All major human conflicts are essentially what Jonathan Swift called the war between the “Big Endians” and the “Little Endians” in Gulliver’s Travels. In Swift’s novel, Lilliput and Blefuscu are island nations ruled by emperors. Those from Lilliput broke boiled eggs on the larger end, while those from Blefuscu broke their’s on the smaller end. Swift’s readers at the time would have recognized that his metaphor suggested that the British political parties at the time, the Whigs and Torys, were fighting a war based on minuscule and inconsequential differences. That appears to be a common theme in human history: Most . . . → Read More: The Faces of Humanity
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 Comments are closed  Blog  animals, Ark, begats, Buddhists, Catholics, city-states, climate change, Denisovans, evolution, global warming, Gulliver's Travels, history, human conflicts, humanity, humans, In Memoriam A.H.H., Jonathan Swift, last straw, life force, metaphor, Neanderthals, Noah, oral transmission, original face, political parties, pollution, Protestants, record keeping, red in tooth and claw, religious war, Tennyson, tribes, war, written records, Zen Koan By now, you undoubtedly know about the devastating earthquake in Nepal. You may not have heard, however, about the earthquake in SW Michigan. Earthquakes come in all sizes, from the huge and deadly to the minor shake-ups. Michigan’s earthquake was a minor shake-up. When I was growing up in California, we had numerous minor quakes. Even though they always came as a surprise, we learned to recognize them for what they were. After I had grown up and left, California experienced at least two serious quakes with extensive damage and some deaths, one in northern California and one in southern . . . → Read More: Earthquakes Comments are closed Blog airplanes, Aldous Huxley, Alexander the Great, Amish, assimilation, automobiles, bats, bees, belief systems, Big Enders, birds, Brave New World, butterflies, California, carbon paper, Catholics, Chiffon margarine, climate change, Denisovans, drought, earth, earthquake, electronic communication, elimination, evolution, floods, forest and trees, genetic modification, Genghis Khan, geology, GMOs, God, GPS, Gulliver's Travels, herbicides, horses, Islam, Jonathan Swift, Julius Caesar, letters, Life, Little Enders, long distance, Mother Nature, mules, natural disasters, Nature, Neanderthals, Nepal, news, news weeklies, newspapers, northern California, pesticides, phone calls, plate tectonics, Protestants, radio, rear-view cameras, red in tooth and claw, seatbelts, Shia, southern California, Sunni, survival, SW Michigan, Tennyson, tornadoes, trains, tribes, TV, typewriters, volcanic activity, volcanoes, wagons, Western U.S. In the movie, “Master and Commander,” Captain Jack (Russell Crowe) asks the ship’s surgeon, Dr. Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany) to choose one of the two weevils crawling around in their food. The doctor initially says that they are the same in the critical aspects: “Arcades ambo. They are the same species of curculio, and there is nothing to choose between them.” When Captain Jack insists on a choice, the doctor chooses the larger one. The captain says that he has chosen incorrectly because “in the Navy you must always choose the lesser of two weevils.” Now that the political . . . → Read More: Lesser of Two Weevils Comments are closed Blog Arab Spring, Better Angels of our Nature, Captain Jack, Colonies, congress, corrupt, Dylan Rattigan, elections, evil, evolution, eye of the needle, Fugs, George Washington, get the money out, In Memoriam A.H.H., Master and Commander, money, occupy wall street, OWS, Paul Bettany, philanthropist, philanthropy, politics, red in tooth and claw, Russell Crowe, Steven Pinker, Tennyson, TV, weevils |
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