Category Archives: miscellaneous
What is fire?
No definition is perfectly concise. We associate words with images and pretend that we all agree on their meaning, but we are occasionally reminded that we don’t always agree. I remember, as a child, being surprised to hear that school buses are yellow, having been of the opinion that school buses are orange. “Fire” is [...]
The Fool and the Prince
Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there lived a fisherman’s son. He was not favored by the girls of the village, for he was neither smart nor good looking. He was such a fool; in fact, that the village folk got much pleasure at his expense, for he in his [...]
Cannibal Planet
It sometimes seems to me that eating fellow vertebrates is a degree of cannibalism, for we do share very much with our fellow vertebrates in the way of anatomy and natural intelligence, and when it comes to dining on fellow mammals—all the more. Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be [...]
Diary of a Map Geek
I was born in California and raised in transit. In my parents’ fifty years of marriage, they have resided in forty different places in a half-dozen states and nations. My father is a restless man. He gives the term “blind ambition” new meaning: he is quite literally blind, and seems charged with a deep, innate [...]
California v. II
… continued Metamorphosis About thirty million years ago, the trailing edge of the Farallon Plate began to disappear under North America in the shape of an inverted 90° wedge, beginning at the location of present-day Los Angeles, and proceeding northeast under the continent, leaving nothing but hot mantle where before was the cold, subducting oceanic [...]
California v. I
It’s common knowledge that water is the bane of fire, but the Earth tells us a different tale. Up to about 200 million years ago, at the dawn of the Jurassic Period, there was no California. It might be said that even North America didn’t exist. North America had then part of the supercontinent of [...]
Pareidolia
I just thought I’d try putting one of my favorite Hubble images at the head of this blog. Seems apropos as good pareidolia. Looks like some kind of infernal fish … or is it just me?
Beware Anonymous Cheques!
… and keep your credit cards close to your vest! … and Burn in Hell, Budget! I just got a cheque in the mail for $9.95 to be paid to me. It’s a very official, professional-looking cheque, addressed to “California Resident”, and issued from “California Processing Center”. I was set to cash the damned thing, [...]
The Hungriness of Stuff
We previously reflected upon the intimate, multifaceted relationship between ancient man and fire, and considered how easy it would have been for a man such as Heraclitus to conceive of the idea that fire is the fundamental constituent of all matter. Heraclitus was, after all, a subject of the Persian Empire, a land of fire [...]
The Biology of Fire
What is the color of life? Green. Certainly, most observers would agree. Yet when one considers what the green represents, one might not remain so certain. Green is the color of photosynthesis. It is therefore the color of the conversion of light energy to chemical potential energy—stored energy. Isn’t life better seen as the active [...]