the question that religious folk often like to ask of atheists, “But what would it take for you to believe in god?”

I imagine that half of the time, it’s asked out of frustration, as the read more

Too cool, part 35: A modicum of success


The praying mantids have been an ongoing saga on this blog now for several years, and if you want to call it an obsession, no argument from me. While I am definitely motivated to capture sequences and behavior of any species that I can, I happen to like mantids, and I’ve had the opportunities to bear close witness to them. So here we are again.

Not having found any distinctive evidence of local read more

Standards of evidence

Some time back in a discussion on religion, someone once told me that we weren’t going to come to an agreement on the existence of god because, between us, we had “different standards of evidence.” And I’ve heard similar sentiments many times over before and since, notably in regards to whether or not we’ve been visited by extra-terrestrial intelligence. The phrase read more

Revealed yet hidden

So, the image I am about to show you can be considered creepy by a lot of people, I suspect largely through social conditioning, but whatever the reason, I’m suggesting you get over it the amount of information and fascination that can result is a lot more interesting and useful than shuddering and saying, “Ewwwww!” And it’s not all that bad anyway.

Several years back in read more

Too cool, part 34: A chronicle in amber

I had initially said that I wasn’t timely on this, and that was even a few days earlier when I’d started to type this up, but then I realized how much I was falling for the same trap that has made “news’ the pathetic state of affairs that it is now. Scientific findings of this nature don’t have this bare moment of interest, like a celebrity doing something stupid, but read more

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