Evolution

This is actually one of my favorite anecdotes regarding evolution:

"An example of evolution resulting from natural selection was discovered among "peppered" moths living near English industrial cities. These insects have varieties that vary in wing and body coloration from light to dark. During the 19th century, sooty smoke from coal burning furnaces killed the lichen on trees and darkened the bark. When moths landed on these trees and other blackened surfaces, the dark colored ones were harder to spot by birds who ate them and, subsequently, they more often lived long enough to reproduce. Over generations, the environment continued to favor darker moths. As a result, they progressively became more common. By 1895, 98% of the moths in the vicinity of English cities like Manchester were mostly black. Since the 1950's, air pollution controls have significantly reduced the amount of heavy particulate air pollutants reaching the trees, buildings, and other objects in the environment. As a result, lichen has grown back, making trees lighter in color. In addition,

Read more »

Experiencing Nature

I've killed lots of people. I ran a guy through a wood-chipper once, and I relished every second of the event. I froze one person to the point of his insanity-driven necrophilia and ultimate demise. I've even grown a tree with a man inside. I've committed the most heinous of offenses, and I savor the administration of mental torture through the omnipotent puppetry of my work. That is the horror-fiction writer side of me.

But I also read textbooks for fun. A fan of MacGyver and a student of primitive survival skills, as well as an accomplished martial artist, I thrive upon knowledge and pragmatism. I crave detail and resolution of both the minute and the massive.

Read more »

Intuition, and Time the Killer

In the real world, the natural world, one begins to lose touch with the calculated bridle of secular time in what often takes only one setting and rising of the sun. This adjustment can be an uncomfortable feeling, at first—a proverbial culture shock--for anyone who has strictly succumbed to the adherence of schedule and routine in the modern world to the point of depending upon time-pieces in order to function, in order to feel as though one has place, purpose, and occupation. Without measured time, the modern human often feels lost, bored, and lacking positive or productive progression. This is called a rut, a conditioned, psychological dependency and sickness.

Read more »

You Don't Even Walk Like a Human . . . or Do You?

Here’s an example of taking things to nature. There is something to be said about how much we’ve disconnected ourselves from the real world when one considers the extent to which we’ve even forgotten how to walk. Nobody walks correctly anymore, and we generally face an inevitable fate of joint problems, from the ankles upward, even through the spine to the base of the skull, particularly if one does a harder form of motivation, such as running or other high-impact sports.

In the old days, before cars, Nikes, and sidewalks, natives had been

Read more »

Make your own reality in three easy payments of $29.99! Seriously?

Reality exists in the form of Nature. There is no end or beginning of reality. We do not create our own reality; we simply process stimuli based upon former experiences and sensory perceptions, and even now, we utilize artificial tools to help us interpret increasingly smaller parts of reality, which respond in a manner that our limited physical world cannot comprehend. Our experiences are based upon our interpretations of reality. We use restricted parameters of language to define, discern, and categorize our interpretations. “Blue,” for example, is a color in the spectrum of natural light. It is absorbed by certain elements, and is thus translated by our eyes as a particular frequency of light. But “blue” does not exist

Read more »