Category: People

In the name of progress!

Or might that be in the name of insanity?

John Hurlburt is a frequent contributor to Learning from Dogs, as a quick search through the blog will reveal.

A few days ago, John sent Jean and me a film to watch. It was the documentary Surviving Progress. We watched it on Monday evening. Here’s more on the film and related information.

Here’s the trailer.

Published on Apr 6, 2012

Surviving Progress Trailer (Documentary 2012).

Directed by Mathieu Roy, Surviving Progress documentary film is based on the best selling book A Short History of Progress. From Executive Producer Martin Scorsese, this provocative documentary explores the concept of progress in our modern world, guiding us through a sweeping but detailed survey of the major “progress traps” facing our civilization in the arenas of technology, economics, consumption, and the environment….

Like all films these days, there is an associated website, from which one can read the synopsis, as follows:

“Every time history repeats itself the price goes up.”

Surviving Progress presents the story of human advancement as awe-inspiring and double-edged. It reveals the grave risk of running the 21st century’s software — our know-how — on the ancient hardware of our primate brain which hasn’t been upgraded in 50,000 years. With rich imagery and immersive soundtrack, filmmakers Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks launch us on a journey to contemplate our evolution from cave-dwellers to space explorers.

Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired this film, reveals how civilizations are repeatedly destroyed by “progress traps” — alluring technologies serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. With intersecting stories from a Chinese car-driving club, a Wall Street insider who exposes an out-of-control, environmentally rapacious financial elite, and eco-cops defending a scorched Amazon, the film lays stark evidence before us. In the past, we could use up a region’s resources and move on. But if today’s global civilization collapses from over-consumption, that’s it. We have no back-up planet.

Surviving Progress brings us thinkers who have probed our primate past, our brains, and our societies. Some amplify Wright’s urgent warning, while others have faith that the very progress which has put us in jeopardy is also the key to our salvation. Cosmologist Stephen Hawking looks to homes on other planets. Biologist Craig Venter, whose team decoded the human genome, designs synthetic organisms he hopes will create artificial food and fuel for all.

Distinguished Professor of Environment Vaclav Smil counters that five billion “have-nots” aspire to our affluent lifestyle and, without limits on the energy and resource-consumption of the “haves”, we face certain catastrophe. Others — including primatologist Jane Goodall, author Margaret Atwood, and activists from the Congo, Canada, and USA — place their hope in our ingenuity and moral evolution.

Surviving Progress leaves us with a challenge: To prove that making apes smarter was not an evolutionary dead-end.

WikiPedia adds:

Surviving Progress is a 2011 Canadian documentary film loosely based on A Short History of Progress, a book and a 2004 Massey Lecture series by Ronald Wright about societal collapse. The film was produced by Daniel Louis, Denise Robert, and Gerry Flahive and written/directed by Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks.

So now to reactions to the film.

To say that it was compelling watching is both correct and, yet, emotionally disconnected.

The blunt truth is that the film is scary beyond belief. Like watching a giant wave about to engulf you, or a snake about to strike; nothing to do but be transfixed; to be mesmerized by these last few moments of your life.

Because a reasonable conclusion to the weight of evidence put forward by the film is that the time left to pull back from the certainty of the end of life on Planet Earth is minuscule. By that I mean we are speaking of a decade, perhaps two at most. Ninety-nine percent of the people reading this, living in your neighborhood, or your region, or your country will suffer the terrible consequences of the impending end of this planet as a home for life.

Unless?

Unless there is most incredible awakening of global consciousness in the next two or three years. Unless the free world, from the highest in those lands to the vast masses of decent, working people, say, “Enough is enough.”

Unless every level of society, from local and national Governments, from Universities, from Churches, from employers both large and small, recognize that this time it’s different. This is about to become a global crisis.

I taken the following from the Amazon page for Ronald Wright’s book A Short History of Progress, that inspired the film:

From Neanderthal man to the Sumerians to the Roman Empire, A Short History of Progress dissects the cyclical nature of humanity’s development and demise, the 10,000-year old experiment that we’ve unleashed but have yet to control. It is Wright’s contention that only by understanding and ultimately breaking from the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we avoid the onset of a new Dark Age.

“the 10,000-year old experiment that we’ve unleashed but have yet to control.”

So let’s seek some solace. Back to John Hurlburt who in a post in July, Maybe home is found in our quietness, offered this:

Evening Meditation

Our world is increasingly spiritually, morally, mentally, physically and economically bankrupt. Many people would like to change the world one way or another. Most don’t really know why. Some folks simply don’t care. The idea is to leave life a bit better than we found it when we were born.

The fact is we’re all intrinsically sacred in a universe we didn’t create. We tend to prioritize illusion and delusion above reality. Playing God is a precursor of evil. A supreme faith in Money is self contradictory and ultimately fatal. Arrogance compounds the problem.

We connect in unified awareness through serene meditation. We experience harmony within an emerging celestial symphony. Answers flow from the inside out as we surrender to the eternal energy flow.

Be still and know…

an old lamplighter

I was going to close with a quotation from that most famous of Brits, Winston Churchill. The one that goes: “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

But after I had put the post ‘to bed’, so to speak, I started to read the Transition Primer from Transition US. It was such a positive message that I decided to write about Transition tomorrow. Then there was a quote in the Primer that just had to be the one to close today’s post.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Margaret Mead.

Ever noticed how quickly a dog returns to wagging its tail!

Just one in trillions!

The immensity of the universe and what it means for Planet Earth.

Jean and I have been watching the astounding BBC Series Wonders of Life presented by Professor Brian Cox. Here’s the BBC trailer:

and there are more clips from the programmes on the relevant part of the BBC website. There is so much about the series that is breath-taking. So much that reminds one of what a beautiful and fragile planet we live on. Quite rightly, the series received great reviews. Here, for example, is a little of what the UK Daily Telegraph newspaper wrote:

Wonders of Life, BBC Two, review

Sarah Crompton reviews the first episode of Brian Cox’s latest series, Wonders of Life (BBC Two).

By Sarah Crompton

10:00PM GMT 27 Jan 2013

When it comes to presenting styles, Professor Brian Cox is hard to keep still. There isn’t a beach he won’t feel compelled to stroll on, a mountain he won’t climb, or a river he won’t jump into. And what does he carry in that bag?

Once you got beyond these irritating stylistic tropes, however, Wonders of Life (BBC Two) was Cox at his absolute best, using his natural enthusiasm to communicate complicated ideas in very simple ways. He decided, for example, to show us his own DNA by spitting in a test tube – and missed.

“A physicist doing an experiment,” he giggled, with unforced charm. But when he actually succeeded, those little strands of white that you suddenly see brought everything he subsequently said to life.

He was brilliant at explaining his thesis, which was actually about the second law of thermodynamics, so not that much of a doddle to grasp. If I’ve got it right, what Cox thinks is that life itself may have been the inevitable consequence of the laws of physics and can be explained in the same terms as we explain “the falling of the rain and the shining of the stars”.

Sarah rounds off her review, thus:

The programme’s sophisticated use of graphics, and Cox’s patient repetition of his conclusions, all added to the sensation that this is a series that is actually going to tell you something. For the BBC to unveil both this and The Story of Music over a single weekend reveals a pretty impressive commitment to public service broadcasting. Long may it last.

One of the clear messages that comes from the program is the fact that our universe and the formation of life are intimately connected. That the ‘big bang’ some 3.2 billion years ago, the huge interstellar gas clouds, the formation of the carbon atom and the subsequent long-chained molecules, the collapse of those gas clouds to form suns and planets, the start of life, evolution through natural selection to ever more complex life forms, and on and on and on were and are inevitable. The science is clear. There is nothing mystical about it.

Yes, of course, anyone with half-an-ounce of sensitivity will be in awe of it all; the power and beauty of nature and of the natural world.

But here’s the rub.

As another BBC television programme explained, the universe is bigger than beyond imagination. That was from the BBC Horizon broadcast of August, 2012: How Big is the Universe? Here’s the trailer for that programme.

Stay with me a little longer! Just look at the following image.

This image of the Andromeda galaxy, taken in infrared and X-ray, consists of over a trillion stars.

The detailed Spitzer Space Telescope view above features infrared light from dust (red) and old stars (blue) in Andromeda, a massive spiral galaxy a mere 2.5 million light-years away. In fact, with over twice the diameter of our own Milky Way, Andromeda is the largest nearby galaxy. Andromeda’s population of bright young stars define its sweeping spiral arms in visible light images, but here the infrared view clearly follows the lumpy dust lanes heated by the young stars as they wind even closer to the galaxy’s core. Constructed to explore Andromeda’s infrared brightness and stellar populations, the full mosaic image is composed of about 3,000 individual frames. Two smaller companion galaxies, NGC 205 (below) and M32 (above) are also included in the combined fields. The data confirm that Andromeda (aka M31) houses around 1 trillion stars, compared to 4 hundred billion for the Milky Way.

Please stay with me for a few more minutes. Keeping the Andromeda galaxy in mind, now read this:

March 29, 2013

An ‘Infinity of Dwarfs’ –A Visible Universe of 7 Trillion Dwarf Galaxies

ESA astronomers say that for every ten far galaxies observed, a hundred go undetected.

Astronomers estimate that there are between 100 billion and 200 billion galaxies in the known universe. A single galaxy such as the Milky Way contain upwards of 200 billion normal stars. About 75 percent of all stars in the Milky Way are less than half as massive as our Sun. In the universe at large, the majority of galaxies are classified as dwarfs, each with less than a few hundred million stars. The image above is a computer simulation of a colliding dwarf galaxy triggering the formation of the Milky Ways spiral arms.

The largest project ever undertaken to map out the Universe in three dimensions using ESO telescopes has reached the halfway stage. An international team of astronomers has used the VIMOS instrument on the ESO Very Large Telescope to measure the distances to 55,000 galaxies as part of the VIPERS survey (VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey). This has already allowed them to create a remarkable three-dimensional view of how galaxies were distributed in space in the younger Universe.This reveals the complex web of the large-scale structure of the Universe in great detail. The light of each galaxy is spread out into its component colours within VIMOS. Follow up analysis then allows astronomers to work out how fast the galaxy appears to move away from us — its redshift. This in turn reveals its distance and, when combined with its position on the sky, its location in the Universe.

Wow!

Millions of galaxies, trillions of suns, inconceivable numbers of planets.

Please pause and let the numbers sink in.

Now back to that Wonders of Life BBC series, during which Professor Brian Cox, said, “that it is inconceivable that there isn’t life elsewhere, that life is not present on countless other planets circling countless other suns …“.

In other words, if mankind is so intent on ‘fouling our nest’ on this most beautiful of planets, so what!

In the bigger scheme of things, it matters not. Find that tough? Then go and hug a dog and enjoy the moment. For tomorrow may never come.

Looking at stress from a different perspective

Who doesn’t get stressed out! Maybe not such an issue?

I have in my bookshelf a book called The Anxiety Epidemic. On the back cover it explains this:

The Pain & Stress Center was founded in 1979, but the dream started long before that. The goal is to help individuals realize their true potential and to support and conduct research in the areas of man’s greatest needs – natural alternatives.

I had seen the book in a second-hand bookshop and paid $1.99 for it!

Clearly I have some interest in the topic and like many others around me know that certain situations cause me stress.

Thus when recently there was a TED talk on the topic of ‘How to make stress your friend’ it seemed like a worthwhile thing to watch. I was not wrong!

Published on Sep 4, 2013

Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others.

It was an easy matter to find Kelly McGonigal’s website and discover a mine of advice and other good stuff. For example, this:

Watch: How to Think Like a Psychologist

My fall 2011 Stanford University course “How to Think Like a Psychologist” is now available as a series of free, downloadable videos through iTunes university.

In this fun course, I invited my favorite psychology and neuroscience researchers at Stanford to talk about their work and what it means for everyday life and real-world problems. Each class starts with a 45-min lecture by the guest speaker, followed by about 30 minutes of Q&A from myself and course participants. I had a great time grilling these amazing scientists about everything from politics to education, parenting, shopping, and the scientific process. You’ll even hear a few personal stories they’ve never shared in public before!

Then there was this:

Learn: Mindfulness of Breathing.

I’m frequently asked questions about how to get started meditating, what is the best meditation for beginners, what is the best meditation for reducing stress (or training willpower, or cultivating self-compassion, or developing focus, etc.). Below is my favorite meditation for all these intentions.

You can listen to (or download) a version of these instructions and a 15-min guided practice here.

Mindfulness of Breathing

The intention of this practice is to turn your attention to the breath, notice when the mind wanders, and bring your attention back to the breath.

This meditation cultivates self-awareness, mindfulness, and the ability to make conscious choices about what you are doing. It also is good practice in not following every impulse or habit.

There are a few different ways to focus on the breath; choose the one that feels right to you.

There’s more to read here.

Of course, I couldn’t sign off without offering yet another thing to learn from dogs- relaxation.

So have a great week ahead: With or without stress!

A little philosophy for today!

Philosopher Daniel Dennett offers a kind of self-help book for deep thinkers.

Those of you that are regular followers of Learning from Dogs know that I tend to offer posts for the week-end that are light-hearted. Certainly that’s easier for me, if you pardon me from saying, and hopefully a change for you, dear reader.

Well today’s offering is not exactly heavy but it is, nonetheless, not a typical Saturday topic.

However, trust you find it engaging.

Of the many blogs and websites that I follow, I enjoy the regular mental stimulation that flows from the blog Big Think. Recently there was a piece from Daniel Dennett that tickled my interest and I wanted to share it here.

Wikipedia describes Daniel Dennett as follows:

Daniel Clement “Dan” Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.

This is the Big Think piece that caught my eye. Enjoy!

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The Philosopher’s Self-Help Book (with Daniel Dennett)

by JASON GOTS

JULY 13, 2013, 12:00 AM

While Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley busy themselves making every aspect of our lives more efficient (except, perhaps, for the process of discovering these new technologies, learning them, and integrating them into our lives), Daniel Dennett sits up at Tufts University in Massachusetts, philosophizing. His latest book, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking is an attempt to make transparent some of the tricks of the philosopher’s trade. In an accelerating age, it’s a self-help book designed to slow the reader down and improve our ability to think things through.

The kinds of things Mr. Dennett likes to think about include the nature of consciousness, evolution, and religious belief. But the mind-training his new book offers is applicable to any problem you want to consider thoroughly. In an age of quick fixes and corner-cutting, we’re in constant danger of bad decision making – of overreliance on what cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls “system 1”, and what most of us call intuition. This rapid decision making channel of the brain is helpful when we are in mortal danger, or pressed for a quick decision within our areas of expertise. But for most decisions, the slower, more deliberate channel (system 2) is much more reliable. What Dennett offers, then, in Intuition Pumps, is a workout for system 2 – a series of thought experiments you can apply to puzzles real and imagined to bulk up the slower, wiser parts of your consciousness.

Some of the tools Dennett offers in the book are more familiar than others. Reductio ad absurdum arguments, for example, in which we test the validity of a claim by taking it to its most outrageous illogical extreme (a: “all living things have a right to liberty.” b: “so let me get this straight – a blade of grass has a right to liberty? What does that even mean?”). But the true delights of the book are the far-out exercises Dennett and his colleagues have dreamed up in the course of their work, such as “Swampman Meets A Cow-Shark”, from Donald Davidson, which begins:

Suppose lightning strikes a dead tree in a swamp; I am standing nearby. My body is reduced to its elements, while entirely by coincidence (and out of different molecules) the tree is turned into my physical replica. My replica, The Swampman, moves exactly as I did; according to its nature it departs the swamp, encounters and seems to recognize my friends, and appears to return their greetings in English.

Walking us through Davidson’s considerations about whether and to what extent the Swampman is anything like Davidson, and related ones about a cow that gives birth to something that looks exactly like a shark (yet has cow DNA in all of its cells), Dennett teaches us a surprising lesson about the utility of wild philosophical speculation.

Cloaked in the breezy, familiar trappings of a self-help book, Intuition Pumps is in actuality a dark mirror of that genre – a field of rabbit holes designed to leave the reader with more questions than answers, and wiser for the long and indirect journey.

Watch for Daniel Dennett’s Tools For Better Thinking – a Big Think Mentor workshop coming soon.

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Don’t know about you but Daniel Dennett’s book looks like one that deserves reading. If you feel the same way the book is called Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking and here’s the link to Amazon.

Closing my Windows.

A big move on in my computing.

Warning! Today’s post has almost nothing to do with dogs plus if you are not into computing then you may want to come back tomorrow! 😉

A little over a week ago I ordered an Apple Mac computer.

So what, I hear you say.

Well one way or another, I have been associated with personal computing for too many years and with the Microsoft Windows operating system equally for a long time.

Here’s that history and, be warned, I do go on a tad!

In 1970 I joined the Office Products (OP) Division of IBM in the United Kingdom. I joined as an office products salesman and after my initial training was based at IBM OP’s London North branch in Whetstone in the London Borough of Barnet. I loved both the job (remember the Selectric ‘Golfball’ typewriter?) and the company and conspired to win the prize of top UK salesman for the year 1977. By that time, IBM was selling dedicated word-processing (WP) machines. They offered powerful benefits for companies of many sizes and, as an experienced WP salesman, I was enjoying the fruits of that success. Thus it was that in 1978 I attended IBM’s Golden Circle celebrations for 1977 country winners from all around the world. The Golden Circle celebrations were held in Hawaii!

I returned from Hawaii with the clear idea in my mind that this was the time to move on; my ego didn’t like the idea of not being number one again! So within a couple of days of returning to my sales branch, I announced to my manager, David Halley, that I wished to give three months notice. I can still recall David’s rather shocked response with him saying, “But I always thought Golden Circle was an incentive event!”

In those days New Scientist magazine was a regular read for me. During my time of working out my notice I read in the magazine about this new personal computer from Commodore Business Machines that had been launched in the UK. It was called the Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) and had been unveiled in 1977 at the US West Coast Computer Faire. I was captivated by what I had read.

I had casually mentioned it to Richard Maugham; a good friend and fellow office-products salesman working for Olivetti UK. Richard said that coincidentally a close friend of many years had just been appointed sales manager for CBM UK Ltd. That friend was Keith Hall and on making contact with Keith, I was invited to go and meet him and learn more about this funny device. What I hadn’t bargained for was that Keith was yet another smart salesman; Keith and Richard had met when they were both salesmen working for Olivetti.

When I asked Keith the retail price of the ‘PET”, his immediate reply was, “Well why don’t you become a dealer and I can sell you one for 30% less!” Like most salesmen, I was always a sucker to a good sales pitch! I signed the necessary paperwork. (It is very sad to say that Keith died a few years ago, at far too young an age.)

So it was that towards the end of 1978, I became the sixth Commodore computer dealer in the UK, opening my small store in what had once been a Barber’s shop in Church Street, off Head Street in the centre of Colchester, Essex. I called my business Dataview Limited.

Frankly, I hadn’t a clue as to what I was doing! If it hadn’t been for a gigantic stroke of luck I would not have lasted long!

That piece of luck was meeting someone who was a programmer for a large, traditional computing company, ICL, who had bought himself a Commodore PET and, just out of fun, was writing a word-processing program. Now if I didn’t know about computers, personal or otherwise, I certainly knew about word-processing. When I looked at what Peter D. had written I practically wet myself. Because, I was looking at a program that even incomplete already offered three-quarters, give or take, of the functionality of a £20,000 IBM Word Processor.

I offered to guide Peter in refining and honing his software which he graciously accepted. Then a few weeks later Peter casually asked me if I would like to sell the software. I jumped at the opportunity and in due course Wordcraft was launched under the Dataview umbrella. (And do see my footnote!)

But back to my Windows journey.

In 1981 IBM announced the release of their own personal computer.

With my love affair with IBM not even dimmed, becoming an IBM PC dealer was a must. An IBM PC version of Wordcraft was developed by Peter and now things were really rocking and rolling. Then in 1983 Microsoft announced the development of Windows, a graphical user interface (GUI) for the operating system MS-DOS. MS-DOS was the existing operating system on the IBM PC.

By the time I sold Dataview in 1986, Windows was well on its way to evolving into a full personal computer operating system and ever since that time my own PCs have been Windows based. (Difficult to imagine now how in those early years Windows didn’t achieve any popularity!)

OK, fast forward 27 years to my present machine running Windows 7, Google Chrome web browser and all the fancy ‘cloud’-based applications of today.

Much of my time spent writing and blogging relies on me being online. Like so many others, as soon as I turn on my computer it becomes an online PC. On average, I am working in front of my PC for about 3 to 4 hours per day. However, slowly but surely over the past few months I have become aware of a number of strange occurrences, the most annoying of which is the regular ‘hanging’ of my Chrome browser. This was happening at least on a daily basis and required the complete rebooting of my PC – a right pain in the posterior!

Muttering about this to friends who know a lot more about computing than I, raised my awareness that the privacy and security of one’s computer was no longer to be assumed. Then just recently, I read online,

“A Special Surveillance Chip”

According to leaked internal documents from the German Federal Office for Security in Information Technology (BSI) that Die Zeit obtained, IT experts figured out that Windows 8, the touch-screen enabled, super-duper, but sales-challenged Microsoft operating system is outright dangerous for data security. It allows Microsoft to control the computer remotely through a built-in backdoor. Keys to that backdoor are likely accessible to the NSA – and in an unintended ironic twist, perhaps even to the Chinese.

The backdoor is called “Trusted Computing,” developed and promoted by the Trusted Computing Group, founded a decade ago by the all-American tech companies AMD, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Wave Systems. Its core element is a chip, the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), and an operating system designed for it, such as Windows 8. Trusted Computing Group has developed the specifications of how the chip and operating systems work together.

Its purpose is Digital Rights Management and computer security. The system decides what software had been legally obtained and would be allowed to run on the computer, and what software, such as illegal copies or viruses and Trojans, should be disabled. The whole process would be governed by Windows, and through remote access, by Microsoft.

Then a few paragraphs later:

It would be easy for Microsoft or chip manufacturers to pass the backdoor keys to the NSA and allow it to control those computers. NO, Microsoft would never do that, we protest. Alas, Microsoft, as we have learned from the constant flow of revelations, informs the US government of security holes in its products well before it issues fixes so that government agencies can take advantage of the holes and get what they’re looking for.

Now I’m using Windows 7 so imagine my angst when I then read:

Another document claims that Windows 8 with TPM 2.0 is “already” no longer usable. But Windows 7 can “be operated safely until 2020.” After that other solutions would have to be found for the IT systems of the Administration.

That did it for me – time to move on from Windows.

Many Apple-user friends said that I should switch to the Apple Mac; that it was the only logical way to go. I checked that all my important software applications that I used under Windows were compatible with the Apple Mac Operating System and thankfully they were. I was speaking of Open Office, WordPress, Scrivener, Picasa, Skype. Then I started to browse the Apple website. I was clear about wanting a desktop machine, an iMac, and pretty soon realised that my change of personal computing was going to cost me around $1,500, perhaps a little more.

Then Dan Gomez, both long-time friend and Apple user, in browsing the web came across the Mac mini. He called me and I took a look. For well under half the price of an iMac, I could get a great alternative to my Windows PC and use many of my existing peripherals.

A quick conversation with Zachary of the Apple Mac mini sales team and the deed was done! So all that remained was the great transition!

The box arrived last Wednesday.

Surely too small for a full-blooded personal computer?

I resisted opening the box until last Friday when I had some decent spare time.

This is a long, long way from the Commodore PET!

Plugging it all together was easier than I feared.

Just screen and keyboard/mouse and we are good to go!

Then the acid test. Could I even understand how to operate it? I put that off until Saturday!

The new Mac mini system on the right, all ready for me to play with!

I have to say that first impressions, especially of the elegance of the display and the icons, were great.

But this had to be a fully functional machine for me. Where to start? By downloading and installing the most critical of my software needs: Scrivener, my writing software.

Imagine my great pleasure and huge relief when less than a couple of hours later, not only had I downloaded and installed Scrivener for Apple Mac OS but had passed the latest backup file across from my Windows PC and accessed it on the Apple.

My (very) draft book file installed and running on the Mac mini!

So, all in all, despite this being very early days, it’s starting to look like a great change.

However, I mustn’t close without thanking a few people:

Dan Gomez and John Hurlburt, friends and Apple users, and in John’s case experienced on both Windows and Apple systems. Guys, I couldn’t have made the decision to change without your kind, generous and supportive advice.

Zachary Brown of Apple sales, Mac mini team. Zach, I know it’s your job but nonetheless you did and said all the right things. (And the new screen is much better than my existing one!)

Last but not least, my dearest wife Jean, who just let me get on with things and even though I knew she didn’t have a clue as to what I kept muttering on about, never let on.

Footnote:

Earlier on I wrote about launching Wordcraft, the word-processing software for personal computers. That was in early 1979 and later that year I was invited to present Wordcraft at an international gathering of Commodore dealers held in Boston, Mass.

During my presentation, I used the word ‘fortnight’ unaware that Americans don’t know this common English word. Immediately, someone about 10 rows back in the audience called out, “Hey, Handover! What’s a fortnight?”

It released the presenter’s tension in me and I really hammed my response in saying, “Don’t be so silly, everybody knows the word fortnight.” Seem to remember asking the audience at large who else didn’t know the word. Of course, most raised their arms!

Now on a bit of a roll, I deliberately started using as many bizarre and archaic English words that came to me. Afterwards, the owner of the voice came introduced himself. He was Dan Gomez, a Californian based in Costa Mesa near Los Angeles and also involved in developing software for the Commodore.

Dan became my US West Coast distributor for Wordcraft and was very successful. When Dataview was sold, Dan and I continued to see each other regularly and I count him now as one of my dear friends. Through knowing Dan I got to know Dan’s sister Suzann and her husband Don. It was Su that invited me to spend Christmas 2007 with her and Don at their home in San Carlos, Mexico. Jean also lived in San Carlos and was close friends with Su. Together they had spent many years rescuing feral dogs from the streets of San Carlos and finding new homes for them.

Thus it was that I met Jean. Both Jean and I were born 20 miles apart in London!

So from ‘Hey, what’s a fortnight’ to living as happily as I have ever been in the rural countryside of Oregon. Funny old world!

The marriage of Jean and Paul wonderfully supported by Diane, maid of honour, and best man, Dan Gomez. — The ‘voice’ Dan Gomez – Best Man at the marriage of Jean and me, November 20th 2010.

Taking a pee, Europe style!

Wonderful item sent to me from Bob Derham.

Important EU announcement

The British Penny

EU Directive No. 456179

In order to help meet the conditions for joining the Single European currency, all citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland must be made aware that the phrase ‘Spending a Penny’ is not to be used after 31st December 2013 .

From this date, the correct terminology will be: ‘Euronating’.

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To all readers who are unfamiliar with the phrase ‘spend a penny’ it effectively means going to the bathroom, in American speak.

My understanding is that when the first public lavatories were opened in the cities of England, one had to place a penny in the mechanism in order to open the door to the toilet. Hence the expression of spending a penny.

I Am Leader

A short story from author Wendy Scott.

Back in July, I published a post reviewing Traveling Light, the novel by Andrea Thalasinos. At the end of that post, I made the following offer.

Now here’s an offer.

Wiley has offered a free copy of Andrea’s book as a ‘give-away’ from Learning from Dogs. Here’s the plan.

Would you like to write a story about any aspect of the relationship that dogs can have with humans?

Any length, truth or fiction; it doesn’t matter. Email your story to me to be received by the end of Wednesday, 31st July 2013, Pacific Daylight Time …… [and] I will publish every one received.

Just one story was received, from Wendy, and the promised free copy of Andrea’s book has been mailed to her.

So here is that short story.

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I Am Leader

The water was angry today. I watched as it tore the tall trees from their roots, thundering, roaring, snapping them, toppling them.

I watched as the angry water shredded the shore. I watched as its fury snatched my pup, my baby, sweeping her away like a dying twig torn from the mother tree.

I am hunter. I am leader.

But now I am nothing.

I ran after my pup, tried to grab her by the nape, take her back. But I failed. I saw her paddle in the froth, scramble atop a long gnarled broken bole that was once a tree. My pup shook, her ears flattened, her tail tucked. She cried. I watched the cold, angry froth take her.

My mind sang with the cry of my little grey pup that I could not save, the little one who would never learn about the hunter, the leader.

I picked my way, shivering, along a path — it used to be our way to good hunting, to the forest edge where the deer grazed as near as yesterday. Now…

My left shoulder ached where the water nearly took me, hurled a branch at me in frustration. I fell and dragged myself away from the collapsing shore, to higher ground. The rain poured and sleeted to drench the shambles left by water that continued to roar and foam. Mud slid through my feet, gusts took my breath.

It was very cold. My ears twitched, hearing nothing beyond the roar of the fury. Water is very noisy when it is angry. The others, my sisters, my mate, I could not scent them, hear them, see them.

The day retreated. I blinked to see better, my eyes wide, but they saw nothing that I could recognise. My nose and ears twitched and twisted — nothing. I could hear my little grey one, my pup; she shivered and cried in my mind, but my eyes and ears, my nose … she was gone.

I stumbled over broken branches, a drowned fox, mice flushed from their holes, a broken-necked bird, bushes overturned and torn apart, walls of fallen trees. Daylight was lost in a twilight.

Now, I scented a 2-legged. I stilled. Crackling. Smoke, deep and hard to breath. Rabbit, burnt. These were the smells I knew of the 2-leggeds. One was near.

I crouched and crept. Yellow-orange light bounced and throbbed through the jumble of once-forest. I remained low, but now I could hear. The 2-legged rustled. It was noisy and careless while its fire snapped. And the rabbit smell was very faint, distorted.

I could see it now, this 2-legged, seated in that foolish way 2-leggeds have, crossing one foot over the other. It rustled again and held a big stick over its fire — the stick jabbed through the rabbit. The rabbit’s fur was gone from its blackened body, abandoned near the 2-legged’s thigh.

My stomach twitched. My mouth filled with hunger. I took another step.

The 2-legged looked up and over. He saw me, then quickly looked away.

I am hunter, I am leader — you do not meet my gaze unless you want to be punished.

I crouched, readied myself to spring.

The 2-legged stood. I eased back. My back paws met the tangled once-forest left of the water’s anger and stopped me. I tensed.

But the 2-legged lifted the big stick with its rabbit, tore a haunch with its hand. It looked directly at me again — no, I am hunter, I am leader — and threw the haunch at me. The burnt meat landed close to my feet.

The 2-legged looked away and returned to its foolish, awkward sitting. It tore ragged bites from the burnt rabbit, holding the big stick between the paws of its upper limbs.

My stomach demanded food. I scented the burnt rabbit, the smell of blood faint and smoky. I did not hunt the rabbit, I am not like the vultures and scavengers … but I was hungry. I nosed it, picked it up and turned away from the 2-legged. The flesh was warm. It sated. I licked my paws, swiped my whiskers and jowls to groom.

For a moment, my mind tricked me. I heard my pup. I scented my mate, my others, we were sated, we curled together, our warm bodies close, to sleep through the long cold night.

I opened my eyes. I was alone.

Except the 2-legged. Its odour was unmistakable, deer hide, rabbit, something sweetly sour I thought must be its own scent, not the ones borrowed by the other animals it ate or draped over its body.

I studied the 2-legged. It had curled on its side. The fire beside it throbbed yellow and orange, throwing strange shadows where they should not be. When I looked away, my sight was poor. I would not look directly at the fire again.

All was silent, save the angry water behind us. We lived. Nothing else lived. The water took everything.

I dreamed of my mate, his powerful howls alerting our cousins of our hunt; the deer was warm, its blood and flesh giving us another day of life. The deer was old and slow, an easy hunt. Its time had come; we knew that, understood it, this deer and our pack.

I dreamed of my sisters, nipping at my pup, teasing her to chase them in mock hunts. I dreamed of my brothers, circling and securing our family. My pack. My life.

We slept.

The day hung low and grey. Overnight, the angry water had become a sussurrating hiss behind us.

With its strange flat feet and its big stick, the 2-legged was tossing dirt and wet leaves over the ash where the fire and the rabbit had been. The old fire flared briefly. A cool damp gust caught some of the sparks and swept them high. A bird swooped near to see, then lost interest, flapped its wings to gain height.

The smell in the air was smoke and faint rabbit scent. It was upturned earth and rot and rain.

The 2-legged’s odour wore the smoke and long-dead deer.

The 2-legged came close. It looked at me — no — I am hunter, I am leader, you do not meet my gaze. But it was stupid and foolish, this 2-legged, like a pup that had not yet learned. It neared me. I growled, prepared to attack.

Surely it could see my flattened ears, my lowered shoulders?

No, it was stupid. It walked passed me.

I watched. The 2-legged paused and turned. It swung one of its upper limbs down low, then away, a sweeping motion. Strange language. It did not lower its ears, or roll on its belly. It made noises with its mouth. The noises were terrible, low, rumbling, but they were not threatening. I watched.

It made the motion again, then turned and walked on.

I sat on my haunches.

I am leader, I am hunter. But this 2-legged did not understand. It had not learned from its pack.

We two were the only ones I scented. We were alone. The angry water had taken the others.

The 2-legged stopped, made the strange sweeping motion and noises again. I took a step in its direction.

I am hunter. I am leader.

My pup cries in my mind. My mate howls. My sisters tease, my brothers scout. But around me is silence, the scents dirty and empty, the forest destroyed, the deer gone. We two are alone.

The 2-legged’s head bobs up and down. I take another step.

We walk on, stepping carefully over the tangled mess that was once our home, our feet slipping in mud, scratched in dying brambles, struggling in the unfamiliar path before us. 2-legged uses the big stick as if it were a third leg.

It is learning. I am patient.

I am hunter. I am leader.

oooOOOooo

Don’t know about you but I found that story by Wendy more than compelling. Found it hauntingly beautiful. A ancient account of the first meeting between man and wolf.

Therefore, can’t close without again reproducing this short extract and images of the grey wolf posted on the 20th May Musings on love.

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While we were looking at the animals, along the pathway came a couple of the volunteer staff walking a Grey Wolf (Canis Lupus).

I was utterly captivated by this beautiful animal. Her story was that she was born in captivity and owned by an individual who soon decided he didn’t want her! Not long thereafter Tundra, as she became named, was brought to the Sarvey Wildlife Center in Washington and thence to Wildlife Images when she was just 8 weeks old.

Tundra turned to look at me. I stood perfectly still and quiet. Tundra seemed to want to come closer. As one would with a strange dog, I got down on my knees and turned my eyes away from Tundra’s. I sensed she was coming towards me so quickly held up my camera and took the picture below.

I kept my gaze averted as I felt the warm breath of this magnificent animal inches from my face. Then the magic of love across the species! Tundra licked my face! The tears came to my eyes and were licked away. I stroked her and became lost in thought.

Was this an echo of how thousands and thousands of years ago, a wolf and an early man came together out of trust and love and started the journey of the longest animal-human relationship, by far?

oooo

Fight for the trees.

An update to yesterday’s post.

In the recent post Sing for the trees, Pedantry of the blog Wibble left this comment:

don’t consider myself an envious type, but I have to admit to being jealous of your location there, Paul. Deer in the back garden! Amazing. I guess I’m lucky to see the odd squirrel. But (as usual) I digress…

Trees… yes. Were I King of the Earth my first edict would be to make it illegal to chop down any more trees anywhere for any reason, and to reward true reforestation efforts (while banning old-forest lumbering dressed up as ‘reforestation’).

As I’m not, the extent of my singing for the trees is limited to pledges on such worthy projects as Who Bombed Judi Bari? (less than subtle hint: just 39 hours to go, as I write).

Your first image above is wonderful, and is a terrific, healing counterpoint to the images I see elsewhere, such as in the clip below, of what we’re doing to our home, out of sight of most people. Thank you.

That comment also included this video:

I thought readers would be interested in learning more by visiting the Kickstarter Campaign page and just possibly offering whatever pledge you can afford.

The importance of this campaign was underlined by the fact that just last Wednesday my daughter Maija, son-in-law Marius, and grandson Morten visited the Redwood Forest as part of their holiday with us in Oregon. Here are three of their pictures taken just two days ago.

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So do whatever you can, please! There are just 26 hours to go at the time of posting this: 9:10 am PDT.

Thanks to Pedantry for bringing this to the attention of LfD readers and followers.

Healing our planet, person by person.

Jon Lavin reflects on the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.

Last week, I republished a number of Jon’s posts from way back and was delighted at how many of you enjoyed his writings. Jon and his family are taking a well-earned vacation which clearly includes reading posts on Learning from Dogs: Poor soul! This was made clear from an email Jon sent me yesterday afternoon.

Jon had read the essay from George Monbiot that was published three days ago under my post title of Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) all over again? So hopefully, this introduction puts Jon’s email into proper context. The subject title of Jon’s email was DDT 2.0.

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Hi Paul!

Hope you guys are well on your lovely farm! We’re in sunny Falmouth for the week staying in our Ben’s student flat slowly working our way through his food supplies.

In my current chilled state, I read your reproduced article and I got to thinking; so you might pick out the odd bit of coherence in these ramblings!

I am reminded of David Hawkins’ ‘Scale of Human Consciousness’. If 80 percent of us are below the level of Integrity, and therefore truth, and the average level of integrity in business is below this level, it is no wonder that money comes before the greater good. Think of the banking crisis as a good example.

I guess we move forward at the speed of the slowest. We certainly seem to learn through the pain and suffering of our own making. I can understand now why this world is perfect for our development and advancement. We are exposed to every opportunity to better ourselves and not everyone has enough of what it takes to hit the mark. We just have to keep going until we get it, even if this means pain and suffering.

The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism talk about suffering and how we create it.The First Noble Truth states that life is suffering. The 2nd Noble Truth talks about our craving for things: money, possessions, etc.; cravings that create suffering. The Third Noble Truth talks of a cure and a way out of hopelessness and suffering and finally, the Fourth Noble Truth gives guidance on walking the path out of suffering.

So, although your article is awful, it is to be expected that we keep being attracted to these sorts of schemes and are attracted to money. We have to learn through pain and suffering until we get it right.

People frequently ask, “What can I do to help?”. Unfortunately or fortunately, there is a way out! The best way to help is to work on ourselves! Sounds a bit silly but by working and developing ourselves we raise the overall level of human consciousness. This means that when companies and individuals attempt to do things that are not integrous, there is less likelihood of them being successful.

Heady stuff really and I wouldn’t describe myself as Buddhist but I have to admit there seems to be some truth in this.

I hope some of this makes sense.

Warm wishes,

Jon.

oooOOOooo

Well, of course it makes sense; perfect sense! Reminds me of the old adage that one cannot truly help another without first helping oneself.

Thus what I read in Jon’s words is that by living a life of integrity we help bring up the overall level of human consciousness, right across our planet. Let me stay with that for a moment longer. Jon mentioned David Hawkins’ ‘Scale of Human Consciousness’. It was included in a post in January 2012 The evolution of the domestic dog but to save you going there, here it is again:

Map of Consciousness, copyright Dr. David Hawkins

One might argue that the column headed ‘LEVEL’ is a pseudonym for ‘Behaviour’. In other words, those behaviours from Courage and up represent integrity.

So when Jon writes, “The best way to help is to work on ourselves!“, what he is saying that by consciously abandoning levels below 200 we open ourselves to being a force for good beyond ourselves. Just run your eye down the emotions from Ineffable to Affirmation and reflect on how others that offer those emotions affect us in such a positive and inspiring way. Indeed, no better than reflecting on how a dog makes us feel when offering unconditional love!

Of course it’s not easy! Nothing great ever is. There is so much around us that we can hate (score 150), so much to create anxiety (score 100), and so many examples of despair (score 50).

But remember the beginning of integrity is 200.

Which is why trust (score 250) and optimism (score 310) and forgiveness (score 350) and especially love (score 500) are truly the tools of healing our planet.

You can start right now by hugging a dog (dogs score 210!).

Love and Trust - Grandson Morten hugging Dhalia. — Love and Trust – Grandson Morten hugging Dhalia.

Thank you, Jon.

Some content on this page was disabled on August 23, 2017 as a result of a DMCA takedown notice from Susan Hawkins. You can learn more about the DMCA here:

https://wordpress.com/support/copyright-and-the-dmca/

Healing

Always the need for healing.

My posts from Monday and yesterday about the plight of our bees must to many, frequently me as well, engender a level of hopelessness as to where we, as in the peoples of this planet, are heading. Too many times the news is discouraging; to say the least.

But hold on for just a moment! Here’s a quotation from this week’s Sabbath Moment from Terry Hershey:

Tears have a purpose.

they are what we carry of the ocean, and

perhaps we must become sea,

give ourselves to it,

if we are to be transformed.

Linda Hogan

What this says to me is that feelings of sadness, of grief, even of despair are an essential part of the process of ‘letting go’; of being able to heal oneself. Just as dogs and many other animals know when to crawl away and recuperate in some peaceful and quiet place, so too must we humans counter our feelings of pain and anguish with healing.

So with that all in mind, I’m delighted, and very grateful, to Sue of Dreamwalker’s Sanctuary for permission to repost her item on Sound Healing, published last Friday.

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Friday Facts ~ Sound Healing

by Sue Dreamwalker

Have you ever wondered why we so enjoy Music? Why various styles seem to either lift our mood or sooth our spirits? Or some grate on our nerve endings?

Sound Healing comes in various forms. I have received healing from various sources: Crystal Singing Bowls, Tuning Forks and the Mighty Gongs. The Gong Bath in particular shifted something within my being as I physically felt something leave my aura to be replaced with a new found peace within.

Sound Healing isn’t new and if you research back to ancient times many ceremonies were done through sound.

I know in the 90s when I was going through my own major self-healing after listening to some tapes by Deepak Chopra called Magical Mind Magical Body in which he speaks about our vowel sounds. I remember driving to work, and on occasion still do, chanting out Very Loudly the vowel sounds in a chant, each vowel holds its own frequency. Chanting brings an awareness of our own voice, as we express outwards our feelings, and there are some interesting theories as how certain frequencies are powerfully connected to our body. This includes the frequency of 528hz,referred to as ancient solfeggio frequencies which has been researched for its proposed ability to heal and resonate with human DNA. I did my own research on the net, and came across this site and post ( Forgotten in Time: The Ancient Solfeggio Frequencies )

Interestingly too the author of that post went on to explain how Deepak Chopra was a big inspiration and listened to the same tapes I did where Deepak Chopra explained saying: “Quantum physics has found that there is no empty space in the human cell, but it is a teeming, electro-magnetic field of possibility or potential.” This made me smile as synchronicity seemed to be playing a role.

Within that same article the author went on to say how music makes waves which produces shapes and patterns and quoted a passage from a book by the first to make that connection, a German scientist, Ernst Chladni who in 1787 detailed his findings in his book “Discoveries Concerning the Theory of Music.” These patterns and figures are called Chladni figures with each note having a corresponding pattern or vibration.

My own tool is the Drum and if we look back through time we see how the Drum beat has been used not only in rituals but also within our military as we march to its beat! The Drum is very powerful and many join Drumming circles. You, too, can find out how to call Healing from within a Drumming Circle from an article in the magazine Sacred Hoop of 2003 called Healing Power of the Drum Circle

Sound Healing works, because we are all vibration, we all resonate with our own frequencies. For those wishing to learn more the links are below and of course there are many many articles covering this subject on the ‘web’.

For those who have not much time I will leave you with this one note of vibration from a Singing bowl. If you go to the YouTube site you will find more about this One note and how it heals.

…

… and for those who have 5 minutes to spare this Om Meditation.

Sue~Dreamwalker

Sources:
http://www.holistic-resonance.com/

http://gongsofjoy.com/articles/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Magical-Body-Mind-Connection-Well-Being/dp/0743530136/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376658622&sr=8-1&keywords=magical+mind+magical+body

http://www.somaenergetics.com/forgotten_in_time.php

http://theworlddrum.com/more.html

http://shamanicdrumming.com/healing_power_of_the_drum_circle.html

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I thought it would be helpful to include the YouTube notes that were associated with those two videos.

First: 7th Chakra – Reiki Angel Crystal Singing Bowl Sound Healing

Chakra’s are energy centers in your body. There are 7 major Chakra’s. Each Chakra governs specific issues and lessons.By aligning the chakra system you can heal your mental, emotional, spiritual & physical bodies.

7th Chakra= Crown Chakra

Color: Purple

Location: top of head

Element: Superether

Musical note/ sound: B/ silence

Glands/ Organs: Pineal gland, cerebral cortex, central nervous system, right eye

Foods: Fasting

Essential Oils: Frankincense, Myrrh

Stones/ Crystals: amethyst, alexandrite,diamond, sugalite, purple fluorite, quartz, selenite

Purpose: vitalizes upper brain, unification with higher self. Being open to source, accepting our own Divinity, Beauty, healing, Inspiration. Perception beyond space & time, perceives “miracles”.

When Harmonious: Idealism, selfless service, One with divine, spiritual will, unity.

When Disrupted: lack of inspiration, confusion, depression, alienation, hesitation to serve, senility, crisis of faith.

Second: Aum Meditation

Working with Aums will resonate into all objects around you, effectively re-writing all undesirable environmental energy programming. Like a springboard of positivity. Use it to launch your spiritual work to new heights. This is just a small sample of the full meditation.

Evening Meditation

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

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Wonders of Life, BBC Two, review

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Friday Facts ~ Sound Healing

Sue~Dreamwalker

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