If you’re an avid gardener (or even a not-so-avid gardener) this is a list you may want to read. There are some plants on it that many of us have in our homes or yards. Most of us know that things like mistletoe are dangerous to pets but did you know kalanchoe is too? I didn’t.
Thanks to the ASPCA for yet another service for our home companions!
Once again Mazlov’s supposed hierarchy gets kicked to the curb! (Don’t worry about Dr. Mazlov’s feelings. He didn’t like it either and as I understand was somewhat dismayed that everybody made such a fuss over it.) A story out of Japan just goes to show that the need for love and connection overrules the need to feed. An article in the Boston Globe shows how a lonely snake can make friends with his dinner, a master.
It seems the zookeepers thought the hungry snake, who wouldn’t eat frozen mice, would eat a live hamster they named “meal” in Japanese. Well heart overcame belly and the snake didn’t eat the hamster. Instead, he decided a nice furry cuddle was much more important than a warm meal.
This may be even better than the lion and the lamb lying down together. At least both of those have fur. I’m not even sure how far apart taxonomically-speaking we are witha snake and a hamster.
And don’t worry about the snake. He nows eats frozen mice.
This could be the start of a great short story. Lovers reincarnate as prey and predator but eternal love overcomes momentary hunger. Hmmm. Or maybe a prequel to Haint…
Thanks to Lynn Hartke for sending me this article!
If you’ve ever seen a diagnostic dog in action, this editorial is no surprize nor revelation. The New York Times has a lovely and short editorial on how we forget how amazing are the animals around us in everyday life.
The writer discusses cancer-sniffing dogs but the piece reminds me of one outstanding little Scottish dog named Pixie. If I had not misplaced my new digital camera shortly after returning from Scotland I would be proud to post Pixie’s picture on this or any site. Pixie was a black and tan mix of perhaps border collie and doberman or some other breed with the distinctive blanc body and caramel colored eyebrows. A delight to be around at any time but if one needed to learn just how disadvantaged we are as a species when it comes to natural abilities, spend some time with Pixie, her human companion Adrian Glynn and their friend David Mackie.
All three are absolutely delightful Scots but Pixie was the one who was always at work. You see, Pixie is a diagnostic dog. She watches over Adrian (who is diabetic) and David (who is epileptic). She constantly monitors both and makes sure both are cared for and about. When Pixie is on duty both Adrian and David are safer for it. And the world is a better place for all of us who believe in natural “magic.”
No one ever mnetioned in Grimm’s Fairy Tales that Pixies could be angels too.
Over breakfast the other day my mother and I were talking about babies and dogs (she had two babies and I have none). It seems that people want to believe that having babies is an unselfish act yet so many of these same people can’t understand why you or I would prefer having dogs. Perhaps because loving dogs is the real unselfish act.
When someone has a child so much of loving the child has nothing to do with the child him or herself. Heck, they don’t even know that little person. Sure, the kid was riding around with mom for 9 or so months but I doubt there was a lot of communication other than warm fuzzy feelings brought on by hormones. Nothing against kids but over the years of interviewing parents about their kids the one really big fact that keeps coming out is that having kids is for the parent, not the kid. Babies are the original Mini Mes. So when parents say they love their babies, what they are saying is I love me and that little part of me I’m holding in this blue or pink blanket. That’s fine and we won’t get into adoptive parents who love the idea of being parents (not a bad idea, not just a particularly unselfish one).
So back to dogs. When someone loves a dog they have the chance to experience really unselfish love, love that carries the spirit higher and transforms it into something better.
Loving a dog:
Allows one to love unselfishly. For most people there is no objective in loving a dog. The dog can’t get you a better home (yours might look worse for wear or you might even have trouble finding new digs with a dog); he can’t be your sexual partner (don’t go there); he can’t get you a better job or a better social class. In fact, all he can do is love you in whatever his own fashion.
Allows one to love openly without fear of rejection or abuse of trust. The dog will not stay out all night and come in, only to tell you he’s found someone else to share his bed. The dog will not reject you because you gain or lose pounds, hair, teeth, uterus or some other body part. When the dog loves, he loves without concern for anything other than you are the object of that love. A Weimaraner may show love differently than a Beagle or a Border Collie or even a Newfoundland, but they all love without reserve.
Allows one to love honestly. There are no games with dogs when it comes to love. They do not know how to play those games so you cannot play them either. No coy, “how much do you love me’s” with dogs. They love and you love. Period.
Allows one to live honestly. Having this much honest love in one’s life gives one the chance to live honestly as well. Having to eat hamburger rather than steak for dinner or living in a small house rather than a mansion? Dogs don’t care and they won’t love you any differently. Dogs inspire internal honesty (if we let them) because they are so honestly themselves and accept the world honestly. We can live a more honest life knowing someone loves us in that honesty.
Allows one to transcend our meager human spirits. Loving another creature without the expectation of getting something back other than that purest of loves allows us to grow past out human pettiness and selfish and self-absorbed lives. We can learn how to be more than human. We can embrace the greater spirit which embraces all life. We can learn to love like dogs love.
Have you ever wondered how some people could blithely deny the reality of global warming that we see around us every day? Then check out the new article by George Monbiot in the Guardian and passed on to us by the sterling folks at Common Dreams. In “The Scam of Global Warming is That We Pay Others for Our Complacency” Monbiot pulls away the veil from the carbon offset trade. But he also does something even more interesting; he not so subtly raises the larger question of the monied interests’ shell game with something that affects us all –global warming and the lack of true action in addressing the very thing that will pull our own earth out from under us as surely as the ice is falling away from the polar bears.
For those of you who haven’t read it, futurist Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near is a valentine to all those scifi writers who believed that the future and humans could only get better through technology. According to Kurzweil, in the near future humans will become technologically joined with superhuman intelligence to become superhuman. I won’t dispute his ideas but I will put forward the one question that must be answered — Why? Why do we want to supercede our biology? Yes, I know that is a hard question for humans, especially westerners, to ask themselves and others. But if we are going to make this drastic a change in our bodies, minds and civilizations, I for one want some good answers.
Perhaps the question that really needs asking is not whether Kurzweil is correct in his future projections but do we really want to allow technology to change our lives, relationships and civilizations so completely. More importantly, why do we wholeheartedly welcome such extensive changes?We have evolved over millenia to be a species that must work together, build connections with others, if we are to survive as a species. Yet the technology Kurzweil so welcomes is the antithesis of connection. He may talk about how we will all be connected through technology yet it is only the illusion of connection. We learn as a species through shared experiences. We learn as individuals through empathy, much of which is gained through shared events. I understand your hurt because I have felt pain. Virtual reality is NOT reality. In fact it is the offer of fake connection for the real connections of real people and events. Moreover, why should we want to embrace a reality for which we are not biologically or psychologically suited? Our brains are wonderfully evolved to process and manage information, and perhaps most importantly if you follow the work of certain neuroscientists (i.e., Damasio) emotional input. Where does emotion live in this new world of Kurzweil’s?Lastly, are we to expect that everyone will have access to this nanobot-enhanced world? What about the poor? What about the middle-class? I suspect that Kurzweil’s brave new medical and technical breakthroughs would only be available to those who could afford them. Just like medical care in America today, many people would simply be cut out and left behind.
The upshot of technology such as this at the beck and call of the wealthy is that they (who are already often extremely out of touch with the real world of everyday people) would become even more out of touch. What does this say for the decisions that they will make that influence us all? I suspect those decisions will do even less to draw us together. Why should the wealthy and powerful make decisions that help everyday people? Through virtual reality they can become even more insulated from the results of their acts. Those left on the outside (probably the mass of humanity) are not as “human” or advanced are we? So, like the 21st century version of Puritanism with this form of technology as God, everyone without it will be found wanting and cast off into the technological and civil underworld.
Note, I am not a Luddite. I would not question all new technology but something as fundamentally important as how humans interact with the world and others is something to be closely considered and examined before letting it loose to do untold damage. A device that beeps me to my keys is not likely to affect the way I interact with others and the way I think. A virtual reality womb that feeds my the sensory input and thereby chooses what I see and therefore how I feel about that input is something else all together.
So I ask again — Why do we so easily welcome this technology without closely examining potential results from every angle?
The great and greatly missed Theodore Sturgeon in his classic, More Than Human, envisioned a superhuman formed by the connections and relationships of a number of humans. It was their interdependence that made them the next step in human evolution. I wonder if Kurzweil’s world would usher in the less-than-truly-human rather than superhuman?
From the fine folks at Common Dreams yet another compelling article on Global Warming. The Independent is reporting that we are about to see an acceleration of Global Warming. Seems that the readings of carbon dioxide parts per million have jumped from 1.6 in the 1990’s to recent unpublished findings of 2.2 ppm.
I guess I’d better write the sequels faster so we can see what happens. It would be nice to know if there is much of a future. Sardonic of me I know…
Common Dreams has sent on another great article on global warming. In this one the Guardian reports that the US government is addressing global warming by depending on the private sector to devise new technologies!!!! Talk about governing by putting one’s head in the nuclear sand!!!! I’m guessing these political appointees never heard of the tragedy of the commons.
Frog species victim of global warming
Interesting article in The New York Times today about global warming being the root cause of the demise of a variety of frog. Biologists have said for decades that frogs are our canaries in the mines. When they start going, so do we. Thanks to Common Dreams for circulating the article!
And so it begins…
I guess that isn’t really correct because I’m sure there are other species of animal and plant life that are already beginning the slide into extinction due to global warming and we just don’t know about them yet.
If you don’t get either Truthout online or Rolling Stone you may have missed a moving and well-considered article by Jim Kunstler, the author of the new look forward, The Long Emergency. Kunstler addresses what happens when America runs out of cheap gas. As I’m seeing the future in which Haint and Amanda are interacting, I can’t help but be moved and influenced by what Kunstler has to say. To read the article on Truthout click here.
But don’t stop there. Continue on to Kunstler’s homepage to get an even bigger view of where he has been and where we are going. I suspect that in the year’s to come, Kunstler’s work will be even more appreciated.
As for me, I’ll keep his vision in mind as Haint’s sequel progress.