Category: Morality

Journalism.

A start to a fascinating programme on BBC Radio 4.

Yesterday morning (Oregon time) had me listening to a new series on BBC Sounds. It was Frontlines of Journalism. Here is what the Beeb had to say about it:

Released On: 27 Feb 2023

Available for over a year

In the spring of 2023, twenty years after the Americans, the British and their allies invaded to overthrow Saddam Hussein, BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen was reporting from Iraq for the BBC. He described the invasion as ‘a catastrophe’. Taking you to some of the most difficult stories Jeremy and other journalists have covered; in this episode – why impartiality is not about trying to get perfect balance, the truth lying somewhere in the middle.  Often it does not.   Jeremy speaks with: journalist Rana Rahimpour who was born in Iran but left when she was 25 to work for the BBC; former BBC bureau chief Milton Nkosi, who grew up under apartheid in Soweto, South Africa; journalist and environmentalist George Monbiot, and CNN’s Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour.

Presenter: Jeremy Bowen Producer: Georgia Catt Assistant Producer: Sam Peach Additional research: Rob Byrne Series mixing: Jackie Margerum Series Editor: Philip Sellars.

But in wanting to present a little more to you readers, I did some research on the topic and came across this article published by the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford. I cannot see a warning about not sharing this with you.

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Impartiality is still key for news audiences. Here’s how to rethink it for the digital age

Our research shows people still value the ideal of impartial news. A new report offer suggestions to adapt it to a challenging environment.

Election posters of Germany’s top candidates for chancellor.
September 16, 2021. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Nic Newman

Tuesday 19 October 2021

Most people agree that news organisations and journalists should reflect all sides of an issue and not push a particular agenda – at least when asked about it in surveys. Our 2021 Digital News Report finds this to be true across countries and age groups. 

However, many people feel that the media often fail to live up to this ideal. Our surveys consistently show that committed partisans believe that traditional media coverage is unfair, especially in countries where debates about politics or social justice have become deeply polarised. In recent years we’ve also seen an increase in opinion-led television formats such as Fox News/MSNBC in the United States, GB News in the UK and CNews in France, while many traditional print publications have focussed on distinctive and robust opinion as a way of standing out online.

Together with the growth of partisan websites, YouTubers and podcasters, audiences now have access to a wider range of views than ever before. Against this background, some have questioned traditional approaches to impartiality that try to represent all points of view within a single broadcast or publication. Other critics go further – arguing that impartiality has given extreme or unrepresentative views undue prominence, through its focus on balance, helping to legitimise climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers amongst others.

This all raises the question: how relevant is impartial and objective journalism to audiences today? The Reuters Institute commissioned market research company JV Consulting to carry out qualitative research in four countries – Brazil, Germany, the UK, and the US – with different news markets, traditions of public broadcasting, and systems of media regulation. They conducted a series of focus groups and in-depth interviews on our behalf in February and March 2021 with politically and ethnically diverse groups of older and younger people interested in and engaged with news (52 people in total).

These are some of the key findings of the report:

  • Engaged audiences in the four countries researched still care about impartiality and say it helps define news, even if some consider it an impossible ideal. They want journalists to focus on facts, objectivity and fairness, and to steer clear of opinions and bias in reporting, leaving them to decide for themselves how they feel about the news. Alongside accuracy, impartiality is a foundational value of news that underpins audiences’ trust.
  • People recognise the risk of giving exposure to extreme views or one side in the name of balance. However, evidence from this group of engaged users is that they are even more concerned about the suppression and silencing of viewpoints. There are particular misgivings about this in Brazil and Germany, where twentieth century history frames some people’s views.
  • Most participants recognise that there were some topics (e.g., science stories, natural disasters, and questions of social justice) where there were not always two or more sides to represent. Here, many felt there should be more latitude for journalists to present just one perspective or an established point of view. There are also expectations that journalists will show greater empathy and connection in their reporting than perhaps traditional interpretations of impartiality have allowed in the past.
  • Across countries, newer digital formats such as social media are perceived as carrying more risk of bias along with the growth of more informal and entertaining broadcast formats such as chat shows and podcasts. Impartiality is more vulnerable in these contexts, as well as when the news is emotive or controversial, because journalists’ personal views risk slipping out in the impulse to engage, although the subject and intention have a bearing on how audiences feel about this.
  • Younger people, who have grown up using more informal and digital sources, tend to have different expectations of impartiality, often looking for journalism that aligns with their values. But overall, their underlying attitudes and desires are remarkably similar to older people’s.
  • Different countries’ news traditions shape people’s experiences and expectations. Audiences in the US cannot envisage a world without partisan news outlets, but in the UK and Germany, with their public service traditions, most audiences still laud the upholding of impartiality.
  • Respondents also delineate between news reporting (where impartiality is expected) and opinion/commentary (where people expect that views are argued for). Importantly, many told us that they often find it difficult to distinguish between the two, especially online. Interviewees like news and they like opinion, but want them very clearly separated. 

It is important to recognise that not all news organisations are committed to impartiality: indeed, some make a virtue of creating news and opinion with a clear point of view. But most will want to take note of audience desires for a range of views to be represented and to see clearer labelling of news and opinion. For news organisations that are committed to impartiality, the report highlights the increased dangers in areas where journalism is more informal or accessed in distributed environments. Public media like the BBC have already embarked on updated training and issued new guidelines on these issues. Audiences have also sent a clear signal in this report that they would like much greater transparency over why certain perspectives are included or excluded, however difficult this may be in practice.

Finally, the report notes that given the importance of social media, search and other access points, technology platforms such as Facebook, Google and Apple, will also need to develop clearer guidelines on impartiality – as their own trust levels will depend on fair implementation of policies around inclusion and exclusion, whether by algorithm or human intervention.

Download the full report

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Now this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but when one thinks of the enormous amount of news and information one gathers from the television, the radio, the press and a wide variety of online sources then thinking a little more about the truth of what we are being told is crucial to us making wise decisions. including voting where appropriate.

People still value the ideal of impartial news; there is no question about that!

Picture Parade Four Hundred and Eighty.

More dogs from Unsplash.

This time Siberian Husky Dogs!

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What a fantastic group of photographs; apologies if I have shown these before.

This is just a beautiful Picture Parade

In other words, Picture Parade Four Hundred and Seventy-Eight.

Introducing A guest post (sort of) by Cara Sue Achterberg.

Read this! It tells the story of the volunteers who spend their time at the Animal Control centre in Bernie County.

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Animal Control And/Or Care

By Cara Sue Achterberg

Bertie County is a small county most people pass through on their way to vacation on the Outer Banks. The county’s tiny shelter is the next to last stop on a road that ends at the regional jail. The shelter sits on a property prone to flooding, and although the county has had plans to move it, the folks we talked to were skeptical that the collection of sheds, trailers, and kennels would leave the spot it has occupied as long as anyone can remember.

Bertie County Animal Control in Windsor is a municipal, open-intake shelter comprised of ten kennels on a concrete pad with a roof, plus two quarantine kennels, and three puppy runs.

There is no heat or AC or walls, for that matter. The day we arrived, county maintenance workers were busy wrapping plastic around the kennels to try to give the dogs some protection from the cold.

The county has two full-time Animal Control officers and one part-time ACO, but the care of the dogs is done by Josh, a full-time kennel tech. The county pays for Josh (and a part-time person who comes in once on Saturday and Sunday to feed/clean), plus the ACO salaries, and the property utilities, but everything else is left up to the Bertie County Humane Society.

Beyond the $2000/year the county gives the Humane Society, they must raise the money to pay for everything else – veterinary needs, vaccinations, spay/neuter, food/treats, transport to rescues, beds, heartworm preventative, flea/tick treatment, dewormers and anything else.

Pretty much every dog that comes in is heartworm positive. As Vicky, a volunteer who used to be the kennel manager at the shelter, told me, “If we get one that’s negative, I go buy a lottery ticket!”

Vicky was at the shelter that day to give rabies vaccines to Cooper and Spot, two young dogs at the shelter. (NC is the first state I’ve discovered that doesn’t require that rabies vaccines be given by a veterinarian.)

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We learned about Bertie County after we connected with another of their volunteers, Gina. Gina lives two hours away, but she is a tireless advocate for the dogs and the shelter. She networks the dogs to rescues, arranges for veterinarian appointments and transports, even finds donors to pay for heartworm treatment. Gina is one of those rescue warriors with a heart that just slays me. It’s inhuman how many hours and how much work she puts in to save these dogs, many she has never met.

Gina has been involved with BCHS ever since she discovered how many dogs were being killed in Bertie County. She began pulling dogs to foster within her rescue operation and eventually called on other rescues to get involved. Because she lives so far away, she depends on Diane, who lives in Bertie County and is the president of the Humane Society, and Vicky, who used to be the kennel manager at the shelter and still volunteers her time there.

There were only six dogs (and lots of cats) the day we visited thanks to Gina’s work to find rescues to empty the shelter just before the holidays and the bitter, record cold that came. The shelter normally handles about 100 dogs a year.

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Because of the number of photographs, beautiful photographs I would add, this is today’s Picture Parade.

Please, please watch this

And I wish I knew what to say…

This is a video that is three years old.

But it is more pertinent today than it was when it was first released.

The video asks ‘… why we never really learnt how to talk about this’.

The video is a little less than ten minutes long so watch it now, with the family as well, if that is appropriate, and perhaps have a discussion afterwards.

Jean and I do not have any answers especially when the news is all about other things.

Yes, we know that the climate is changing but what exactly does that mean is a more difficult question to answer. Mind you there are a growing number of organisations committed to finding answers.

Yes, there are many scientists who have clear opinions on the situation but we need a global movement, NOW, to address this very urgent requirement, and there is no sign that the global community are even talking about climate change let alone doing something.

Please, please watch this:

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Plastics in the ocean

A fascinating insight into recovered plastic.

Like so many others we do our little bit regarding plastic but do not properly think about the issue. I have to admit that I am not even sure if all plastics are harmful or just some.

But I comprehend art!

That is why I am republishing, with permission, this article from The Conversation.

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My art uses plastic recovered from beaches around the world to understand how our consumer society is transforming the ocean

Pam Longobardi amid a giant heap of fishing gear that she and volunteers from the Hawaii Wildlife Fund collected in 2008. David Rothstein, CC BY-ND

Pam Longobardi, Georgia State University

I am obsessed with plastic objects. I harvest them from the ocean for the stories they hold and to mitigate their ability to harm. Each object has the potential to be a message from the sea – a poem, a cipher, a metaphor, a warning.

My work collecting and photographing ocean plastic and turning it into art began with an epiphany in 2005, on a far-flung beach at the southern tip of the Big Island of Hawaii. At the edge of a black lava beach pounded by surf, I encountered multitudes upon multitudes of plastic objects that the angry ocean was vomiting onto the rocky shore.

I could see that somehow, impossibly, humans had permeated the ocean with plastic waste. Its alien presence was so enormous that it had reached this most isolated point of land in the immense Pacific Ocean. I felt I was witness to an unspeakable crime against nature, and needed to document it and bring back evidence.

I began cleaning the beach, hauling away weathered and misshapen plastic debris – known and unknown objects, hidden parts of a world of things I had never seen before, and enormous whalelike colored entanglements of nets and ropes.

Three large plastic art installations, the central one a cornucopia spilling plastic objects onto the floor.
‘Bounty Pilfered’ (center), ‘Newer Laocoön’ (left) and ‘Threnody’ (right). All made of ocean plastic from the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, installed at the Baker Museum in Naples, Fla., 2022. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND

I returned to that site again and again, gathering material evidence to study its volume and how it had been deposited, trying to understand the immensity it represented. In 2006, I formed the Drifters Project, a collaborative global entity to highlight these vagrant, translocational plastics and recruit others to investigate and mitigate ocean plastics’ impact.

My new book, “Ocean Gleaning,” tracks 17 years of my art and research around the world through the Drifters Project. It reveals specimens of striking artifacts harvested from the sea – objects that once were utilitarian, but have been changed by their oceanic voyages and come back as messages from the ocean.

Array of plastic objects, including toys, action figures and fragments of larger objects.
‘Drifters Objects,’ a tiny sample of the plastic artifacts Pam Longobardi has collected from beaches worldwide. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND

Living in a plastic age

I grew up in what some now deem the age of plastic. Though it’s not the only modern material invention, plastic has had the most unforeseen consequences.

My father was a biochemist at the chemical company Union Carbide when I was a child in New Jersey. He played golf with an actor who portrayed “The Man from Glad,” a Get Smart-styled agent who rescued flustered housewives in TV commercials from inferior brands of plastic wrap that snarled and tangled. My father brought home souvenir pins of Union Carbide’s hexagonal logo, based on the carbon molecule, and figurine pencil holders of “TERGIE,” the company’s blobby turquoise mascot.

On the 2013 Gyre Expedition, Pam Longobardi traveled with a team of scientists, artists and policymakers to investigate and remove tons of oceanic plastic washing out of great gyres, or currents, in the Pacific Ocean, and make art from it.

Today I see plastic as a zombie material that haunts the ocean. It is made from petroleum, the decayed and transformed life forms of the past. Drifting at sea, it “lives” again as it gathers a biological slime of algae and protozoans, which become attachment sites for larger organisms.

When seabirds, fish and sea turtles mistake this living encrustation for food and eat it, plastic and all, the chemical load lives on in their digestive tracts. Their body tissues absorb chemicals from the plastic, which remain undigested in their stomachs, often ultimately killing them.

Two piles of tiny particles of virtually identical sizes.
Plastic ‘nurdles,’ (left), tiny pellets that serve as raw materials for manufacturing plastic products, and herring roe, or eggs (right). These visually analogous forms exemplify how fish can mistake plastic for food. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND

The forensics of plastic

I see plastic objects as the cultural archaeology of our time – relics of global late-capitalist consumer society that mirror our desires, wishes, hubris and ingenuity. They become transformed as they leave the quotidian world and collide with nature. By regurgitating them ashore or jamming them into sea caves, the ocean is communicating with us through materials of our own making. Some seem eerily familiar; others are totally alien.

Two views of a degraded arm from a plastic doll, found on Playa Jaco in Costa Rica.
A degraded plastic doll arm, from the series ‘Evidence of Crimes.’ Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND

A person engaging in ocean gleaning acts as a detective and a beacon, hunting for the forensics of this crime against the natural world and shining the light of interrogation on it. By searching for ocean plastic in a state of open receptiveness, a gleaner like me can find symbols of pop culture, religion, war, humor, irony and sorrow.

A rolling landscape covered with thousands of life vests.
‘Division Line,’ 2016. This photograph shows the ‘life-jacket cemetary’ in Lesvos, Greece. Traumatized asylum-seekers and migrants arriving by boat from Türkiye leave the life vests on shore as they stagger inland. Most of the waste is plastic. © Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND

In keeping with the drifting journeys of these material artifacts, I prefer using them in a transitive form as installations. All of these works can be dismantled and reconfigured, although plastic materials are nearly impossible to recycle. I display some objects as specimens on steel pins, and wire others together to form large-scale sculptures.

A plastic bottle cap inscribed 'Endless' and a photograph of a beach littered with plastic objects.
From the series ‘Prophetic Objects,’ a plastic cap from a Greek manufacturer of cleaning products, found on the Greek island of Kefalonia. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND

I am interested in ocean plastic in particular because of what it reveals about us as humans in a global culture, and about the ocean as a cultural space and a giant dynamic engine of life and change. Because ocean plastic visibly shows nature’s attempts to reabsorb and regurgitate it, it has profound stories to tell.

A large sculpted anchor in the center of an art gallery, with ties to life preservers mounted on the ceiling.
‘Albatross’ and ‘Hope Floats,’ 2017. Recovered ocean plastic, survival rescue blankets, life vest straps and steel. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND

I believe humankind is at a crossroads with regards to the future. The ocean is asking us to pay attention. Paying attention is an act of giving, and in the case of plastic pollution, it is also an act of taking: Taking plastic out of your daily life. Taking plastic out of the environment. And taking, and spreading, the message that the ocean is laying out before our eyes.

Pam Longobardi, Regents’ Professor of Art and Design, Georgia State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Pam at one point describes the ocean plastic”… because of what it reveals about us as humans in a global culture, and about the ocean as a cultural space and a giant dynamic engine of life and change …”. It raises questions that I can only ponder the answer. Ultimately, are there too many inhabitants on this planet? What does the next generation think? Is there an answer?

The work done by dog charities

This particular post is from ‘Who Will Let the Dogs Out‘.

The range of expertise in looking after our dear dogs is incredible. I have long followed Who Will Let the Dogs Out but today wanted to republish a very recent article, hopefully with permission.

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Tiny Municipal Shelter Outside Nashville Has Only One Employee

By Cara Sue Achterberg. 14th February, 2023

In Robertson County, Tennessee, just outside Nashville, there are actually three municipal shelters. In addition to the Robertson shelter written about in the previous post, we also stopped at a tiny shelter ten minutes away— Greenbrier Animal Control.

This small shelter has ten kennels and was currently housing 12 dogs. Shelbie is the only ACO and employee for the small shelter. She works seven days a week 365 days a year. The only days she’s had off since she began work there three years ago were this past winter when she had Covid.

Shelbie does everything at the tiny, age-worn shelter – the cleaning and the caring, and running the animal control calls, and pretty much anything that needs done. Several of the outdoor kennels do not have covered roofs. The roofs are at the shelter, but Shelbie is only one person (and a tiny one at that), so she can’t get them put on by herself. She could use a hand with the roofs, and with lots of things, but the only ones she and the dogs have are her own.

The city animal control budget covers food, supplies, and a few other things, like Shelbie’s uniforms, but it doesn’t cover vaccines, deworming, or spay/neuter. Shelbie knows that anything she adopts out locally is likely to send puppies back her way. She depends on CASA Transport to help get animals out, so the shelter doesn’t become overcrowded.

Shelbie took the job because she loves animals and because she’s always been an advocate for not killing shelter animals. One of the dogs, Denali, has been at the shelter almost as long as she has. “He’s special and he needs a special kind of home,” she told me.

She loves her job, but would really love for the city to hire someone to help on the weekends so that she could have more time for herself (and her FIVE children ages 4-10).

We set up a few peanut butter boards and left Shelbie with lots of food, treats, bones, and collars, but joked with her that we wished we had a person in the truck we could leave with her. Every time we make these trips we meet remarkable people like Shelbie. I’m sure she isn’t getting rich on this job and I’d guess she sees some pretty awful situations. It is not just back breaking work, it’s heartbreaking.

There are so many people, just like Shelbie, who are quietly saving lives through their own dedication and sacrifice. They inspire me to keep pushing for change, for any way to make the situation better.

I don’t understand why Robertson County, which serves 72,000 residents, has not only the county shelter, but two city shelters (we were not able to visit Springfield animal control). Greenbriar is in the county and it took us about ten minutes to get from one to the other. To me, clearly an outsider (but one who has visited over 100 shelters in 12 states), it makes more sense to combine the three shelters in the new building that Robertson County is building.

Surely, by combining budgets and staff, they could have one excellent facility with plenty of help, and likely save money in the bargain. Plus, then Shelbie wouldn’t be working seven days a week and handling animals all by herself (not that she isn’t more than capable of doing so as she’s done it for three years now). That’s just my observation, unlikely to be embraced.

Until we start looking for common sense solutions like regional public shelters, the lives of too many animals will depend on the decency and the willingness of people like Shelbie to sacrifice so much to do the work very few will.

If you’d like to help Shelbyville Animal shelter, consider shopping their Amazon wishlist.

Until each one has a home,

Cara

If you want to learn more, be sure to subscribe to this blog. And help us spread the word by sharing this post with others. Visit our website to learn more.

You can also help raise awareness by following/commenting/sharing us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Tik Tok!

Learn more about what is happening in our southern shelters and rescues in the book, One Hundred Dogs & Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey Into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues (Pegasus Books, 2020). It’s the story of a challenging foster dog who inspired me to travel south to find out where all the dogs were coming from. It tells the story of how Who Will Let the Dogs Out began. Find it anywhere books are sold. A portion of the proceeds of every book sold go to help unwanted animals in the south.

Watch our Emmy-nominated, award-winning short documentary about rescue in western Tennessee here.

For more information on any of our projects, to talk about rescue in your neck of the woods, please email whowillletthedogsout@gmail.com or carasueachterberg@gmail.com.

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There are many more photographs on the website that I chose not to republish because I couldn’t do it as neatly as Cara did it.

Putting aside the pills!

A fascinating article presents an alternative.

There was a recent item on The Conversation that is being shared with you all today. It is about the role of meditation and mindfulness is keeping one healthy, and I sense this will be a popular article!

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Meditation and mindfulness offer an abundance of health benefits and may be as effective as medication for treating certain conditions

By Hilary A. Marusak

Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, Wayne State University

Published January 12th, 2023

Many people look to diet trends or new exercise regimens – often with questionable benefit – to get a healthier start on the new year. But there is one strategy that’s been shown time and again to boost both mood and health: meditation.

In late 2022, a high-profile study made a splash when it claimed that meditation may work as well as a common drug named Lexapro for the treatment of anxiety. Over the past couple of decades, similar evidence has emerged about mindfulness and meditation’s broad array of health benefits, for purposes ranging from stress and pain reduction to depression treatments to boosting brain health and helping to manage excessive inflammation and long COVID-19. 

Despite the mounting body of evidence showing the health benefits of meditation, it can be hard to weigh the science and to know how robust it is.

I am a neuroscientist studying the effects of stress and trauma on brain development in children and adolescents. I also study how mindfulness, meditation and exercise can positively affect brain development and mental health in youth.

I am very excited about how meditation can be used as a tool to provide powerful new insights into the ways the mind and brain work, and to fundamentally change a person’s outlook on life. And as a mental health researcher, I see the promise of meditation as a low- or no-cost, evidence-based tool to improve health that can be relatively easily integrated into daily life. 

Meditation requires some training, discipline and practice – which are not always easy to come by. But with some specific tools and strategies, it can be accessible to everyone.

What are mindfulness and meditation?

There are many different types of meditation, and mindfulness is one of the most common. Fundamentally, mindfulness is a mental state that, according to Jon Kabat-Zinn a renowned expert in mindfulness-based practices, involves “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.” 

This means not ruminating about something that happened in the past or worrying about that to-do list. Being focused on the present, or living in the moment, has been shown to have a broad array of benefits, including elevating mood, reducing anxiety, lessening pain and potentially improving cognitive performance. 

Mindfulness is a skill that can be practiced and cultivated over time. The goal is that, with repetition, the benefits of practicing mindfulness carry over into everyday life – when you aren’t actively meditating. For example, if you learn that you aren’t defined by an emotion that arises transiently, like anger, then it may be harder to stay angry for long. 

The health benefits of meditation and other strategies aimed at stress reduction are thought to stem from increasing levels of overall mindfulness through practice. Elements of mindfulness are also present in practices like yoga, martial arts and dance that require focusing attention and discipline.

The vast body of evidence supporting the health benefits of meditation is too expansive to cover exhaustively. But the studies I reference below represent some of the top tier, or the highest-quality and most rigorous summaries of scientific data on the topic to date. Many of these include systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which synthesize many studies on a given topic. 

Stress and mental health

Mindfulness-based programs have been shown to significantly reduce stress in a variety of populations, ranging from caregivers of people living with dementia to children during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Meta-analyses published during the pandemic show that mindfulness programs are effective for reducing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and depression – including the particularly vulnerable time during pregnancy and the postnatal period.

Mindfulness-based programs also show promise as a treatment option for anxiety disorders, which are the most common mental disorders, affecting an estimated 301 million people globally. While effective treatments for anxiety exist, many patients do not have access to them because they lack insurance coverage or transportation to providers, for instance, or they may experience only limited relief.

It’s important to note, however, that for those affected by mental or substance use disorders, mindfulness-based approaches should not replace first-line treatments like medicine and psychotherapy such as cognitive behavioral therapy. Mindfulness strategies should be seen as a supplement to these evidence-based treatments and a complement to healthy lifestyle interventions like physical activity and healthy eating. 

How does meditation work? A look into the brain

Studies show that regular meditators experience better attention control and improved control of heart rate, breathing and autonomic nervous system functioning, which regulates involuntary responses in the body, such as blood pressure. Research also shows that people who meditate have lower levels of cortisol – a hormone involved in the stress response – than those who don’t. 

A recent systematic review of neuroimaging studies showed that focused attention meditation is associated with functional changes in several brain regions involved in cognitive control and emotion-related processing. The review also found that more experienced meditators had stronger activation of the brain regions involved in those cognitive and emotional processes, suggesting that the brain benefits improve with more practice. 

A regular meditation practice may also stave off age-related thinning of the cerebral cortex, which may help to protect against age-related disease and cognitive impairment. 

Limitations of meditation research

This research does have limits. These include a lack of a consistent definition for the types of programs used, and a lack of rigorously controlled studies. In gold-standard randomized controlled trials with medications, study participants don’t know whether they are getting the active drug or a placebo. 

In contrast, in trials of mindfulness-based interventions, participants know what condition they are assigned to and are not “blinded,” so they may expect that some of the health benefits may happen to them. This creates a sense of expectancy, which can be a confounding variable in studies. Many meditation studies also don’t frequently include a control group, which is needed to assess how it compares with other treatments.

Benefits and wider applications

Compared with medications, mindfulness-based programs may be more easily accessible and have fewer negative side effects. However, medication and psychotherapy – particularly cognitive behavioral therapy – work well for many, and a combination approach may be best. Mindfulness-based interventions are also cost-effective and have better health outcomes than usual care, particularly among high-risk patient populations – so there are economic benefits as well.

Researchers are studying ways to deliver mindfulness tools on a computer or smartphone app, or with virtual reality, which may be more effective than conventional in-person meditation training. 

Importantly, mindfulness is not just for those with physical or mental health diagnoses. Anyone can use these strategies to reduce the risk of disease and to take advantage of the health benefits in everyday life, such as improved sleep and cognitive performance, elevated mood and lowered stress and anxiety. 

Where to get started?

Many recreation centers, fitness studios and even universities offer in-person meditation classes. For those looking to see if meditation can help with the treatment of a physical or mental condition, there are over 600 clinical trialscurrently recruiting participants for various conditions, such as pain, cancer and depression. 

If you want to try meditation from the comfort of your home, there are many free online videos on how to practice, including meditations for sleep, stress reduction, mindful eating and more. Several apps, such as Headspace, appear promising, with randomized controlled trials showing benefits for users. 

The hardest part is, of course, getting started. However, if you set an alarm to practice every day, it will become a habit and may even translate into everyday life – which is the ultimate goal. For some, this may take some time and practice, and for others, this may start to happen pretty quickly. Even a single five-minute session can have positive health effects.

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This is a comprehensive article on a most important topic.

For whatever is happening in our world it is getting busier especially for those that are a great deal younger than me.

Why is intelligent life so rare?

Maybe it is because of a ‘Great Filter‘.

Like so many others I read many items online. One of the websites that I follow is the EarthSky site because for a long time I have been interested in space.

So when I saw an article on why intelligent life is so rare in our Milky Way I read it fully. And hoped it would be of interest to others.

Here it is:

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What is the Great Filter, and can we survive it?

Posted by

Kelly Kizer Whitt and Deborah Byrd

November 17, 2022

This graphic depicts intelligent civilizations as stars. The vertical lines represent Great Filters that civilizations do or don’t survive. This graphic depicts Earth’s human population (the yellow “star”) approaching its own Great Filter. How would we surpass it, and keep going? Image via NASA/ arXiv.

What is the Great Filter?

Is intelligent life common, or rare in our Milky Way galaxy? If it’s common, why haven’t we encountered it? While discussing UFOs on a walk to lunch in the year 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi is famously said to have asked, “But where is everybody?” Scientists today call that riddle Fermi’s Paradox. Now a new paper by NASA scientists explores one possible answer to the paradox. The answer may be what’s called the Great Filter.

Economist Robin Hanson first proposed the Great Filter, in the late 1990s. It’s the idea of that – even if life forms abundantly in our Milky Way galaxy – each extraterrestrial civilization ultimately faces some barrier to its own survival. The barrier might come from without (for example, an asteroid striking a planet, and wiping out all life forms). Or it might come from within (for example, all-out nuclear war).

Hanson proposed that a Great Filter might be at work within our Milky Way galaxy. He argued – from what we can see here on Earth – life expands to fill every niche. And so, he argued, we should see signs of intelligent life beyond Earth in nearby star systems, perhaps even in our solar system. But we don’t see this.

Is humanity facing a Great Filter?

The authors of the new paper take Hanson’s idea further. They explore the idea that humanity may now be facing a Great Filter. The authors wrote:

We postulate that an existential disaster may lay in wait as our society advances exponentially towards space exploration, acting as the Great Filter: a phenomenon that wipes out civilizations before they can encounter each other … In this article, we propose several possible scenarios, including anthropogenic and natural hazards, both of which can be prevented with reforms in individual, institutional and intrinsic behaviors. We also take into account multiple calamity candidates: nuclear warfare, pathogens and pandemics, artificial intelligence, meteorite impacts, and climate change. 

And they offer solutions, beginning with, as they say:

… a necessary period of introspection, followed by appropriate refinements to properly approach our predicament, and addressing the challenges and methods in which we may be able to mitigate risk to mankind and the nearly 9 million other species on Earth.

In a sense, the authors of the new paper – including lead author Jonathan H. Jiang of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California – are engaging in a “necessary period of introspection” by the act of writing their paper.

And, with their paper, they’re laying out the challenges we’re facing and methods of addressing them.

We’ve already survived some ‘filters’

The scientists point to life’s resilience. Life on Earth has already survived a number of filters in the form of mass extinction events. The Permian-Triassic extinction – aka the Great Dying – occurred 250 million years ago and nearly ended all life on the planet. This extinction event wiped out about 96% of marine life and 70% of land species. The exact cause of the Great Dying is still a matter of study, but some scientists have said it was a combination of warming temperatures and decreasing oxygen.

But these previous filters, or extinction events, have been natural, arising from the evolution of our planet and solar system, including volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts. 

A Great Filter of our own making

But now, clearly, humanity may be facing a Great Filter of our own making, and one that other intelligent civilizations in the galaxy have faced … and failed to withstand. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the technological advancements humans have achieved might ultimately lead to our undoing. Perhaps that’s nature’s way. As the new paper said:

It seems as though nearly every great discovery or invention, while pushing back the borders of our technological ignorance, is all too quickly and easily turned to destructive ends. Examples such as splitting the atom, biomedical innovations and resource extraction and consumption come to mind with disconcerting swiftness. Still, some have suggested artificial intelligence (AI) as yet another factor, which, pending substantial technical hurdles, may yet have its chance to prove friend or foe.

Here’s a look at some of the issues that might compose Earth’s Great Filter.

Unchecked population growth

One of the factors Earth faces, according to the paper, is unchecked population growth. Earth just passed a milestone on November 15, 2022, when it reached 8 billion human inhabitants. The paper said with our current population figures, Earth has experienced:

… an exponential rise from about 1.6 billion [people] at the start of the 20th century.

Technological advancements in farming, energy production and distribution have made such a large population possible on Earth. But, as the paper said, these advancements cannot:

… indefinitely offset the multifaceted stresses imposed by an ever-escalating population.

When will Earth’s human population reach its peak size? Some projections report that education in developing nations might allow Earth’s population to peak at 10 billion in the 2060s. But, of course, no one really knows.

Nuclear war

While warfare has long been a factor of life on Earth, only in the past century has humanity had a weapon that could destroy all nations, not just those participating in a nuclear war. The scientists said the greater the number of democracies in the world, the better our chances for avoiding nuclear war. The scientist also saw other encouraging signs, including:

Peace agreements in the historically troubled Middle East, a vast reduction in nuclear warheads since the height of the Cold War and a wide coalition of nations rallying their support for the besieged in Eastern Europe.

Pathogens and pandemics

The threat of illness and pandemics continues to grow simply because our world is so interconnected. Spreading diseases have a much easier time in our global society. But on the positive side, advancements in medicine have also given us an edge. The scientists said that having current and reliable data is crucial:

… in predicting how future pandemics will spread, how deadly they will be and how quickly and effectively we will be able to leverage our knowledge of the life sciences to counter this manifestation of the Great Filter.

Artificial intelligence

While true artificial intelligence as a separate sentient being is not yet reality, the authors of the paper urge a proactive plan to peacefully share Earth. They project that computer sophistication will one day rival that of the human mind. The scientists said:

As for whether AI would be benign or otherwise, self-imposing a Great Filter of our own invention, that will depend on the evolving nature and disposition of Earth’s first high-tech species.

Asteroid and comet impacts

Here’s an extinction event from the past that could still spell our doom in the future. While large impacts are exceedingly rare, there is, as the scientists said:

… a non-zero percentage [of asteroids or comets] which are large enough to survive passage through the atmosphere and, impacting the surface, cause catastrophic destruction to our sensitive biosphere.

The odds of a mass extinction level event in the coming years is vanishingly small. But, over time periods extending into the very distant future, the odds increase toward 100%. Meanwhile, with projects such as the DART mission, and given enough lead time, humanity has a way of defending itself.

Climate change

Climate change has become one of the most studied threats to life on Earth. Because the threats from climate change happen on a slower time scale than, say, the time it takes to launch a nuclear weapon, the efforts to curb these effects have not been as rapid as they could have been. The scientists said:

The major impediment to taking more decisive actions, however, are the challenges imposed by transitioning to non-carbon-based energy sources such as solar, wind, nuclear power. Here again, rapidly advancing technologies in areas such as modularized nuclear power plants and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) are among the best hopes for avoiding slow-motion ensnarement by this lulling but lethal Great Filter.

Avoiding the Great Filter

So you see there’s not just one possible Great Filter for Earth, but many. Any one of them could be our downfall. These scientists are suggesting something that sounds simple on its face, but is (apparently) hard to do. That is, in order to avoid the Great Filter, humans must work together and recognize the big picture. As the paper said:

History has shown that intraspecies competition and, more importantly, collaboration, has led us toward the highest peaks of invention. And yet, we prolong notions that seem to be the antithesis of long-term sustainable growth. Racism, genocide, inequity, sabotage … the list sprawls.

Meanwhile, we continue to look outward, peering at the dark depths between the stars, hoping for a sign that we aren’t alone in the universe. Ultimately, our quest to find life beyond Earth is part of trying to understand life on our planet and where we fit in. As Carl Sagan said:

In the deepest sense, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves.

Bottom line: Scientists say the reason we haven’t found intelligent civilizations in the galaxy is that they may not have survived the Great Filter. And they say we may be facing down our own Great Filter.

Source: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2210/2210.10582.pdf

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We are a funny bunch! As was said just a couple of paragraphs ago we humans must work together and recognise the big picture. But we do not!

Why do we not do that?

I wish I knew the answer to that conundrum! Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed the article.

The story of Zeus!

What a wonderful tale!

First, let me will quote from the text that comes with the YouTube video.

This is the remarkable story of Zeus, who was effectively paralyzed at the time he was rescued from a high-kill animal shelter in Oklahoma by the wonderful people at St. Francis CARE in Murphysboro, Illinois.

Video edited and produced by Jason Greene

Next, this unmissable video confirms what so many now already: Dogs are stars in their own world.

There you go! A short, little post for today but one that highlights the power of dogs! They are incredible!

One of the puzzles of this age.

Why society doesn’t worry a whole lot more about the changing climate.

There was an article recently on Treehugger that I read in full.

It was predictable, in a way, and very disturbing. Have a read yourself.

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Why Don’t People Care About Climate Change?

They have other things on their mind, like being hit by a car.

By Lloyd Alter,

Published October 21, 2022

People fear this more than climate change. Halfpoint/ Getty Images

Treehugger was founded by Graham Hill as “a green lifestyle website dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream.” Sustainability is often defined as “meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” and doesn’t seem to be much more mainstream now than it was then. Here we are, 18 years later, and key sustainability issues like climate change are not top of mind for most people, and Treehugger is not the world’s biggest website.

One reason might be because of people’s perception of risk. The Lloyd’s Register Foundation is a charity that “helps to protect life and property at sea, on land, and in the air.” It hired Gallup to do a World Risk Poll in 2020, using 2019 data, and just published its latest 2022 poll with 2021 data, after polling 125,911 people in 121 countries, mostly by telephone. One poll was pre-pandemic, and the other during it.1Chief executive Dr. Ruth Boumphrey compares the two:

“Looking at this first report of the 2021 World Risk Poll, what strikes me most about the findings is what hasn’t changed, as much as what has. People globally still worry about perennial threats such as road crashes, crime, and violence more than any other risks, including Covid-19, and this has important implications for how policymakers work with communities to manage emerging public health challenges in the context of their everyday lives.”

Perhaps the most surprising statistic is that North Americans believe that their greatest daily source of risk is from road-related accidents and injuries at 29%, followed by crime and violence at 11%. Australia and New Zealand put road risk at 33%, weirdly followed by cooking and household accidents at 11%.1

At first, I thought this is terrible; we have been writing about road safety for years, and nothing gets fixed, and yet it is North Americans’ biggest worry! And what’s wrong with Australian kitchens? But when you look at the numbers, you realize that this is a result of rich countries not suffering as much from many of the things other countries worry about, such as Latin America with crime and violence at 43%, Africa worrying about not having money, and North Africa worried about disease.1

Covid-19 was considered a major risk in some parts of the world, but “its impact was moderate overall, and day-to-day risks such as road-related injuries, crime and violence, and economic concerns remained top-of-mind for most people.”

This has been the perennial sustainability story; day-to-day issues and worries have higher priority. Climate change gets its own special section of the risk report and it comes to much the same conclusion. The authors start by noting that “the global risk posed by climate change is widely recognised, and warnings about its effects are increasingly dire. A recent joint statement by more than 200 medical journals called the rapidly warming climate the ‘greatest threat to global public health.'”

But then they dig into the data and find that, while 67% of respondents consider climate change a threat, only 41% deem it serious.1 It varies by education:

“The likelihood of people viewing climate change as a very serious threat to their country was much lower among those with primary education or less (32%) than among those with secondary (47%) or post-secondary (50%) education. More than a quarter of people in the lowest education group (28%) said they ‘don’t know,’ compared to 13% among those with secondary education and 7% with at least some post-secondary education.”

Logically, people who had experienced severe weather events were more likely to consider climate change to be a serious threat, although even then, there is a correlation with education. So university grads in Fort Myers are probably pretty convinced that climate change is a problem right now. The conclusion:

“As in 2019, the 2021 World Risk Poll findings demonstrate the powerful influence of education on global perceptions of climate change. The data highlight the challenge of reaching people who may be vulnerable to risk from extreme weather but have low average education levels, such as agricultural communities in low- and middle-income countries and territories… Spreading awareness of how climate change may directly impact people’s lives may be crucial in broadening local efforts to reduce carbon emissions and build resilience to the effects of rising temperatures.”

Education has always been a problem because, as climate journalist Amy Westervelt noted after the latest IPCC report, there are powerful forces interested in downplaying the importance of climate change. She wrote, “The report made one thing abundantly clear: the technologies and policies necessary to adequately address climate change exist, and the only real obstacles are politics and fossil fuel interests.” Education would have a lot to do with how susceptible people are to their stories.

In many ways, we have seen this movie before, in the Great Recession of 2008. When people are worrying about whether they can heat or they can eat, or apparently whether they will survive crossing the street, then climate change is something they can worry about later.

  1. “2021 Report: A Changed World? Perceptions and Experiences of Risk in the Covid Age.” Lloyd’s Register Foundation, 2022.

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This is the reason why we need leaders, as in country leaders, because only these people are sufficiently committed to plan and to legislate for the most important tasks facing that country. In the case of climate change it requires even more co-ordination across all the countries in the world; we do have a way to go before that is achieved.