natator88

ALTERNATIVE FUTURE HISTORY: CUBAN DEMOCRACY

Margaret Trudeau, mother of Justin Trudeau, 23rd Prime Minister of Canada, and wife to Pierre Trudeau, 15th Prime Minister of Canada, visited Cuba in 1971. Just...

ART PERSONIFIED - OLYMPICS

Aliona Savchenko and Bruno Massot of Germany just captured the gold medal at the PyeongChang Winter 2018 Olympics. Watching their free skate performance made me...

The Most Heartwarming Headline You'll See Maybe Ever

South Korea Asks UN for Permission to Let North Korean Official Attend Olympics I sometimes sit and ponder how North Korea will lift itself from its morass. Lat...

Suicidal Species and the Complexity of Nature

Suicidal Species Are (nonhuman) species suicidal by nature? That is, will they consume prey until there is no prey left, thereby unintentionally committing suic...

Make America Green Again

The Sierra Club just sent a sticker in the mail: Make America Green Again. I'm going to use this sticker, and enjoy using it, even though it is anathema to thei...

A Libertarian and Epistemocratic View of Ecology

What do the primacy of the individual and a recognition of the unknowable have to do with ecology? Let us rewind time back to 1798 and a chap called Malthus, wh...

Discordant Harmonies - Daniel B. Botkin

Is nature intrinsically harmonious or inharmonious? Mainstream ecologists would probably reply, "Harmonious, of course. Everything is interconnected in a beauti...

Maximize the Serendipity Around You

Nassim Taleb is full of one-liners good for maxims, mottoes, and mantras. Just read his book "The Bed of Procrustes." This particular advice, however, comes fro...

Winter Beauty

My Mom is an excellent photographer. She shot this pine cone during Golden Light, an hour after sunrise or sunset. I was lucky enough to be raised by two genera...

Why I Hope Bitcoin Keeps Dropping

At the beginning of this year, I had about enough cryptocurrency here on steemit to buy one Bitcoin. But I didn't, because I'm not a very decisive person. Now, ...

AI Fears Overhyped

Every time I read one of Bill Gates' injunctions against AI, or Elon Musk's warnings against it, I don't feel afraid. After all, as one of my hyper-intelligent ...

WESTERN CIVILIZATION'S THREE WORLDVIEWS

Traditionalism, Modernism, and Postmodernism: which will win out in the end? ---- "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." - Louis Brandeis. It will cleanse all bad...

CAN WE LEARN ANYTHING FROM THE CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES?

Yes, we can. Specifically: 1. Nature is more powerful than we are 2. We need more prescribed burns 3. We need to change our attitudes to wildfire control Breath...

WE DON'T KNOW WHAT WE DON'T KNOW AND WE CAN'T PREDICT IT

MULTIPLICATIVE DIFFICULTY HYPOTHESIS How can we predict things? What does trying to predict the 25th impact of a billiard ball tell us about the nature of the u...

MEME CONTEST- YOU ARE WHAT YOU READ

Earn SBD! Have fun! Be creative! I'm reopening my Meme Contest, since I didn't get any entrants last time. Same rules as before, except the deadline is Friday, ...

BRAINS ARE ANTICIPATION MACHINES

HYPOTHESIS Why do we predict the future? Why do we anticipate? What is the evolutionary foundation for this mechanism? According to Daniel Dennett, it is becaus...

CHARACTER VS DIVERSITY

THE HYPOTHESIS I went to givewell.org to search for Property and Environment Research Council, a company I want to work for. Their search engine is down, but I ...

HORSE FEATHERS EVERYWHERE

Have you ever gotten something in your mind and started seeing it everywhere? Probably, because this is a version of synchronicity, or perhaps confirmation bias...

WHY WAS THE FROG INCORRECT? IT JUMPED TO THE WRONG CONCLUSION.

What do Dusky Gopher Frogs and property rights have in common? I wish I could think of a punchline, but neither the environment nor property rights are a joke. ...

How to Hold a Frog

I am quite the herpetology (amphibians and reptiles) freak, and I enjoy spreading my passion to others. This summer, I worked with 2 species of birds, which alt...