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Paul Chadwick’s Concrete: The Human Dilemma is one of the most accessible, balanced and finely crafted stories we have that explores the problems of overpopulation. The storytelling is superb – Chadwick consistently produces emotive art and compelling narratives that are exemplars of sequential art – and provides a magnificent framework for making sense of such a complex subject.
Overpopulation is a critical issue that we face as a world. Even a casual look at the state of the world reveals that the pieces vital for building the kinds of civilizations we can thrive in are being sapped, in large part, because we fail to limit reproduction. Our staggering numbers have helped turn things such as space, food, fuel and infrastructure into scarce resources. When we consider the complexities of disparities in development, quality of life and consumption we are faced with an overwhelming challenge.
Chadwick points out complications of motivation (baser tendencies, higher ideals and transcendent awe) and cultural momentum alongside statistics about overpopulation and possible strategies for combating it throughout The Human Dilemma. He presents an appropriately nuanced perspective of the issue, acknowledging conservative concerns, possible harmful extremes and obstacles in the way of implementing programs while being steadfast in the conviction that we must act to reduce our numbers.
One of the most important aspects of the overpopulation problem comes to the fore early in the book. The main character, Concrete, becomes involved in a program encouraging couples to opt for sterilization rather than contribute to overpopulation, thus creating role models and acceptance for life without reproducing. Creating public acceptance of not having children and forging new stations of life that embrace this will be incredibly hard to do. There is so much momentum in our cultures and biology that embeds the process of having biological children with a sense of obligation and benefit, and this will be challenging to counter.
Looking at the positive implications of fewer humans on Earth reveals a lot of promise. Imagine a world that is environmentally healthier, with abundant resources, greater wealth, more opportunity for individual and cultural growth, more people freed to contribute their greatest potential to the world rather than struggling just to create the necessities to sustain us and with space to build societies of great dignity. Those children we would choose to create would have better, happier, more rewarding and meaningful lives in a world with the kind of freedom we deny ourselves, in part, through overpopulation. If it comes down to a question of quantity of lives versus quality of lives, I think it’s clear we should work to create less lives and less suffering.
Speechwriter Ron Lithgow’s mind was suddenly removed from his body and placed into that of an immense extraterrestrial-one with a rock-like shell for skin. Now Lithgow enters into another contemplative conundrum. As the accidental celebrity Concrete, he is now courted by a high-profile CEO to lend his name to a controversial population control program. While Concrete mulls this generous proposition over with his companion Maureen, his longtime aide Larry Munro mulls over an entirely different sort of proposal.
Tags: none Originally published at Frozen Truth. Please leave any comments there. | |
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Humans moving into space is an inevitability in my vision of the future, and some of the early steps in making it more attractive and feasible are being planned right now. Ukrainian scientists have demonstrated a method – using a hardy bacteria – that allows marigold to grow in rock very similar to the surface of the moon, meaning that it is likely possible and relatively easy to grow plants on the lunar terrain. Tulips, cabbage and arabidopsis are proposed as other plants to be tested in actual lunar conditions.
Marigolds on the moon may be beautiful, but it’s the potential this unlocks that matters. We can extrapolate from this breakthrough and imagine using the knowledge gained to create human-made ecosystems on other bodies in our solar system and beyond. It’s an enchanting thought that we may be able to instill cold rocks with the life we treasure on our own Earth.
In what marks an important step towards helping lunar colonists grow their own food, a Ukrainian team, working with the European Space Agency, ESA, has shown that marigolds can grow in crushed rock very like the lunar surface, with no need for plant food.
The research was presented at the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna, by Dr Bernard Foing of ESA, director of the International Lunar Exploration Working Group, and father of the SMART-1 moon probe, who believes it is an important milestone because it does away with the need to bring bringing nutrients and soil from Earth.
He has worked with Natasha Kozyrovska and Iryna Zaetz from the Ukranian Academy of Sciences in Kiev, who planted marigolds in crushed anorthosite, a type of rock found on Earth which is very similar to lunar soil, called regolith.
They did not grow well until the team added different types of bacteria, which made them thrive; the bacteria appeared to leach elements from the rock that the plants needed, such as potassium.
Even better, bacteria are able to withstand extremely tough conditions, so would be an ideal way to fertilise lunar crops. “That is the new aspect of this work,” says Dr Foing, who presented the study at the EGU meeting, said there was no reason in principle why the same idea could not bear fruit on the Moon itself.
- “ I’ll grow marigolds on the moon“
There’s a pull on my senses of wonder and responsibility in the notion that we can spread the beauty and potential of the life that has blessed Earth. If it allowed for the awesomeness of humanity and what we can become on one world, why not pollinate others? And why shouldn’t we disperse humanity’s best features along with it and allow the fullness of our great care, beauty and understanding to flourish without boundary?
Tags: none Originally published at Frozen Truth. Please leave any comments there. | |
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For thirty years Elfquest has been one of comics’ gems, growing as an independent comic into one of the medium’s most endearing, compelling and beautiful bodies of work. Using fantasy and science fiction elements for its framework, the series explores sexuality, love, ethnocentrism, persistant change, and a range of issues the visual style and broad medium are not often recognized for.
Creators Wendy and Richard Pini will be publishing the entire series of Elfquest online for free to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the publication of the first Elfquest story. Already a healthy selection of issues are available and by the end of the year over 200 will be readable with no cost and only a web browser is needed to do it.
Thirty years after its first appearance in early 1978, Elfquest is poised to make its biggest online splash ever. Beginning March 14, and every Friday throughout 2008, Warp Graphics presents every Elfquest comic book story from the Original Quest all the way up to 2006’s “The Discovery.”
With over 6000 pages of material to prepare and upload, the project will easily take the remainder of this 30th anniversary year. The initial offering will start off with an explosion of firsts: There will be the entire first graphic novel, to introduce new readers to the characters and world of Elfquest, plus the first issues of all the spinoff titles produced during the 1990s. Each week will see several more issues added to the collection. Eventually, every published page will make its way to the online archive. A timeline and a catalog of all Elfquest appearances are part of the package, so all readers will be able to experience the complete saga from start to present-day.
My own love for Elfquest goes back a long way. Throughout my high school life Elfquest was the one comic series I followed faithfully. It offered me the first and most positive portrayal of polyamoury in my youth and gave me solace as I tried to come to some sort of understanding and acceptance of my own polyamourousness. My first taste of Taoist philosophy, my broader understanding of love and sexuality and my appreciation of family and community all have foundation stones in Elfquest that I am deeply thankful for.
Delve into Digital Elfquest and be sure to start with “Fire and Flight“.
Tags: none Originally published at Frozen Truth. Please leave any comments there. | |
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For a long while I’ve had a general policy of keeping my inbox empty. I’d let replies and actions sit for a while sometimes, but the appeal of a clean, white page when I leave Gmail is too great to let lapse for too long. What I haven’t had was a methodology for keeping that inbox clutter down and staying on top of everything. Inbox Zero came to my attention again today (it keeps popping up everywhere) and that has all changed.
Simply, Inbox Zero is a set of “skills, tools, and attitudes” for maintaining an empty and manageable inbox. A lot of the tips seem like common sense once we encounter them, but most of us are applying some simple methods that can save us time and keep our focus on things we value more than dealing with e-mails. “Act now or delete” becomes a liberating mantra for avoiding being bogged down by e-mails.
I’m now working on having my RSS feed reading work similarly. My ideal is that when I encounter something interesting among my feeds I read it and then either move on, add it to my del.icio.us bookmarks, or blog about it.
Here’s a great video of Merlin Mann, the guy behind Inbox Zero, talking to employees at Google:
Tags: none Originally published at Frozen Truth. Please leave any comments there. | |
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Hot on the heals of Radiohead’s brilliant In Rainbows, Saul Williams just released his new album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!, to the world through the ‘net. He ups the ante by releasing the album in a lossless FLAC format, as well as MP3 and OGG. It’s such a pleasure to be able to hear two of the best albums released this year without the hassle of middlemen and unnecessary hindrances like chunks of plastic and dinosaur promotion methods. Won’t it be wonderful if this direct method of delivering music takes off?
Delivery aside, this is a magnificent album. NiggyTardust! is the result of a collaboration between Saul and Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor, and both are in fine form. As the title might suggest, this album holds a strange mix. Saul’s lyrics are richer with meaning and eloquence than ever as he again plays with mysticism, hip-hop and other disparate ingredients in a way that is unmatched. Reznor’s contribution gives the flavour of his past work to the album and his expertise in arrangement and production give it a distinct solidity. And there’s a sharp rendition of “Sunday Bloody Sunday”!
It’s just $5 USD (something minuscule for us Canadians) if you want to pay and free if you don’t, so there’s no excuse not to give it a listen, is there?
Tags: none ( Read the rest of this entry » )Originally published at Frozen Truth. Please leave any comments there. | |
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Buck 65’s Situation is his most coherent, thoroughly masterful and enjoyable album to date. It’s filled with the retro-eclectic themes and masterful rhymecraft that Buck 65 has become admired for while remaining essentially fun, inventive and fresh. This is a superbly smart, sexy, playful and observational collection of tracks.
Loosely based around the year 1957, there’s a complex nest of ideas within these songs and an underlying longing for a return of the creative and subversive cultural explosion Buck 65 perceives in the counter-cultural events of that year. He sees himself as a cultural observer and this comes through in so many plays on historical and present events and norms. Betty Paige, beatniks, film noir, hip hop, regional wrestling, pornography and hobos collide and form an unlikely thematic storm that is never unwieldy, but rather seems perfectly pieced together.
Buck 65 performing “Dang” from Situation live in Halifax
(I was lucky enough to be there for the taping)
Buck 65’s take on cyclical rebellion is worth exploring in addition to the music, so check out this recent Pitchfork interview where he explains the album’s genesis.
The more I began to look at it, I began to come to the conclusion that arguably, culturally, in modern times– certainly in the West– maybe it’s the most important year in history. And I think [1957] really has had a way of shaping the way we see the world and our expectations of art and pop culture. I think it’s really subconscious for a lot of us, but the fact that it was exactly 50 years ago– and to compare and contrast where we are now compared to then– it’s just all really interesting stuff. It gave me a lot to think about, and it resulted in a record.
…
We all love to look back and reflect on how exciting that time was, how exciting 1977 was, how exciting it was when Nirvana came along– these are the sorts of things that really get peoples’ blood running and we still like to talk about it. It becomes a very romantic thing for us. And I think we’re waiting for it, sometimes almost to a fault.
But having said all that stuff, and having made all these statements with this record, the last thing I would ever assume or try to position is me being that person. I’m just here to provide food for thought; I like to think of myself as a cultural observer, like everybody else. I’m not the man for the job. I’m expecting it and wanting it and hoping for it just as much as anybody else.
Tags: none Originally published at Frozen Truth. Please leave any comments there. | |
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Today there is a movement happening in the blogosphere that is pushing environmentalism to the fore. Blog Action Day aims to have thousands of bloggers posting their take on the environment in order to increase the dialog around the environment. Some of my favourite bloggers have already provided their views, from C4Chaos’ writing on conscious capitalism and bright greens to Lighter Footstep’s call for individual action and wise leadership. Also check out the contributions of Integral Options Cafe, Craig Photography, and Integral Praxis, three of my other daily reads.
I try to keep my own stance pragmatic and wide. I’m in favour of using technology in every way we can to increase efficiency and quality of human life while simultaneously reducing harm to our environment. This, as far as I can tell, if entirely possible and is actually a major thrust of innovation already. Genetically enhanced plants, more efficient devices and smarter public transportation are among the tools we have emerging as viable changes for preserving and benefiting the environment. And we should be cheering on innovation and existing technology as a way to protect our world and to create the quality of life everyone can flourish with. We should not give up advancements for some romantic ideal of returning to nature. Spider Robinson, in “Sustaining the Planet” (PDF), sums this up nicely:
Me, I want everybody, the whole human race, to be at least as well-off as the average Canadian is right now. (Not the average American: I want ’em to have health care.) That’s the only way I can live with myself. So it’s my obligation to help make that happen, by demanding it. What it will require is not less technology but more—smarter, safer, less polluting, less expensive, more humane technology. Happily, we’re already starting to see it on the horizon.
Good thing. My only alternative is to go back to the woods like I did in the ’70s, and live the Natural Life…until I run out of axe-heads, woodstoves, kerosene, nails, and other crucial things I can’t make myself, and die nobly ever after, of cold and hunger. Been there, done that, was unable to weave the t-shirt.
Some still doubt such things as global warming and urge against believing that humans have a tremendous impact on the earth. I don’t think the evidence points to that, but there is one simple and compelling argument that I was impressed with for whether or not we should work to reduce our emissions. What’s the worst that could happen?
What isn’t asked here is what do we do if we can’t slow or reverse global warming, whether it is caused by us or not. I think that if the worst predictions are accurate we can’t do anything now to stop global warming. What options do we have then? I think we have to seriously look at what we need to do to adapt to a world that is changed tremendously. Our lives and those of countless others will be threatened and the lifestyles that breed better humans will be lost. Can we afford not to plan for the preservation of a humanity far stronger than it has ever been before? Can we afford not to look at how other life would be changed?
And even if we just improve our technologies and live in ways that are more sustainable, what have we gained beyond survival? I don’t think any short survey could encompass all the benefits we can reap from being spurred into change by a concern for the world. If we shrug off fear, at least let us embrace the hope that we can create a better world.
On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.
Tags: none Originally published at Frozen Truth. Please leave any comments there. | |
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Dream. Dance. Evolve.
This week I discovered a fantastic endeavour being proposed by Jeanne Robinson as I was exploring the website of her husband, Sci Fi luminary Spider Robinson. The Stardance Project’s aim is to create and promote dance in space, first through a film simulating what is possible through the form and eventually as a reality. Jeanne was the founder and artistic director of Nova Dance Theatre here in Halifax, among other accomplishments, and has passion, experience and expertise enough to craft something incredible.
Spider and Jeanne wrote about dance in space in The Stardance Trilogy and place an emphasis on the transformative and meditative benefits space may hold for us. I’m very appreciative of their work to bring attention to the good and the beauty that we will be enabling as we advance technologically. We should never limit the fruits of science and evolution to mere mechanics, but embrace the grace and luminosity that a greater vista and lesser physical boundaries permit us to walk into.
Although over 99% of the universe is a zero-gravity environment, our species seems to have a neurotic dependence on the surface of large planets. We’re stuck in the mud. A dance to free our bodies from the pull of gravity, to celebrate life off the planets, may free us to accept and appreciate the unearthly beauty, meditative stillness, and physical comfort that can be found in space.
… [T]here is more to space travel than orbital mechanics, payloads and turbopumps. There is also zero-gravity art. It can be a powerful key to spiritual transcendence, and the kind of accelerated human evolution Spider and I have talked about at length in our novels.
Spider himself recently started a lively podcast, Spider on the Web, where he has been reading essays and excerpts from his most recent novel. The first essay, “Let’s Start Wasting Money in Space“, is in line with Stardance, promoting space tourism as a way to sew the seeds of space art, sport and contemplation (and space sex!). He paints a brief and compelling picture of space as holding our future and maybe a piece of our salvation.
As a personal note, Spider Robinson has been in the periphery of my reading interests for years. My father’s bookshelf was a treasure trove of science fiction and fantasy and this included Stardance. I didn’t read the book then, nor when Spider became one of my favourite guests on my favourite show when I was an early teen, the well-missed Prisoners of Gravity. Now I’m drawn to him again and think this time I’ll dive in.
Tags: none Originally published at Frozen Truth. Please leave any comments there. | |
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I’m diving back into regular blogging, and what better day to do so than on Blog Day 2007? I really dig the notion of a day dedicated to exploring blogs of people who are quite different from ourselves, so I’ll be sharing 5 blogs I enjoy that are outside my usual reading range.
BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.
With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. This way, all blog readers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.
    
iCiNG
iCiNG is the fashion blog of Gala Darling, a globe trotter based in Australia and originally from New Zealand. I’m not generally a fashion enthusiast, but Gala’s excitement is contagious. (Plus I have a weakness for pink-haired beauties.) She has become the most unlikely addition to my daily reads, so where better to start this list?
Baghdad Burning
Riverbend is a an Iraqi woman who blogs about the politics and personal events taking place in occupied Iraq. I began reading her blog a couple years ago and have kept up with her accounts of life within Baghdad with great interest. Her updates have become infrequent and she may have left the country, but she has offered a rare look into a devastated place.
Rural Pinoy Biker
I enjoy biking and foreign lands, but I didn’t expect to be drawn into “a Pinoy biker’s Philipine rural adventures”. The author’s joy in biking is immediately apparent and has brought up my own fond memories of biking.
Fish Feet
Fish Feet is a sharp and accessible science blog that focuses on “evolution, biodiversity, palaeontology, conservation and current controversies”. Sarda Sahney’s insights and commentary are always a highlight of my daily science reading.
Lucid Nutrition
Briana Franco writes a wonderful food blog that showcases recipes, social issues, information and other nourishing content. I’m looking forward to trying out Veggie Enchiladas Verdes.
Thanks to I Quit for Lijit for the heads up on Blog Day.
Tags: none Originally published at Frozen Truth. Please leave any comments there. | |
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Maps feed our minds, poetry feeds our souls, and in all the feasting and fasting Spirit is forever adance.
Today has brought a facinating confluence of thought on the soul in integral theory to the fore for me. I’ve been rereading Ken Wilber’s One Taste, while reading some compelling takes on the role of soul from William Harryman’s Integral Options Cafe and Joe Perez’s Until.
William’s take on integral in “Soul in Intergal Theory” is that it neglects Soul in favour of Spirit. He associates Spirit with agency and Soul with communion, among other distinctions.
Integral theory, in my experience, is heavily biased toward Spirit at the neglect of Soul. Lately, I have been feeling the need to have a more balanced relationship with the world — I want transcendence and translation, agency and communion, autonomy and interconnectedness, knowledge and experience, and so on.
…
Soul seeks communion, interconnectedness, experience, inclusion, and darkness. This is what Jung called the anima, which is the original Greek word for soul.
Spirit seeks agency, autonomy, knowledge, distinctions, and light. This is what Jung called the animus, the original Greek word for spirit.
In William’s experience, if I understand him correctly, integral theory, as a map of reality, is too rooted in intellectual, transcendential, non-experiential and non-sensual approaches.
Joe responded to William’s piece with “How We Care for the Soul“. Right away he reminds us that the map is for the mind and then goes on to encourage us to include soul as we include mind and body, but to not limit ourselves to soul when Spirit and our true identity awaits.
Theology feeds the mind, not the soul. It’s silly to try to get nourishment from theology. Theology will not give us a sense of being grounded and alive to the harmonious rhythms that unite our bodies and nature. But the silliness of the enterprise doesn’t mean it’s not tempting.
…
The soul defeats attempts to break it down into modules and transcend its messier aspects with the neatness and purity of spirit. So let the soul defeat us. But let us not wander forever in the realms of the psychic/subtle, for this is not territory that most of us will want to spend the rest of our lives traversing! Let us come to the fullest possible understanding of our true nature, a sense of identity that enfolds the soul, but one that allows us to choose whether we allow ourselves to descend into the soul’s muddy waters or whether we choose to live from a wider sense of identity. I believe in the great “I AMness” that we are, the great Everyness of each moment, there is a self-recognition of Spirit. There is possible the realization of our highest and widest identity in the unborn spirit, existing outside of Time yet one with all levels of our individual and collective beings. I believe proper caring for the soul can mean giving our psychic/subtle self a rest, and not always placing the entire burden of our existence on so fragile a peg. So let us choose carefully how we engage our spirits and souls, for this passion play of a world very much needs us to bring all of who we are to the drama.
Joe is framing soul, I believe, as a manifestation of Spirit, an aspect of our Self that follows body and mind in the holarchy of our being. Here I think the two diverge in a way that has more to do with definition than outright disagreement. William seems to be addressing the difference between involution and evolution (understandably wanting more of the former in his life), while Joe is addressing an aspect of our selves that is immersed in the involutionary and evolutionary currents.
In One Taste, Ken Wilber writes poetically about both the involutionary and evolutionary plays and the manifest layers it has in soul, mind and body. I find his description of personal involution from Spirit to be beautiful.
Once you find your formless identity as Buddha-mind, as Atman, as pure Spirit or Godhead, you will take that constant, nondual, ever-present consciousness and reenter the lesser states, subtle mind [soul] and gross body, and reanimate them with radiance. You will not remain merely Formless and Empty. You will Empty yourself of Emptiness: you will pour yourself into the mind and world, and create them in the process, and enter them all equally, but especially and particularly that specific mind and body that is called you; this lesser self will become the vehicle of the Spirit that you are.
My take on Ken’s work is that he deftly balances involution and evolution, experience and theory, agency and communion, style and subtance, mind, body and soul. But I sympathize with William’s stance and understand that spending too much time exploring the map leaves us longing for adventures in the territory.
I have a huge sense of admiration for both Joe and William, and enjoy the genuine dynamic that is formed when sharp minds go exploring in this space we are moving into. William’s call for inhabiting our lives with embodied, connecting grace is vital, as is Joe’s reminder of just what’s behind the masks.
Tags:none Originally published at Frozen Truth. Please leave any comments there. | |
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