Category: Ionian Enchantment

civilization’s lowest denominator and greatest are one The Japanese Garden in Portland, Oregon is hosting a haiku contest. They’re offering a $100 gift certificate and two $50 certificates to the top three winners for their Gift Store, which, if you don’t live in Portland Oregon, like me, you’ll never redeem your prize. However, a selection…

Paternal Ryan Somma’sPaternal DNA Results I participated in the Genographic Project last year, an ongoing effort to chart the migration of the human race across the earth using DNA testing. It was $110 for the kit, which is a bit pricey, but I was curious and glad I did it. After processing the results of…

Port Discover Science Center Science in my first life. The Port Discover Science Center located in downtown Elizabeth City provides me with my most rewarding philanthropic exersizes and volunteer activities. The center runs on a shoe-strig budget of a little over $50k a year. With that it must rent a space in a downtown location,…

“Extraterrestrial Intelligent Beings Do Not Exist.”       – Frank Tipler Von Neumann Machines… Clanking Replicators… Universal Constructors… They are one of the many fascinating dimensions of speculation concerning Fermi’s Paradox, which posits the question: If there is life in the Universe, then why don’t we see it? The Nobili-Pesavento 29-stateapproximation ofvon Neumann’suniversal constructor, with a tape…

“Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.”      – Konrad (Zacharias) Lorenz (1903-89) Austrian ethologist. [Nobel prize for medicine, 1973] I’ve caught some criticisms over the past year and a half since I posted this image in my article summarizing evolution, where…

Many of the arguments I’ve read online are making a mockery of this debate, both pro and con. I have read logically fallacious appeals to tradition, arguing that Pluto should remain a planet because that’s what we were taught in school and that’s the way it has been for 76 years. On the other side…

“Subvert the Dominant Paradigm.” – Bumpersticker Pessimists are forever pushing the “Nice Guys Finish Last” meme on us. People who exhibit selfish behaviors such as cheating and taking advantage of others use this affirmation as a sort of justification for their actions. If they played by the rules, they argue, they would be less successful.…

At one end of the spectrum are the religionists, who believe the human race was created above the animal kingdom, distinct from it. Animals have nothing in common with human beings other than the relationship of being at our subjugation. At the other end of the spectrum are environmentalists who see animals as equals to…

Also known as “Posthumanism,” this concept is approximately defined as “Persons of unprecedented physical, intellectual, and psychological capacity, self-programming, self-constituting, potentially immortal, unlimited individuals.” Humanism finds reasons for ethics and morals without traditional religion, basing its philosophy of life on empirical observations of the world around us. Recognizing the trends, seeing the millions of years…