21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Teddy Roosevelt on Nature
A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great or beautiful cathedral. The extermination of the passenger pigeon meant that mankind was just so much poorer; exactly as in the case of the destruction of the cathedral at Rheims. And to lose the chance to see frigate-birds soaring in circles above the storm, or a file of pelicans winging their way homeward across the crimson afterglow of the sunset, or a myriad terns flashing in the bright light of midday as they ho...Folksonomies: nature spirituality
Folksonomies: nature spirituality
1 Nature is like a cathedral with every living thing a masterpiece.
06 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Scientific Progress Crushes Conservativism
Innovations, free thinking is blowing like a storm; those that stand in front of it, ignorant scholars like you, false scientists, perverse conservatives, obstinate goats, resisting mules are being crushed under the weight of these innovations. You are nothing but ants standing in front of the giants; nothing but chicks trying to challenge roaring volcanoes! Folksonomies: innovation progress
Folksonomies: innovation progress
1 
notes
notesFree thinking and innovation are forces that cannot be stopped.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Shelley's Obituary
This obituary was immediately followed in the same issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine by a short notice of the death of one Percy Bysshe Shelley, son of the Whig MP for Horsham. ‘Supposed to have perished at sea, in a storm, somewhere off Via Reggio, on the coast of Italy … Mr Shelley is unfortunately too well-known for his infamous novels and poems. He openly professed himself an atheist. His works bear the following titles: Prometheus Chained [sic] … etc.’69 For good measure a Lond... 1 notes
notesCalled him "infamous" and condemned his atheism.
16 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
The Rhythms of Nature
Nature vibrates with rhythms, climatic and diastrophic, those finding stratigraphic expression ranging in period from the rapid oscillation of surface waters, recorded in ripple-mark, to those long-deferred stirrings of the deep imprisoned titans which have divided earth history into periods and eras. The flight of time is measured by the weaving of composite rhythms- day and night, calm and storm, summer and winter, birth and death such as these are sensed in the brief life of man. But the c...
3 We experience oscillations of all sorts in our lifetime, but the Universe has much larger waves hidden in geologic time.
10 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
We Should Appreciate the Winter Solstice
We have become too wise in our own
conceits if ever we let a winter solstice go by
without a glance upward to rejoice that the
sun will sink no lower in the darkening sky
. .. We walk too hurriedly if ever we pass the
season’s first pasqueflower by, too busy to
let its meeting stay us for a quiet moment
before this token of the covenant of life to
continue in beauty despite the storm.It's a shame if we do not at least glance up at the sky to appreciate the fact that the days will be getting longer.
20 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
There are Fairies of Science in Everything
There are forces around us, and among us, which I shall ask you to allow me to call fairies, and these are ten thousand times more wonderful, more magical, and more beautiful in their work, than those of the old fairy tales. They, too, are invisible, and many people live and die without ever seeing them or caring to see them. These people go about with their eyes shut, either because they will not open them, or because no one has taught them how to see. They fret and worry over their own litt... 1 notes
notesand with patient observation, we can see them.
12 MAR 2011 by ideonexus
How An Idea Makes Something Valuable
White people discovered the Galapagos Islands in 1535 when a Spanish ship came upon them after being blown off course by a storm. Nobody was living there, nor were remains of any human settlement ever found there.
This unlucky ship wished nothing more than to carry the Bishop of Panama to Peru, never losing sight of the South American coast. There was this storm which rudely hustled it westward, ever westward, where prevailing human opinion insisted there was only sea and more sea.
But when... 1 notes
notesVonnegut relates how the Galapagos Islands were worthless until Darwin's revolutionary idea made them a huge tourist attraction.
