‘Hope smiles on the threshold of the year to come,
whispering that it will be better.’

— Alfred Lord Tennyson 

An ingredient found in abundance in birch bark appears to have an array of metabolic benefits, according to new studies in animals that are reported in the January issue of Cell Metabolism. In mice, the compound known as betulin lowered cholesterol, helped prevent diet-induced obesity, and improved insulin sensitivity. Betulin-treated mice were also more resistant to developing atherosclerotic plaques in their arteries.

— Read article from PhysOrg

Dog with a 1000+ word vocabulary

Two South Carolina psychologists have spent three years training their Border Collie to distinguish among more than 1000 different toys, called by their names.  

They stopped training the dog after three years due to their time constraints, not because the dog could not learn more names. This study demonstrates Chaser’s ability to learn the names of proper nouns, and her extensive vocabulary was tested repeatedly under carefully controlled conditions. The authors admitted that she remembered the names of each of her 1022 toys better than they could.

Read Science Blog article
Original research article

Re-born

A strange new youth is on me; not of song
Nor fiery wine, nor woman’s kisses dim
But of the long night’s strife I strove with him
Whose face is secret and whose hands are strong.
There is a joy too keen for common thought
This: that whoe’er has slowly scaled and spelled
Cycles of starry suffering: may be held,
Worth, at last to learn that he is naught.
Now and for one great moment, not in me
Nor any crown I hope for, I rejoice
But in a meadow-game of girls and boys
Some sunset in the centuries to be.

— G.K. Chesterton

Control of the means of production

Evergreen Cooperatives is a network of employee-owned, environmentally-sensitive for-profit companies in Cleveland, OH.  Within the world’s most intensely capitalist economy, employee ownership is a radical model for democracy in the workplace. Workers are motivated to build the company’s future, not this quarter’s bottom line.  And, of course, management looks out for the workers when the management is the workers.

Video

Practical mystic

In 17th Century Europe, all discussions of morals took place in the context of theology.  What did Jesus want from us? 

Antoinette Bourignon, born this day in 1616, was inspired by direct communications from God, but her message had practical content.  She assailed the view of Protestants and Catholics alike that faith in Jesus, rather than good deeds, was God’s criterion for admission into heaven.  She asserted free will, and denied pre-ordination and fatalism. 

As a teenager in 17th-century Belgium, Antoinette Bourignon had deep spiritual longings her family and town priest could not satisfy. One night as she prayed, a voice spoke to her: Forsake all earthly things. Separate thyself from the love of the creatures. Deny thyself.

Antoinette took these intuitions earnestly. But her parents would not allow her to enter a convent. When they betrothed her to a wealthy merchant, she kept putting off the wedding date. One morning, dressed in a hermit’s habit she had sewn herself, she stole into the pre-dawn darkness. She had stashed a penny in her pocket to buy bread, but the voice asked, “Where is thy faith...in a penny?” so she tossed it away. “Thus,” a disciple would later write, “she went away wholly delivered from the heavy burden of the cares and good things of this world and found her soul so satisfied that she no longer wished for anything upon earth.”

Later Antoinette served in a convent and supervised an orphanage. Meanwhile, she began formulating her own spiritual philosophy. A century after Martin Luther’s reform movement, she began traveling throughout France, Belgium and Holland preaching her brand of Christian mysticism.

For the next four decades, Antoinette promoted Quietism. She carried a wooden printing press with her. In each town she set it up and laboriously produced 250 pages an hour of pamphlets promoting direct, personal experience with God. ‘’ “”

— Rebecca Bartholomew, author of Lost Heroines: Little-Known Women Who Changed Their World

Through the practice of meditation, we begin to find that within ourselves there is no fundamental complaint about anything or anyone at all.

— Chogyam Trungpa*

* In the spirit of defying the airbrush: Chogyam Trungpa was one of many inspired teachers
who led a dissolute life and yet had much genuine wisdom to offer in his writings and lectures.

Rotating cows

Climate change has arrived, and Australia is experiencing a historic 10-year draught.  Tony Lovell thinks it may be more practical to adapt to the change locally rather than organize globally, trying even now to avoid it.

In natural ecosystems in dry areas, herds of grazing animals eat the grass down to the roots once a year, then move on, allowing the grass to recover.  In contrast, ranches are designed to let cows graze continually.  Since the grass is always at a low level, its growth is slowed.

Semi-arid prairie can be transformed into lush grassland. More moisture is retained, and more carbon is returned to the soil, enriching the topsoil while reducing the carbon footprint.  ‘What is more exciting is that almost any farmer can adopt the system. All you need is a few fences. Then you build lots of small paddocks, form your cattle into a big herd, and put them in each one for just a day or two.’

Read New Statesman article by Mark Stevenson

Blindfolded dolphin

A blindfolded dolphin is able to imitate on command the motions and tricks performed by a friend and tank-mate.  How does he know what the other dolphin is doing? 

Is dolphins sonar so exquisitely sensitive that they can ‘see’ details of another dolphin’s motion?*  Or are they communicating with clicks and whistles?  Or are they just so well-tuned to interpretation of splashing sounds that they can tell what motion created what kind of splash?  How about telepathy?

— AP Article                                — Journal Article

*Note added 1/21:  After reading the full article I am less convinced that the dolphin’s feat is extraordinary.  Many of the behaviors that Tanner imitated were associated with vocalizations, and some others had distinctive splashes.  The success rate was 75% for the vocalizations, and 41% for the swimming stunts.  It is possible that all the success could be attributable to sharp ears.

Musical Citizen of the World

‘Alexander Tcherepnin’s view of music as a moral force that breaks down artificial barriers between peoples has a special relevance in our own troubled times.’  [Tcherepnin Society]

Listen to his wind quintet
     Allegro Marciale
     Langsam
     Feierlich

Echo of the Gilded Age

‘This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of Wealth: First, to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and after doing so to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community — the man of wealth thus becoming the mere agent and trustee for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves.’

— Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)

Let go the fiction of life and death

The ego is a monkey catapulting through the jungle: Totally fascinated by the realm of the senses, it swings from one desire to the next, one conflict to the next, one self-centered idea to the next. If you threaten it, it actually fears for its life.

Let this monkey go. Let the senses go. Let desires go. Let conflicts go. Let ideas go. Let the fiction of life and death go. Just remain in the center, watching. And then forget that you are there.

— Lao Zi, Hua Hu Jing, Brian Walker translation

The Old Astronomer to His Pupil

Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet,
When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet;
He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of how
We are working to completion, working on from then to now.

Pray remember that I leave you all my theory complete,
Lacking only certain data for your adding, as is meet,
And remember men will scorn it, ’tis original and true,
And the obloquy of newness may fall bitterly on you.

But, my pupil, as my pupil you have learned the worth of scorn,
You have laughed with me at pity, we have joyed to be forlorn,
What for us are all distractions of men’s fellowship and smiles;
What for us the Goddess Pleasure with her meretricious smiles!

You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late,
But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant’s fate.
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

— Sarah Williams (British, 1837-1868)