I got to wondering what people mean when they say that a person is good. I’m not sure why I started wondering about this. I think it is because somebody told me that I was a good person on the same day that somebody told me that I was a despicable person. The latter person [...]
Shugendo is an amalgam of various religions such as Japanese shamanism, Kannabe Shinko, Tantric Buddhism, religious Taoism and Confucianism–a religion peculiar to Japan comprising aspects of all the various religious influences that has influenced Japan. Shugendo, translated as “the way,” is a method of mastering magico-ascetic spiritual powers– a search for spiritual, mystical, or [...]
“Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny” a quote ascribed to Ernest Haeckel basically means that Ontogeny, the development of the individual from the fertilized egg to maturity, recapitulates the phylogeny or evolutionary history of the species. The strict interpretation of this statement that embryos go back through every stage of their evolutionary past is rejected today, but [...]
When one examines the available literature on overpopulation (or any other environmental problem), it can immediately be seen that there are vociferous advocates both pro and con. One side is predicting dire consequences if world population isn’t checked, and the other sides pooh-poohs such people as wild-eyed extremists, claiming that there IS no problem. Whom [...]
“When on board HMS Beagle as naturalist, I was struck with certain facts in the distribution of the organic beings inhabiting South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to throw some light on the origin of species-that mystery of mysteries.” So [...]
I just saw a very instructive two hour program by NOVA. It had to do with the recent events (2004) in a town in Dover, PA where a couple of individuals on the school board pushed through a requirement that Intelligent Design be taught in biology classrooms as a viable alternative to the modern theory of evolution. They also required that [...]
I just read an article in the newspaper reporting that the Nevada Department of Wildlife was planning to kill more mountain lions to help increase the deer population. They plan to enlist not just sport hunters but contract employees for the new “program of intensive, sustained predator reduction.” Biologist D.J. Schubert describes this [...]
