Nature's Not Working Quite Right

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Well this is alarming. Something truly awful is happening to the bee population. A mysterious illness is wiping out colonies all over the country.

A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination.

Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of the ailment, called Colony Collapse Disorder.

Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some affected commercial beekeepers -- who often keep thousands of colonies -- have reported losing more than 50 percent of their bees. A colony can have roughly 20,000 bees in the winter, and up to 60,000 in the summer.

This follows another epidemic of bee killing mites a few years ago. But the current crisis points to a possible explanation for that ailment, and disturbing portent for the future of apiculture. An analysis of the dead bees points to an immune breakdown.

Cox-Foster said an analysis of dissected bees turned up an alarmingly high number of foreign fungi, bacteria and other organisms and weakened immune systems.

Researchers are also looking into the effect pesticides might be having on bees.

In the meantime, beekeepers are wondering if bee deaths over the last couple of years that had been blamed on mites or poor management might actually have resulted from the mystery ailment."

Now people think that they may have had this three or four years," vanEnglesdorp said.

This is disturbing on many levels. Not only does it bode ill for honey production and agriculture that relies on bees for pollination. It's yet another indicator of nature gone awry. And like global warming, this phenomenon probably has its roots in human behavior; in this case the use of pesticides.

Here's another example of nature gone mad, that can only be ascribed to the planet's rising temperatures. Cherry blossoms... in January.

Cherry blossoms have been sprouting from Baristaville to Brooklyn, but in January? It seems that mother nature is giving winter a miss this year. The evening news last night even reported "April Showers" for later this week.

And if you're thinking that the massive snowfall in New York state is an indication that global warming isn't such a threat, think again. Lake effect snow occurs when the warm air from lake water meets a cold front. The more the planet heats, the warmer those lakes get, and the greater the shock when cold air, from say Canada moves in. Kind of like our intensifying hurricanes, as the waters in Gulf of Mexico become warmer.

Well. Aren't I a ray of sunshine.

Virgin Mother Gives Birth To Five

ineffable, hidden, brilliant scion,
whose motion is whirring,
you scattered the dark mist
that lay before your eyes and,
flapping your wings,
you whirled about,
and through this world
you brought pure light.

-- Hymn to Phanes-Dionysus


The hotly anticipated Komodo Quints have made their debut. Reports of the virgin mother komodo started circulating this holiday season, in coordination with the birthday of another famous virgin-born child, Jesus. They didn't quite make it in time for Christmas, but they cracked their eggs on January 15th. Babies and mother Flora are reportedly doing fine at Chester Zoo in Great Britain.

Other reptile species reproduce asexually in a process known as parthenogenesis. But Flora's virginal conception, and that of another Komodo dragon earlier this year at the London Zoo, are the first time it has been documented in a Komodo dragon.

Flora joins a proud tradition of virgin mothers, long predating the Madonna. Virgin birth is a recurring theme in goddess traditions from around the world.

Crishna was born of a chaste virgin, called Devaki, who, on account of her purity, was selected to become the "mother of God."

Doane, Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions

A recurring theme in ancient religion revolves around the manner of the sun god's birth, as well as the chastity of his mother. In a number of instances the sun god is perceived as being born of the inviolable dawn, the virgin moon or earth, or the constellation of Virgo. The virgin status of the mothers of pre-Christian gods and godmen has been asserted for centuries by numerous scholars of mythology and ancient religion.

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And, curiously, the mother goddesses of ancient mythology have long been associated with serpents.

Serpents were commonly connected to the Mother Goddess; however, the reason for this connection is still quite unclear. It can be seen around the world in such examples as a Gorgon. Notice that the common dragon slayer myths often include a woman to be saved by the valiant knight.¹⁰

The theory today states that the societies with a more patriarchal worship came down through the Mediterranean area, where many of the Mother Goddess cults remained, and changed the culture through war and conquest. This can account for the many dragon slaying myths that have been recorded.¹¹ The most common format for the story is something like this: An evil dragon scourges the land, a valiant knight takes up the charge of killing the dragon, and he slays the dragon and wins a bride or saves the virgin sacrifice. While some interpretations may vary, the knight is generally a symbol of all that is good, while the dragon is a symbol of corruption. The knight, which represents the new conquering culture, should be revered by the people while the dragon, which represents the Mother Goddess of the past, should be hated. What is left of the symbolism of women? Well, she's either give over as a prize, or she is a virgin saved by the knight.¹²

Even before Christianity, the Mother Goddess was devalued. However, she was not tossed aside entirely. There was still a need for a mother figure in religion; her complete "overthrow" did not fully take place until the Christians took their toll upon the religions.¹³ In the end, the people were left with two major role models for women: the Virgin Mary and Eve.¹⁴

Connections between women and serpents and dragons are everywhere. Tiamat was slain by Marduk, a male god. Eve was tempted by a snake; the Gorgons had hair that was writhing with snakes. Apollo slew Python, a serpent of terror. The saints commonly slew dragons to save maidens. Countless connections can be made between dragons and the view of women.¹⁵

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Serpent lore lies at the heart of creation myths in ancient civilizations all over the world from the Naga Serpents of the Hindus to the snake mounds of the Americas to the great stone circles of Europe.

Now in another twist in the tale of the serpent I uncover one of the ancient truths about dragons, remembering that in myth and in ancient history, dragons and serpents are intertwined like the coils of a pit viper....

Avebury is a huge British Temple and stone monument erected around 2,000 BC in the shape of a serpent when seen from the sky. Once known as Abury which according to Deane [2] is evidently Abiri or Ab-ir (after the Abiri people or Cabiri who were serpent worshippers). Abir incidentally means the solar snake or fire snake.

Although some have argued whether Avebury should ever have been Abury or Aubury (serpent sun) the fact remains that even as far back as the 17th century there was a Mr Aubury who said himself that it should be pronounced and spelt Aubury (found in the legier-book of Malmesbury Abbey.)

Of course even as Ave Bury, the ‘Ave’ reverts back to the root of ‘Eve’ which we know means ‘female serpent.’ The pathway of Avebury passes through a large circular Temple of the sun emerging and then winding again and ending with an oddly, not quite circular head – directly in line with ‘Snakes Head Hill’ (Hackpen.) The central circle is symbolic of the sun, which is the male principle in the creative process and is symbolized elsewhere as a bull or lion. Once the serpent has passed through or around this sun circle it is recharged for new life.

And so we come full circle.

Got Raw Milk?

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There's an excellent article in Salon about the controversy over raw milk. As the article makes clear, the FDA, CDC, and AMA have branded raw milk as dangerous, even though people all over the world have been drinking it that way since time immemorial. How is that the entire population of India didn't become extinct before pasteurization?! Hmmm...

The article is full of valuable info on the health benefits of dairy in its original state, but it is also a reminder of the flaw in allopathic medicine in the broader sense. The dependence on the "disease model" often negates any discussion of true health. The FDA says pasteurized milk is non-pathogenic and therefore healthy. But for some of us the absence of germs in our food is not enough. We require that there also be some nutrients that the body is capable of using. Nature still makes food better than technology does, and raw milk is a prime example.

Among the health benefits of raw milk from pastured (grass fed) cattle is a reduction of allergy symptoms like asthma, hay fever, and eczema. A number of the subjects of the Salon article came to raw milk as a last resort for those afflictions and turned their conditions around. And as reporter Hannah Wallace points out:

A compelling new study, published in the June 2006 issue of the Journal of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, seems to lend support to what these three already know to be true. Researchers at the University of London analyzed the diet of 4,700 children in Shropshire and found that those who lived on farms and drank raw milk had significantly fewer symptoms of asthma, hay fever and eczema. Children who drank raw milk were 40 percent less likely to develop eczema and 10 percent less likely to get hay fever than their non-raw-milk-drinking peers. Blood samples showed that they had 60 percent lower levels of immunoglobulin E, an antibody released by the immune system when it's confronted by allergens. (IgE, in turn, causes cells to release histamines, which is what causes an allergic reaction.) In their conclusion, study authors Michael Perkins and David Strachan surmised that the lactobacilli found in raw milk protect against eczema. They also stated, "Unpasteurized milk is known to be rich in a variety of gram-negative species and their lipopolysaccharides, and it is plausible that a persistent exposure to a diverse milieu of bacteria from an early age is likely to have an effect on the developing immune system."

For some of us the worst allergy is to dairy itself. I was diagnosed as dairy allergic many years ago, and I noticeably react to dairy products... unless they're raw. Allergic reactions to food occur because the body can't digest and process them properly. Pasteurized milk is effectively dead and, in the attempt to kill off any lurking pathogens, all the enzymes necessary to its proper digestion are also killed. Raw dairy, rich in the enzymes and cultures nature intended, is far more digestible, which means the body can actually utilize its protein, vitamins, and nutrients.

Breezing through some of the blog entries and letters in response to this article, I'm unsurprised to find that many people are just terrified of raw milk and sure that it's very, very dangerous. But as the article makes clear, E. Coli and other dangerous pathogens have been found in a number of foods that have not been made illegal; like spinach. Taco Bell hasn't been closed down, despite it's recent traffic in contaminated food. How is that the FDA is so quick to demonize raw milk, but rely on testing and regulation for other foods that are at least as likely to be contaminated? The answer probably lies in the demands of industrial agribusiness. Pasteurization is a blanket solution to the problems of mass produced milk from sick cattle.

"Pasteurization is an excuse to produce dirty milk," says Los Angeles raw milk activist Rahman Dalrymple, citing the outbreaks of salmonella, listeria and Campylobacter that have all been traced to pasteurized milk. In California, accepted bacteria levels for Grade A raw milk are fewer than 15,000 colony-forming units per milliliter; accepted levels for raw milk destined for pasteurization is 50,000. (Post-pasteurization, milk in California can contain 15,000 CFUs per milliliter. States that adopt the FDA's Pasteurized Milk Ordinance allow pasteurized milk 20,000 CFUs per milliliter, one-quarter more than California's raw-milk limit.) Dalrymple, who credits raw milk with curing his asthma, emphasizes that he would never drink raw milk that's destined for pasteurization by a large industrial dairy. Not all raw milk is created equal, Dalrymple says. "Raw milk is dangerous -- if you get it from one of these industrial dairies that have fecal matter and pus and blood in their milk. I would absolutely not drink that!"

This distinction -- between raw milk that's destined for pasteurization and raw milk from a small, spotlessly clean dairy that's kept to higher standards precisely because the milk won't be pasteurized -- is a crucial one, and it's lost on public health officials like Sheehan, who seem to lump all raw milk into the same pathogen-contaminated vat. Industrial farms are dirty -- as the recent agri-exposés "Fast Food Nation" and "The Omnivore's Dilemma" have proved. When Sheehan thinks of raw milk, in other words, he's thinking of milk from cows crowded together in barns, eating a diet of corn, and standing in their own manure. All the raw milk advocates I spoke to are against drinking this type of raw milk.

In fact raw milk may be less likely to be infected with pathogens than it's mass produced, pasteurized counterpart, because pastured cattle, using their four stomachs the way nature intended, produce milk that naturally defends against contamination.

Another reason no pathogens have ever been found in his milk, McAfee believes, is that it contains a host of active antibacterial components -- not just proteins like lactoferrin, but enzymes, bacteriocins, colicins and at least 25 beneficial bacteria, including lactobacillus and bifidus, the same probiotics that are found in most yogurt. And all of those components, McAfee says, are destroyed during pasteurization. (In her book "Nourishing Traditions," WAPF founder Fallon concurs: "Pasteurization destroys these helpful organisms, leaving the finished product devoid of any protective mechanism should undesirable bacteria inadvertently contaminate the supply.") To prove his theory, a few years ago, McAfee sent his milk and colostrum to a private lab and had both injected with high levels of the three pathogens. The bacterial counts of all three bugs decreased over time. And the conclusion of the scientist at BSK Labs? "Raw colostrum and raw milk do not appear to support the growth of Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, and Listeria monocytogenes," stated the lab report. McAfee is so proud of his below-normal bacteria counts that he posts annual averages on his Web site.

The exact opposite is true of the corn-fed cattle that are the stock-in-trade of big, commercial farms.

Cows, like all other ruminants, are meant to eat grass. Yet, at the vast majority of U.S. dairies -- even organic ones -- cows subsist on corn feed. In "The Omnivore's Dilemma," Pollan explains how eating a high-starch diet acidifies a cow's rumen, making the animal sick and eventually allowing bacteria to enter its bloodstream. A cow's corn diet can also make us sick: E. coli O157:H7 has been around only since the early '80s, when it likely evolved in the acidic guts of corn-fed cattle. (E. coli O157:H7 is so lethal because human stomachs, too, are acidic. We can kill off microbes that evolve in the neutral pH of a grass-fed cow's rumen, but not the acid-resistant strains such as E. coli O157:H7.)

I'm fortunate to live in a state where producing and selling raw dairy products is legal and the farms certified to bring it to market are scrupulously inspected. And let me tell you there is no going back once you've experienced what milk, yogurt, and cheeses are supposed to taste like... and digest like.

Meanwhile, the FDA has just announced that it's safe to eat meat and drink milk from cloned animals. In such an Orwellian universe, where raw milk from cows that have two biological parents is considered dangerous, while pasteurized milk from cloned cows is safe -- is it any wonder that a growing band of consumers don't trust FDA decisions?

I DO Believe in Angels!

It turns out an overwhelming majority of Americans believe in those mysterious, celestial beings. Belief in angels is most solid among Christian evangelicals at 97%, which doesn't seem terribly surprising. But belief in some type of angelic presence is also shared across a wide cultural spectrum, even among people who have no religious affiliation.

Protestants, women, Southerners, Midwesterners and Republicans were the most likely to believe in angels, although strong majorities in other groups also shared that faith. Belief in angels declined slightly with advanced education, from 87 percent of those with high school education or less to 73 percent of those with college degrees. Overall, 81 percent believed in angels.

One of the points made by Graham Hancock in his new book Supernatural is that religious belief is universal. These beliefs are not rational and not empirically provable, but they are part of every human civilization. He disputes the idea that religion is simply a means of providing comfort in a confusing world, by pointing out that religion is often counterproductive to cultural harmony. Many religious beliefs inspire fear as well as awe. And religious conflicts can escalate to open warfare. Hancock explores the human capacity for interfacing with the supernatural world that the highly reasonable dismiss as hallucinations. Hancock delves deep into shamanic practices, including the use of the notorious "vine of souls" ayahuasca. He posits the notion that the world we experience when we pierce the veil is not a disordered hallucination, but a separate reality accessible through the same brain that perceives this one.

In other words people cling to religious and spiritual beliefs because they experience them as real and tangible, even if their glimpses of this hidden reality are usually ephemeral. Such is the experience of Edward Pelz:

Edward Pelz, 80, of Grabill, Ind., said he believes that angels are guiding him, even though it's impossible to explain to anyone else.
"Have I ever seen one? Nope. We depict an angel as a person that's white, has a robe on, has wings on back. I'm not sure that's the way they look. So for me, I think sometimes there's angels that aren't that way."
Pelz recounted a story about a man who showed up to change his tire when he had a flat in Ohio five years ago.
"I look at life — I say, well maybe I had an angel with me here today. It could have been just another man doing a good deed."....
Pelz felt another spirit when he walked into his backyard on a winter's day — that of the wife he lost over two years ago. He called her Mom.
"She loved bluebirds," he said. "In the wintertime, we don't have bluebirds. I was out in the back, thinking, 'Mom I'd like to see you,' and this little bluebird comes by.
"I don't know, maybe that's an angel. It was just something I wanted to see. Maybe I imagined it. Next thing you know, it flew off. What is an angel? Is an angel something that has a heartbeat like us? Or is it ...?"
The thought trailed off.

Editor's Note: Graham Hancock's Supernatural is available in the bookstore. I will probably be writing more about the process of discovery Hancock leads the reader through in this amazing book. Really, one of the best books I've ever read.

How Many Episcopalians Does it Take to Change A Light Bulb?

Ten. One to change the light bulb and 9 to discuss how much better the old one was.

I'm old enough to remember the angst caused by revisions to the Book of Common Prayer in 1979, as well as the pitched battles over the decision to ordain women. I've always thought the Episcopal Church did an admirable job of straddling the line between forward, social momentum and regressive bickering.

Once again Anglicans are roiling with the changes that would allow them to keep pace with modernity. The recent appointment of a woman, the Right Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, to the post of Presiding Bishop of the US is the latest daring move for a Church internally at odds with its notorious tolerance. From Salon:

Jefferts Schori, a former oceanographer, was considered a long shot for the position by most church experts: Although she's a fairly mainstream liberal, her gender made it unlikely that the church would choose to be stirred up at a moment when it seemed to require smoothing over and calming down.

The Episcopal Church -- the American branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion, with 77 million members -- had already outraged conservatives three years ago by electing the openly gay Right Rev. Gene Robinson to head the Diocese of New Hampshire. Conservative African Anglicans joined with reactionary American Episcopalians, threatening to pull out of the Communion entirely if the enfranchisement of gay Christians was not stopped. There were name-calling, backstabbing, breakaway parishes, fights over property and thundering sermons about "abomination" and deviance. "The battle is about the authority of Scripture," proclaimed conservative American Bishop Robert Duncan. "It's about the basics of Christian faith ... The issues have to do with sexuality and morality, but at the very heart of it is whether Scripture can be trusted."

The eponymous blogger at That's Not Christian offers this oh-so-gentle reminder to those who would cling to ideas of Biblical inerrancy in their battle against the legitimization of gay lifestyles.

The Old Testament contains several verses written by men who opposed homosexuality (and biblical literalists believe that every word written by these men was inspired by God)–but not in terms of restricting gay marriage or gay bishops or gay soldiers or gay whatnot. The only Old Testament prescription for handling gay people is "stoning unto death".

And there are several other groups of people, including adulterers and rebellious children, that Old Testament writers advised stoning unto death. In "Biblical days", stoning was the capital punishment of choice, though there were several lesser-known methods of punishment for the authorites to use as desired, such as "poisoning the womb" of women...

That last is actually a method of abortion, which underscores as well anything the level of hypocrisy called for by rigid fundamentalism.

I spent a good deal of my youth in a very moderate Episcopal Church. The Assistant Priest, who was charged with the responsibility of shaping our adolescent minds, was a bit of a lefty and had done a stint as a touring folk singer. He began one youth group meeting by telling us what he'd learned his first day of seminary. He snatched a Bible from the shelf and dropped it on the floor. He pointed at it and announced, "The Bible did not arrive that way." The holy scripture, he taught us, had many authors, and, while inspired by God, was flawed and internally contradictory. Not even the begats are consistent, he told us, with some listings skipping entire generations. "The thing that makes me nervous about fundamentalists," he used to say, "Is that I've never met people who were so sure that they were right and everybody else was wrong."

My opinions of the American Episcopal Church are largely shaped by the progressive attitudes I encountered in formative years spent under its tutelage. So it is painful to watch them lurch and limp into the future; alternating brave innovations with craven reversals.

This Friday PBS will air a new series, "Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason," exploring the role of religion in a modern, culturally diverse world. Says Moyers:

The chaotic events of the world have fueled a yearning for certainty, and fundamentalism is nothing if not certain -- it offers propositions that can be affixed as bumper stickers; it gives people sound bites to which they can assent. It's a life jacket in a stormy sea, solid ground in the earthquake of life.

Furthermore, if you believe a sacred text is literally the word of God, you don't need any other proof. And you don't want to waste time with people who disagree with you. You know God's mind -- who are they to stand in your way? Around the world, fundamentalism is waging war against the imagination -- against creativity, freedom (freedom of the mind, above all), and against the tolerance that is necessary if people of different beliefs are to live together.

It is the challenge of all humanity to juggle contradictions and the Episcopal Church has proved itself to be skilled at doing so. If history is any guide they will continue along the bumpy path of growth and change; seeking a contemplative and mature faith over a reactionary one.

New Studies: Hurricane Intensity Rising

Two new studies released earlier this week conclude that hurricane intensity is increasing with increases in global temperature. In an earlier post I noted a study from the Georgia Institute of Technology that saw a correlation between rising water temperatures and stronger, more damaging hurricanes. Early this week both Purdue University and Pennsylvania State University studies reached similar conclusions. This New York Times article emphasizes the hotly debated nature of these studies. They cannot be read as conclusive, but certainly as very interesting and concerning.

The Purdue scientists found that their results matched earlier work by Kerry A. Emanuel, a hurricane expert at M.I.T. Dr. Emanuel has argued that global warming, specifically the warming of the tropical oceans, is already increasing the power expended by hurricanes.

The approach used by the Purdue researchers, concentrating on what is called reanalysis data, has never been tried for this purpose before, Dr. Huber said in an interview, adding, "We were surprised that it did as well as it did."

In a statement accompanying the release of the study, Dr. Huber said the results were important because the overall measure of cyclone activity, whether through more intense storms or more frequent storms, had doubled with a one-quarter-degree increase in average global temperature.

In the other new study, Dr. Emanuel and Michael E. Mann, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, compared records of global sea surface temperatures with those of the tropical Atlantic and said the recent strengthening of hurricanes was attributable largely to the rise in ocean surface temperature.

The impact of stronger storms is already taking a toll on the environment and damaging sensitive ecosystems. After last year's deluge of hurricanes the entire gulf region of the United States experienced multiplicative damage. As per the Baltimore Sun:

Throughout the Gulf Coast region from Texas to Florida, barrier islands have been battered by wind and waves, leaving many fragmented and submerged.

The Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana's coast were stripped clean by Katrina, submerging much of the 40-mile-long, uninhabited chain and leaving the mainland more vulnerable in the coming hurricane season.

"It takes a long time for these dunes to re-establish naturally, so the next storm that comes along will have an easier job overtopping the islands and flooding inland areas," said oceanographer Abby Sallenger of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Louisiana had been losing coastal wetlands at a rate of about 25 square miles a year, scientists say. It is estimated that Katrina caused a loss of 118 square miles of wetland marshes.

"What potentially could happen if you take away the barrier islands, the wetlands could even disappear faster," Sallenger said. "The marsh itself will just disintegrate, and it supports an incredibly rich ecosystem."

Another recent study shows that New Orleans is simply not ready for another major hurricane and the impact could be devastating. But Florida's ecosystem is also hanging in the balance.

"These hurricanes are just taking big chunks of our landscape," Doyle said.

"It could eventually be the threshold that tips the bucket and leads freshwater systems to become brackish ... and the whole system kind of collapses. We now have this game board set with certain things in place, and in combination with more frequent hurricanes it can aggravate the situation in terms of sustainability in our social, agricultural and natural systems."

In Florida, where the Everglades has become a managed network of canals and levees, scientists face the daunting task of controlling more water from frequent storms to keep developed areas from flooding and to cleanse agricultural runoff of fertilizers and pesticides before it reaches surrounding wetlands.

"Religion is Hard Work"

I relate strongly to Karen Armstrong. No, I was never a nun, but my life has followed a similar path of spiritual exploration, disillusionment, and discovery. In the introduction to his interview with Armstrong, Salon's Steve Paulson describes her appeal thusly:

Armstrong now calls herself a "freelance monotheist." It's easy to understand her appeal in today's world of spiritual seekers. As an ex-nun, she resonates with people who've fallen out with organized religion. Armstrong has little patience for literal readings of the Bible, but argues that sacred texts yield profound insights if we read them as myth and poetry. She's especially drawn to the mystical tradition, which -- in her view -- has often been distorted by institutionalized religion.

The interview is quite compelling and well worth watching the ad to read. I've excerpted some of the highlights.

	In her recent book, "The Great Transformation," Armstrong writes about the religions that emerged during the "Axial Age," a phrase coined by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers. This is the era when many great sages appeared, including the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Jeremiah and the mystics of the Upanishads. -- Salon

On the meaning of religion:

Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept. The sages were all extremely concerned with transcendence, with going beyond the self and discovering a realm, a reality, that could not be defined in words.

On God as a personal concept:

No, but the great theologians in Judaism, Christianity and Islam say you begin with the idea of a god who is personal. But God transcends personality as God transcends every other human characteristic, such as gender. If we get stuck there, this is very immature. Very often people hear about God at about the same time as they're learning about Santa Claus. And their ideas about Santa Claus mature and change in time, but their idea of God remains infantile.

On whether the non-religious can be moral:

They can. I fully endorse that. I don't think you need to believe in an external god to obey the Golden Rule. In the Axial Age, when people started to concentrate too much on what they're transcending to -- that is, God -- and neglected what they're transcending from -- their greed, pompous egotism, cruelty -- then they lost the plot, religiously. That's why God is a difficult religious concept. I think God is often used by religious people to give egotism a sacred seal of divine approval, rather than to take you beyond the ego.

On mythos and logos:

Yes. In the pre-modern world, there were two ways of arriving at truth. Plato, for example, called them mythos and logos. Myth and reason or science. We've always needed both of them. It was very important in the pre-modern world to realize these two things, myth and science, were complementary. One didn't cancel the other out.

On violence in the Quran:

I would say there are more passages in the Bible than the Quran that are dedicated to violence. I think what all religious people ought to do is to look at their own sacred traditions. Not just point a finger at somebody else's, but our own. Christians should look long and hard at the Book of Revelation. And they should look at those passages in the Pentateuch that speak of the destruction of the enemy.

On fundamentalism as a reaction to institutionalized secularism:

Yes, because fundamentalism has developed in every single one of the major traditions as a response to secularism that has been dismissive or even cruel, and has attempted to wipe out religion.

On the practice of relgion:

Religion is hard work. It's an art form. It's a way of finding meaning, like art, like painting, like poetry, in a world that is violent and cruel and often seems meaningless. And art is hard work. You don't just dash off a painting. It takes years of study. I think we expect religious knowledge to be instant. But religious knowledge comes incrementally and slowly. And religion is like any other activity. It's like cooking or sex or science. You have good art, sex and science, and bad art, sex and science. It's not easy to do it well.

On creation myths and the book of Genesis:

Well, it's not a literal account because it's put right next door to another account in Chapter 2, which completely contradicts it. Then there are other creation stories in the Bible that show Yahweh like a Middle Eastern god killing a sea monster to create the world. Cosmogony in the ancient world was not an account of the physical origins of life. Cosmogony was usually used therapeutically. When people were sick or in times of vulnerability, they would read a cosmogony in order to get an influx of the divine, to tap into those extraordinary energies that had created something out of nothing.

Anatomy of Climate Lie

It's behind the curtain of New York Times Select, but Paul Krugman's latest column is an insightful dissection of one emblematic case of disinformation used to obscure the evidence of global warming.

NASA climatologist James Hansen is introduced in Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."

Dr. Hansen was one of the first climate scientists to say publicly that global warming was under way. In 1988, he made headlines with Senate testimony in which he declared that "the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now." When he testified again the following year, officials in the first Bush administration altered his prepared statement to downplay the threat. Mr. Gore's movie shows the moment when the administration's tampering was revealed.

Krugman fleshes out more of Mr. Hansen's story and demonstrates how far energy companies are willing to go to disinform the public about hard science.

But soon after Dr. Hansen's 1988 testimony, energy companies began a campaign to create doubt about global warming, in spite of the increasingly overwhelming evidence. And in the late 1990's, climate skeptics began a smear campaign against Dr. Hansen himself.

Leading the charge was Patrick Michaels, a professor at the University of Virginia who has received substantial financial support from the energy industry. In Senate testimony, and then in numerous presentations, Dr. Michaels claimed that the actual pace of global warming was falling far short of Dr. Hansen's predictions. As evidence, he presented a chart supposedly taken from a 1988 paper written by Dr. Hansen and others, which showed a curve of rising temperatures considerably steeper than the trend that has actually taken place.

In fact, the chart Dr. Michaels showed was a fraud — that is, it wasn't what Dr. Hansen actually predicted. The original paper showed a range of possibilities, and the actual rise in temperature has fallen squarely in the middle of that range. So how did Dr. Michaels make it seem as if Dr. Hansen's prediction was wildly off? Why, he erased all the lower curves, leaving only the curve that the original paper described as being "on the high side of reality."

The experts at www.realclimate.org, the go-to site for climate science, suggest that the smears against Dr. Hansen "might be viewed by some as a positive sign, indicative of just how intellectually bankrupt the contrarian movement has become." But I think they're misreading the situation. In fact, the smears have been around for a long time, and Dr. Hansen has been trying to correct the record for years. Yet the claim that Dr. Hansen vastly overpredicted global warming has remained in circulation, and has become a staple of climate change skeptics, from Michael Crichton to Robert Novak.

It is just this kind of distortion that has allowed energy companies and their front men in political office to perpetuate the myth that global warming is still debatable and unproven. Pioneers like Dr. Hansen have been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. Meanwhile, the planet keeps getting warmer.

Gold Star Widow Seeks Pentacle

Sgt. Patrick Stewart served his country twice; once in Desert Storm with the regular Army and again in Afghanistan with the National Guard. He did not return from Afghanistan. Last September he died there when his helicopter was shot down. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart; symbols of his service and sacrifice. But it is the symbol of his religion that has become a complicated issue. Stewart was a Wiccan and his wife has been fighting a protracted battle to memorialize him with a pentacle.

Over the years, families have used religious symbols such as the Jewish Star of David, the Christian cross and the Islamic crescent and star to honor their loved ones on headstones and markers.

For Sgt. Patrick Stewart's family, the symbol of choice was also from his religion: the Wiccan pentacle.

But of all the symbols and faiths recognized by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Wicca and its emblem – a circle around a five-pointed star – are not among them.

There are hopeful signs from the VA.

The state's top veterans official, Tim Tetz, said he was “diligently pursuing” the matter with Gov. Kenny Guinn, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.

“Sergeant Stewart and his family deserve recognition for their contributions to our country,” said Tetz, executive director of the Nevada Office of Veterans Services.

“It's unfortunate the process is taking so long, but I am certain Sgt. Patrick will ultimately receive his marker with the Wiccan symbol,” he said Thursday.

However, Stewart's family is not the first to pursue equal consideration for Wiccans who have served their country with discouraging results.

The Rev. Selena Fox, senior minister of the Wiccan Circle Sanctuary in Barneveld, Wis., is among those who have been pushing the federal government to adopt the emblem.

Fox said Veterans Affairs has been considering such requests for nearly nine years with no decision.

“While this stonewalling continues, families of soldiers who gave the ultimate sacrifice are still waiting for equal rights,” Fox said.

Only time will tell.

"Sudden Climate Change" pt. 4: Media Tipping Point

First "60 Minutes," now Time magazine. The mainstream media are suddenly waking up to the grim reality of global warming and its gathering danger.

Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.

It certainly looked that way last week as the atmospheric bomb that was Cyclone Larry -- a Category 5 storm with wind bursts that reached 180 m.p.h. -- exploded through northeastern Australia. It certainly looked that way last year as curtains of fire and dust turned the skies of Indonesia orange, thanks to drought-fueled blazes sweeping the island nation. It certainly looks that way as sections of ice the size of small states calve from the disintegrating Arctic and Antarctic. And it certainly looks that way as the sodden wreckage of New Orleans continues to molder, while the waters of the Atlantic gather themselves for a new hurricane season just two months away. Disasters have always been with us and surely always will be. But when they hit this hard and come this fast -- when the emergency becomes commonplace -- something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global warming.

Time's Jeffrey Klugar does a very capable job of describing some of the tipping points and feedback loops that are leading to escalated warming and escalating concern amongst climatologists.

What few people reckoned on was that global climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping points and feedback loops, thresholds past which the slow creep of environmental decay gives way to sudden and self-perpetuating collapse. Pump enough CO2 into the sky, and that last part per million of greenhouse gas behaves like the 212th degree Fahrenheit that turns a pot of hot water into a plume of billowing steam. Melt enough Greenland ice, and you reach the point at which you're not simply dripping meltwater into the sea but dumping whole glaciers. By one recent measure, several Greenland ice sheets have doubled their rate of slide, and just last week the journal Science published a study suggesting that by the end of the century, the world could be locked in to an eventual rise in sea levels of as much as 20 ft....

One of the reasons the loss of the planet's ice cover is accelerating is that as the poles' bright white surface shrinks, it changes the relationship of Earth and the sun. Polar ice is so reflective that 90% of the sunlight that strikes it simply bounces back into space, taking much of its energy with it. Ocean water does just the opposite, absorbing 90% of the energy it receives. The more energy it retains, the warmer it gets, with the result that each mile of ice that melts vanishes faster than the mile that preceded it.

That is what scientists call a feedback loop, and it's a nasty one, since once you uncap the Arctic Ocean, you unleash another beast: the comparatively warm layer of water about 600 ft. deep that circulates in and out of the Atlantic. "Remove the ice," says Woods Hole's Curry, "and the water starts talking to the atmosphere, releasing its heat. This is not a good thing."

A similar feedback loop is melting permafrost, usually defined as land that has been continuously frozen for two years or more. There's a lot of earthly real estate that qualifies, and much of it has been frozen much longer than two years--since the end of the last ice age, or at least 8,000 years ago. Sealed inside that cryonic time capsule are layers of partially decayed organic matter, rich in carbon. In high-altitude regions of Alaska, Canada and Siberia, the soil is warming and decomposing, releasing gases that will turn into methane and CO2. That, in turn, could lead to more warming and permafrost thaw, says research scientist David Lawrence of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. And how much carbon is socked away in Arctic soils? Lawrence puts the figure at 200 gigatons to 800 gigatons. The total human carbon output is only 7 gigatons a year.

Only time will tell if this marks a tipping point in the public consciousness and will result in the drastic reform needed. But it appears time is the one thing we don't have.

"Rewriting the Science"

If you missed this Sunday's "60 Minutes" you can read a recap here. As I wrote a few weeks ago, only in the US is global warming still being debated. For most of the world it's settled science. Now comes further insight into how our current Administration has been keeping the jury out all this time -- by silencing the prosecution.

As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn't want you to hear but he's going to say them anyway.

Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent [sic] scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science.

What the science actually says, according to Hansen is that global warming is real, accelorating, and caused largely by human activity. This is the message that an Administration with strong ties to the energy industry has suppressed with tactics Stalin might have envied.

"In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public," says Hansen.

Restrictions like this e-mail Hansen's institute received from NASA in 2004. "… there is a new review process … ," the e-mail read. "The White House (is) now reviewing all climate related press releases," it continued.

Veteran of both the Clinton and Bush Administrations Rick Piltz explains the anatomy of that vetting process.

"It comes back with a large number of edits, handwritten on the hard copy by the chief-of-staff of the Council on Environmental Quality."

Asked who the chief of staff is, Piltz says, "Phil Cooney."

Piltz says Cooney is not a scientist. "He's a lawyer. He was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, before going into the White House," he says.

Cooney, the former oil industry lobbyist, became chief-of-staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Piltz says Cooney edited climate reports in his own hand. In one report, a line that said earth is undergoing rapid change becomes “may be undergoing change.” “Uncertainty” becomes “significant remaining uncertainty.” One line that says energy production contributes to warming was just crossed out.

"He was obviously passing it through a political screen," says Piltz. "He would put in the word potential or may or weaken or delete text that had to do with the likely consequence of climate change, pump up uncertainty language throughout."

In a report, Piltz says Cooney added this line “… the uncertainties remain so great as to preclude meaningfully informed decision making. …” References to human health are marked out. 60 Minutes obtained the drafts from the Government Accountability Project. This edit made it into the final report: the phrase “earth may be” undergoing change made it into the report to Congress. Piltz says there wasn’t room at the White House for those who disagreed, so he resigned.

"Even to raise issues internally is immediately career limiting," says Piltz. "That’s why you will find not too many people in the federal agencies who will speak freely about all the things they know, unless they’re retired or unless they’re ready to resign."

As for Mr. Cooney:

For months, 60 Minutes had been trying to talk with the president’s science advisor. 60 Minutes was finally told he would never be available. Phil Cooney, the editor at the Council on Environmental Quality didn’t return 60 Minutes' calls. In June, he left the White House and went to work for Exxon Mobil.