Death by technology: how living with technology deprives us of silence, inwardness, and the ability to find the well-springs of life. And this condition has its own, overlooked history. From the article: The English Reformation began, one recalls, with an assault on the monasteries, and what silence the Protestants didn’t banish the philosophers of the Enlightenment [...]
The 17th-C. plague in London: now we know. How DNA (and Daniel Defoe) reveal the killer bacteria's identity in one of history's longest cold cases. From the article: Testing in Germany confirmed the presence of DNA from the Yersinia pestis bacterium - the agent that causes bubonic plague - rather than another pathogen. Some authors have previously questioned the [...]
The scientist, the thinker, and the artist: seeking truth though facts, ideas, and the shared but secret vision of humanity. A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. And art itself may be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice [...]
In an recent study, Norwegian researchers funded by Microsoft discovered that using a pen stimulated more cerebral activity than typing on a computer. Drawing words makes the brain more prone to learning. From the article: Inspired by previous studies that suggested long-hand notetaking using a pen deepens the mind’s ability to retain and process information, van der [...]
Civilization's tricky situation: as we enter the autumnal season, the shadow self would be heard, as the gateway to introspection. Here history and imagination are in play. The so-called civilized man has forgotten the trickster. He remembers him only figuratively and metaphorically, when, irritated by his own ineptitude, he speaks of fate playing tricks on him [...]
The costs of learning: prudent parents have thought of better investments than financing the studies of their children I am thinking of something I heard in Bologna, where I was a student, from a certain honorable citizen, the father of a legal scholar, who told me more than once that there was nothing he regretted as much [...]
On Muslims living in Europe: the past not only informs the present, but also expands our sense of the politically and culturally possible. Then I reached the country of Hungary, where the people called Bashghird live. They are descended from the first tribes that came from the lands of the Turks and entered the lands of [...]
Public service and religious faith: a way that in life's darkest moments we may yet record the light of goodness. Hi little one, I only gave a hand to bring you out of that prison of rubble. Pardon us if we arrived late; unfortunately you had already stopped breathing. But I want you to know from up above that [...]
Therapy and the nurture of nature: how landscape and the natural world foster (from the Greek, therapeia) wholeness. From the article: For many writers, the act of observing nature has healing properties. Amy Liptrot found it from returning time again to the same spot, and feeling more aware each time of “the height of the tide, [...]
Voyages of Discovery: what are our certainties, when we, and what we find, are constantly in flux? A swifter and more obvious stream lays hold of mankind, for although the waters of a river flee, its appearance is the same. However, as the years of a man's life slip away, his appearance is so different [...]
