LifeItself

Here at KAUST , we had three good rains in the last ten days. I just finished my 18 km bike ride and inhaled the vibrant shades of green of all leaves and the efervescent colors of flowers. The mangroves along the coast are growing vigorously, and today they were a bouquet of seledines reflected by the crystal clear water. It is peace where I live. Things could not be better. 11/23/2018, 11:30 a.m. Our garden after the rain.  Behind the fence, you can see the crowns of mangroves and a low tide in the Red Sea. Why then am I so worried? First this legal disclaimer: I am no Tralfamadorian .  I do not have the ability to experience reality in four dimensions; cannot access past, present, and future; and am unable to perceive any instant of time at will. Tralfamadorians are able to see the entire timeline of the universe, they know the exact time and place of the universe's annihilation caused by an unfortunate Tralfamadorian experiment, but are powerless to prevent the inev...

11/15/2018. This haze in San Francisco is caused by the fires burning for weeks 170 km to the north. On Nov 17, 2018, air quality in San Francisco was worse than that in Beijing on a bad day. Please don't act with surprise when I say this: The global climate change is real; global warming is accelerating , especially in the northern hemisphere; and the positive feedbacks that will further exacerbate human condition are kicking in with vengeance.  I am stating the scientifically obvious, but I have not made it clear yet just how bad this climate change will be for us humans. For millennia, we have relied on the "free" environmental services that are going away.  These life-giving services are clean air to breathe, fertile soil, mild temperatures, healthy forests and savannas, healthy rivers, lakes, seas and oceans, sufficient rain, full aquifers, clean drinking water, and ample snowpacks.  When you are in China, in the Middle East, or in Central Valley in California, ...

I have not written for a year, because I did not want to infect you with my depression.  The climate is warming up like never before in all human history, the polar ice is melting at the fastest rate in 120,000 years, the hurricanes, fires and droughts are ever stronger, and people went mad, most of them all at once.  At this time of epochal change, the global superorganism of which we are tiny parts, keeps on pretending that nothing will prevent its eternal growth.  People in power are borrowing ever more money and drawing the seemingly logical plans of eternal economic expansion, when only drastic contraction can save us. America, my dream country and my state of mind, has been withering and burning through geological deposits of good will around the world.  And just two days ago, we heard a scarred-for-life, direct and gentle woman, whose credible testimony was ignored by the old cynical white men on the right hand side of the room. Then came the raison d'etre...

Have you wondered recently what makes us humans do what we do? Have you pondered why can we be so beautiful at times and act like crazed savages at other times? Why, for example, President Donald J. Trump, who swore to defend the laws of my United States and to protect our Constitution, is glowing about two Confederate generals? During the bloody civil war of 1861-1865, the Union of northern states declared loyalty to the U.S. Constitution, while the southern Confederacy fought to destroy my country and keep the savage slavery going.  So how can a U.S. president praise the two major traitors, who fought against everything we stand for and against the U.S. Constitution? Donald J. Trump Perhaps human history and nature can give us clues.  So who are we? Humans are large omnivores, whose ecological niche is to reset (remove mass from) the environment in which they roam. A human requires about 4 square km to roam freely in small egalitarian bands in their natural se...

OK, I am furious, so furious that words can't pass through my throat that dried up from anger. You'd expect me to take an easy path and lash out at President Trump. But this would too self-serving and wrong. Let's rewind a little.  Idiocracy is a 2006 American science fiction comedy film that tells the story of two perfectly average people who take part in a top-secret military hibernation experiment, only to awaken 500 years later in a dystopian society where centuries of negative genetic selection combined with advertising, pornography, commercialism and cultural anti-intellectualism.  The stunning outcome is the really, really dumb people with lifestyles that are devoid of common human attitudes we take for granted today. Today, we think that one should be educated, develop independent judgement, and be able to reach conclusions that are based on facts and logic.  One should know something practical, like how to water plants or hold a wrench.  One should unde...

If you are like me, you may read, watch and listen to what is happening around you with disbelief. But should we be incredulous? Perhaps not... By chance, I looked at " What on earth are we doing ?," a sad commentary on human condition I wrote 6 years ago, and this passage caught my attention: Our Society “In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It is not necessary that the lies be particularly believable. The lies act as barriers to truth. These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities. Truth must be at all costs avoided. When we do allow self-evident truths to percolate past our defenses and into our consciousness, they are treated like so many hand grenades rolling across the dance floor of an improbably macabre dance party. We try to stay out of harm's way, afraid that they will go off, shatter our delusions, and l...

We are on the island of Sicily, near Syracuse, one of the five Corinthian colonies that also included the island of Ortygia nearby. Old people still remember that Leto gave birth on Ortygia to Artemis, the first of her twin god children with Zeus. Leto was a daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe. She was an early and favorite lover of Zeus. Soon after birth, Artemis helped Leto flee Hera's wrath and escape to Delos, where the other twin, Apollo, was born. Or was it the same island, because in ancient times Ortygia was also called Delos?  Who knows ? The fearless warrior and archer, Artemis, is my favorite goddess of nature and hunting. She protects all plants and animals. She is also an eternal virgin, and the goddess of the moon. This is her statue from Pompeii.  Photo by T. W. Patzek, 01/06/2017. Arethusa means "the waterer." She was a gorgeous nymph, who left her home in Arcadia beneath the sea and became A victim of the river god’s lust She’d tried to flee;...