start your own blog now!
 
Read other blogs...
Geo Visitors Map

Edgewise

My Personal Notebook for Anything and Everything that Catches My Fancy...

About Me

Blogger:
Name: Jayson
So what's to say? Well, I'm an American (of Filipino Ethnicity), a Resident of the Great State of New York, a Catholic, a "Conservative" Republican, a Married Man--and Not Necessarily in That Particular Order...I have this Unrealistic Interest in learning about Nearly Everything! Of course, since that's impossible, I'll settle for the next best thing (such as it is). In Recent Years (for Some Mysterious Reason) I've developed quite a Curiosity about History and Politics.

Contact me
My profile
Linkme
Subscribe to this blog

Counter

visited *loading* times

Friday, 08 February 2008
Hymn Parody Site

By way of Mark Shea ( "Two Ends of the Spectrum"  ) and Barbara Nicolosi ("Hysterical!" ):
Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas
 
EXCERPT:
 
No matter where you go to Mass on Sunday in the United States, it's difficult to escape the music of Marty Haugen and David Haas. I for one am sick and tired of hearing their banal ditties everywhere, and in desperation I have founded this Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas, or SMMMHDH for short. The Society is awaiting pontifical approval from the Holy See as a pious sodality.  :-)

Thomas G. McFaul, in his essay on The Sad State of Liturgical Music, laments, "What a shame for a young person to grow up thinking that Marty Haugen is the traditional music of the Catholic church!" The Catholic Church has a rich patrimony of sacred music, but it is a closed book to most of today's Catholics.

You are de facto a member of the Society if you gag or grit your teeth whenever you hear any of the following:

  1. Come to the Feast
  2. Gather Us In
  3. Sing Out, Earth and Skies

The Society is honored to have members from other denominations. There are Anglicans and Lutherans who have joined us in this crusade.[...]

posted by: Edgewise at 05:38 | link | comments |
music, humor, religion, christianity, hymns, catholic church, remarkable observation, parody

Sunday, 20 January 2008
Humanity's Domestication

"When We Began"

EXCERPT:

[..]"Culturally modern humans" seem to have started roughly 10K years ago, when inhabitants of the fertile crescent -- who had not yet discovered farming -- started living in cities. Consider that: for the first time, our species was living in high-density because we wanted to -- because it was better to be with our fellows than be out in packs, even though we were still hunting animals and gathering plants. This doesn't mean that behaviorally modern humans would not be capable or willing to live in cities, but the for the first time a metastable equilibrium toward city life existed.

In A Farewell to Alms, Greg Clark argues that what might be called economically modern man finally emerged 200 years ago, in England, after an extremely long period of intense malthusian selection. Clark's politically smart enough to be coy about the mechanism, but it's pretty clear he's talking about genetic natural selection[...]

"Against the Wild Type of Man"

EXCERPT:

[...]Combine domestication with two other facts: that by "the wild" we essentially mean Africa and the Islamic States, and that [hat-tip to Sandwalkgnxp]:
With a population of 6 billion individuals on the planet, there will be 120 x 6 x 109 = 7.2 x 10^11 new mutations in the population every generation. This means that every single nucleotide in our genome will be mutated in the human population every 20 years or so.
Evolution is a slow process that takes generations, but observable change can come about in 200 years or so. The longer the Gap exists, the longer the darwinian advantage of humanity's "wild type" is prefered: The longer mass rapes exist, the more mass rapists will be favored, the longer mass murder exists, the longer mass murderers will be favored.[...]

posted by: Edgewise at 07:35 | link | comments |
history, genetics, biology, remarkable observation, humanity

Stephen Baxter's 2003 novel, "Coalescent."

No, I haven't read it. Only learned of it today. Just from what I learn from this Wikipedia article, I'm inclined to not read it. Something about the novel's premise gives me the creeps.

posted by: Edgewise at 07:26 | link | comments |
books, reading, novels, science-fiction

Ramon Llull

posted by: Edgewise at 07:18 | link | comments |

Von Neumann Universal Constructor

posted by: Edgewise at 07:16 | link | comments |

The Great Train Wreck of Social Networks - can we be saved?

posted by: Edgewise at 07:11 | link | comments |

Real "Superhumans"?

Here's an interesting Discovery Channel program: "The Real Superhumans and the Quest for the Future Fantastic."

Unfortunately, this is just the first five minutes of this Discovery Channel show. By any chance, has anyone here seen this? I missed it when it was first broadcast (hopefully I'll catch a repeat!).

posted by: Edgewise at 06:48 | link | comments |
science, genetics, biology, discovery channel, youtube, humanity

Wednesday, 02 January 2008
Happy New Year, Everybody!

Wishing Everyone a Happy New Year!
May we all have a blessed and prosperous 2008!

Auld Lang Syne

New Year Greetings--Wish Your Friends a Happy New Year With the Choicest New Year Greetings

New YearWishes--Wish Your Near and Dear Ones With New Year Wishes From the Famous

posted by: Edgewise at 03:14 | link | comments |
holiday, happy new years

Sunday, 16 December 2007
Rise of the Artificial Genome-plex

"An Artificial World"

Sayeth Dan:

[...] We live in a world, radically artificial twice over, and we haven't begun to see what it will hold.

Indeed.

Folks, I'd swear that this TDAXP post appears  one of those nice observations (that one occasionally comes across online) that seems to sum up "everything."

And what a nice catch-phrase: "artificial genome-plex." Never came across that before. Unable to recall coming across that before. Did he just coin this? If he has, well, talk about original...

posted by: Edgewise at 18:57 | link | comments |
culture, science, genetics, nature, biology, ecosystems, remarkable observation, humanity

Using Measles to Treat Cancer

"The Measles Virus-Tamed and Trained"

posted by: Edgewise at 07:58 | link | comments |
science, medicine, cancer, biology, new-discoveries, virus

Technorati Profile Locations of visitors to this page