High Desert Scenario Paintball

Team Hellfish graciously filmed, edited, and published this video from footage taken at the last game I attended with my friend Noel.

Just Say No...

...to disposable cups.



Photo thanks to Intel corporate propaganda.

That goes for bottled water too. I have been trying to teach my family about conserving natural resources and coexisting with all God's creatures, great and small.

Terra Australis Incognita

The following excerpt comes from the journal of Lieutenant James Cook and reflects on the native Australian people:

"In reality they are far more happier than we Europeans, being wholy unacquainted not only with the Superfluous, but with the necessary Conveniences so much sought after in Europe; they are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in Tranquility which is not disturbed by the Inequality of Condition. The Earth and Sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for Life."

Also of note, Cook often admitted his failure to learn the Australian people's customs or to "form connections with them." Still, his observations deserve some reflection.

Two Men, One Phenomenal Idea

The following excerpt is from The Ant and the Peacock by Helena Cronin. The book mostly deals with two special cases of biological evolution, altruism and sexual selection, that at first were problematic. Here is the text:

"Imagine a world without Darwin. Imagine a world in which Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace had not transformed our understanding of living things. What, that is now comprehessible to us, would become baffling and puzzling? What would we see as in urgent need of explanation?

"The answer is: practically everything about living things--about all of life on earth and for the whole of its history."

A brief explanation is in order for those not familiar with Wallace. After his famous voyage across the globe on The Beagle and two decades of gathering additional data and developing hypotheses, Darwin came to some conclusions concerning "the origin of species by means of natural selection," but had decided not to make public his ideas just yet. As I recall, about this time he received a letter from an associate, the younger naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace. (He has quite an interesting story of his own that you can read about elsewhere.) The letter detailed Wallace's hypothesis that provided an explanation for the variety and similarities we see among species. Darwin quickly realized that he and Wallace had independently pieced the same puzzle and decided it was time to make his ideas public. Being a gentleman and not wanting to rob Wallace of the credit due him (which would have been very easy), Darwin arranged for his and Wallace's ideas to be presented together at a meeting of the Linnean Society.

The next year, Darwin published his book The Origin of Species (short title). We tend to mention only the work of Charles Darwin with respect to biological evolution for, I think, two reasons: first, he had accumulated more data and spent more years studying the subject than Wallace; and second, Darwin was more affluent and had a broader reputation.

If you want to learn more, here is a link with useful information:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0_0/history_14

Also check out the Charles Darwin Wikipedia article that was nominated and elected for featured article status:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_darwin

The article on Wallace is very good and also was elected as a featured article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace

A Little Gandhi Goes a Long Way

"My idea of society is that while we are born equal, meaning that we have a right to equal opportunity, all have not the same capacity."

-Mahatma Gandhi

As much as Mahatma made a point of getting back to his roots, his ideas differed radically

from traditional Hindu values.

Political Philosophy

I found this lecture interesting; it describes a dilemma I have been trying to confront for a long time. Pay close attention to what this professor says between minutes 15:00 and 23:00 of the lecture.

After presenting a hypothetical situation that involves a moral decision and going through several variations of the story, the students find out that the answer or solution is not as clear as they first thought. The ignorant think moral decisions easy, while the more you understand the situation, the more disabled you become. An understanding of philosophy has made me a worse citizen. I hope to see the uphill side of my valley of defeatism, I just don't think I'm there yet. I often feel like Socrates.

I had some other thoughts while watching this video. Here are some:

I also wonder why are we so preoccupied with preserving human life or maximizing human happiness? Honestly, I don't care much about the result of the train wreck, whether one worker dies or five workers die. Either way an accident occurs. Yes, the case is tragic, but people do die. One of my favorite cynical philosophers, Robert Heinlein, said in effect that we reach adulthood when we realize we will one day die and accept our own death. Blame it on thermodynamics. Every living organism has to consume energy to stay alive, the environment providing fuel to our otherwise closed system and allowing us to escape the second law, but eventually we are overtaken by entropy and become dust.

The study of biology is beautiful because most of the life on this planet is void of morals, making life wonderfully uncomplicated. Richard Dawkins knew this when he wrote The Selfish Gene. To apply human morals to non-human biological systems would cast a very malicious light on biology.

Sociobiology trumps all philosophers. I often wonder how Edward Wilson would respond to lectures like this one. I suspect he keeps much of his thoughts to himself, as they would seem taboo to someone who understands little of biology.

I'm sorry if this post came across a little strong-flavored and distasteful, but these issues have been on my mind for a while. I'm sure most of my readers would prefer another animal-of-the-week write-up.