Confessions of Someone Almost 18: June 2010

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

30 Days to an Almost End - Day 08

A photo that makes you happy

You are my master and my author, you—

the only one from whom my writing drew

the noble style for which I have been honored.

30 Days to an Almost End series list

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

30 Days to an Almost End - Day 07

Your favorite book

The same is true of biology. It is no accident that we see green almost wherever we look. It is no accident that we find ourselves perched on one tiny twig in the midst of a blossoming and flourishing tree of life; no accident that we are surrounded by millions of other species, eating, growing, rotting, swimming, walking, flying, burrowing, stalking, chasing, fleeing, outpacing, outwitting. Without green plants to outnumber us at least ten to one there would be no energy to power us. Without the ever-escalating arms race between predators and prey, parasites and hosts, without Darwin’s ‘war of nature’, without his ‘famine and death’ there would be no nervous systems capable of seeing anything at all, let along of appreciating and understanding it. We are surrounded by endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random natural selection - the only game in town, the greatest show on Earth.

30 Days to an Almost End series list

Monday, June 28, 2010

Monday’s Excerpts - The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins

This Week’s Book: The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins

Preface
. . . I want to inspire the reader with a vision of our own existence as, on the face of it, a spine-chilling mystery; and simultaneously to convey the full excitement of the fact that it is a mystery with an elegant solution within our grasp. . . . (Page xiv)

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Chapter 6: Origins and miracles
If the origin of life were a probable event by ordinary human standards, then a substantial number of planets within radio range should have developed a radio technology long enough ago (bearing in mind that radio waves travel at 186,000 miles per second) for us to have picked up at least one transmission during the decades that we have been equipped to do so. There are probably about 50 stars within radio range if we assume that they have had radio technology for only as long as we have. But 50 years is just a fleeting instant, and it would be a major coincidence if another civilization were so closely in step with us. If we embrace in our calculation those civilizations that had radio technology 1,000 years ago, there will be something like a million stars within radio range (together with however many planets circle round each one of them). If we include those whose radio technology goes back 100,000 years, the whole trillion-star galaxy would be within radio range. Of course, broadcast signals would become pretty attenuated over such huge distances. (Page 165)

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Chapter 10: The one true tree of life
Indeed, it is important to understand that all mammals – humans, whales, duck-billed platypuses, and the rest – are exactly equally close to fish, since all mammals are linked to fish via the same common ancestor. The myth that mammals, for instance, form a ladder or ‘scale’, with ‘lower’ ones being closer to fish than ‘higher’ ones, is a piece of snobbery that owes nothing to evolution. It is an ancient, pre-evolutionary notion, sometimes called the ‘great chain of being’, which should have been destroyed by evolution but which was, mysteriously, absorbed into the way many people thought about evolution. (Page 263)

Books finished this past week...
★★★★☆ Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
★★★★☆ Mortal Coils by Aldous Huxley

(All title links link back to my webpages of them on Goodreads.com, a great library/reviewing/rating website for readers. Check it out, and add me as a friend if you decide to join!)

We ache to dedicate, us in love.

     An intimate disgrace, the fashion in which my inspiration to drive creativity evacuated shortly after you were excused. & when you’re not sure what your ranking is beyond the departure from the ship you savored, where are you to be stranded in the sea of thoughts and names, my oh-so-hopeless Magdalena?

     A tugging from the anchor beckons you, “write write write, if only for the sake of writing every morning at 9 AM as sharp as you are in love.”
     “And if I do, to whom shall it be dedicated?”
     With no siren to accept the grace, to dive into your depths with assuring wonderment, why impregnate the work not yet prose? A sailor waited not prior to your pen’s touch; a sailor waits not now, for he stands stranded and strangled on the shores of self-deceit bearing the name, “your Magdalena, please come home.”

Incurably scribing poetic dedications and lengthy acknowledgments with sorry aim to suffice our greatest works found lacking a substantial purpose undirected. Who’s to say a subliminally directed message renders something thought imperfect, perfect?

Lying in what you create by the bed and the tongue, I dedicate this to the “desperately seeking a muse” class of my fellow man. Dear you...

30 Days to an Almost End - Day 06

Whatever tickles your fancy- tattoos

I love when tattoos look like paintings on canvas. Vincent Castiglia’s work on Nick Kusher—owner and operator of the Nachtkabarett and Babalon, the official Marilyn Manson forums—displays this attribute better than any work I have ever seen.

My best friend Dave has a ton of tattoos. I’m fairly certain he has at least one hundred stars spread about his body by now, if not more. He’s become a collage of sorts, and the greatest part about it is that no matter how silly one or two tattoos might seem on the surface, they all make up who he is. It’s fascinating to me when someone can pull this off.

I’m not sure who this is, but I’ve wanted a piece very similar to this on my own back for years. I have some ideas to make it my “own” and not a typical spine/ribcage copy, but nothing is 100% as of yet.

Another favorite tattoo of mine is on Marilyn Manson. It is the Tursaansydän tattoo with a swastika incorporated in its center on his left inner bicep. I would love to get one done someday.

30 Days to an Almost End series list

Sunday, June 27, 2010

30 Days to an Almost End - Day 05

Your favorite blog/blogger

http://kaathryn-xo.blogspot.com/

30 Days to an Almost End series list

Saturday, June 26, 2010

30 Days to an Almost End - Day 04

A photo that makes you happy

30 Days to an Almost End series list

Friday, June 25, 2010

A jolted note before bed,

There’s a lot of reasons why my life is enjoyable, why it’s great. Much negative, still so much positive. Electromagnetic, I am what I am what I want to be and that’s always been me, or I’ve been told. Proud, proud, proud—to be free.

30 Days to an Almost End - Day 03

Your favorite television program

Overall, my favorite show is Roseanne. As a child, I watched it for hours every day. Without it, I’m not sure how I would have gotten through some of my rougher childhood years.

Today, I have a few more favorite shows.

30 Days to an Almost End series list

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Thursday’s Thoughts - Theme: Apologies

I find it slightly irritating when someone apologizes to me for the sole reason of moving on themselves from their wronging me. It’s not situations where I’m holding resentment so strongly I refuse the apology—the apology is simply sour, false; a last resort to rid one’s self of guilt. It’s not genuine, I won’t tolerate it.

This Week’s Theme: Apologies

“Apology is only egotism wrong side out.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes

“It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.” - P.G. Wodehouse

“Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses?” - David Brin