A Moment of Peace and Stillness

Definitely feel like after the last few weeks, I could use a moment to catch my breath. I suspect the same is true for most of us. And a reminder that the world is bigger than our little frantic corner of it.

This is NOT a photo I took. Click thru to get back to the original photographer on Flickr.

Monkey Wars: A New Hope

There is something to be said for an all-natural solution to an human-created problem. In India, human feeding of wild monkeys has lead to a plague of macaques breaking into houses to steal food. So entrepreneurs have taken to the streets with a unique security force to drive them off - MORE MONKEYS.

But Chotu and his gang are a special force trained to put a stop to any monkeying around near the stadiums. Chotu, Pinki and Mangu are langur monkeys.

Their trainers said each one has the ability to scare off 50 potential attackers -- namely the wild smaller macaque monkeys that roam the streets and buildings of Delhi.
The wild monkeys are known for some naughty habits...

"They bite, they charge, sometimes they bite people's ears. That's why we have to use langurs," langur trainer Promod Kumar said.

The strangest part of this strange article is "animal rights activists" who question the use of monkeys as workers. Are they afraid they'll refuse to join the union?

Deep Thought of the Day: A Universe of Laws

It is not uncommon when talking with my athiest friends for them to use the lawlessness of nature as one evidence against God's existence. They point to the randomness and seemingly immoral interaction of predator and prey, rot and decay, death and destruction as evidence that a legalistic God like the one shown in the Bible simply can not be the one in charge. If He were, the argument goes, things would be a lot more orderly.

So it has stricken me recently, while watching some programs on the Discovery and History channel, how profoundly ordered, consistent, and - if you will excuse the expression - legalistic our universe is. Consider animal behavior. As scientists look more and more at extinct animals like dinosaurs, the more they recognize what they see as being consistent with the behavior of animals alive today. Predators act like predators (aggression, territoriality, ambush over long chases, etc.) and herbivores act like herbivores (herd behavior, size over aggression for protection, etc.) Or consider stellar phenomena. While we are recognizing more and more kinds of stellar events, we are seeing more and more how they fit into existing laws of gravitation, nuclear fusion, entropy, etc. The fact is that while there is a huge number of possible phenomena to observe, they are all governed by a small number of "laws" whose interaction produces them.

This seems absolutely consistent with the Biblical God who "spoke" the universe into existence. It is not proof of God, but it is consistent.

Snow day!

Are we de-naturalizing our children?

I suspect BowHunter will have the strongest opinion on this particular story. It describes how children in only 4 generations have lost the freedom to wander and explore the natural world around them. A child born in 1926 was free to wander 6 or 10 miles from home in search of fun, and thus was able to explore the natural world. A child born in the 2000s, on the other hand, is likely to never be allowed more than 300 feet from his own lawn unsupervised and thus have very little interaction with the natural world.

"It's not just about time. Traffic is an important consideration, as is the fear of abduction, but I'm not sure whether that's real or perceived."

...The report's author, Dr William Bird, the health adviser to Natural England and the organiser of a conference on nature and health on Monday, believes children's long-term mental health is at risk.

He has compiled evidence that people are healthier and better adjusted if they get out into the countryside, parks or gardens.

Stress levels fall within minutes of seeing green spaces, he says. Even filling a home with flowers and plants can improve concentration and lower stress.

"If children haven't had contact with nature, they never develop a relationship with natural environment and they are unable to use it to cope with stress," he said.

"Studies have shown that people deprived of contact with nature were at greater risk of depression and anxiety. Children are getting less and less unsupervised time in the natural environment.

"They need time playing in the countryside, in parks and in gardens where they can explore, dig up the ground and build dens."

I am hardly a good judge of this, since I have always been the great INdoorsman - preferring my own imagination to green spaces - but this makes a lot of sense to me. I know my mother spend most of the summer outside wandering the neighborhood and adjacent spaces, while I see most friends kids never allowed out of the sight of parents until they are well into their teens. Can this NOT have an impact on our development as human beings?