Category Archives: nature

Soil Pill

My wife tells me I’m 天の邪鬼, meaning I go out of my way to be strange or not conform. Perhaps from a Japanese perspective I am. Maybe she’s right. All I know is I’ve resisted every temptation to blog about … Continue reading

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Livable Hamlets

Lately, I’m scouring statistics to find places to move to and really just feed my curiosity. Going through city-data’s top 101 lists and was curious which places have the most people walking to work (once I saw the list existed). … Continue reading

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Newscientist: Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527441.500-horizontal-and-vertical-the-evolution-of-evolution.html?full=true&print=true Lately, I’m increasingly thinking, especially after reading this article, that evolutionary computing would benefit greatly from using a more bacterial type of evolution, where genes are shared between often unrelated organisms, rather than brute inheritance. Another way of looking … Continue reading

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Thoughts on “Avatar”

Today, I had to see what all the buzz was about. Me and my wife saw Avatar in 3D before she had to go to work. The  3D was a nice effect, but after over two hours of that, I … Continue reading

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My Proposal – EcoTax

There is a deep, serious flaw in our tax system – it is too damn complicated. Which is to say, administrative costs dig in to what revenue it brings in and it is spurious (which means it is unfair). Whatever … Continue reading

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Evolution… Politically Correct?

I was in the book store last weekend (one of my favorite places, of course!) and looking through the biology section to see if there’s something else I should read for the fun of it. As usual, the Biology section … Continue reading

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僕の生物工学を学ぶ理由

僕がもうビジネスの学士学位を持ってて、もうコンピュータープログラマーです。もう生物学を勉強しています。学位が要らなそうで、夜の授業には忙しそうから友達がよく「なんで生物工学を学んでる?」と聞きます。このポーストで答えます。理由は以下です。 僕は大きい子供です。趣味が物を作ることです。プログラミングを習う理由はテレビゲームを作りたかったからです。仕事がプログラマーなのにまだプログラムを作るのが楽しいです。だから、発明家になりたいです。色んな能力を集めたら、いい有名な発明家になれると思います。実はプログラミング力と生物工学が合うと思います。特にメディカルデバイスには特に便利です。虫よりもちっちゃいロボットを人間の体に通って何か直すロボットなどを作りたいです。 暗い未来を防ぎたい理由もあります。だんだん地球の人口が増えています。それで、餓死が増えています。森とかが経ています。それが悪いことは悪いけど、科学技術の新法によって防げます。料理オタクだから、よく貧乏のアフリカの村を何か発明した生物工学で救済するイメージを見ます。人間が必要なビタミン100%のトウモロコシを作りたいです。などなどなど。 最後に生物が確かに好きです。僕には水草が気持ち悪くないです。1週間に3回ぐらい、朝に森の中にジョッギングします。太っているアメリカ人にならないためだけじゃなくて、自然に親しむためです。僕は宗教的じゃないです。逆に無神論だけど、自然の経験がよく僕には宗教的です。教会より大きい杉、天使より多い鳥、神様よりずっと理解すれば理解するほど理解できない宇宙。

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Is O.J. Simpson the Victim of Brain Damage?

Study Indicates Higher Rate of Dementia in Former N.F.L. Players – NYTimes.com One of the first things I thought upon seeing this is, oh shit, OJ probably went crazy from too many concussions. People often forget the obvious fact that … Continue reading

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Thoughts on Forest Fires

Look at all the fancy folk of La Cañada Flintridge worrying about their expensive homes in the foothills. Yes, the cost of proximity to the forest is the very wildness that draws them – nature, in her sheer spontaneity may … Continue reading

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Naturalistic Animism, Part II

Here is a simpler argument for a notion I have I call “Naturalistic Animism,” which is a nod to Spinoza‘s “Naturalistic Pantheism.” My earlier post was here. It’s also referred to in Bron Taylor’s writings on “Dark Green Religion,” meaning … Continue reading

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Strange! Humans Glow in Visible Light – Yahoo! News

Strange! Humans Glow in Visible Light – Yahoo! News Looking at the last few paragraphs – isn’t it so Japanese to look for problems by looking at the light coming from bodies? We Westerners, informed by perverted notions such as … Continue reading

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I Created Life!

Here is a ruby script I quickly whipped up to teach myself genetic programming/evolutionary programming, and also to demonstrate basic principles of biology (please see below to see how it works.. if you’re on my front page, click to read … Continue reading

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Prescribed Burn…

The one in Lone Pine Cañon is making Wrightwood smell like a campfire. Mmmmmm. I’m a real believer in leaving something aside for non-human nature to use for whatever she wishes, but where the boundary lays, I can be okay … Continue reading

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New Year’s Resolutions

I succeeded (#3) and gotten in stepwise directions towards (#1 and #2) my last year’s resolutions. Because of that, and because I’m awesome, I know I’ll be at least partly successful in these three resolutions. I have very good reasons … Continue reading

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What’s this Shit?

Looks like the artist who did an artist’s rendition of a living Mars did a pretty good job: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:TerraformedMarsGlobeRealistic.jpg Except one big, glaring hole – the craters! Why isn’t Earth all crater-y like that? Oh yeah, because we have erosion … Continue reading

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