I don’t mean what are the biological processes that constitute life. Rather, I mean, what is the essence of life in the philosophical sense? For instance, I do not mean breathing to exchange oxygen so much as I mean consuming information so as to satisfy vague and ambiguous desire. Originally, I made this site because … Read more
I sincerely did not expect to find myself in this situation. I naively believed that internet tech would facilitate an equanimous (this isn’t the word I wanted originally: I thought equanimous meant like “equal,” but I just looked it up and saw it means “calm and composed,” which I think works here, too). I foolishly … Read more
Since my latest post, I have been thinking about the nature of knowability. I apologize if I’m repeating myself, but I’m hopefully not. In the movie, “12 Monkeys,” there’s a scene where one guy says, “There’s no true, there’s no false; there’s only popular opinion.” I find that notion especially true regarding ancient history. When … Read more
As we have gleaned so far, history is very speculative. In many ways, it’s the ultimate speculative fiction, particularly because it’s impossible to know about much of “pre-history” for certain, but compelling pre-historic histories can establish timelines that get used quite extensively, forming peoples’ understandings and opinions long before they have even learned that something … Read more
We have previously learned that humans may have walked the land as early as ~500,000 years ago. However, the Quaternary Glaciation began around 2,588,000 years ago and ended around 128,000 years ago. I love the abbreviation for this: Last Glaciation Period – aka the LGP (in English, obviously). During this “Ice Age,” I think it’s … Read more
Before I can tell you about the three goats I saw, I need to be able to communicate verbally. So naturally, I turned to Wikipedia again to learn about the origin of language. Incidentally, the origin of language is not without controversy. Indeed, as one might expect, theorizing was banned in nineteenth century France. You … Read more
Perhaps this entry should have preceded the prior one, but hey, I am not an expert on communicating this kind of information — yet! In any case, to build a society, ya gotta be able to count things. Setting aside the quantification of so many things, it appears that the most fundamental need for numbers … Read more
In my recollection of high school history classes, human civilization is largely built on agriculture. Once humans had crops, the incentive to live in communities rose significantly. Sure, you can assert that “humans are social beings” (whatever that specifically means), but humans need food to carry out basic biological functions, which is decidedly less abstract. … Read more
Consistent with the name of this site, we have to go through a lot of “then” before we get to “now.” As we recount all the intermediate stages, you will recognize many of the names — at least I did! I will try to hit only the main points (for a while) so we can … Read more
I was just reading about a young woman who was killed by police who’s referenced in a song I’ve heard many times. I know I’ve read about her before, but I couldn’t even tell you when. Reading about her again got me to thinking about the half-life of information salience. Andy Warhol (I think) said … Read more