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if the stump could speak
Jumper Protests Human Folly
20 JunThe New York Times reports:
Racing regulators kept hearing the reports: trainers were giving their horses a powerful performance-enhancing potion drawn from the backs of a type of South American frog.
When asked for a comment, Jumper the Frog responded,”This is an outrage to frogs and horses everywhere. Have these humans no shame?”
Jumper further stated that the Amphibian Protection Association is investigating rumors that members of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia have been licking frog backs in late night sessions in the gardens at Monticello. “If these rumors prove true,” Jumper remarked, “the consequences will be most grave. Humans must not be allowed to continue acting like narcissistic damn fools. Frankly, they’re stinking up the planet. They need to stop it. Right now.”
A Story About Truth, Tradition, Dialog, and Groovology
17 JunThe following is a presentation of the Truth and Traditions Theatre of Polymorphic Politics, Jumper the Frog and Kong the Gorilla, proprietors. Since the adults are not getting the message, it’s in language suitable for five-year olds.
* * * * * Continue reading
How to stop world catastrophe – Since You Asked – Salon.com
12 JunThere’s always TRANSITION.
What if you could join an army to fight global environmental catastrophe? If you could simply enlist and say, give me whatever I will need to fight this thing, give me a cot, teach me how to fight, and I will fight it?
I’ll bet lots of people would join such an army.
But there is no such army to join.
Perhaps some philanthropist will fund the formation of such an army and equip it to do the kind of fighting that must be done. Until then, millions are faced with the same questions and the same concerns and must individually seek out ways to do their part. You can work for environmental organizations and political organizations and take direct action and send money and sign petitions and talk to your neighbors and many other things, all of which are good things to do, but I am sure many people feel as you do: paralyzed, incredulous.
I wish I had answers. I am, unfortunately, just a writer.
via How to stop world catastrophe – Since You Asked – Salon.com.
Our new era of anxiety – Neuroscience – Salon.com
4 JunThe article reports high levels of anxiety in the contemporary world. Would more dancing, singing, and grooving help cut that down?
While evolution programmed anxious emotions to arise in threatening and uncertain situations, culture helps define what particular objects and situations people consider to be dangerous, what cues activate their fear responses, and what sorts of things they worry about as well as the degree of intensity or duration with which one should respond. For example, while witchcraft is a common source of anxiousness in many African societies, it is unlikely to be a source of fear in modern Western cultures. Witch fear is seen as reasonable in the former but not the latter. Fears of being buried alive dominated nineteenth century consciousness in the United Kingdom and United States but would be extremely rare at present; conversely, food allergies, a rare source of anxiousness in the past, are a dominant source of worry in the contemporary United States.
Nearly one-tenth of hemisphere’s mammals unlikely to outrun climate change: study
15 MayIt’s not just about us. It’s about all the animals and plants in the biosphere.
For the first time a new study considers whether mammals will actually be able to move to those new areas before they are overrun by climate change. Carrie Schloss, University of Washington research analyst in environmental and forest sciences, is lead author of the paper out online the week of May 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We underestimate the vulnerability of mammals to climate change when we look at projections of areas with suitable climate but we don’t also include the ability of mammals to move, or disperse, to the new areas,” Schloss said.
Indeed, more than half of the species scientists have in the past projected could expand their ranges in the face of climate change will, instead, see their ranges contract because the animals won’t be able to expand into new areas fast enough, said co-author Josh Lawler, UW associate professor of environmental and forest sciences.
via Nearly one-tenth of hemisphere’s mammals unlikely to outrun climate change: study.
Global Marshall Plan
14 MayA National Security Strategy of Generosity and Care:
In the 21st century, our security and well being depends on the well being of everyone else on this planet as well as on the health of the planet itself.
An important way to manifest this caring is through a Global Marshall Plan that would dedicate 1-2% of the U.S. annual Gross Domestic Product each year for the next twenty years to eliminate domestic and global poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, and inadequate health care and repair damage done to the environment by 150 years of ecologically irresponsible forms of industrialization and “modernization” throughout much of the world.
via Global Marshall Plan.
Dance to a Different Drummer: Groovology and Politics
14 MayGroovology, about the groove, the human groove, the dancing and music-making at the heart of human community and togetherness. A line of thinkers going back through Darwin and Rousseau argued that it’s music that made clever apes into human beings – and, wouldn’t you know? that connects to the apes, the rabbits, fish, bees, flowers and the earth as well. Because we sing and dance we are human. Groovology is lightness and joy, but also sorrow and healing. It binds us together in common action and feeling, in community.
What has that to do with politics?
Politics too is about community, about negotiating among that various needs and desires of people living in a group. When the group is small, the negotiations are face-to-face, as is grooving. When the group is small, groovology and politics are commensurate, their connection is obvious.
It is when the group gets large, very large, that the connection is obscured. The USofA is very large, our political leaders distant from the local places where we politic and negotiate. And yet there are obvious connections, still.
Politics is not all backrooms and stolen votes. Politics is also ceremony, and ceremony has music: Hail to the Chief, The Star Spangled Banner, Battle Hymn of the Republic, Washington Post March, Taps, and much else. Continue reading
Orangutans At Miami Zoo Use iPads To Communicate « CBS Tampa
10 MayIt’s their world too.
The 8-year-old twins love their iPad. They draw, play games and expand their vocabulary. Their family’s teenagers also like the hand-held computer tablets, too, but the clan’s elders show no interest.
The orangutans at Miami’s Jungle Island apparently are just like people when it comes to technology. The park is one of several zoos experimenting with computers and apes, letting its six orangutans use an iPad to communicate and as part of a mental stimulus program. Linda Jacobs, who oversees the program, hopes the devices will eventually help bridge the gap between humans and the endangered apes.
H/t Tyler Cowan.
via Orangutans At Miami Zoo Use iPads To Communicate « CBS Tampa.
stump speech
8 Mayif the stump could speak
what would it say
if trees had standing in court
would they get their day
if each pol had to speak
from an actual stump
would we be so quick
to put Nature in the dump
— Charlie Keil
Truth and Traditions 