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“A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.”
— Carl Jung
Category Archives: READING MATTER
Books I read & recommend
EVOLUTION DOES NOT CREATE BIODIVERSITY
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“Biologists are still trying to count the number of different life organisms on the planet. Consider the probability that an estimated TWO BILLION SPECIES have lived on Earth, of which as many as 99.9 percent are now EXTINCT! So, there probably aren’t that many left, right?
Wrong.
There are still estimated to be about 30,000,000 (thirty million!) different species of organisms still living on Earth. There are estimated to be more than 400,000 species of plants, alone. Do you like bugs? There are more than 1,000,000 species of insects (yes, that’s one million). There are 30,000 different subspecies of spiders! Not to mention the 30,000 species of beetles, 20,000 species of moths and 20,000 species of ants, bees and wasps. Researchers have estimated that for every human being there are one billion insects on Earth!
There are more than 9,000 species of birds, 4,000 species of mammals (1,700 are rodents), 10,000 species of roundworms, 4,000 species of amphibians, 21,000 species of bony fish and 6,000 species of reptiles. Don’t even think about the nearly unfathomable variety of invertebrate life in the oceans. Scientists will be working for a very long time to identify everything that lives in the waters of the world.
That’s just life in the macrocosm of Earth; i.e., just those life forms that we can see easily with the naked eye. How does this apply to the microcosm of relatively invisible animals?
There are 4,000 known species of bacteria. On the average human body, about 600 million bacteria live on the skin. The skin under your arms carries close to 500,000 bacteria and your forearm is a thriving metropolis that is home to over 12,000 bacteria per square inch! The bacteria population INSIDE your body is too numerous to count.
Then there are all the species of protozoa, algae, fungi and bacteria that eat carbon dioxide and hydrogen and produce methane as a byproduct.
In addition to the vast number of species, consider the fact that each individual cell in any complex organism is, in fact, a separate, distinct life entity. There are about 75 trillion cells in the average human body. The size of a single cell varies from the thickness of a few thousand atoms, to the largest single cell (an ostrich egg), measuring about 20 inches in diameter.
The sheer volume and diversity of life forms would seem to defy the probability of any coincidental, circumstantial, accidental or spontaneous development of the unthinkably vast, complex, intricately coordinated, precisely structured, cooperatively balanced, and yet, ingeniously bizarre, incongruously grotesque and downright peculiar variety of life on Earth. (Remember, we aren’t even counting the 99 percent of life forms that USED to live on the planet, which are now extinct!)
In the 150 years since Darwin and others have re-proposed the Theory of Evolution, no one has ever demonstrated it to be true. Not a single one of any of this immense number of species have ever successfully interbred and created a fertile reproductive combination of two different species.
The point is this: Darwin’s theory does not provide us with a workable solution. The missing pieces of the puzzle are still missing, namely: where did man and the other life forms on this planet come from?”
~ excerpt from THE OZ FACTORS by Lawrence R. Spencer
WONDER WORMS
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These are Marine worms or polychaetes. From the depths of the cold White sea to the coral reefs of the Great Barrier in Australia. Some of them were collected recently and they are still undescribed… ( see more Worms Renaissance)
THE DIOGENES CLUB
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“Watson and I gathered our things and a five p.m. set out in a hansom cab from Baker Street to arrive at the one place at which I was certain to locate my brother in the early evening each day: The Diogenes Club.
“There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in town.
No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger’s Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offenses, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.”, I informed Watson as we jostled our way through the streets of London in the cab.
This very exclusive men’s club was named after Diogenes, the Cynic. He made a virtue of extreme poverty, begging for a living and sleeping in a large tub in the marketplace. He was notorious for his provocative behavior and philosophical stunts. He carried a lamp in the daytime, claiming to be looking for an honest man. He regularly antagonized Plato, disputing his interpretation of Socrates and sabotaging his lectures. After being captured by pirates and sold into slavery, Diogenes eventually settled in Corinth, where he was befriended by Alexander The Great.
Fundamentally he was a Western contemporary of the ancient Indian ascetics who abstained from worldly possessions and comfort in favor of poverty as an aid toward spiritual purity. He believed that virtue was better revealed in action and not theory. His life was a relentless campaign to debunk the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt society”, I explained to Watson, having read several treatises concerning the life of Diogenes written by modern day Cynics.
Alexander the Great went to meet Diogenes because he was impressed that the philosopher was so highly admired despite having neither money nor power. However, while Diogenes was relaxing in the sunlight one morning, Alexander, thrilled to meet the famous philosopher, asked if there was any favor he might do for him. Diogenes replied, “Yes. Stand out of my sunlight.”
Alexander declared, “If I were not Alexander, then I should wish to be Diogenes”, I said anecdotally, as Watson absorbed my diatribe, as well as the scenery passing by the window of our hansom.
The Diogenes Club was apparently founded, in part, as a front for the SIS, which, as you may know, is the supreme and indispensable brain-trust behind the British government. This organization secures government secrets and advises the best course of covert action to enable Britain to intervene in the affairs of other nations without detection.”
~ excerpt from the book SHERLOCK HOLMES: MY LIFE, by Lawrence R. Spencer
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Diogenes of Sinope was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophyhe was born in modern-day Sinop, Turkey, an Ionian colony on the Black Sea, in 412 or 404 BC and died at Corinth in 323 BC.
CREATURES OF NATURE
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Equality is an idea that individual members of a mass of beings have equal rights to action, self-possession and thought.
Aristocracy is the unchallengable right of power, control and possession of an entitled few over subservient individuals.
In nature these ideas are pre-programmed into the essence and behavior of every living creature, according to their nature.
Humans beings are creatures of nature.
~ lawrence r. spencer ~