When I quit a lucrative career in Silicon Valley I thought to work as a naturalist educating young people. The pay was so low I found only the young and the old could afford to be that poor. I once was stranded in Nevada with a broken truck and I had to sleep in it at the repair shop for a week until it was fixed. I had hoped to homestead and do a positive survival thing but I found the most amazing woman and realized that I would need real money if I were to have a family and do nearly anything in the world. I chose against a solitary though aesthetic and ascetic existence with the hope that I would advance the cause from within rather than just leave it. I have never liked monastic Buddhism precisely because its greatest proponents lived aside from the world and I wished to change the world for the better. I also need to live in the middle of the world, natural and human, and enjoy its culture and advance its deep, human beauty. After all I am a philosopher. Ongoing research confirms the need for green space.

Green space in urban communities can make life better for those living around it, a new study finds.

Using survey information from thousands of United Kingdom households collected over 17 years, researchers from European Center for the Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter in England seemed to confirm what naturalists have long asserted — that living in a greener area has a significant positive effect on people.

Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of NY’s Central Park, one of my heroes, insisted that nature and city be combined as man had made great inroads into nature and the reverse was in order. In particular he castigated southern culture.

My own observation of the real condition of the people of our Slave States, gave me … an impression that the cotton monopoly in some way did them more harm than good; and although the written narration of what I saw was not intended to set this forth, upon reviewing it for the present publication, I find the impression has become a conviction.

Wiki: “Southern civilization was restricted to the wealthy plantation owners; the poverty of the rest of the Southern white population prevented the development of civil amenities taken for granted in the North, he said.”

‘The citizens of the cotton States, as a whole, are poor. They work little, and that little, badly; they earn little, they sell little; they buy little, and they have little – very little – of the common comforts and consolations of civilized life. Their destitution is not material only; it is intellectual and it is moral… They were neither generous nor hospitable and their talk was not that of evenly courageous men.’

Sadly monocultural agriculture is the least expensive and most profitable. We used to truck farm and sell at Farmer’s Markets. Little money, too much time. Another career for the young, the old, or branches of farms doing conventional agriculture. The adoption of a national Organic standard allowed organic chemicals to replace synthetics and gave market advantage to industrial farms. So we did what most small farms do around here, grow hay and work for some one else to pay the bills. 100 acres are in conservation easement protection and someday when needed the land will be ready and healthy.

The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, examined data from a national survey that followed over 5,000 UK households and 10,000 adults between 1991 and 2008, as they moved around the country.

The survey had asked participants to report on their own psychological health during that time to estimate the “green space effect,” said the study.

Indeed, individuals reported less mental distress and higher life satisfaction when they lived in greener areas, the data showed.

That general state of heightened well-being continued even after the University of Exeter’s Dr. Mathew White and his colleagues took into consideration changes over time in the incomes, employment, marital status, physical health and housing types of the study participants.

The two biggest written influences in my career decisions were “What Color is Your Parachute” and “Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow.” Not entirely though as choices are never so clear. After a degree and a child we chose to live on a boat and sail around the world. When lack of funds and disposition stopped that we chose to live on a farm.

“We’ve found that living in an urban area with relatively high levels of green space can have a significantly positive impact on well-being, roughly equal to a third of the impact of being married.” White said.

The effect was also found to be equivalent to a tenth of the impact of being employed, as opposed to unemployed, the study said.

I lived in Minneapolis MN for a number of years and while I appreciated the great number of parks and greenways there I found it too urban, cold, and Lutheran-Catholic. I also realized then that I had always thought where I lived was actually more important to my well being than with whom I lived. I am at the far end of this spectrum. Nature feeds me and I wanted a partner that inspired me but would also love and wish to live in natural beauty–yet enjoy travel, culture, and participating in society. From the BBC source.

Beth Murphy, information manager at the mental health charity Mind, said: “For people living busy lifestyles in densely populated areas, being able to get outdoors and access green space is a great way to escape the stresses of day-to-day life.

“Our research has shown that 94% of people who took part in outdoors ‘green exercise’ said it benefited their mental health and can have huge impacts on physical health.

It would be utterly disastrous for everyone to move to the country so I am grateful to those who prefer city life. I am excited data shows the benefit (I would say need) of nature. The hippie movement was disastrous to the environment. Often, being suburbanites, their obliviousness to ecology science and blind faith that their footprints were beautiful  turned land to dust.  I hope this research continues to influence the structures of cities to include green spaces without creating a rural land rush. I hope the MacMansions blossom gardens and trees rather than fences and grass. I hope the book “The Apartment Farmer” regains an audience. I hope we continue to care and create parks, forests, and wild lands.

We both cut the cord of monetary success and career path so we could live in nature or close to it. Right now I sit in front of a window on a hill overlooking the back fields. The sun is warm, the horses are in view, I can hear the chickens and birds, my books are beside me, I can’t see my neighbors, my culture is at my fingertips, and a bigger world, DC, is an hour and a half away. I haven’t skipped out on social involvement for the good. But for the money, life is good!

Jim Newman. bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

Turkey is trying to enter the EU and has difficulty with its secular governance run by a fundamentalist Muslim prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

First, let’s not use the word extremist anymore as fundamentalist is more correct; an extremist would say, meh, you have no need to be Islamic, criticism leads to wisdom, no need to submit to authority; an extremist might say Mohammed says people should be free to do what is right in their hearts, women must be in control of their bodies, education is more important than obedience; an extremist would say the Koran can mean many things to many people and they are all true paths to virtue as no one can read it and not be moved correctly. So many kinds of extremism but to be more true to Islamic verse is to be more fundamental.

A fundamentalist looks at their sacred text as pure, without error; insists that deviation is misinterpretation; insists that one must submit and that submission is essential for all; does not allow for criticism as a path to wisdom; ensures that education supports the fundamentals.

But I have come to praise Fazil Say, a brilliant pianist who is emotive and technical, a rare combination. As bound, a pianist can be technical or emotive. The implication being you can play the piece exactly or take some liberties to get the feeling across. Some pianists are sloppy expressive like Horowitz, some are expressive and accurate like Rubinstein, and some are caricatures of pop fantasy pornography like Liberace. Russians like Richter were often strong and yet expressive, able to thunder on the keys and yet soften in an agonizing expression of restrained, even tortured, emotion.

It takes tremendous discipline to insist on playing a piece well, precisely, and yet expressively, as the temptation is to either follow the music exactly or to play with improvisation either with more heart or more speed. Understanding what the composer meant is often key but can feel confining. At some point a brilliant pianist goes into the head of the composer and seems to channel the music. To play a Liszt piece as if it were Chopin or vice versa loses the piece.

It sounds exacting and seems antithetical to Jazz but musicians who improvise well immediately get what it means to be in the groove and can instantly assess another musician whether they are getting it or not. These flights of apparent fantasy nevertheless have their rules and constraints. In the same sense a poet can be liberated or confined by the structure of the verse; a painter freed or chained by their media; a writer let loose by grammar or expressive in transgression.

Artists often express what is to be in the future. They have a sense of what is going on that is often intuitive and yet effable. They speak to us without overt conversation. They are dangerous in they appeal to us without explanation. Plato wished to control the music of the people because he knew its powers of persuasion without premise. Music, a great art, is Circean, an unabashed enchantment of the spirit that suspends conventional morality. For this, fundamentalist Islam does not allow nonreligious music into their hearts and minds, condoning arabesques and geometric patterns but no more.

Fazil Say is not alone says the sign. Fazil Say has gotten in trouble for tweeting:

… Say joked about a call to prayer that he said lasted only 22 seconds. Say tweeted: “Why such haste? Have you got a mistress waiting or a raki on the table?” Raki is a traditional alcoholic drink made with aniseed. Islam forbids alcohol and many Islamists consider the remarks unacceptable.

… The charges against Say also cite other tweets he sent, including one – based on a verse attributed to famous medieval poet Omar Khayyam – that questioned whether heaven was a tavern or a brothel, because of the promises that wine will flow and each believer will be greeted by virgins.

A citizen complained:

Emre Bukagili, a citizen who filed the initial complaint against Say, said in an emailed statement that the musician had used “a disrespectful, offensive and impertinent tone toward religious concepts such as heaven and the call to prayer”

Say received a sentence which was suspended but if he criticizes again in five years will lose the suspension. Turkey is a confused state wishing to be secular and yet wishing to be Islamic. Turkey borders East and West.

Turkey has a history of prosecuting its artists and writers, and the EU has long encouraged the nation to improve freedom of speech if it wants to become a member of the bloc.

Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has been prosecuted for his comments about the mass killings of Armenians under a law that made it a crime to insult the Turkish identity before the government eased that law in an amendment in 2008.

In 2007, ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who received death threats because of his comments about the killings of Armenians by Turks in 1915, was shot dead outside his office in Istanbul.

If I have heard the Moonlight Sonata once I have heard it a thousand times.  It is a rapture of a piece that has long called to me. I heard it played on a beautiful German, clear-coated, Mahogany Steinway that sailed to America with us in 1961–where I would fall asleep in the back underneath–its redolent soundboard above me, a mixture of wood, finish, metal, dust, and the floor beneath me. Soon I heard the piece misplayed, as it was being learned, by so many students who loved it that it took on a caricature of its own

Say plays it beautifully. Every note has a depth, is never rushed, and has a beginning middle and end. A kind of expression that is given care to plying the maximum range of sound from the action of a hammer striking, caressing, cloying the string. Every note tells the story. It is indeed like the moon that casts a light on a darkened world mixed with sight and cloaking. The darkness beguiles in its cover and the moon teases glimpses.

Ludwig Rellstab hailed it as the light of the moon on Lake Lucerne–hence the name attributed later.  Berlioz said of it that it “is one of those poems that human language does not know how to qualify.” Beethoven, exasperated at its popularity, said ”Surely I’ve written better things.” It is an introduction that leaves one lingering.

Eric Henderson plays it on guitar. It feels rushed. The notes don’t linger on the ear. The limits of the guitar require a near-brutish emphasis on vibrato that introduces a phrasing and rhythm.

As contrast to show the range of a guitar, I found Segovia’s cover of Villa Lobos Prelude #3 (couldn’t find Moonlight) where you can hear how a guitar note can be its own story.

Here is a fantastic version by ThePianoGuys. It takes the reflection and makes it into a celebration, a playfully intense journey into light.

Classicists used to worry that their music would die and yet it has been brought live, refreshed, revigorated.

It would be a crime against humanity to imprison a brilliant pianist simply because he makes remarks critical to a fundamentalist Islamic regime that has lost touch with beauty and humankind.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

Phil here…. Please Welcome Susana Paco!

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(Note: My mother language is Portuguese and I am currently studying for Proficiency Test in English. If you wish, please help me correct my mistakes. Thank you!)

Hello fellow Primates

This song reminds me of the most repeated question i get from theists: “How can you be happy without a god?”

Well, how can i not be? I have the biggest playground ever conceived by our minds to play with: the Universe! With millions of amazing discoveries still to be done, life is too short to think about authoritative skydaddies. And i think that we need to wake up our inner scientist and rediscover the wonders of the world.

I am from Portugal, a young atheist biologist. I live in the capital, Lisbon, and work with the educational department of the Museum of Natural History, teaching science daily to kids. I am also currently doing my Master thesis on Complexity Sciences so I can say that I am a mix of Scientific Researcher/educator.  My young age (just 23) makes me technically an adult but young enough to reach the kids and interest them in science. You’ll read about my adventures teaching science in later posts.

I was brought up a catholic, but always hated it. The guilt factor of all the speeches of nuns and priests made me sick. I kept putting myself into trouble like asking directly to the priest in the middle of a mass “why did god choose to torture Jesus instead of grounding all humanity with a reprimend?” . I guess I was never really a theist. When I was 12, I couldn’t bear anymore and left church forever. My parents thankfully understand it, but I’m always getting backlash from highly religious relatives.

Nature was always much more interesting than the deity. There is no guilt or thought crimes, just things to discover. My grandpa taught me to love nature and I became a biologist. I love to teach and recover poor students is one of my pleasures. As one of my zoology teachers once said “You can teach evolution to a 8 year old and to a 80 year old. Just choose the words wisely”.

Thanks Phil for letting me in the Skeptic Money boat!

Any questions about life sciences (or even science in general) just ask. And for those who have kids, tell me in which subjects you want me to share teaching tools, I have quite a few!

Just a smell of how fun science can be. A recipe for a cake that takes under 15 minutes to do and kids can do it on their own!

The Cake in a Mug

Ingredients :

3 soup spoons of self raising flour

3 soup spoons of sugar

2 soup spoons of powdered chocolate

1 egg

2 soup spoons of sunflower oil

2 soup spoons of milk

In a mug (that can go to the microwave) first we mix the dry ingredients, then the egg and finally the oil and the milk. With the spoon or a fork, the mixture has to be stirred very well until little bubbles start to form on the surface. Then is just 3 minutes in the microwave at 600 watts and, ta dah, we got a cake in a mug

Explanation : the little bubbles in the mixture are the indication of a chemical reaction starting. The leavening agents of the flour were activated by the acid of the milk and started consuming the sugar producing carbon dioxide and letting the cake grow. When we place the mug in the microwave we accelerate the chemical reaction (by exciting the water molecules in the cake, creating heat). The microwave also cooked the egg, giving consistence to the cake. Chemistry in action!

Donate to the project here.

A few months ago I wrote a blog here, “Grieving for the Living“, about the pain and loss I felt after my parents disowned me. Something I didn’t expected happened: I received a dozens upon dozens of emails and messages from people stating that they were in the same situation. An unfortunate and common theme was that there hadn’t been much research or discussion about the effects disownment has as people go through adulthood. So I, along with a friend I met because of have decided to do something about it. Grieving for the Living: Effects of Disownment in Adulthood is a work in progress by authors Bridget R. Gaudette and Emma S. Phillips. Our stories, along with about 20 others will be recounted in the book. We’ve  approached disownment from several angles including religious (de)conversion, gender identity, interracial partnerships and sexual orientation just to name a few.

In addition, to demonstrate the need for such a book, we are conducting a large scale survey meant to assess the impact disownment has on mood and mental health. We will be assisted by individuals that have PhD’s in psychology and social work along with medical doctors and counselors.

Disownment is the formal act or condition of forcibly renouncing or no longer accepting one’s child as a member of one’s family or kin. We are pursuing knowledge in the hopes of helping others. We are confident that by conducting research about this population and by publishing this work, people who are experiencing this alienation, like ourselves, will be able to find comfort in the knowledge that they are not alone. Further, the results we find with our research will aid in bringing attention to this issue, which is more prevalent than one might think.

If you have been disowned, please take this survey. Also, although we have a publisher that has looked favorably on the project no contract has been signed so we are raising money to self-publish here: donate.

For more information on the book and the authors, visit our website at www.GrievingForTheLiving.com.

“If racism is ever to be finally undone—and that remains a very open question indeed—we will have to first and foremost stop lying to ourselves.” —Tim Wise, White Like Me

Pardon this blog post, it’s written mostly out of frustration and I fully admit that I could’ve handled the situation better in retrospect. Recently, I found myself explaining why the black atheist experience differs from the non-black atheist experience with a friend of mine. This friend is a 40-something white male that lives in Connecticut. During this conversation he stated off-handedly that, “Where I live, racism isn’t a problem”. I didn’t press the issue because I just wasn’t up for it. I could have gone on a rant about covert racism, but for all I know, racism isn’t a problem in that part of the country. <wink>

I then fell upon a great article listing 28 common racist attitudes and behaviors that indicate a detour or wrong turn into white guilt, denial or defensiveness. I felt his earlier comment fit in with #15:

I was hopeful that this article would explain what I hadn’t before and would do so better than I could. So, I sent him an email. Please read the following exchange and give me your thoughts (my comments are in red and his are in blue. Underlining is mine).

Read them all but check out #15

I should say the circle of folks with whom I associate aren’t racist. But it’s true that we don’t mix much with blacks.  How does racism manifest itself in your daily life?

It’s like if I sent you an article on rape and you said, “I should say the circle of folks with whom I associate aren’t rapists.” That doesn’t matter and in fact it’s dismissive.

I was simply explaining what I meant by my initial statement regarding racism and all the people with whom I’m personally acquainted.

But if you get all huffy and puffy and play the race card with me, I will seriously LOL

Play the race card?

Acting like I’m a closet racist

Are you being serious? Also, I’ve never quite understood what a race card is.. Is mentioning race a card trick?

Really? You never heard that expression? My Jewish clients use it all the time…

Of course I’ve heard it, I just don’t see why you’re claiming I’m using it. It’s not meaningful, it’s a rude expression.

It’s not rude if valid. What’s your point with that article you sent? I’m not following you. Help me to understand what you’re driving at.

It’s a very rude expression (still talking about the “race card” comment). If you think someone is bringing up race when they shouldn’t, don’t say “the race card”. It does nothing to make the conversation more meaningful. It’s you being dismissive. I actually sent that article to all of my friends who aren’t on my Facebook (I posted it on FB). It’s a great article is why.

I don’t think you’re a closet racist, but you’ve made at least one of the comments listed. We’re all a little racist. Shit, I’ve made at least one of the comments in the article.

It continued on after this for many emails and he asked for an apology for calling him a racist, which I never said. Well, I said we’re all a little racist, but I certainly don’t think a person is racist because they make the occasional ill-advised comment or think a racist-y thought. I just wanted him to see why saying, “well we don’t have racism here” wasn’t ideal. He also said he doesn’t have racist speech, behavior or thoughts. Come on! We all do, most of us rarely, but still. Can we all stop fooling ourselves and have a real conversation? See #1 on the list:

And yes, at one point he did say he didn’t think of me as black. Thank you? So reader, tell me how you feel about accusing someone you care about of “using the race card”? I’ve found that that always puts a halt to the conversation or incites anger and resentment. I find it incredibly dismissive. Tell me I’m using a logical fallacy. Tell me that you don’t believe race is a relevant factor in our conversation. Tell me you see things differently. Tell me that you think my perspective as a black woman might be skewing my conclusions. If you want to have a meaningful conversation on race issues.. don’t accuse me of “playing the race card”.. it never ends well.

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For more of my thoughts on being a black atheist please see:

A Minority Within A Minority Within A Minority

I Don’t Tell Black People I’m an Atheist

Shades of Black Atheism #1

Shades of Black Atheism #2