There is an article this week on The Chronicle Review from the Chronicle of Higher Education that comes pretty close to ‘must reading’.  “We are all Madoffs” by David Barash (University of Washington) makes a simple, and surprisingly powerful, connection between the Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme and what we are all doing to God’s creation.

If you are one of the few who don’t remember exactly what Bernie did that had the entire nation enraged, it was this: He ran one of the country’s largest (and most successful – until he was caught) pyramid schemes.  The idea was simple, the execution complex and ingenious:  Collect “investments” from people – pay “dividends” back to those people from new “investments” from other people.  The scheme runs well until you run out of new investors or someone blows the whistle. Read more »

from Flickr (CC License)

Human population growth – it’s one of the most controversial and difficult aspects of our environmental crisis.  In all likelihood, it is controversial because it’s difficult:  Human beings are precious, especially if you hold to the Biblical teaching that humans are ‘created in the image of God‘ – but even if you don’t have that perspective.  Really, which of us, no matter what our religious (or non-) persuasion, would put a pet or a backyard squirrel on the same plane as one of our children or grand-children? Read more »

It was a brief and on the surface completely unremarkable conversation. Two conference speakers complimenting each other on their talks, discussing points each one appreciated in the other’s presentation.

But this encounter was somewhat unusual and possibly quite special. The scene played out at Kansas State University, in the midst of an academic symposium on sustainability issues in Africa. I was one of the participants in the conversation, and had, the day before, presented a talk on ‘mobilizing the African church to respond to the African environmental crisis.’ The other speaker was a representative of a prominent and important botanical garden, and had just presented what I considered the best talk of the conference on dealing with biodiversity loss in Madagascar.

As it happens, Madagascar is one of the richest – and one of the poorest – countries in the world. Rich in plants, animals and insects that are found no where else. [Your favorite zoo animal, the Lemur, is found only on Madagascar, for example.] 90% of the animals there are ‘endemic’ – they occur only on this one, large island. But Madagascar is poor – the people who live among this rich abundance are among the poorest in the world. And both groups – the plants and the people – are under great pressure. Plants and animals are going extinct. People are going hungry. Which one do we help? Read more »

“Half of the apartments in New York City are occupied by single individuals.”

"Modern Loneliness" - from Flickr (Le Pere, Creative Commons License)

Listening to To the Best of our Knowledge on NPR this morning, that phrase jumped out at me.  The topic for the morning was loneliness and solitude, and for the most part, the comments were interesting if predictable.  Yes, our culture has made us lonelier than we’ve been in the past.  No, there is no difference between men and women – both genders are equally lonely, though (again, predictably) men tend to be less likely to admit to loneliness. Read more »

I was at the Inauguration last week.  Braved the cold and the crowds and witnessed history – up close.  It wasn’t easy getting there, but it was worth the trip.  I’m glad I went.  Lots of others have already used up a lot of ink and bandwidth dealing with the event, its symbolisms and import for the future, so I’m not going to go there.  Rather, my mind has been occupied with more mundane matters:

What happens when a really good transportation system is asked to carry many times more people than it has ever done before? Read more »