Tag Archives: Nature




  2. The universe began to exist.
  3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

How could anyone object to that?




2. The universe began to exist.




3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.


  • A committee of gods created the universe.


Choosing a Purpose






















That’s his purpose. What is yours?

31 Days – Sky




They look up and see nothing.



31 Days – Cattails

You’ve heard of the “butterfly effect” – that a butterfly flapping its wings in China could affect the weather in New York. It’s a poetic window into chaos theory. When a complex system (the weather) depends on a long chain of cause and effect, and the dependencies are non-linear, then a small change in the initial conditions can produce a large change in the result.

Sometimes I wonder about the butterfly effect, but more often I wonder at its opposite.

Redwing Blackbird and CattailsFrom my office, I can see cattails bowing rhythmically in the summer breeze. We don’t think much about the breeze, but it is incredibly chaotic – a turbulent boil of molecules bouncing off each other and only sort of going in one direction. What made the breeze?

True to chaos theory, the causes are simple: the steady fusion of innumerable atoms in the Sun; the inexorable rotation of the Earth; land shaped by ancient, Moon-pulled tides; butterflies in China. The simplicity iterates over time and distance, confusion increasing at every step. Eventually, all predictability is lost and total chaos arrives outside my window.

The butterfly effect then goes into reverse.

The cattails, possessed of a certain shape and flexibility, absorb the chaos. They rock as calmly as cradles.

A single redwing blackbird is stirred and takes flight.

I see the bird’s epaulets and rise slightly in my chair, drawing in my breath.

31 Days – Telepathic Dogs

Dogs That Known When Their Owners Are Coming HomeHere’s something to wonder about: dogs that know when their owners are coming home — seemingly by telepathy.

I’ve been rereading a book on the subject by Rupert Sheldrake. Here is one story as told by  a woman named Elizabeth Bryan.

My whole working life has been as a cabin crew member working out of Gatwick Airport. For ten years my dog Rusty would jump around and bark at the same time I landed and then sit quietly watching the front door until I got home. The astonishing thing is there is no routine to my coming and goings. I could be gone one day or fourteen and no regular time of landing, yet he knew without fail.

Here’s another.

Monika Sauer, who lives near Munich, Germany, carried out some tests at my [Sheldrake’s] request with her dog, Pluto, whose reactions were observed by her partner. Pluto reacted not only when Monika set off to come home in her own car but also when she set off in friends’ cars with which he was unfamiliar. I then asked her to come home by taxi. … The dog reacted not when she got into the taxi, but when she ordered it.

There are many more stories in the book, and they refute the explanations I would come up with (the dogs’ superior hearing is responsible; the dogs were pickup up cues from people who knew of their owners’ return; the dogs knew their owners’ routines; etc.).

Could there be an extrasensory connection between some dogs and their owners? It seems impossible. What would be the medium through which transmission would take place? On the other hand, the idea of electromagnetic fields passing through empty space was considered impossible until the 1800’s. Why couldn’t thoughts be transmitted without the medium of neurons?

What do you think? Is it bunk? Or do you know of people (maybe yourself) who have had this experience with their dogs?

31 Days – View from Space

Tonight, many of us will be looking up to see the Perseid meteor shower. So, I thought it would be fitting to see a view from the other direction.

Here is a compilation of night views from the International Space Station. The music is beautiful, too, so be sure you have your speakers on.

Full YouTube page here.

31 Days – The Antikythera Mechanism

This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind. The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right. The way the mechanics are designed just makes your jaw drop. Whoever has done this has done it extremely well. It does raise the question: What else were [the Greeks] making at the time? In terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa.

Fragment of the Antikythera Mechanism

Fragment of the Antikythera Mechanism

Professor Michael Edmunds was speaking of the world’s most spectacular device that you’ve never heard of: the Antikythera Mechanism. It surely qualifies for inclusion in August’s 31 Days of Wonder.

Built in the first century B.C. entombed in a shipwreck until 1901, and not understood for almost another hundred years, this ancient orrery featured a complex set of gears upon gears, the likes of which would not be seen for again for a millennium and a half. It was able to calculate and display:

  • The movements of the five planets known to the Greeks, including their curious retrograde motion relative to the Earth.
  • The movement of the Sun.
  • The movement of the Moon, including its acceleration as it gets closer to Earth.
  • The phase of the Moon.
  • Solar and lunar eclipses.
  • The Metonic cycle – that is, the 19-year cycle which is the least common multiple of solar year and lunar month.
  • The 76-year Callippic cycle.
  • The dates of the Olympic games. (No kidding!)

…All this in a box just over a foot high, 7 inches wide and 3.5 inches deep.

Check it out: