Thomas J. Webb’s Ecology Blog

We can grow quintillion times again
And we can know more than the ancients many times again
And still be dwarfed by the nearest star

We can understand the universe many times more,
And still never understand our increasingly complex selves

I love the flimsy wills of men, Amor fati
We shall forget the lessons of the ancients
And the great leviathan shall rise again

We shall destroy every last God again
Become them ourselves,
And it will never become absurd

Everyone has her own crazy ideas
And most of them are wrong
But they all contribute in their own way
Their own part of the song

Every fallacy they had,
Is one more we shall not,
And every detail they found, however stupid,
Is the foundation from which we build atop

Some may push fallacious ideas,
But these will always fall to the ideas that work
For you cannot build a building with snake oil
Nor plow fields with “intelligent design”

Here is a particularly good and in-depth interview with Hoder. And here it is Auf Deutsch (the German version has a pic of him, so you can see how funny looking he is). What’s happening with the youth in Iran is a good example of blogging actually meeting its promise as a tool for change (unlike my blog, which is utter nonsense).

Tonight is the longest night of the year! It is the Winter Solstice of the Northern Hemisphere, Dong Zhi on the Chinese Calendar. Yule was, and is the winter celebration for pagans and heathens (that is, goons that live in the countryside and goons that live in heaths, respectively). In ancient Persia, Yalda was the celebration of the sun-god, Mithra.

Today, Persians still celebrate Yalda, sans the Allah-angering sun god reference. Christians also stole Yule and mislabled it to be Jesus’ birthday. The true meaning of Christmas isn’t Christian but human - reconnecting with families, celebrating the season and getting fat.

この季節は世の中たくさんのホリデーがある季節である。アメリカにキリスト教徒はよく「本当のクリスマスの意味を忘れないで」と言ってる。でも、本当の意味はキリストの誕生日じゃなくて、家族と休みホリデーだよ。本当にイエスの誕生日は多分1月にある。昔はヨーロッパの北で、よく「Yule」と言うホリデーを多神教が出ていた。キリスト教徒はそのホリデーを盗んだ。今、トールとかオディンを信じる人が続いてそのホリデーを出ている。

How do you avoid being compared to others? How do you avoid just being another person, slightly more intelligent than some and less than others? You are a commodity and you must sell your self the same as one would a commodity. And product differentiation in its sublimest form is eccentricity.

Why does a narcissist get violently angry when insulted? The same reason a sleepwalker gets violently angry when woken.

Increasingly, scientists are applying more math and physics-like tools to biology (nice for me since I think I’m good at math and I shall study biology). The idea of “metabolic ecology” is on the drawing board right now. It’s an attempt to derive equations and constants that can reliably predict things such as body size, temperature, metabolic rate and how they relate to eachother. On one hand, it is a waste of brain power and discovery to constantly be looking at different parts of a whole and not utilizing underlying patterns, but like the critics say, if the ideas require too much patching up to be workable, then they aren’t of much use. We understand biology in good detail and “metabolic ecology” might put too much emphasis on rules. Take your pick: fallacy of everything-is-the-same-whole or fallacy of every-thing-is-a-different-kind.

One of my favorite Italian Dishes is your pasta aglio olio. It consists of pasta (usually spaghetti), olive oil, garlic and vegetables. Here is a cell phone shot of an Italian Restaurant in Japan’s interpretation of the dish. Note the Japanese, rather than Italian, assortment of vegetables.

ある好きなイタリア料理は「アグリオ・オリオ」と言うパスタだ。パスタとオリーブ油とニンニクと野菜で作る。こっち、日本のレストランのアグリオ・オリオの写真だよ。日本の野菜で作ったね。

You are not standing on the shoulders of giants, Messrs. Newton. No, you are a midget standing on the shoulders of another midget standing on the shoulders of another midget and so on.. all the way back to the first half-wit that thought it made sense to beat rocks together and make sparks. (We’re all links in a chain. Promote yoursef, Mr. Scientist! Or get lost in history.)

Human males have, by far, the biggest dicks. But consider this.. We have the biggest head size at birth, too. If we had little ape wieners, we couldn’t pleasure our freaky big-brained alien baby having women.