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Monday miscellany

Speaking of which …

meditating dog

(BTW, the title of that one is Transcendoggy Meditation. It’s around the ‘Net a bit, but I’ve never seen a credit for who did that brilliant bit of photography and photoshopping. If you know, please tell me!)

5 Comments

  1. Pat
    Pat June 18, 2012 5:09 am

    I’m most anxious to read “Existence” by David Brin!

    Buckminster Fuller said “Sometimes I think we’re alone. Sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the thought is staggering.”

    There are times when I think it doesn’t matter how the world will end, because we don’t deserve this Earth in any case. As brilliant as the human mind is – as its *potential* is – we will never be as brilliant as we think we are. We mistake knowledge for wisdom… ability for intelligence… productivity for progress.

    We’re acting no differently today than we did 2000 years ago – we’re just doing it with different and better (!) tools. Philosophy has taught us very little since the Greeks (except possibly Rand); psychology has taught us even less (except Thomas Szasz). The political mind refuses to acknowledge what we could have learned from history.

    How will the world end? Science tells us that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, it only changes. If the Earth remains intact (there’s no accounting for natural disasters), then surely Man will destroy it with his constant bickering, refusal to learn, and holier-than-life-itself attitude.

  2. Matt, another
    Matt, another June 18, 2012 7:28 am

    Makes me recall Robert Frost poem Fire and Ice.

    If the world doesn’t end by some great man made cataclysm as many believe, or by some apocalyptic event such as one of the various religions versions of Armegeddon, then the world as we know it, will likely grind itself slowly to a stop as a new iceage creeps from the polar caps.

  3. Scott
    Scott June 18, 2012 9:10 am

    On The Endo-O-Th’-World. About a billion or so years from now, the Sun will start running low on hydrogen, and either become a dwarf star or supernova. That will be the absolute end. Until then, we will just have to deal with our own messes, and natural ones. I hope we’re smart enough to get our act together move out long before then.
    All governments, past, present and future, across the planet, are full of paranoid weirdos. I think government attracts them.

  4. Jim B.
    Jim B. June 18, 2012 8:51 pm

    Not enough mass to effect a supernova. It’ll go up to a red giant stage and eventually become a cool dwarf. It’ll be the transition to a red giant that’ll end Earth.

    Even so, it is believed we only have about 500 Million years left of life on Earth because the Sun will become too hot for the planet. To put this in perspective, 500 Million years ago, life was starting to crawl out of the waters to walk on land.

  5. JS
    JS June 24, 2012 11:08 am

    What did those new creatures eat and where did they live when they breached the beach? 😉

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