From the category archives:

Nature as teacher

Rust in peace

January 29, 2010

Is this trash? Does it mar the landscape? After having each served a nine month stint as a cover for the Peace Fire during the six years from 2002 till 2008 these ten galvanized, circular lids now lay with their backs to the ground for a final sleep until their slow dissolve back into the [...]

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Mix sun, water and oil

January 19, 2010

Leonardo da Vinci is widely known as an artist and not so well known as a scientist. He was equally both. And what informed both his art and science was a keen observation of nature and its many interconnections. One could even say that Leonardo was an early advocate of a systemic, interdisciplinary approach to [...]

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A cautionary tale

January 12, 2010

Inertia results, not so much in the delay of the future, but in the destruction of its potential. For a very long time I was aware that the Shakespeare Bench was slowly degrading and that if I wanted its carved-into-the-wood message of “tongues in trees, sermons in stones, books in brooks” to have a longer [...]

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A mathematical genius

December 5, 2007

It is generally assumed that humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions, but a study published this week in “Current Biology” provides proof that chimpanzees are better than humans at basic numeric memory. In a simple mathematical test devised by Kyoto University cognitive scientist Tetsuro Matsuzawa, “Ayumu” (the most prodigious of the six [...]

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Sauntering along

November 8, 2007

Now that spring is here the cute echidna has come out of hibernation and can be seen sauntering along in its hungry way looking to terrify any ant colony she finds. A walk along the “Peace?” path reveals upheaved ground where sharp claws and a pointy snout have wrecked havoc on the peaceful ants who, [...]

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Shifting realities

October 11, 2007

I find it amazing that no matter how certain we are of things, not only are things susceptible to change, they can change in an instant. We can be looking right into the eyes of an issue, convinced of its reality. Then, with the subtlest shift of thinking or of events, it appears in a [...]

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Growth

September 28, 2007

For a year I lived on a farm in Korea that was run by an in-house Catholic priest and frequented regularly by other priests from throughout the country. They seemed wonderfully warm hearted men doing what they thought best for those in their charge. On the surface their public persona was exemplary. Behind closed doors, [...]

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Living with struggle

August 16, 2007

I thought the day was going to be fairly straight forward, easy and relatively light-hearted. Just use the Subaru to carry fencing material out near the cliff where Glenn, Sally and I would build a protective barrier against the wallabies. The sun was shining, the wind non existent. Perfect. I hadn’t, however, accounted for the [...]

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Entirely foreign?

April 19, 2007

The above photo of Wedge island, which is just off the southern end of Windgrove, conveys nature as a multiple of dualisms: beautiful and sinister, foreboding and enticing, stormy and calm. There is no one description of nature that fits. The flip side of today’s description will be tomorrow’s reality. Similar, I suppose (if memory [...]

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A truer equinox

March 21, 2007

Today marks another equinoctial day on the year’s calendar where night and day are equal throughout the world. Equal, perhaps, between the amount of hours given to either light or darkness, but not so much a blending of the two. Reminds me of the old, discriminatory, “Separate, but Equal” apartheid laws of America. Maybe we [...]

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