Tag Archives: evolution

Armadillo

dictionary with letter A

Armadillo: (n) a nocturnal omnivorous mammal that has large claws for digging and a body covered in bony plates. Armadillos are native to the south central US and Central and South America.

Along with crocodiles and spiders, armadillos clearly remind us that our world is ancient and was once occupied by really scary creatures.

Even though these animals are now much smaller and have a shrunken fear factor, you can certainly comprehend that in their heyday, they must have turned a head or two.

Matter of fact, the first time I saw an armadillo in the middle of the road while driving through Texas, I pulled over and stared at it for a while.

In some ways it looks like a knight in unshining armor. A really ugly knight, mind you.

Rather than seeming to be something natural, the bony plates on the outside of the body look like some kid placed them as a joke on his pet dog and then released the puppy into the wild, and stood behind a cactus and laughed.

The armadillo is also kind of like the pineapple of the animal kingdom. Even though the fruit inside the pineapple is really quite sumptuous, the outside looks like it was constructed by a medieval tinsman.

So it always causes me to reflect on the great debate between creation and evolution.

I will have to admit, if God made all of these creatures at the same time, He certainly had to be on some sort of heavenly acid trip.

And if evolution is completely accurate, it’s difficult to comprehend why the armadillo survived and the stegosaurus ended up in the pits.

So for me, I land somewhere betwixt: envisioning a God who used evolution to create, and a Creator who even to this day, continues to evolve.

 

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Apple-pie order

dictionary with letter A

Ap·ple-pie or·der (n): perfect order or neatness.

When I read today’s definition, I realized I had no recollection or information on this terminology, and since I am a writer on the Internet, I am fully qualified to expound on it in great detail.

For I will tell you–I like the phrase “apple-pie order,” and I realize that it is never used in our generation simply because we find that a certain amount of disarray is necessary to convey our individuality.

If you want to lose friends and not influence people, just suggest they initiate organization. It is the classic definition of “buzz kill.”

Because even though people cannot argue with your assertion that a certain amount of prioritizing is essential, they feel very American and freedom-minded by continuing their chaos in bliss.

What is the apple-pie order of life? Does it vary from one situation to another? Or has the evolution of the human experience shown us exactly how we work best?

I think that we, as human beings, are heart, soul, mind and body creatures.

When we make our decisions based on our bodies, we normally end up in some derivation of excess or hedonism.

If we decide our life goal based on what we think, we borrow too much from our training and parents’ philosophy and never gain our own sense of purpose.

Even those who feel they’re very spiritual by promoting prayer and God-seeking in the forefront tend to sprout too much piety and not enough practicality.

So we must begin with the heart. If we don’t deal with our feelings and rectify them with reality, they will hang around and kick us in the butt if we turn our backs.

So I think the apple-pie order when attempting to place things in a realistic framework is to start out with:

  1. What do I feel about this?
  2. Is there abiding knowledge or wisdom on the issue?
  3. Can I think of a way to take what I’ve just discovered about my feelings and universal truth and come up with a great idea?
  4. Can I motivate this old bod that I’ve carried around and encourage it to perform the functions that make me appear adept instead of inept?

So it turns out that the apple-pie order is so much like the dessert itself: it works better if you take some time to seek out an a la mode.

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Ape

dictionary with letter A

Ape (n.) 1. an animal like a monkey but without a tail, such as a chimpanzee or gorilla. (v) 2. to imitate.

It’s confusing to me.

People who advocate for Darwinian evolution also are the greatest proponents for higher education. Yet they certainly are not trying to get the chimpanzee to evolve to Harvard.

On the other hand, those who insist that God created man from the dust of the earth, and that we have no missing link to the ape, often discourage scientific discovery and brain teasing.

How bizarre.

I guess I’m one of those weird people who find evolution completely possible until you reach the point of leaping from the chimpanzee to the human being, so I contend there was a God who created the process, but yearns for the Homo sapiens wing of creation to pursue science, nature and knowledge to the utmost.

Call me obtuse and surely you must.

It appears to me that people use evolution to promote their atheism and creationism to attack the infidel.

No one actually sits down and thinks about how this all might have come to be, but instead, looks for a position to perch from which to throw stones.

I love nature. I just believe it was created. And I am sure that there was evolution involved, and even find that the Good Book strongly suggests that the “survival of the fittest” is not only practical, but spiritual.

I have no confidence whatsoever that a gorilla or an ape of any sort would find kinship with me simply because neither of us sport a tail.

 

 

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Antibody

dictionary with letter AAntibody (n): a blood protein produced in response to and counteracting a specific antigen.

I know I encounter futility when I come across someone who tells me that life is complicated.

Actually, life is amazingly simple–as long as you’re willing to accept how it has progressed instead of creating your own “revolution against the evolution.”

This becomes evident to me when I realize that in order to build up resistance to disease, you actually have to encounter the vermin and have your body react with the positive energy to reject the infection, and make sure the varmint doesn’t return again.

Why wouldn’t the parallel be just as true in our emotional, spiritual and mental lives?

Emotionally, if I don’t encounter all sorts of personalities and even struggles, do I not become a hermit–or worse, a bigot?

Spiritually, if I don’t understand how my faith stacks up against other ideas, realizing where there are similarities and also aware of the differences, how will I ever have the endurance to achieve the end and be saved?

And mentally, if the ideas shared by my upbringing are not challenged and questioned, so that I can derive the best of the precepts for future use, will I not become a mere provincial buffoon?

I love antibodies.

It’s physical evidence that we have been through the battle and we have won.

Stop complicating life and realize that it comes down to simply being willing to place yourself in the mix and trust that your ideas, your spirituality, your feelings and even your immune system … are strong enough to survive the competition.  

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Antediluvian

dictionary with letter A

Antediluvian: (adj) of or belonging to the time before the Biblical flood

I must not be the only one–or if I am the only one, I would have to question why I find myself alone.

I would enjoy being allowed to believe in a God who loves people, challenges us to excellence, and asks us to be tolerant of one another without being tied in with barefoot, emotionally Neanderthal sorts who seem to permeate the sanctuary of spiritual thought with outdated concepts and hurtful expletives.

It is very easy in an agnostic-driven society to become the target of pseudo-intellectual critics who try to trap you into defending Jonah and the whale, Daniel in the lion’s den and Noah and the flood.

Recently when I told a friend that I believe that the trinity of God, Nature and Science have no argument with one another and are complementary, he became incensed, insisting that he wanted them separate because the charm of each one lies in its difference from the others.

I was bewildered by that thought. I decided to leave him to his own mental escapade and walk off quietly into the distance.

If there was a great flood, there was also a great season of evolution which preceded it, where dinosaurs walked the face of the earth.

I have no problem with that.

I don’t look at stories from the Good Book as being eyewitness accounts with accompanying photographs. I look at them as tales passed from one generation to another, to encourage the fresh offspring to pursue kindness, goodness, gentleness and hope.

Unfortunately, like in any book, extra narrative is thrown in which does not advance the story.

  • I want to believe in God without having to defend the writings that surround Him.
  • I want to love people because God loves people, without believing that some of them are chosen and others, uncircumcised.
  • I want to live my life with a sense of purpose and emotional grandeur instead of feeling as if I am “one with the walrus.”

I don’t think I’m alone here.

When religion stops putting pressure on mankind to be morally astute, and atheists realize that a life without a Father turns this joint into an orphanage, we will actually begin to make progress … through our humanhood with one another. 

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Annunciate

dictionary with letter A

Annuciate: (v) to announce something.

“Hear ye, hear ye!” the town crier squalled at the top of his lungs.

To annunciate.

Yet I believe the definition has evolved over the years, has it not? It is no longer about making an announcement, but rather, the idea that to annunciate is to speak clearly.

Maybe this change was necessary because over the years misunderstanding has tainted the original proclamation.

We must realize that clarity is just as important as purity. There are many people who feel they can annunciate great truth from holy books, but because they do it with a hypocritical accent or a vicious tone, the words never quite land on the human heart with comprehension.

I’ve heard individuals suggest that somebody speaks “with a nasal tone.” Actually the nose is a great reverberator, and when used, generates clearness of speech rather than inhibiting it.

Sometimes people fail to annunciate because they don’t want their meaning to be grasped. Ambiguity is a great advantage to those who have decided to be chicken-shit.

Case in point: politics always looks for sentences that can have double or even triple interpretations so as to protect the politician from defining a position.

Yet sooner or later, those who announce with purpose and represent their cause precisely are the ones who advance the human race in the direction of unity.

For after all, once you proclaim “liberty and justice for all” it is difficult to tolerate segregation and inequity.

And when you’ve stood in a pulpit and spoken “God is love” and the words ring out like a bell in the heart of mankind, it is nearly impossible to transform that thought into a vengeful and hateful Being who wishes to destroy portions of His creation because of their status.

To annunciate: to announce, unafraid to articulate … knowing that the truth that makes us free must be spoken faithfully.

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Aisle

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Aisle: (n) a passage between rows of seats in a building such as a church or theater, an airplane or a train: e.g. the show had the audience dancing in the aisle.

I shall use the airplane as my example. It happens in three phases.

As an adult male, I have approximately a forty-five pound ratio of wiggle in my room. What I mean by that is that sometimes my girth will soar–if that’s possible–to forty-five pounds heavier. And on other occasions I will drop that forty-five pounds, reaching my more svelte.

As you can imagine, in most intervals, I hover between.

I can tell where I am in the various phases of my evolution by walking down the aisle in an airplane. If I am peaking, I must perform the task sliding completely sideways. If I am in my lean and keen phase, I can stand and walk completely upright, facing forward, without carrying other people’s newspapers with me along the way. If I land between the two conditions, I can move forward a few feet before a buttock will catch on a seat, demanding that I shake and rattle my way free before proceeding forward.

It is a marvelous test to determine my progress or regression–perhaps even more effective than weighing on a scale.

It is the “aisle test.”

And I’ll say … preferable.

ADD

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

ADD: (abbr.) attention deficit disorder

Ironically, I was thinking about writing an essay on how Thomas Jefferson, who penned the Declaration of Independence, was considered by many of his cohorts–those gentlemen we call “the forefathers”–to be a rather obnoxious sort because he was always bouncing from one idea to another, proposing several different drafts and considering every paragraph and line in his document, like some sort of nervous kid on a sugar high.

Oops. There he is again.

The fly.

He got let into the room yesterday. I HATE a fly in my room. Do you know why? They lie in some corner, dormant, until, in some fit of gregarious insect joviality, they join you for dinner, watching TV or sipping your coffee.

I want to kill the fly. Is that wrong?

Speaking of Thomas Jefferson, he had a tendency to question the silliest little words, wondering if they would be understandable to future generations, and what that generation would consider to be freedom and their concept of the Revolution.

Do you like that song by the Beatles? I’m talking about the song, Revolution.

Do you know what I once did? I was doing a television show and wanted to include the song, but every time I tried to edit the song in, it was distorted. So I bought myself a mixer to try to remove the distortion, and then someone pointed out to me that the first part of the song commences with a distorted guitar.

Which brings me back to Thomas Jefferson. I think he finally realized there’s no such thing as a perfect document, and the Declaration of Independence would have to be interpreted by future generations based upon our evolution in democracy.

Do you really think we came from monkeys? I was thinking about evolution. We’ve never really found the missing link, have we? I have met some folks worthy of study, but even they would not be conclusive to such a claim.

It’s not that I would mind being a monkey, it’s just that cooking with only bananas would get very old–let’s say, lose its “a-peel.”

Even though I suppose you could use plantains. Do you like them? Plantains? Do I really want a non-sweet banana? Do I need a potato substitute? Have potatoes failed me?

I like Mr. Potato Head. I was one of those weird kids who used to put the ear in the nose and the nose on the mouth…and then I would present it to people, thinking it was funny, and they just thought it was weird.

Yes, it was weird that Thomas Jefferson fussed so much about the Declaration of Independence.

Do you think maybe he had ADD?

 

Adapt

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Adapt: (v) 1. make something suitable for a new use; modify 2. to become adjusted to new conditions

Some words just are NOT synonyms. Even though we think they are, we need to take another look.

As I studied today’s definition, I realized that for years I have considered the word “adapt” and the word “evolve” to be twins.

Evolve (or evolution, if you will) happens AGAINST my will.

Adapt, on the other hand, is me having the option of getting ahead of the Darwinian curve and being in the front of the line instead of shoved to the back, in danger of falling into the tar pits.

It is a powerful difference.

If I will use my emotional, spiritual, mental and physical capabilities to discern the signs of my times, I can peek ahead to where things are going and prepare myself for the transition instead of being startled by circumstances and forced into submission.

So what is the best way to achieve an “adapting mindset” instead of an “evolutionary profile?”

1. Don’t be stubborn. Being wrong is fun if you catch it instead of your neighbor catching it.

2. For some reason, things don’t stay the same, so look for where the change in life is for the better and get there first.

3. Understand that organizations always maintain tradition, and are forced into evolution instead of willingly marching toward adaptation.

4. Don’t be afraid to be the drummer instead of just a marcher to the drum beat. Some things are obvious. For instance, you can’t live in a free society and tell other folks they can’t be free.

5. And finally, rejoice in the humor that you are not in control, but CAN control your OWN destiny by being flexible instead of being a big old ugly stick-in-the-mud.

I am learning to adapt so I won’t be blown away by the evolution.

It is an exciting choice.

It is the difference.

Adapt

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Adapt: (v) 1. make something suitable for a new use; modify 2. to become adjusted to new conditions

Some words just are NOT synonyms. Even though we think they are, we need to take another look.

As I studied today’s definition, I realized that for years I have considered the word “adapt” and the word “evolve” to be twins.

Evolve

(or evolution, if you will) happens AGAINST my will.

Adapt

, on the other hand, is me having the option of getting ahead of the Darwinian curve and being in the front of the line instead of shoved to the back, in danger of falling into the tar pits.

It is a powerful difference.

If I will use my emotional, spiritual, mental and physical capabilities to discern the signs of my times, I can peek ahead to where things are going and prepare myself for the transition instead of being startled by circumstances and forced into submission.

So what is the best way to achieve an “adapting mindset” instead of an “evolutionary profile?”

1. Don’t be stubborn. Being wrong is fun if you catch it instead of your neighbor catching it.

2. For some reason, things don’t stay the same, so look for where the change in life is for the better and get there first.

3. Understand that organizations always maintain tradition, and are forced into evolution instead of willingly marching toward adaptation.

4. Don’t be afraid to be the drummer instead of just a marcher to the drum beat. Some things are obvious. For instance, you can’t live in a free society and tell other folks they can’t be free.

5. And finally, rejoice in the humor that you are not in control, but CAN control your OWN destiny by being flexible instead of being a big old ugly stick-in-the-mud.

I am learning to adapt so I won’t be blown away by the evolution.

It is an exciting choice.

It is the difference.