And I like it.

[..] The question is, how do we find our way out of the wilderness that has grown in the heart of man? How does a society, a whole civilization, that is on the skids and bound for destruction, arrest its slide? I pose this today in the broadest possible way, because I think it is the one, common, practical, and even political question that should remain near the front of all minds capable of charity and goodwill.

The obvious answer, to those who realize that our civilization was built not only by human hands, but under the guidance of Church and religion, is to counsel a re-centring, a return to God. But for those who have moved and been moved so far away, that the very idea of God chills them, what paths lie open?

I think there are quite a few, and that all have in common this mysterious element of joy. I think art, broadly, offers many alternative means to the kind of regeneration — moral, and ethical, as well as aesthetic — that can help us out of our enclosed spaces. Learning to draw, from nature; to sing, in key; to dance, in pattern; to write, metrically; even to sew, or to master carpenter’s joints — all such enterprises offer the lost soul an individual direction out of the jungle.

The reason why, is that each is a discipline that restores us to harmony with the natural order of things. Each offers a way of seeing into God’s creation, and puts us in the presence of what is infinitely greater than ourselves.

To be able to draw a single flower, with full attention to all its colours and parts, is to be lifted out of one’s tawdry self into a realm where good, truth, and beauty still prevail. It is to recover joy.

Thank you kindly for the reminder.

“Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.” - William Butler Yeats

This of course has implications for success in many areas of life not just the academic. Like many a great venture, this one starts with an experiment (from the Australian, 14/6/06):

Psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman descended on the eighth grade of a large public school in the northeast of the US. As the autumn leaves fell, each of the 160-odd children took an IQ test, then they (and their parents and teachers) answered questionnaires that probed self-control. Are you good at resisting temptation, they were asked. Can you work effectively towards long-term goals? Or do pleasure and fun sometimes keep you from getting work done?

The children were also given a real-life test of their ability to delay gratification. Each was handed a dollar bill in an envelope. They could choose either to keep it or hand it back and get $2 a week later. Their decision was carefully recorded.

The researchers returned in spring. They took note of each child’s grades and then looked back to see both how clever, and how self-controlled, that student had been in autumn. What, they wanted to know, was the most important factor in school grades?

The psychologists discovered it was self-control, by a long shot. A child’s capacity for self-discipline was about twice as important as his or her IQ when it came to predicting academic success.

The UK Science and Technology Select Committee has put forward a new classification table, ranking drugs in terms of the harm they cause, based on scientific evidence. (New Scientist)

What makes more sense than allocating resources in combatting drugs in proportion to the actual harm the drugs cause in the community?

Here’s the table. The committee’s assessments have been handed over to the UK government.

Two points however. Firstly the table does not differentiate methamphetamine from amphetamine and crack cocaine from cocaine. In both case the drugs should be classified separately. Meth and crack and far more costly to the users and to the community than amphetamine and cocaine. Besides the fact that they are totally different drugs, that is. The second point is that the “scientific evidence” that places GHB next to ecstacy is tragically flawed. Although GHB, when used in safe doses, is possibly the least harmful physically (note: not a derivative like 1,4b or GBL, which are potentially more harmful) and is not addictive, the potential for misuse (eg “date-rape” etc), dose volatility and the potential for overdose should have propelled it much further up the list.

In recent years, slowly but surely, scientific research has again begun on the possible medical uses of various psychedelic substances. After several decades of almost total absence for mostly political reasons, small, often privately funded, studies have begun springing up around the world. MDMA has been showing very positive results in the treatment of anxiety and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Ibogaine has been haled as nothing short of a magical wonder cure for opiate dependence, at least in comparison to other treatment options currently available. Now recent research has added “magic” mushrooms, used by many cultures all over the world, from the South American Aztecs to the shamanic tribes of Siberia, for thousands of years, to the list of potential treatment options for a variety of psychological disorders.

From “‘Magic’ mushrooms blow many minds: study” on NineMSN:

“Magic mushrooms,” used by Native Americans and hippies to alter consciousness, appear to have similar mystical effects on many people, US researchers report.

More than 60 per cent of volunteers given capsules of psilocybin derived from mushrooms said they had a “full mystical experience.”

“Many of the volunteers in our study reported, in one way or another, a direct, personal experience of the ‘beyond,’” said Roland Griffiths, a professor of neuroscience and psychiatry and behavioral biology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who led the study.

A third said the experience was the single most spiritually significant of their lifetimes.

Many likened it to the birth of their first child or the death of a parent.

And the effects lingered.

Two months after getting the drug, 79 per cent of the volunteers said they felt a moderately or greatly increased well-being or life satisfaction, according to the report published in the journal Psychopharmacology.

Griffiths said the drug might be used to treat addiction as well as severe pain or depression.

Other teams are also exploring some different posibillities:

Food and Drug Administration, and one team led by Dr Charles Grob at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California is testing the drug on patients with end-stage cancer.

“Our specific aim is to learn whether this psychoactive drug, psilocybin, might be effective in reducing anxiety, depression and physical pain, and therefore improving your quality of life,” the researchers say on their website.

Dr Solomon Snyder, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins who says he has experimented with LSD himself, said the experiment might lead to a way to find the “locus of religion” and the biological basis of consciousness in the brain.

What do you know, for a change the hippies were onto something. Of course too much of a good thing..

I highly recommend supporting MAPS: the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a non-profit organisation that assists research into the medical and spiritual potential of psychedelic substances, by helping scientists and research teams in securing funding, obtaining approval for and designing their studies. You can read about the many research projects currently under way in the US and around the world on their website. Current research includes MDMA, LSD, Ibogaine, psilocybin/mushrooms, mescaline/peyote, DMT, Ketamine, Salvia Divinorum and ajahuasca.

News Scientist seems to be having a coffee propaganda month, or perhaps they’ve just clued on to the fact that most of their readers are geeks who spend Monday to Friday in front of the computer guzzling caffeinated beverages and then engage in what they think is a social life in a flurry of alcohol consumption on the weekend. Telling people exactly what they want to hear is the oldest marketting trick in the book.

In “Could coffee protect your liver against alcohol?” they report that a team at Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Programme in Oakland, California has carried out a study that answers that question with an emphatic “yes”. The study apparently tracked over 125,000 people who had enrolled on a private health care plan in northern California between 1978 and 1985 to see who developed cirrhosis. This number was 330, out of which 199 had alcohol cirrhosis. And the results:

People drinking one cup of coffee per day were, on average, 20% less likely to develop alcoholic cirrhosis. For people drinking two or three cups the reduction was 40%, and for those drinking four or more cups of coffee a day the reduction in risk was 80%.

Tea was not found to have the same benefit.

Earlier this month New Scientist appeased coffee drinkers with more news that just sounded too good to be true, in the story “Drinking coffee makes you more open minded”. This research was done at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia:
Previous studies have show that consuming caffeine can improve one’s attention and enhance cognitive performance, with 200 milligrams (equivalent to two cups of coffee) being the optimal dose.

..

In 2005, [the University of Queensland] team published a paper suggesting that the compound primes people to agree with statements that go against their typical views because it improves their ability to understand the reasoning behind the statements.

These revelations follow hot on the heels of this story, on the 17th of May: “Caffeine boosts breathing in premature babies”:

For decades doctors have prescribed caffeine to premature babies because it appears to protect against apnoea, a condition in which breathing stops for more than 15 seconds. But physicians have wondered about the other effects of the caffeine.

A study at the University of Toronto, Canada monitored how more long 2000 premature babies required assistance from ventilators and the health of the infants’ lungs. They found that:

Babies who received no caffeine had a 47% risk of bronchopulmonary dysplasia, an illness characterised by inflammation and scarring in the lungs. Premature babies are at greater risk of this condition because of the air pressure placed on their lungs from medical ventilators.

But the premature infants given caffeine were found to have just a 36% risk of brochopulmonary dysplasia. Ohlsson says this may be partly because babies receiving caffeine were taken off ventilator systems about a week earlier than those that did not receive the stimulant, on average.

Makes me smarter. Check.

Lets me drink as much beer as I want without killing my liver. Check.

Saves the children. Check.

So why is valuable pipe space still being wasted pumping mere water into our homes?

UPDATE (16/6): I read this this morning and my first thought was “Whoah, how much coffee did they feed that sucker during the screening?”

THE US President, George Bush, is to create the world’s largest marine sanctuary, 363,000 square kilometres of Pacific Ocean surrounding a necklace of islands and atolls stretching from the main Hawaiian islands to Midway Atoll and beyond.

..

It is a sharp departure for an Administration that has campaigned to privatise some federal lands and designated less wilderness than most presidents over the past 40 years. A turning point came in April, when Mr Bush sat through a White House screening of Voyage to Kure, a documentary that unveiled the beauty of, and perils facing, the archipelago.

The film caught Mr Bush’s imagination, say US officials. The President jumped up after the screening, congratulated the maker of the documentary, Jean-Michel Cousteau, and urged White House staff to get moving on protecting the archipelago’s waters.

Step 1 to a better Australia: free coffee on tap in Parliament House. And from there, on to the rest of the world.

Last week the Mayor of Shoalhaven City Council, Greg Watson, and 4 councillors travelled to China to meet with representatives of the Shaolin Temple. On Saturday the deal was signed for the development of the new temple complex on the 1,200 hectare property, called Camberton Grange, south of Nowra. The original Ch’an Buddhist monastery (its main gate is pictured below) is located in the Henan province in China and has a 1500 years history. It is considered the birthplace of Ch’an (Japanese: Zen) Buddhism and Kung Fu.

According to the Mayor, speaking on the ABC’s AM program on Saturday, from China, the development is to include “a three-tier temple complex, with two pagodas, 500-room hotel, a 500-place kung fu academy”. He then continued: “There’ll be some residential subdivision, a 27-hole golf course, herbal medicine, herbal gardens, acupuncture, special massage, and that’s about it.”

Sounds like the primary purpose of the new temple is to function as the centerpiece of a tourist resort. The 500-place kung fu academy however is exciting news for Australian martial arts. The planned hotel is going to be four-star and sounds like it is aimed at the tourists, so perhaps the academy will have separate accomodation for the kung-fu students on top of that? Unless they either think Nowra is much bigger than it is or they are targetting very rich students.
Competition for the site apparently came from Victoria and Italy, with the Italian Government putting forward a deal to the Shaolin abbot. Perhaps the proximity of the Ch’an Buddhist Nan Tien Temple at Wollongong played a part the decision.

Late last year, when the proposal was first brought before the Council, some controversy arose around the development, following comments from local Pastor Trevor Aspin and opposition from some residents. Pastor Aspin said the development would be “bringing evil into the Shoalhaven”. According to the South Coast Register, reporting in November 2005, “ The spark was lit by Pastor Aspin, chairman of the [Shoalhaven] Ministers Association, who sent a memo to fellow ministers saying he believed God had directed him to call a war of prayer to stop the Shaolin temple being developed.”

This earlier report in the same paper has his comments in full:

“I believe the Holy Spirit has instructed me to call the army of God and go to war against this principality,” Pastor Aspin wrote in a letter to members of the Shoalhaven Ministers Association.

“Dear people, it is not worth inviting evil into our city for any amount of money - I’m sure you will agree.”

Although I disagree with the notion that the development is inviting evil into the city, the Pastor’s concerns are understandable, as much as his ostentatious militancy is amusing (if only he had said “Crusade” instead of “war”!). After all Buddhism is Australia’s fastest growing religion, while the number of Anglicans in Australia has declined in the last 3 census’. In the 2001 census 370,345 people were Buddhist, with a 79% increase from the previous one in 1996, accounting for 1.9% of the population. The vast majority are Asian migrants, but tens of thousands are also converts. It will be interesting to see the new numbers in this year’s census.
Predictably ugly was the response from the Shoalhaven City Council. Cl Watson :

“”As a Christian I hang my head in shame at the intolerance which is apparent in this whole exercise,” he said.
“This whole matter is totally misguided, and demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the fundamentals of Buddhism.”

and

“The abbot’s not going to be enamoured towards what’s going to appear to him to be racial bigotry,” Cr Watson said.

Racial bigotry? Where was race mentioned? This deserves the first ever TOD “Bullshit” Award. It is the right of a Christian Pastor to defend what he believes is Australia’s already battered Christian identity. I personally disagree with him, but his concern is perfectly understandable. But I am also thankful that we are a secular nation and his concerns are not government policy. And the Pastor’s “army of God” does not also happen to be the Australian army. Interestingly, one of the Shoalhaven City Council Councilors is a Buddhist - Cr John Anderson. From the same article:

As a follower of Buddhist teachings, Cr John Anderson said the arguments were just religious intolerance disguised as planning concerns - something he described as “an utter disgrace”.

After Pastor Aspin the torch was then taken up by the Anglican minister Peter Robinson of St Stephens Church in Bomaderry. The ABC reported in March 2006:

“In a letter to the federal government, Anglican minister Peter Robinson of St Stephens Church in Bomaderry, raised concerns that the Shaolin temple planned for Comberton Grange, south of Nowra, could threaten the security of the naval base, HMAS Albatross.”

Then it was the turn of the Wollongong’s Anglican Bishop, Reg Piper. From the same ABC article: “For my part, I think I’d be arguing about the difficulty of the Buddhist religion. I think it’s a soul destroying religion rather than a life giving one and so for my part that would be my line.”

Ironically the Camberton Grange development gave rise to far more opposition than a 500-bed prison that was also proposed for the area.

Despite the opposition the Council announced in early March it will officially offer the property to the Shaolin Buddhist Order.
But the controversy did not stop there, as the Council went ahead and planned the trip to China to sign the deal before actually getting State government approval.   The  NSW Planning Minister Frank Sartor wrote to the Mayor to inquire about this decision. According to this ABC report the “Planning Department has earmarked the area as of state significance” and did not want permanent housing on the site. The permanant housing is the dwellings of the monks, as the hotel is not actually “permanant housing” and is perfectly ok, apparently.

At this stage the NSW government is yet to approve the deal, but, according to the Council, no opposition is expected, considering the great economic value the site will bring. The aforemention Cr Watson stated that the complex will add an extra 1.5 million international visitors a year to the Shoahaven region, on top of the current 200,000. It is expected to have 10 times the economic impact of the Nan Tien Temple, which currently generates $16 million a year for the Illawarra economy and attacts between 250,000 and 300,000 day visitors each year.

Lets hope negotiations run to a smooth end.

The Camberton Grange property is located on the NSW south Coast, just south of Nowra and is about a 2 and half hour drive from Sydney CBD.

A heads up for anyone heading down to the NSW snow fields.

The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service are raising the winter surcharge on vehicle entry into the National Park.

Annual pass fee: 2004: $88, 2005: $145, 2006: $190

Day pass: 2005: $16, 2006: $22, 2007: rising again to $27