Notes From A Bear's Journey

   One can say that I was peppering you with a variety of miscellaneous information, and for the most part that would be correct.  To the biologist, the linguist, the sports fan, the general go-fer, such info might be old news, or appear to be reports that are teasers or trivial enough to make you want to toss it aside...or probe deeper.  It's for me a slurry on my desk, a chance once again to clear off those old papers and notes that can't quite find a home but which I nonetheless found interesting; so right off the bat, apologies to you experts-in-your-field out there for these are admittedly just summarized quips.  But let's begin with that sleeping giant, China.  They've made good on their promise and shut down the last of their ivory carving/retail markets, thus driving any further dealings in elephant tusks into the underground (if caught the penalties are severe); in the conservation world this two year-long effort has alone resulted in the collapse of the deman

   One of my friends is fond of saying, "You're a real treasure...you should be buried."  This, of course, comes after perhaps one too many drinks and is always done in jest, our laughs genuine and our verbal barbs being fired back and forth like kids playing tag.  But the word "treasure" is so rarely used today, almost as if it is being saved for special moments of discovery...ancient coins in a farmer's field or a wooden ship suddenly found deep in the ocean after over a century.  And sometimes we're lucky enough to find our own treasure.  This can be something as simple as moving a drawer and finding love letters written when our parents were young, or an adopted child finding his/her blood mother or father (which can be a good or a bad thing depending on the reception and the direction it would go from there).  For me, tackling my self-imposed Take Five decluttering, I came across a storage box in the labyrinth of my basement and inside were a serie

   Okay, since I don't golf I really have no business approaching such a subject.  Not that I haven't tried it, from once hitting a bucket of balls at a driving range to actually venturing out on a public course and, with my rented clubs, pounding through nine holes with my brother and his friends.  And don't get me wrong, because many (dare I say "most") of my male friends are golfers.  Some are real players out to play and improve their game, some are out to have a few drinks as they motor around the back nine in their golf carts (the days of carrying their clubs are long past for most of my friends), and some are out to just try and play new courses wherever they travel.  But for me I never could get into the game...I became sort of like Einstein who, when asked if he ever played golf, replied, "No, no.  Too complicated."  I couldn't understand the rules such as gripping the club with your thumb and pinkie finger wrapped and bound tightly undernea

   Lately there appears to be quite a fuss being made over happiness, reminding me of that old Broadway hit song above (ironically, the zippy version Judy Garland first made famous proved to be yet another Hollywood act as the studio terminated her contract immediately after the filming due to her ongoing problems with depression and such).  Some months ago the New Yorker featured a cartoon which featured a bar with the sign Happy Hour 5-6, followed by Are You Truly Happy Hour 6-7, followed by Were You Ever Happy Hour 7-8.  It was something even I had reflected on in a post some years ago when I quoted a piece in The Atlantic :  In a 2012 paper evocatively titled “Don’t Look Back in Anger! Responsiveness to Missed Chances in Successful and Nonsuccessful Aging,” a group of German neuroscientists, using brain scans and other physical tests of mental and emotional activity, found that healthy older people (average age: 66) have “a reduced regret responsiveness” compared with younge

   Here in the U.S. we seem to like things big: big cars, big homes, big highways, big meals, and in case you missed it, we also consume in big quantities.  We use resources such as energy, food, and minerals in massive amounts, far greater than in most parts of the world and for the most part think nothing of it.  Water is cheap, gas is cheap, food is cheap, so we've grown up feeling that everything --perhaps life itself-- is cheap.  This photo from Popular Science gives you an idea of what we humans have created, a mining excavator that weighs more than the Eiffel Tower and is taller than the Statue of Liberty (it can and does clear out a football field to a depth of 30 metres or nearly 100 feet each day ).  Okay, it was created and is in use in Germany (and is one of many generations of such mining excavators in use worldwide and created by the company Thyssenkrupp ) but here in the U.S. (since we don't have one) we want it...the biggest.    It's the common tale of