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Wednesday, December 10, 2003
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 Tom Atlee counsels those who wish to survive crisis fatigue: 1)Let go of outcome. 2)Not only are we not in control, we're not un-involved. 3)Look for positive possibilities (in the crises we face) and ways to partner them into greater probability. 4)So let us ask: What is possible here in these emerging crises for us, for those we love, for our communities, our societies, our world? Do the chances look slim? Do the outcomes seem impossible to grasp? Often they do. But isn't that what makes life an adventure? 5)I've come to believe that things are getting better and better and worse and worse, faster and faster, simultaneously. 6)That's so important I'm going to repeat it. Whether I expect the best or the worst, my expectations interfere with my will to act. 7)I've started viewing both optimism and pessimism as passive spectator sports, as forms of disengagement masquerading as involvement. Both optimism and pessimism trick me into judging life and betting on the odds, rather than diving into life with my whole self, with my full co-creative energy. I think the emerging crises call us to transcend such false end-games like optimism and pessimism. I think they call us to act like a spiritually healthy person who has just learned they have heart disease: We can use each dire prognosis as a stimulant for reaching more deeply into life and co-creating positive change. (12/10/03)
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12:20:41 PM 
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 Craig Russell writes: We live in a society of victims. Our culture encourages us to believe that everything in our lives was caused, or can be cured, by others. It tells us that nothing is our fault, and that we have no responsibility for anything. If we eat too much, drink too much, lust too much – if we can’t cope with life – it’s not because we’re weak or because there’s any failing in ourselves. We blame our parents or our job, or maybe we claim to have a disease. Accordingly, many of us believe that the restrictions on our rights, that our vaunted American freedoms, are being taken from us by others. It’s the government’s fault, or that of big business. But neither of these institutions sprang full blown like Athena from the head of Zeus. They have, instead, grown and developed from the thoughts and concepts, the wants and needs, of the people they serve, and each of us bears some small responsibility for what they have become. If government becomes cruel and repressive, if business becomes sly and underhanded, then perhaps they do this in response to the desires of the people and to give them what they want. And what Americans want, generally speaking, is Power – power to control the natural world around them, to bend it to their will and to get what they want. Many of them will deny this when baldly confronted with it, face-to-face, just as Peter three times denied Jesus. But such denials do not and cannot alter the facts of the situation. Let’s take, for example, the simple matter of tea and toast. Eating, after all, is one of our primary functions as humans, as animals, on this planet. Before all else, we must stay alive, we must maintain our organic systems, our bodies, and to do that we must therefore eat. We must consume other life forms, whether animal or vegetable. We need hydrocarbons that have been sparked by plants with life energy from the sun. And we also need water, that liquid combination of hydrogen and oxygen that constitutes so very much of our earthly bodies. (12/10/03)
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 BBC Environment -- Humans have been warming the Earth's climate for the last 10,000 years, US scientist William Ruddiman claims. The University of Virginia professor says agriculture has put greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, pushing up temperatures by about one Celsius. This, he claims, has broadly balanced the cooling that should have come from a natural reduction in the Sun's heat reaching Earth over the same period. The professor has presented his ideas to the American Geophysical Union. The AGU is holding its annual autumn meeting here in San Francisco. Over timescales of thousands of years, the Earth goes through a natural cycle of warmer and colder periods, driven by changes in heat coming from the Sun. Professor Ruddiman has now calculated that if the Earth had followed its natural cycle over the last 10,000 years, it should have got steadily colder. It has not because, he believes, human activities have been keeping the temperature steady. "What should have happened with the natural climate is it should have cooled substantially," he told BBC News Online. "And instead humans just started adding greenhouse gases at a rate which cancelled most, but not all, of that natural cooling; and so it's a combination of a natural cooling mostly cancelled by a human warming." The birth and development of agriculture is the key, and it substantially changed the nature of the land and its interaction with the atmosphere. Our ancestors started adding the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide principally by cutting down trees for farming. Methane concentrations - another potent greenhouse contributor - started to rise with wet farming of rice. (12/10/03)
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 BBC Science -- The United Nations has published new predictions on the size and age of the world's population 300 years from now. One startling projection based on present fertility levels is for 134 trillion inhabitants - although the UN concedes this is an impossible outcome. The 134 trillion figure is used merely as a demonstration that present fertility levels are unsustainable. Its medium-case scenario forecasts a rise from the current 6.3 billion people to around 9 billion in 2300. The UN says its forecasts help agencies and governments assess the policy implications from population change. ... The report suggests that if fertility levels stabilise at around two children for every woman the population increase will be more manageable, reaching just over nine billion people in three centuries' time. The continuing rise in this case can be explained by improving longevity. The number of people over 60 would rise from 10% to 38%, and those over 80 from 1% to 17%. But even small variations in fertility levels either side of this could radically alter these figures, the report said. An average fertility of 1.85 children per woman would result in a population of just 2.3 billion, whereas an average of 2.35 would yield 36.4 billion. The report says that whatever the overall increase, the world's population is likely to be significantly older in 300years. (12/10/03)
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 BBC Technology -- Artificial corneas have been successfully "grown" in the eyes of partially blind animals. Scientists from the University of Ottawa are hoping that their findings could lead to an inexhaustible supply of new corneas for human patients. The cornea is the transparent layer that covers the eye - but it can lose transparency, damaging sight. Humans are currently the only source of corneas for transplantation, and the supply of donor tissue is limited. In addition, the artificial corneas may actually work better than human versions - growing their own nerve connections within the eye. This helps the cornea maintain itself properly, as a loss of sensitivity can lead to ulceration and injury. The artificial cornea is grown around a "scaffold" of plastic and protein implanted into the eye. It regenerates the cells necessary to make a fully functioning cornea within a matter of weeks. ... The Ottawa team suggest that the performance of their artificial cornea may outstrip previous attempts to make one. They wrote, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: "Other corneal substitutes have been produced and tested, but we report an implantable matrix that performs as a physiologically functional tissue substitute and not simply as a prosthetic device. "These replacements should have applicability to many areas of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, especially where nerve function is required." (12/10/03)
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10:37:47 AM
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2004
Timothy Wilken.
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1/1/2004; 5:50:45 AM.
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