Kaleidoscopic Topics

 I was trying to come up with a catchy and concise title for this post, and although the above title may sound maudlin (because I had to keep it so short), at least it probably got your attention enough to get you thinking "Boy, what a sappy, maudlin title!"   Now I can get onto the fun part of my purpose-statement: explaining my personal take on all 8-plus billion of us being special. First, however, I have to get a little doom-and-gloom out of the way: Actually, I think all life forms are special, but for the moment I'll stick to human-beings - within the human species alone, and regardless of advances in language, communication and other metrics of civilization too many human beings remain marginalized, and indeed dehumanized.  I'm concerned about whether advances in social media and other communications technologies are accelerating, rather than decelerating this tragedy of dehumanizing others.   In being concerned about the uses of social media, I know...

 A short while ago a friend with a different blog described a vacation in Maine in which she photographed a plaque describing rock formations of the area.  I am always curious about the geological history of places, so began reading the contents.  It turns out that this area of Maine traces is geological roots to the Silurian Period I had fun looking up some articles on the Silurian Period in the Encylopedia Brittanica, and USGS websites and  found out that during the Silurian Period there was a supercontinent called Gondwana which at one point filled much of the Southern Hemisphere. Check out some maps of this ancient continent and you'll see that towards the end of (Retrieved today at  Gondwana | Ancient Landmass, Plate Tectonics & Climate | Britannica ) the Silurian  period, due to factors like continental drift, Gondwana begins to form a rough octopus shape and you find the beginnings of Africa, Australia, and South America as relatively tiny land m...