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a very good choice. in times past, people's names were often descriptions of who they were. the name might be based on physical characteristics, behavior, or the environment (circumstance or place) into which they were born. my name, most literally, means "from the West." being born in California and having lived most of my life in the the West, i was well named. i hope that i am not closed-minded about places -- i wouldn't mind visiting distant corners of the Earth -- but were i confined to western North America (the truest West) for the rest of my days, that confinement would be to sweet scented deserts, rain forests saturated with life, monoliths of glacier bejeweled granite, silent sanctuaries of redwood and hemlock and bristle cone and saguaro, aromas of sage and juniper ... at least in those wonderful places where man has not yet assaulted our planet's riches too severely. "Whenever I ... escape into the California backlands from the suburbia where I live, the smell of distance excites me, the largeness and the clarity take the scales from my eyes, and I respond as unthinkingly as a salmon that swims past a rivermouth and tastes the waters of its birth. ..." - Wallace Stegner left: crossing Coyote Creek, northwest of Borrego Springs, San Diego County (one of my daughters took the photo).

the quest ... :
by nature, i am emotionally and intellectually a skeptic. i don't believe that almond-eyed space aliens visit earth and abduct people. i don't believe that the virgin mary's face appears in tortillas. there are far better reasons to disbelieve these things than to believe them. although a skeptic, i am not a cynic. far from it. the material universe (galaxies, stars, trees, nucleotide codons, the gluon force, quantum phenomena, perhaps vibrating superstrings) is a wonderful playground of information, fascination, and unspeakable beauty, but it is not the "end all" of reality. philosophically, i am a skeptic and a transcendentalist -- a Platonist, if you will. i believe that there is a profound reality beyond matter, beyond our somewhat familiar four-dimensional space-time. when honestly regarded, the material world itself testifies strongly to an external greater Cause. the alternative view, philosophical materialism, as an a priori framework for regarding the deepest mysteries of the universe, has no demonstrable explanatory power in its attempts to consider the existence of matter, physical 'laws', organized complexity [we might more accurately say specified complexity], life, cognition of beauty, intelligence. despite its claims of sobriety, materialism lapses into fanciful whimsy about such nebulous ideas as "panspermia" and such illogical ideas as quantum fluctuation as a creator of physical laws (an "inside-out" conception, at best) and of the spontaneous generation (abiogenesis) of life in "primordial soup"; actually leaving the ultimate questions quite beyond its own blind dictums, while theistic (and here I mean monotheistic) philosophy not only explains such objects and occurrences (including the "big bang" theory of the origin of space-time and matter), it consistently fits the physical evidence as science moves into new areas of 'knowledge' (see my essay on the inferences of science versus the dictates of narrow philosophical presuppositions). the most reasonable explanation to the great mysteries of the universe (and the unknown beyond) is one that does not require me to be intellectually dishonest about the extreme improbabilities of certain popular materialist precepts (improbabilities of such a nature and quantity that they are logically impossibilities). the most reasonable explanation is the one constantly inferred by nature itself -- intelligent design by that entity which Einstein called the 'Super Intellect' and which Darwin, even in his pursuit of materialist explanations, acknowledged as the necessary First Cause. i believe that this Super Intellect is the same entity which ancient Hebrew writers referred to as the omniscient Almighty; that this First Cause is the entity "from eternity" which Isaiah recorded as "the First". sound mysterious? it is the greatest mystery we can reasonably consider. as C. S. Lewis said; "if we found that we could fully understand it, that very fact would show it was not what it professes to be -- the inconceivable, the uncreated, the thing from beyond nature." spiritually, i am a Christian. in saying that, i do not align myself with the blustering "christian" ayatollahs of the 'religious right', whose words and practices are so often their own and not those of the Teacher, who said "learn from me, for I am gentle and humble." so it has been across the ages, people too readily revere their own ideas and/or uncritically defer to those ideas which are popularly esteemed. of course ideas are important, but they do not equate to Truth. the Truth is out there. although not perceived, it is everywhere. "the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." i must not move quickly past that wonderful invitation -- "learn from me, for I am gentle and humble." as much as i dislike the realization that i have often been stupid, i am somehow comforted by the knowledge that we all have this problem, and although we must try, there is only so much we can do about it. what disturbs me more is when i realize that i have been neither gentle nor humble. gentleness and humility are the antithesis of stupidity. compared to the mysteries of actual Truth, all of our presumed knowledge is at best infantile, and at worst a self deception, yet this obstacle is perfectly counter-balanced by gentleness and humility. it is correctly stated that humility cannot be acquired by seeking it directly. the more we pursue it, the more we are aware that we do not posses it -- so how might one acquire these most desirable qualities? the Teacher has revealed this as well. it turns out that gentleness and humility are the result, the product, of a willful decision to love. and this is precisely what love is. it is not so easily altered as is a mere feeling. the idea that love is essentially a feeling is the world's greatest deception. a popular songstress tells us that "love isn't true, it's just something that we do." she demonstrates the popular confusion as to what love is. mere feelings -- as opposed to well considered thoughts and willful decisions to act -- are, of course, not at all "true"; rather they are a temporary invitation to self indulgent self deception. Truth, and therefore true love, is quite different than something temporary or self focused. Bernard of Clairvaux said "true love is precisely this; that it does not seek its own interests." nine hundred years later, most people have not understood this. Immanuel Kant said that this "is practical, and not pathological, love," and that "such love resides in the will and not in the propensities of feeling." love is an unalterable and unbounded decision, a personal and therefore unilateral decision, a gift to all existence, including one's very self, and not only the opposite of stupidity, but the greatest Truth which humans can know. for each of humanity's festering diseases, love is the only true antidote. in the decision to love, all of humanity's ugliest flaws -- greed, indifference, ignorance, arrogance, violence, bigotry, fanaticism, selfish myopia, environmental irresponsibility, even emotional insecurity -- are forever rejected.
so do i suggest that this is easy -- this idea simply to love. no way. like anything True, love is complex; which means it can be difficult. i frequently fail miserably. i am a pilgrim.

why i hate 'virtual reality' [television, movies, talk shows, and computer games]: it is clear to me that this is the understanding of a relatively small number of people. submission to television shows, videos, and video games is -- in not-so-subtle ways -- similar to the condition of death. after all, to experience these things one does exchange a portion of his life for them. is actual existence so poor a condition that i should choose something less? no. so what do i do instead? probably the laundry. i enjoy reading books a great deal. click on the book (to the left) to see some of my reviews and recommendations.

top ten.

night sky.

family photos: page 1. page 2.

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprise? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." - Thoreau

My site includes only a few links to external resources. Two relating to astronomy and astrophysics and a few relating to human quality of life. US political leaders and policy makers pay occasional lip-service to "human rights" concerns but invariably act only when human rights violations can be used as fodder for "police actions" where US monetary interests are at stake. Amnesty International intervenes as a defender of human dignity and freedoms, without deference to political or monetary agendas, simply because justice and compassion require it. Check with Amnesty International, there may be easy ways in which you can be a champion of freedom and human dignity (e.g., sign a petition).