To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
17
Apr
2019
Two great forces shape the world today. No, they are not economic systems, like capitalism and communism. Or political systems, like democracy and tyranny.
They are Evolution and Entropy (for this essay, deliberately capitalized). Perhaps we’ve always known they existed, but we gave them attributes, like good and evil, light and dark. Or names, like God and Satan.
Evolution and Entropy are inseparable twins, like yin and yang. Both are irresistible and irreversible. Both are subject to time. But they are mutually contradictory.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Evolution, Entropy
16
I've had this poem in the works for almost a year. I kept adding bits of description, clarifying metaphors and analogies, fussing with parallels... I couldn't make up my mind whether it was about the church, or politics, or science. I dug it out last week, and started cutting all the preachy stuff. It's up to you, the reader, to decide what it's about.
A rock, rough and rugged.
crashed into a rushing river.
The river pulled back,
waves roiling away from the intruder.
But the river forgave the rock,
wrapped its long blue arms around the newcomer,
hugged it, caressed it, invited it to travel
down to the sea....
Categories: Poetry
Tags: Evolution, Rocks, rivers, erosion
5
Sep
2018
I had my 82ndbirthday last weekend. I’m headed for 100! Wooo-hooo!
Anticipation makes me think back to how things have changed over the last century, or two. My wife Joan’s grandfather arrived from Sweden a century ago with an axe-head, a plane blade, and a handsaw. With those, he made all the rest of his carpenter’s tools.
I wonder what he would think of modern chainsaws.
A century before that, my ancestors arrived from Scotland, to farm 40 acres in southern Ontario. I wonder what they would think of tractors with air-conditioned cabs. Of hay-balers and combines and automatic milking machines.
Nothing stands still. Ever. And it shouldn’t.
Not even religion.
Tags: birthday, Evolution, change
27
May
The video went viral – as so many videos do nowadays, especially when we wish they wouldn’t. Over a million people watched Kelly Pocha of Cranbrook, B.C.lean over the back of a booth in a Denny’s Restaurant in Lethbridge, AB, and yell at the inhabitants of the next booth, who appeared to be of Arab origin.
Her comments were clearly racist. She told them to go back to their own country. She said they didn’t belong here. She threatened physical violence.
To her credit, she later went back to the restaurant, and apologized to the manager for causing a scene. And on the media, she apologized to the subjects of her harangue. “If I could rewind and take it back I would, but I can’t,” she said. “That's just not who I am."
Pocha learned a hard lesson – you can’t do that anymore. Along with a lot of other things.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Evolution, Kelly Pocha, Denny's, Lethbridge, racist comments
14
Jun
2017
Let’s quit calling evolution a “theory.” When Darwin first proposed the concept, evolution was a theory. It’s not any more – it’s a reality.
Gravity was a theory too, when Newton first advanced it. But no one today would step off a cliff because he believes gravity is an unproven theory.
Evolution is not open for debate or denial. No more than, say, the mathematical concept that one plus one equals two. Or the value of pi.
Darwin did not invent evolution. He recognized what had been there all along.
Since then, not one scientific discovery has disproven evolution.
Tags: Evolution, Darwin