Author: 8rian

I want to value all life, but I don’t want fleas on my dog, aita? The line is where you draw it. I think there is room for a lot of diversity in how that choice is made. The important thing, I feel, is that it is made with humility and compassion. So whether you […]

300 million years ago, life first learned to fly. When, long before the dinosaur, a dragon claimed the sky. 100 million generations, that all look much the same, have been perfecting flight, and sight, earning their fearsome name. While we see only half the world, and colors, only three, the dragon sees it all at […]

Struggling with poetry I fear has got the best of me.Tripped up by meter, Knocked down by rhyme.The battle rages, line by line.And though defeat looms overhead, better out than in, l think.Just like Hagrid said.

There’s a thousand ways to say the phrase “I love you.” All are sweet.Sometimes you say it from the heart, or write it ’cause you’re far apart.Or perhaps it’s just a Saturday, and you want something nice to sayTo spread some joy, or charm a boy you’d really like to meet. If you’re alone, or […]

I have a new hole where nothing used to be. An absence formed from the vacuum it replaced. It lurked in the shadows inside my head. Out of sight, out of mind, out of control. Unremarkable, perhaps, but ineluctable. Now it is manifest, here in the waking world. I shrink from it, as it yawns […]

This book is published by people who are experts in calling BS on everything they hear liberals say, and in not much else. The BS they are referring to is the consensus of thousands of professional scientists with decades of research on data sets spanning time periods from decades to millennia. I posted the first […]

Despite advances in molecular genetics, too many biologists think that natural selection is driven by random mutations. https://aeon.co/essays/why-did-darwins-20th-century-followers-get-evolution-so-wrong?fbclid=IwAR0bsh7GT-ZrLWbVlIhoX8juSTAPy63IJnF4Zc-RTeCPwDkycGJIVrXHuJ8 What we know is finite, what we don’t will always be infinite. Me, just now. I never liked the idea of “junk DNA.” It always seemed lazy at best, and just arrogant to assert that since it […]

Quantum computing, Bose-Einstein condensates, and other cool stuff I just learned… My friend and muse, Naomi, sent me this article: Is the black hole at our galaxy’s centre a quantum computer? https://aeon.co/essays/is-the-black-hole-at-our-galaxy-s-centre-a-quantum-computer Well, that’s the clickbait title, that actual title of the article was: “Black-hole computing – Might nature’s bottomless pits actually be ultra-efficient quantum […]

God the Tinker. To a carpenter, everything looks like a hammer. Robin Collins, in his article “God, Design and Fine-Tuning,“ presents the observation that our physical universe is perfectly endowed with precisely those properties which allow life as we know it to exist. He then attempts to prove by means of logic, evidence and analogy […]