Monthly Archives: September 2015

Humility

Sayings, Words, , ,

IMG_20150928_214439_burst_01 You see the source of this quote from this photograph.  It is definitely a contradiction to seek humility as a source of power.  See number six below.

IMG_20150928_214801 Here are six of the fifteen quotes.

Reflection on these and other quotes is helpful.  When one succeeds in internalizing humility,  probably move in circles with all people.  This may be one of  Pope Francis’s qualities, which allows him to move with ease from talking to heads of state to serving lunch at the Catholic Charities to the poor.  He definitly has humility.  It shows in how he asks the people to pray for him, as he prays for the people.

It was a new insight for me from the pope, that if one is not humble, one runs the risk of being  a hypocrite, which is saying one thing, and doing another.  I am going to think a lot more about humility, and its implications.

Brain Rules For Baby by John Medina

Books, Brain

1443129026794-430918787  This is a wonderful book for anybody at all, but especially for people of child-bearing age, and those with children.  It explains that the first thing that parents and others should know is that the brain of babies is interested first of all in survival, and if it has any energy left, that can go on learning in the more traditional sense.  Therefore, one always does better in relating to babies, in trying to understand the baby’s point-of-view.

He emphsizes the power of example.  Once a child has seen something,  even once, they know it in some way.  So it is very important to not demonstrate to them anything you do not want them to do.

This highly readable book is chock full of these themes, stories, and how to achieve the results we all would like to grow happy, smart babies that grow into happy, smart children.

The Sixth Extinction, An Unnatural History, Review Of the Book

Books, Climate, Evolution

The 6th Extinction image d August 21, 2015, 513qCLaP5sL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_ The Sixth Extinction : An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert, 2014, (Henry Holt and Company), has been on the New York Times Best Seller List, and has won a Pulitzer prize, among other honors.  It describes the very recent signs of distress to forms of life in several regions of earth and disturbing events due to mankind induced changes of our earth.  These things are happening  right now,  for example, the total dying off of many amphibians, due to a new virus to which they are susceptible, unleashed by the changing climate, and the distress of corals because of the oceans dissolving more CO2 from the air, which tilts the oceanic pH toward the acid side.

She then describes five major times of extinction over the last 500 million years, including the extinction wave in which the dinosaurs were killed off, due to a meteorite which hit the earth, altering its climate.

Kolbert tells us how we are the agent of a huge climate change, and suggests that we could stop our actions which are causing this, but she has no certainty at all that we willl, or will not, in fact change our ways.