Language and Fire.

Which came first -
lying or burning ?

There is a limit to learning.

Oh, I love this !

https://aeon.co/essays/muslims-lived-in-america-before-protestantism-even-existed

Stupefied by hope ?

Most people seem to believe
that a horrible life
is better than
an elegant death
- for animals too.

Some Ancient Greeks believed
that an inelegant life
demanded an elegant death.

We rarely give

money to the poor.
But sometimes
we give it to the rich
for the poor, allegedly.

As I get older

I get colder
and injure the Earth
to keep warm.

Pathetic species :

when you can't
see the wood for the trees

you chop down
the trees

then fall on your knees.

Westerners judge 'progress'

in Afghanistan
by that its capacity to produce
young female pop-stars
in revealing Western dress.

No wonder the Taliban
control so much of the country.

Once upon

a very recent time,
tourists trudged streets
while gawping glassily
at buildings and shop-fronts,
fountains and plazas
churches and sculptures.

Now I behold them shuffling along
entranced by their tablets and smartphones.

Paradox

Once the brain of the thinker
has been washed
(ineluctably dyed)
by the notion of worth,
the conclusion is reached
that everything human
(including the thinker)
is worthless.

Meanwhile and far away,

the planet Jupiter
photographed by NASA spacecraft Juno.

There's no control

like self-control
and birth control

We are the species
out of control.

We have nothing to fear

but the truth
(if we ever can find it)
about ourselves.

Nice poster

which is doing the rounds
and will make not an iota of difference.

Senile Insouciance.

Some of us
get to the age
when other people
are less interesting
than plants,

so we hope that our smell
or our unzipped
second-hand pants
will keep them at bay.

No lamentation.

Let us not grieve
at all we achieve
besides devastation

(to be empirical)

just birth, overpopulation
and death without salvation

the miracle.

Half of wisdom

is despair
The other half
is learning how
not to care.

Western European Renaissance Art

is pretty bizarre:

The first small step

towards "Saving the Planet"
would be to stop using the words
animal and beast
as insults.

We haven't got there yet.

A great many disgruntled people

are talking about élites and The Élite 
as they once talked about Jews 
and the World-wide Zionist Conspiracy.  
They'll be lucky that they don't end up
with worse than Donald Trump.

Beyond humanity

evil cannot exist.

Elegant living

and forest-desecration.

thanks for the photo, Almina

We are 'intelligent' enough

to learn
to 'find out'
and to 'know'

but too irrational
and erratic
to act upon our knowledge.

Melting acid snow...

Language demands.

Because we have language
we're always
explaining ourselves
(and the world)
to ourselves.

We should not kid ourselves

that Christianity
(a religion for the poor in spirit)
spread right through the world
from Greenland to Tasmania
and Patagonia to Japan
because of its peaceful message,

but because of a rapacity
greater and more hypocritical
than that of Islam.

Appearance versus Ancestry

from https://eduardo-.tumblr.com/ :

I once read an article that emphasized there is no such thing as a fish. Sharks and rays, lamprey, lobe-finned fish like lungfish and coelacanth, bichir and sturgeon, and of course the multiple infraclasses of more “modern” fish groups are all only very distantly related to one another. They’ve maintained semi-similar body structures only because there are limited ways to efficiently move through water as a vertebrate. 

This:

And this

Are more distantly related from one another than you and I are from a lungfish

Which is absolutely fuckin wild.

Not only that, but all of us air-breathing land vertebrates, all the lizards and chickens and people and frogs, are closer to one another than those three “fish” are to one another as well.

these:

are genetically closer than these

and…

these

are genetically closer than these

- and my personal favorite, it really fucks with people…

these

are more genetically similar than these

And hares cannot interbreed with rabbits.

A message to humankind:

the ice you're treading on
gets ever thinner.

Kitsch consciousness

In vitro fertilisation
Curing cancer
Looking for a Unified Theory
Flying to Mars
Thinking of an after-life
while the Burning Mountain
(or the melting glacier)
falls into the sea.

Escurial Beatus Apocalypse MS : The Angel sounds the Second Trump.
Book of Revelations, VIII.                         Click to enlarge.

History repeats itself - in spades.

The 'success' of the Roman Empire
(in wiping out large species
and small tribes) depended upon
continuous expansion...
which led to its fragmentation
and collapse.

Another surprise on Google Earth.

Just 1% of the population of The Jewish Autonomous Oblast 
in the Russian Far East
is Jewish.

Few things

are as ugly as a lorry *
or a car,
but a burnt-out vehicle
is sculptural.

* US: truck