StumbleUpon | Moody834's blog posts

http://Moody834.stumbleupon.com/review/26667853/

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:05:48 -0700

A hunger has grown and is growing
Whilst financial winds are a-blowing,
Tossed this way and that
Seems only hunger's got fat...
'Cept that bear's got a pot belly showing.

http://Moody834.stumbleupon.com/review/24233560/

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 22:31:38 -0700

Looking in the direction of 39�13' N, 121�49' W, looking at the eroded lava domes, well over a million years old, of Histum Yani (now called Sutter Buttes), the world's smallest `mountain range', located in the great Central Valley of California. I was there with a camera, gazing out at that alien range in the hazy distance. It's a beautiful, almost eerie sight. It certainly looks like the result of volcanism. If you have Google Earth, you can see its roughly circular form from pretty high above Central Valley [see the image at the bottom of the page here]. It must have been a wild sight to see when it formed.

http://Moody834.stumbleupon.com/review/24233519/

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 22:29:25 -0700

Taken at the Hole in the Wall campground in the Mojave Desert. Although the colors of the mountains were gorgeous, I opted to post this B&W photo because it highlights something for me: the sense of vast, pregnant emptiness. The sky and earth in the Mojave seem to play off one another, especially when the clouds roll through in their slow motion way.

Hole in the Wall has a very nice campground right near the visitor center, and I'll gladly recommend it to anyone who has the chance to vacation in the Mojave region. We stayed in a tent and cooked our food with a little Svea-type stove. Delicious! It may just be that the best food I've ever had has been eaten on camping trips. Something about being in the great outdoors, gazing out at a marvelous vista that you're a part of for some little while, listening to the miniature jet engine sibilance of the stove as it boils the water for coffee or hot chocolate, that makes the cheap noodles--noodles you only moments before dished out of the aluminum pot--seem like ambrosia.

Man... I gotta go back! ;-)

http://Moody834.stumbleupon.com/review/24233474/

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 22:27:06 -0700

The lay of the land: San Simeon (not so far from Morro Bay), in San Luis Obispo County, CA. San Simeon is usually known for being the place William Randolph Hearst built his legendary castle (quite worth the price of admission), but it's also a lovely area for those seeking nature's relatively untrammeled beauty.

I stitched together three photos taken from just off the PCH to create this one image. The seemingly endless coastline was behind me, the sound of the surf voluminous and omnipresent. I remember hearing the surf in the still of the night, occasionally sensing (or imagining I was) the vibration of the mighty Pacific from a quarter of a mile away. Anyway, something about the image reminds me of pictures of certain places in Africa. It was hot when I camped there, and the humidity of the air I breathed, as I walked in the shadows of a forested trail, was sometimes almost suffocating.

http://Moody834.stumbleupon.com/review/24233424/

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 22:24:41 -0700

the long, cold procession of stars
faded through tourmaline hours
into brightening blue obscurity
and the sun rolled up
over the slow tilting of the broken plane
setting old colors ablaze and
chasing slothful shadows slowly `round
as my eyes in swelter
sifted visions from the swimming air
air shiny with the heat of vulcan's furnace
and unrelenting
i craved the touch of that water
hidden there in the hollows undisclosed
sometimes hearing the muted drops
like moth wings softly striking the secret interior
of some lost hermit's buried skull

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by Moody834
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http://Moody834.stumbleupon.com/review/23552294/

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:08:57 -0700

How I wish I could claim to be surprised by the number of ignorant and stupid comments I see on "teh intarnets"--but I can't. The ridiculously virulent form of foolishness that can reduce otherwise decent people to a manic and bellicose condition of trollishness is so widespread around here that I am more surprised when I run across an actually thoughtful, calm, intelligent (and intelligible) comment. It makes me frakkin' sad and a wee bit pissed.

Lately, I have almost despaired over the miasma gathered about the issues of climate change and evolution. If it isn't flat out ignorance of the facts of either subject (or both), it's a pathetically malnourished capacity for understanding that conjures something very like it. Or it's a pissy form of apathy. In any case, when it is not some form of apathy, there seems to be a rather fundamental dislike of genuine science on the one side, and an Ann Coulter-like support for the usual dissentient pundits on the other. Not suprisingly, those who automatically scoff at evolution or climate change typically accuse people like me of being the real fanatics, resorting to all manner of hyperbolic descriptions to describe us as, essentially, sickeningly insane and steeped in our own stratagems. They then go on, typically, to portray us as terrorists or amoral freaks whose agenda includes destroying the world that decent, moral, god-fearing, country-loving folks made or whatever. Or they simply say that we are obviously stupid. Not that both sides don't have their low points; there's plenty of pots and kettles, stones and glass houses, motes and planks, etc.; all the usual wanker stuff. But seriously, there are a number of strong distinctions between sides here, readily and accurately characterized by the presence of qualities such as insightfulness, integrity, honesty and forthrightness on the side of those who support the sciences, and an absence of one or more of these on the other. Take a look at the freepers and people like Michael Crichton if you're not sure what I'm going on about. From one end of the spectrum to the other, their voices add up to a deafening, mind numbing wall of sound. It gets so that it's very difficult for the lay person to get any idea at all of what's simply true and what's merely truthy.

This is a tactic of theirs, just so you know. If they can get you to stop before you start poking about, reading up, learning the facts, then they win. This is why their arguments usually devolve into ad hominem attacks or pulp fiction conspiracy theories. If they can get you to believe that what people like me are saying is equivalent to what people like them are saying--if they can so level the playing field--then they've all but won. They have the goal in sight once you stop looking for the truth beyond the post or comment. They have only a few steps to go in their endeavor if they can get you to think that in the end it's all just arguments, smoke and mirrors, trivial or pointless. If you buy their shtick, you'll walk away thinking that it's all just a matter of opinion or, in some cases, that it's a matter of shady politics or villainous social engineering that you should distrust out of hand.

It would appear that their shtick is potent. The sad thing is, I see a lot of people parroting the disinformation back like it's a weaponized retort aimed at killing the bothersome dissidents who would overthrow a righteous America or patriotic "God" or some such thing.

But if you want the truth, here it is. Two issues (that are really kind of just one issue) here addressed in one rambling paragraph. OK? Listen...

First off, I don't hate America or "God" (I am simply opposed to nationalism and theocracy as I am delusion and fanaticism). I am not a member of some occult cabal, and there is no camarilla speaking in Al Gore's, Barack Obama's or Henry Waxman's ear. Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Sam Harris and the like do not want to eat your children or destroy morality. Secondly, that being said, a) please understand now that the world is in fact already beginning to feel the effects of global warming, a phenomenon that a great deal of evidence points to as having a man-made driver as its primary source, and know, too, that b) the theory of evolution is a robust, well-tested and open-ended attempt to explain the mechanisms of evolution--which is a real phenomenon in the world and not something that Darwin, Wallace, Huxley and many, many more esteemed scientists invented in order to supplant "God". As for atheism (or secular humanism): it is not a religion, it is a philosophical viewpoint. Similarly, there is no "Church of Global Warming". Finally, the scientific method is beautiful and trustworthy, and the dividends of scientific exploration are fruitful and exceedingly valuable to you, me, and everyone.

http://Moody834.stumbleupon.com/review/17266508/

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 22:27:44 -0800

"If you have an enemy, do not requite him evil with good, for that would put him to shame. Rather prove that he did you some good."
~ Nietzsche

http://Moody834.stumbleupon.com/review/16986114/

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 20:49:35 -0800

The Just
Jorge Luis Borges

A man who cultivates his garden, as Voltaire wished.
He who is grateful for the existence of music.
He who takes pleasure in tracing an etymology.
Two workmen playing, in a cafe in the South, a silent game of chess.
The potter, contemplating a color and a form.
The typographer who sets this page well, though it may not please him.
A woman and a man, who read the last tercets of a certain canto.
He who strokes a sleeping animal.
He who justifies, or wishes to, a wrong done him.
He who is grateful for the existence of Stevenson.
He who prefers others to be right.
These people, unaware, are saving the world.

Translation: Alastair Reid

Posted at 3 Quarks Daily.

http://Moody834.stumbleupon.com/review/15904087/

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 01:09:59 -0800

"You can't be a rational person six days a week ... and on one day of the week, go to a building, and think you're drinking the blood of a two thousand year old space god."

~ Bill Maher

http://Moody834.stumbleupon.com/review/14452162/

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 20:17:06 -0800

The Church, The Mosque, The Temple, All

Crenelated, dilapidated, worn
to withered stillness, decadent and fey;
this fallen fortress, flyblown and wind-torn,
belies the ancientness of earth. Its day
now passed beyond recalling, yet there dwell
some ghastly apparitions who still cry
that 'tis the earth descended into hell,
as in their darkness ages pass them by.
Stay far from there, my child, nor ever leave
with anyone who says, "You must believe!"...

For that way lies madness, a cloying mist
that lingers 'round the parapets and gate,
and in such blindness, by confusion kissed,
the dwellers there see light and feel but hate.
They wish that you would join them; they are sure
that if you would but join them -- you would know
the fortress as haven (reward as lure;
sooner take dust for rain, hot ash for snow).
Stay far from there, my child, nor ever leave
with anyone who says, "You must believe!"

by Moody834