The gentle art of sanity amidst civilization
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The first few times I heard about God, I was already suspicious. My earliest clear memory of it was when I was five, leaning against the screen door of our small town home with my older sister, watching a midsummer thunderstorm unfold. We were in awe, like I have been at every thunderstorm since. I [...]
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Last week I ran into a few online discussions about those big, big questions that often come up in late-night conversations: Why are we here? What is our purpose? Strictly speaking, as members of the human species we do have a purpose. But we didn’t choose it, and it might not be us who stands [...]
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At the end of my overseas trip I spent a week winding down in the peaceful surf town of Noosa, Australia. At that point I had over 5000 photographs and two hundred video clips, and I knew people would want to see them. So I took some time to put together a montage of photos [...]
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This week celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking suggested that alien life almost certainly exists, and humans should do everything we can to avoid contact with it. He reasons that contact with aliens would probably be fatal to us, likening it to the European conquest of the New World: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the [...]
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There is a pile of filthy pots and pans in the corner of the kitchen, and it’s tearing us apart. For six weeks I have been living in a hostel in Te Puke, New Zealand, the kiwifruit capital of the world. Te Puke is not a tourist attraction, so travelers generally only come here to [...]
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If there’s one thing Friedrich Nietzsche did well, it’s obliterate feel-good beliefs people have about themselves. He has been criticized for being a misanthrope, a subvert, a cynic and a pessimist, but I think these assessments are off the mark. I believe he only wanted human beings to be more honest with themselves. He did [...]
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New Zealand is a black sheep among nations. Having spent the last 60 million years isolated from the rest of the continents — longer than any other major land mass — life has had a long time to do its own thing here. The vast majority of native trees and animals are found nowhere else. [...]
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Despite the earnest efforts of sixty years of Miss USA contestants, world peace has not arrived on our doorstep. The UN has not managed it, nor did John Lennon or Oprah or The Secret. Religion sure made a mess of the effort altogether, and I don’t hold high hopes for China to pull it off, [...]
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I forged my own blade yesterday, from an unassuming piece of plain steel. With some expert instruction, I pounded it on an anvil, ground the blade down, fitted it with a brass hilt, polished and sharpened it. The handle is made out of native timber that was salvaged from a dismantled insane asylum.
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Though the hysteria surrounding the H1N1 flu has left the entirety of the news-watching world with the encouraging habit of frequent handwashing, it is hard to call it anything but an overreaction. Not to dismiss the crushing impact of even one person’s death to their loved ones, but when we venture into the realm of [...]
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