We have heard plenty about the dangers of peak oil, global warming, banking meltdowns, and global pandemics, but the most critical crisis of all, that of food, looms largely unnoticed. When we have thought about a food crisis it has usually been in terms of there not being enough food. But in recent times a […]
Continue readingGreenhouse Cost of Beef
Offset your driving by becoming a vegetarian! A study by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Tsukuba, Japan, showed that producing a kilogram of beef leads to the emission of greenhouse gases with a warming potential equivalent to 36.4 kilograms of carbon dioxide. That is about the same as driving the average […]
Continue readingThe Art of Letting Go – Double CD
“Just let go” we are often told, yet letting go never seems easy. This is often because we treat it as something we need to do; but letting go is an “undoing”, a releasing of the “holding on.” The first CD explores: The nature of attachment and non-attachment. Inner freedom as the freedom to choose […]
Continue readingUsury—The Root of All Evil?
Charging interest on a loan is so intrinsic to our economic system that few of us ever question it. Yet usury—as the practice is called—has been banned, at one time or another, by just about every religion. Not only does make the rich richer, and the poor poorer—with all the social tensions that engenders. It […]
Continue readingLoving Your True Self
Love your self. It’s a common refrain. One way to interpret this is loving who you are—accepting yourself just as you are, warts and all; having compassion for your shortfalls, while rejoicing in your gifts. Loving ourselves in this way relieves us of much self-judgment and self-criticism. We can also love ourselves at a deeper […]
Continue readingThe Roots of Thinking
Much of our thinking takes the form of self-talk—conversations we have with ourselves, inside our minds. Clearly, the original root of this verbal thinking is speech. Speech gave humans the ability to communicate with each other, share experiences, learn from each other, and amass a collective body of knowledge. Using verbal language within our own […]
Continue readingPigeon Play
It is a windy day. Across the street is a seven-storey office block with a flat roof. Two pigeons fly across the rooftop and over the edge. The gusting wind catches the pair, throwing them around in the air, tumbling them down towards the ground. Nearing the ground, they fly out of the wind. Then […]
Continue readingRat Smarts
Psychologists run laboratory rats through mazes and to test their learning abilities. But this example in the wild beats any laboratory experiment. Rats had nested in a rockery outside my kitchen door. Wanting to move them away to a more comfortable location in the forest, I set up one of those humane rat traps with […]
Continue readingBehind the Mirror Test for Self-Consciousness
It was recently shown that elephants passed the mirror test for self-consciousness. Along with chimps, orangutans, and dolphins, they recognized that they are seeing themselves in the mirror. However, other animals that may not pass the mirror test in its hard form, i.e. a positive recognizing themselves, do pass a softer form of the test […]
Continue readingWhalesong
We stopped the boat about two miles offshore, and switched off the engines. Immediately we could hear the singing of a humpback whale. I have heard them underwater many times. They are the ocean equivalent of birdsong in a forest; their moaning songs playing in the background, sometimes coming from miles away. But to hear […]
Continue reading