The Malay Archipelago

from Steph and Eva

I am reading Alfred Russell Wallace's "The Malay Archipelago". Wallace was somewhat of a co-discoverer of evolution along with Charles Darwin, but he gives all the credit to Darwin. Malay Archipelago is much more interesting to me than Voyage of the Beagle by Darwin because Wallace is much more interested in people, villages, architecture, local crafts and commerce than Darwin was. But, Darwin's schedule was much less flexible owing to the schedule of the Beagle in its surveying mission.

Darwin was several times disgusted by filthy, heathen savages, while Wallace was more tolerant, but still compared the native intelligence and morality of the various ethnic groups as he saw them through his English glasses, so to speak.

I wish I were a better historian and social thinker while reading Wallace because he keeps fretting about the benefits and drawbacks of empire in under the British, especially in India, and under the Dutch in Java and Sumatra. My understanding of the Dutch system (from Wallace) is that it was much like China under Mao, but with a profit motive for the Dutch. At this point in my reading, Wallace is not yet alarmed, but finds the Dutch have curtailed poverty, corruption and hunger. I believe he is thinking about the cost of curtailing these, but will wait to see whether he makes a critical assessment.

Wallace and Darwin studied distribution of similar species on islands, comparing one island to another to the mainland. This is their key to discovering principles of evolution. Wallace was especially interested in beetles and butterflies.

Steady Drummer

by jah_maya

On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.

A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

Blondie - term of friendship

I had finished my lunch at a little cafe in Wyoming. I had my bill, but no one was there to take my money. I pushed open the double, swinging "saloon" doors to the kitchen and there was my waitress, sitting on a counter with her back to me, occupied with punching keys on her cell phone. It was noisy in there, coolers were cooling.

"Blondie!", i said.

No response.

Then louder, "BLONDIE!"



from izzie_whizzie

She jumped down from the counter and said, "You can't be coming in here like that!"

"Then what should I do?"

"You should stand outside and WAIT!", she said. "And besides that, you can't be calling me Blondie. My name is MA KAY LEE. Why are people always callin' me Blondie?"

(She is about 20 years old, attractive, with hair that is too blond.)

"Will, I think when they call you Blondie that means they are getting ready to like you." i said.

She said, "Yeah, I think so, too."

Belief - Tricky Word

belief: any cognitive content held as true wordnetweb.princeton.edu



A man posted a photo to a geology group on Flickr showing a large rock with pits and canals in it, asking whether the viewers thought the pits were man-made or natural. One respondent said he could not tell. I said i thought it was natural and offered several links to other natural pools on rocks as evidence. A day or two later my post and the post of the other reviewer had been erased and his caption now reads, "Ceremonial Grinding Pots" and he notes below, 'It may be a watering hole, ground out by the Miwok or the Costanoan people of the central California coast near San Francisco. I believe these pots/pockets are man made, not naturally occuring."

So, he has a belief that they are man made. But why did he erase the responses to his question? Could he not believe they are man made and yet allow other opinions to remain? Apparently not. Ask yourself why he could not.