Nature = Beauty

reflections ...

... it's the people stuff again. It pretty much always comes down to the people stuff, maybe because we are people!!! What is the story we are telling and how do we put ourselves into that story? And what are the new stories being told?

... it's the heart stuff again. Of late it oftens comes down to the heart stuff, maybe because that is what has been missing !!! How do we keep our hearts open amidst so much fear, violence and suffering?

... it's the bridging of many worlds again. The strength in diversity brings with it the challenge of integrating everything into a whole. How do we bridge what appear like contradictory worlds?

... it's back to seeing the invisible and acknowledging the mystery in our ever changing lives, in these increasingly uncertain times we live in. As someone told me yesterday, enlightment is like water to a fish. All anyone needs do is open there eyes. It's all around, ever present ... we only need feel it, to see it, to be it.

Occupy Love ...

... the revolution is love - oh yes !!!

Urban Green Places ... aka Trees that touch the sky

... nevermind parks and gardens, check out this 27 storey building being planned for Milan by Italian architect Stefano Boeri.

Bosco Verticale, as it is known, is an example of architectures attempts to green our urban landscapes. Writing in the Daily Telegraph (UK) Christopher Woodward  (Director of the Garden Museum), observed, while "Researching our current exhibition From Garden City to Green City we were inspired by projects in Paris, Valencia and Sao Paolo in which architects have created a new generation of buildings in which architecture fuses with nature, such as Stefano Boeri’s Bosco Verticale project currently under construction in Milan: two 20-storey-plus blocks in which each apartment has a garden big enough for a tree cantilevered out into the sky. It is a glimpse of how London could be, with a dash of political will. We have a new generation of architects whose ambition is to make living communities, not to erect air-conditioned icons in glass. The public demand is there..."

If cities are a part of our futures ... let's make green places happen !!!

The Self-Attribution Fallacy

Intelligence? Talent? No, the ultra-rich got to where they are through luck and brutality. Click on the link below to reading a chilling indictment of the psychological qualities of the wealthy and high achieving business/financial executives. George Monbiot writing in The Guardian newspaper (UK) suggests that not all successful business executives are psychopaths, however, the economy has been rewarding the wrong skills. The openning paragraph begins:
"If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren’t responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes."

Click here to read more  ... The Self-Attribution Fallacy

I am the 100%

I like what this guy says a lot, very much, too infinity ... and beyond.

Nature ... Murmuration ... Magnificent ...

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

Every autumn thousands of starlings dance in the twilight. No one really knows why they do it. Sophie Windsor Clive and Liberty Smith, came across this spectacle by chance while canoeing on Lough Derg, the last of the three largest lakes on the River Shannon in Ireland. A living swirling cloud of starlings. The birds gather in magical shape-shifting flocks called murmurations, having migrated in the millions from Russia and Scandinavia to escape winter’s bite. Murmurations are also seen in the UK including Gretna, Scotland and Brighton, England. Scientists aren’t sure how they do it, either. Even complex algorithmic models haven’t yet explained the starlings’ acrobatics, which rely on the tiny bird’s quicksilver reaction time of under 100 milliseconds to avoid aerial collisions—and predators—in the giant flock.

Impenetrable as the flock’s movements might seem to the human eye, Daniel Butler writing in the Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/4736472/The-mathematics-of-murmurating-starlings.html suggests the underlying maths is comparatively straightforward. "Each bird strives to fly as close to its neighbours as possible, instantly copying any changes in speed or direction. As a result, tiny deviations by one bird are magnified and distorted by those surrounding it, creating rippling, swirling patterns. In other words, this is a classic case of mathematical chaos (larger shapes composed of infinitely varied smaller patterns). Whatever the science, however, it is difficult for the observer to think of it as anything other than some vast living entity."

An A-Maz-Ing S-eye-T :)

There are no such things as weeds ...