Showing posts with label belief. Show all posts
Showing posts with label belief. Show all posts

Friday, July 31, 2026

Ornithography – Book Review

Image source: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91SPJbcrhlL._SL1500_.jpg

Ornithography: An Illustrated Guide to Bird Lore & Symbolism (Hidden Languages)
by Jessica Roux

Birds and What They Mean to Us

I am a huge fan of dinosaurs and (I think) have a pretty good knowledge of these fascinating creatures. I decided to pick up this eye-catching book because I realized that, even though I was quite familiar with Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, and other such ancient dinosaurs, I had to expand my knowledge of the only surviving ones: birds. And I'm glad I did.

Ornithography by Jessica Roux is a lovely book celebrating birds and their connections with us humans. The author presents readers with 100 of her favorite birds (including the albatross, cassowary, heron, lapwing, raven, toucan, wren, and even the unfortunately already extinct dodo), each entry showing the meaning of the bird, the lore surrounding it, and a beautiful illustration drawn by the Nashville-based artist. I find Roux's writing style absolutely charming and delightful, and her unique, gorgeous drawings are something you should not miss out on! Thanks to Ornithography. not only have I acquired massive amounts of knowledge about our feathery friends, but I have also learned so much about human history and culture – in reading this amazing avian book, I could clearly see the great propensity our species has for symbolism and superstition. If you'd like to know about birds and how we perceive them as humans, I highly recommend reading this gem of avian literature by Jessica Roux!

Have you read Ornithography? What do you think about this book? Share your opinion in the comment section below!
Continue reading

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Quote #61

"I would choose to know the truth, however agonizing it is, over comforting lies any day." - Klinsman Hinjaya
Continue reading

Thursday, June 4, 2020

My First-Ever Podcast on Dinosaurs!

This past week has been a little surreal for me. Out of the blue, a former colleague of mine Aep Syaefullah, the host of Kantor Penasaran, contacted me and asked whether I would like to talk in his podcast about one of the most influential things in my life: dinosaurs. 🦖🦕 Is this for real? The invitation left me psychologically unstable for some time, and eventually I said yes! I felt it would be a great chance to channel my interest to the general public, specifically the Indonesians, the vast majority of whom, in my opinion, are indifferent to the majestic creatures. So, on June 1, 2020 we did the recording and talked about dinosaurs for about 45 minutes. Here is a poster for the event:


The podcast can be accessed on the following platforms: SpotifyAnchor, Google Podcasts, Breaker, and RadioPublic. The title is "Klinsman H: Talking about Dinosaurs in Indonesia" and, as you must have noticed, it was recorded in Indonesian, our native language. Although we did have a discussion about dinosaurs in Indonesia, the podcast actually covers more than that: what dinosaurs mean to me, my dinosaur-related collection, whether Komodo dragons are honest-to-goodness dinosaurs, and so on. Here is a snippet of the podcast:


Listen to the full podcast here:

I'm really sorry for any imperfections in the podcast – to be honest, I was somewhat nervous! However, I hope that the audience can enjoy listening to our conversation and get something useful from it! 😊

Related articles:
Continue reading

Monday, May 14, 2018

Quote #43

"Yesterday's appalling attacks on Surabayan churches clearly show the unspeakable power of deeply rooted belief. It is probably hard to imagine people willingly exploding themselves for the holy grail, which presumably is the ultimate reward of living in so-called Heaven forevermore; yet it is plain real and should sort of act as a good reminder of the potential danger of such a conviction." - Klinsman Hinjaya, on the bombings of three churches in Surabaya, Indonesia on May 13, 2018
Continue reading

Monday, February 5, 2018

Are We a Perfect Being?

The statement that we, humans (I believe no other organisms are capable of reading and understand this line), are a sort of creation that is impeccable, flawless, and the most majestic of all is ubiquitous. But do we really live up to the grandeur reputation that is passionately voiced in many, or even all, corners of the world?


The answer is "unfortunately" no. Let's probe into why this is the case.

Humans are living beings, just like other animals (I say "other" because we are animals), such as fish, iguanas, cats, dogs, and dinosaurs (birds included), as well as plants, which comprise those flowery stuctures making up your beautiful garden, if you do have one. All living things, including our little friends and foes bacteria, undergo a morphing process called evolution, that is gradual change in response to their environment for the sake of survival. In this harsh world, as we know and realize, sh*t happens, so not all individuals make it. Those who do not manage to continue their odysseys in this world are extinct, leaving the others with their "successful", selected traits. This phenomenon is known as natural selection, which, along with the theory of evolution, was proposed by British naturalist Charles Darwin in his 1859 seminal book On the Origin of Species.

Intermezzo: It is a real shame that the theory of evolution is still denied by many people, claiming that it is "just a theory." One must comprehend that scientists use the term differently from the hoi polloi, and we do have such an abundant amount of evidence pointing to the truth of evolution that it is unarguably, in everyday language, a fact.

Evolution has been going on ever since the first organisms appeared on Earth and the unfathomably deep passage of time that has passed by has resulted in the wondrous world we inhabit today, with the evolution-shaped, extraordinarily rich diversity of life spread all around it. It can be said that we are hyperlucky since we are some of the last remnants of life (shouldn't we be grateful?), those that represent the leaves on the tree of life or, in scientific terminology, phylogenetic tree.

All the individuals of the current life on this planet are "champions" in that we are the last bits of myriad unbroken chains that lead to the first ancestors of all living beings that have ever existed in the world, implying survival of mind-bogglingly immense magnitude. And all of us come with features that were left by our predecessors as a legacy. Modern humans have super complex brains and definitely are the most intelligent species on the globe. However, if you carefully examine the human body, many of the organs are not as "perfect" as people generally might think. Take the eye as an example. While it is true that our eyes are magnificent, they are not as remarkable as those of eagles, which can see four or five times farther than humans. Nevertheless, it doesn't mean eagles' eyes are "better" or "more perfect" than humans'; eagles' eyes evolved in that way because they are required for hunting prey, while humans do not need such visual acuity for their survival. Returning to the fabulosity of the human brain, our intelligence hallmark exists merely as a result of adaptation to our surroundings. This is also to say that we, including our brains, are still constantly evolving towards new trends as necessary – there is no such word or expression as "peak" or "end point" in the dictionary of evolution. In his best-selling book The God Delusion, British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins also enlighteningly points out that humans do possess infirmities caused by things such as lower back pain and prolapsed uteruses, owing to our upright stance after being in the quadrupedal mode for a vast swath of time.

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that Homo sapiens is a very successful species, and with our brain and, especially, I think, our social bonds and skills (among all the "strengths" we possess), we can make up for our "weaknesses". It would have been difficult for a single human to kill a mammoth alone, so he or she worked together to take it down. We couldn't swim like fish, so we came up with ships, scuba-diving apparatus, and the like. We couldn't fly as birds do, so we invented the airplane and similar things intended for navigating through the air. We even remain the only group of living beings capable of exploring the space. Humans, in a sense, are definitely a barrier-breaking species.

To add another argument against our "perfectness", it is useful to think that a number of members of our own species are born with diseases or abnormalities. Think of those cancer-suffering or limbless newborns, for example. Clearly, pathologies can occur at any point in our lives and this is, in fact, natural, as we ourselves are part of the natural world. Additionally, needless to say, we all eventually will come to a point called death.

So are we a perfect being? Well, as they say, nobody's perfect. ;)
Continue reading

Saturday, May 13, 2017

Quote #15

"It is perhaps hard to let go of something you've held onto for a long time. Yet, when it is not right, you know you have to." - Klinsman Hinjaya
Continue reading