After thinking this over for a while, I decided I did not want a letter to Richard Dawkins on my blog. Yuck!
Instead, I’m working on a longish rant about all the blunders Dawkins makes concerning Einstein’s ideas about religion. I plan to post it on my website, and will include a link to it from here. I’m still hacked about his rediculous claim to be a member of “Einstein’s camp” in his interview with Terry Gross, aired on NPR’s Fresh Air, March 8, 2008. Einstein vehemently denied being an atheist and noted that the intolerance of fanatical atheists is of the same kind as that of the religious fanatics. Another thing he got right!
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Our neighbor Diane took this fun picture of Basie peeking through the fence at us as Joan, Diane, and I worked on our rain garden project. Click the picture of Basie to see Diane's album of our project.
Greek, from Attica, about 325 BC, Marble. This is a detail of a life-sized statue on display in the Adelaide Cobb Ward Sculpture Hall of Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Khajuraho region, Madhya Pradesh, Chandella period, 12th c., Buff sandstone. This maiden, dancing under a mango tree, once decorated a pillar in the assembly hall of a Hindu temple. Her twisted posture is a typical feature of medieval sculpture from North India. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Mahatma Gandhi
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
Marcel Proust
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Beaumont & Fletcher
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
Basie Peek
Our neighbor Diane took this fun picture of Basie peeking through the fence at us as Joan, Diane, and I worked on our rain garden project. Click the picture of Basie to see Diane's album of our project.
Labels
- 2009 Resolutions
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Backyard Bird List (55)
- American Gold Finch
- American Kestrel
- American Robin
- American Tree Sparrow
- Baltimore Oriole
- Barred Owl
- Black-capped Chickadee
- Blue Jay
- Brown Creeper
- Brown Thrasher
- Canada Goose
- Carolina Wren
- Chimney Swift
- Chipping Sparrow
- Clay-Colored Sparrow
- Common Grackle
- Common Redpoll
- Cooper's Hawk
- Cowbird
- Crow
- Dark-eyed Junco
- Downy Woodpecker
- Fox Sparrow
- Franklin's Gull
- Gray Catbird
- Great-tailed Grackle
- Hairy Woodpecker
- Harris's Sparrow
- House Finch
- House Sparrow
- Indigo Bunting
- Lincoln's Sparrow
- Mourning Dove
- Nighthawk
- Northern Cardinal
- Northern Mockingbird
- Pine Siskin
- Red-bellied Woodpecker
- Red-breasted Nuthatch
- Red-Tailed Hawk
- Red-winged Blackbird
- Rock Pigeon
- Rose-breasted Grosbeak
- Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
- Ruby-throated Hummingbird
- Sharp-shinned Hawk
- Song Sparrow
- Starling
- Turkey Vulture
- White-Breasted Nuthatch
- White-Crowned Sparrow
- White-throated Sparrow
- Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
- Yellow-rumped Warbler
- Yellow-shafted Flicker
Favorite Blogs and Sites
- Cheveux Salon
- Clutch Cargo Lips
- cornflower
- Desperate Reader
- dovegreyreader scribbles
- Elegant Variation, The
- Eloise by the Book Piles
- Ex Libris
- Hermitage
- I Prefer Reading
- Lifescapes
- Missouri Humanities Council
- My Green Vermont
- Orangette
- Rachel Laudan
- Random Jottings
- Ready Steady Book
- Roanoke Park
- Sea Salt with Food
- simply noise
- So Many Books
- Stuck in a Book
- TED: Ideas Worth Spreading
- tiny avery
- Today in Literature
- Vulpes Libris
Astronomy
Flora & Fauna
Fun Stuff
Nelson-Atkins Lion
Greek, from Attica, about 325 BC, Marble. This is a detail of a life-sized statue on display in the Adelaide Cobb Ward Sculpture Hall of Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Naturalism
“Naturalism, in essence, is simply the idea that human beings are completely included in the natural world: there’s nothing supernatural about us. Naturalism is based on science as the best, most reliable means for discovering what exists. Science shows that each and every aspect of a human being comes from and is completely connected to the natural world, and is understandable in terms of those connections.”
from The Center for Naturalism website
from The Center for Naturalism website
John Burroughs
“My consciousness ceases as a flame ceases, but that which made my consciousness does not cease.”
Willa Cather
“Miracles seem to rest, not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from far off, but upon our perceptions being made finer so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears hear that which is about us always.”
Georgia O'Keeffe
“In a way, nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small, we haven’t time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”
22-Inch Dobsonian
E.B. White
I am impressed by the reluc-tance of one’s worldly goods to go out again into the world.
— Good-Bye to 48th Street
Less Hectic Books
- The Alhambra, Washington Irving
- Happiness, Richard Layard
- The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt
- Life in the Slow Lane, Russell Lynes
- Life is Meals, James & Kay Salter
- The Merry Heart, Robertson Davies
- Voluntary Simplicity, Duane Elgin
Thich Nhat Hanh
The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.
Conservative Amygdalas
A study at University College London in the UK has found that conservatives' brains have larger amygdalas than the brains of liberals. Amygdalas are responsible for fear and other "primitive" emotions. At the same time, conservatives' brains were also found to have a smaller anterior cingulate -- the part of the brain responsible for courage and optimism.
from www.rawstory.com
from www.rawstory.com
Daniel Pinkwater
“My name is really Pinkwater, and I think this would be a better world if everyone had a ridiculous name.”
My Daniel Pinkwater Book Collection
- 5 Novels (forward by Jules Feiffer), 1999
- Attila the Pun, 1981
- Looking for Bobowicz, 2004
- The Neddiad, 2007
- The Worms of Kukumlima, 1981
- The YggYsseY, 2009
Grapes of Wrath Quotes
Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole.
Books I've Always Meant to Read
I have been a total flop at the My Year of Reading Dangerously challenge. I read only Rob Roy in 2008. It’s not really a dangerous list, anyway: more like great books I’ve always meant to read. SO, I’m renaming my list. (I’ve been in a renaming mood lately.) My new goal is to read more than one of these in 2009! December 8, 2009: Oops! Okay, now my goal is to read more than one of these in 2010. Seriously...
- Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott
- The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser
- Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
- Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollop
- The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- Boswell's Life of Johnson by James Boswell
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
- The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Dancing Bracket Figure
Khajuraho region, Madhya Pradesh, Chandella period, 12th c., Buff sandstone. This maiden, dancing under a mango tree, once decorated a pillar in the assembly hall of a Hindu temple. Her twisted posture is a typical feature of medieval sculpture from North India. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Owen Flanagan
“God is something about which, if you have good sense, you will resist speaking, especially with confidence. Nothing sensible can be said.”
— The Problem of the Soul
— The Problem of the Soul
Andre Comte-Sponville
“Where the absolute is concerned, all forms of anthropomorphism are naive or ridiculous. Faced with the ineffable, it is best to remain silent.”
— The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality
— The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality
Anne Lamott
“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
— Bird by Bird
— Bird by Bird
Edward O. Wilson
“Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life.”
— Biophilia
— Biophilia
Oscar Wilde
“The true mystery of the
world is the visible, not the invisible.”
world is the visible, not the invisible.”