The Life Slant

For some time I have wondered why some of the very talented people I grew up with never went anywhere. I saw a file on the internet that addressed the problem. Some children who are “gifted” find mastering certain skills quite easy, while their classmates struggle and work very hard to master the material. But as they progress in the field, there finally (usually in college) comes a time when they must work to move along in the area. Then, when faced with having to work in the area, for the first time, they simply stop and drop out. In the book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell argued that ten-thousand hours of practice is required to become truly world-class. (The original research was done by K. Anders Ericsson, just to give credit for all of his hours of work.)

SAN FRANCISCO, 16 February – Move over chimpanzees and humans, there’s a new brainiac in the fold. An astonishing discovery has revealed the brainpower of cows.

A nature-loving family in the mountains of Southern Austria has a pet brown cow named Veronica. At the age of three, Veronica began to pick up sticks. Soon after, the family noticed Veronica using sticks to scratch herself.

Researchers studying tool-using animals visited Veronica. They were curious to test her cognitive ability. So, they gave her a broom and were gobsmacked by the outcome.

SAN FRANCISCO, 6 February – The mesmerising addiction of staring into screens has “rewired” the brains of young people. And, those screens have stoked a mental health crisis, globally.

Children are less cognitively capable than parents were at their age. Since standardising and measuring cognitive development, which began in the late 1880s, every generation has outperformed their parents.

Higher intelligence, until this present moment, has been attributed to spending more time at school. Learning at school helps develop cognition.

Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to underperform the previous generation, the millennials, on every cognitive measure, from attention to memory, to literacy, to numeracy, to executive functioning, to IQ, even though they spend more time at school than previous generations.

So, what occurred around 2010 that decoupled schooling from cognitive development?

SAN FRANCISCO, 18 January – Three in five or, almost 7000 bird species are in steep decline, many from logging native forests. One in eight kinds of birds are facing near-term extinction. Human health, too, is in dire jeopardy. Poisons in freshwater, fossil fuel smog and transnational organised crime are levelling earthly life.

Lest we forget that combusting fossil fuels, wood pellets and palm oil has brought agony and starvation to four million Common Murres, forced Caspian Terns to mate and lay eggs 1700 kilometres farther north than the species has ever been seen before and driven Snowy Owls extinct in Sweden. Elsewhere across the Arctic tundra, this iconic warm-blooded vertebrate is vanishing. It’s simply too hot.

The British newspaper The Guardian recently posted an article about a podcast named “The Birth Keepers” which is part of The Free Birth Society, an organization that “encourages women to give birth without medical support – no midwives, no doctors, no ultrasounds – just faith and ‘instinct.’” According to The Guardian, the FBS is linked to “at least 18 cases where the group played a significant role in the mother or birth attendant’s decision-making, leading to potentially avoidable tragedies.”

SAN FRANCISCO, 15 December – In spite of a law safeguarding ancient trees, animals and native old-growth within the Salmon Nation Rainforest, the British Columbia Ministry of Forests approved an illegal logging operation that put to death a colossal Yellow Cedar. That Ancient One had an astonishing 8.8-metre (29.9ft) circumference, one of the largest and oldest trees in the province. 

This near 2000-year-old shrine and the surrounding rainforest was home to breeding marbled murrelets, a threatened species. These beautiful seabirds, first cousins of puffins and auklets, nest only in crowns of old-growth within the Salmon Nation Rainforest, laying one egg on a large branch festoon with lichens and mosses.

SAN FRANCISCO, 6 December – Canada is a world leader in destroying its Northern Native Forests, inflicting agony upon the Animal Kingdom and deliberately ruining an indispensable planetary carbon storehouse.

Why were Canadian delegates at the COP30, Brazil, boasting about their climate targets? When in fact, Canada is quickly razing its Native Forests, the best defenders against worsening climate storms.

SAN FRANCISCO, 14 November – Our planetary life support systems are under siege, especially the bees, trees and seas.

Bees are food. Trees are freshwater. Seas are oxygen.

So, why are the bees, trees and seas and everything else within Nature getting destroyed?

The three underlying root causes of our ruinous civilisation: legal, economic and political systems, are all based on the assumption of Man’s supremacy.

The economy is built on human productivity, human inventiveness and plundering Mother Earth’s finite living and non-living jewels. This is why Amazon, Jeff Bezos’s company, is backed by bankers and valued by the economy at >$2tn.

{What’s the difference between a million, billion and trillion in relatable terms? One million seconds is about 12 days. One billion seconds is about 32 years. One trillion seconds is about 32,000 years.}

SAN FRANCISCO, 2 November – For thirty-three years the world’s leaders have postponed action despite incontrovertible scientific evidence and images proving that mankind is rapidly razing and scorching our only home.

The upcoming 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) is a hijacked cash-cow. This year, a four-lane highway has carved up tens of thousands of acres of old-growth Amazon Rainforest, NE Brazil, so that 60,000 foreign participants, including world leaders can grandstand.

SAN FRANCISCO, October 8 – Animals are the heartbeat of this meaningful planet. Certain animals, like Northeast Pacific Herring, are Mother Earth’s engineers. That is, they are the hub that sustains their community.

From British Columbia’s fjord-rich Inside Passage to Alaska’s famed Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, heralded Herring and their proteinaceous eggs (roes) feed an impressive array of predators, including hundreds of marine and terrestrial species. Fascinatingly, their carcasses provide the coastal Salmon Nation Rainforests with nitrogen, a crucial marine-derived nutrient for colossal castles, the trees. (Incidentally, Herring also feed flies that power millions of migrating songbirds).  

Herring can live for 20 years and spawn up to nine times. Herring support Humpback and Gray Whales, Orcas, Sharks, Chinook Salmon, Porpoises, Dolphins, Seals, Sealions, Sea Otters, Halibut, Rockfish, Cod, Hake, Lingcod, Dogfish, Steelhead Trout, Surf Scoters, Bald Eagles, Common Murres (80 per cent of their diet during breeding season), Sea Wolves, Spirit and Black Bears and others.

Welcome to Mother’s intertwined time-tested heaven on Earth.

SAN FRANCISCO, October 11 — The health and wellbeing of the oceans are the mainstay of earthly life. The world’s leaders are hell-bent to annihilate the oceans for the almighty dollar.

Ocean mining is the finishing blow. It will bankrupt irreplaceable biodiverse oases along seamounts, deep ocean floors and vents, and the abyssal plain.

There are trillions of deep ocean polymetallic nodules containing cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese (and other rare earths) used in the batteries of electric cars and other machines as we transition to renewable energies.

I was searching an online video sharing website when I came upon a video by a young woman who was criticizing all of the current technology and what it has devolved into. She lamented how society has declined and we now live in an instant gratification society and economy, where everything, including relationships, has become a “throwaway culture.” The term “hedonic adaptation” came about, and, for me it was new, and perhaps you as well. According to an internet search: “Hedonic adaptation is the psychological process of returning to a stable level of happiness after positive or negative events.”

SAN FRANCISCO, July 18 – Since 2019, the Eastern Pacific Gray Whale population along the west coast of North America has plummeted. At least 6260 emaciated masterpieces, or almost one-third of the Grays, have washed ashore or sunk into Davey Jones’s locker.

Allow me to remind you that these 40-ton Majesties travel between their icy summer Arctic feeding grounds and warmer salty breeding lagoons in Baja California, Mexico, 12,000mi (~19,300km) roundtrip.

“It’s all gone.
Home equity, gone.
Family money, gone.
Empty shush’d up boxes.
Missing dead bees
Gone, too.”
Bemoan’d beekeeper.

The majority of protein powders for sale in the US contain lead and other toxins

The demand for fitness, health, and wellness products have skyrocketed over the last 10 years. In fact, for protein supplements in particular, that number has doubled. Go back to 2015 data and you’ll find the protein supplement industry in the US hovered just below the $7 billion mark. Today, that number is approximately $9.69 billion and projected to grow to a staggering $21.97 billion by 2033. Industry analysts estimate the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.56%. 

This growth is driven by increasing health consciousness, much of which may be attributable to social media influencers–such as celebrity kickboxer Andrew Tate, four-time Mr. Olympia winner Jay Cutler and the like–who have made a lifestyle brand of themselves; showing off six-pack abs, and the kind of guns not covered by the second amendment. They hit the gym, and suck down a thick, protein smoothie at the end of it all as the sweat glistens off every rippling muscle. TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have put this type of physique goal in the palm of everyone’s hands…including our youth, who are buying into the idea that you can drink your way to big muscles. 

SAN FRANCISCO, February 7 – Just before Christmas Eve, Tahlequah (J35), a majestic Salish Sea Orca that grieved in 2018 for 17 days whilst carrying her calf in her mouth for 1000 miles (1600km), gave birth to a female, J61.

One-week later J61 died. Over again, Tahlequah began grieving. This time she clutched her daughter for 11 days and swam 650 miles (1046km) before mother and corpse disappeared on 11 January 2025.

The Salish Sea is nestled between British Columbia, Canada, and Washington, United States. There are about seven million people in near proximity to this sea.

SAN FRANCISCO, 26 January – Almost 114 million Americans suffer from loneliness. Yet, there’s a free cure awaiting them outside their front doors.

Spending 20 minutes each day in nature i.e., your yard, local greenspace, community forest, river walkway, beach shoreline, desertscape or anywhere in the wild erases that feeling of emptiness or neglectfulness, whilst boosting your mental health, cognitive function and lowering stress.

The sounds of water running, waves lapping, wind rustling, birds singing, frogs chorusing and bees buzzing are a salubrious tonic.

Shut your personal device down. Revel in silence. Take a walk. Clear your mind. Look around at the little things that run the natural world. Listen. Smell. Touch. Breathe to the bottom of your lungs. Stay in one spot for several moments. Smile. Rejuvenate.

SAN FRANCISCO, January 18 – Big banks have spent $213bn on constructing new intake/outtake liquefied natural gas (LNG) ports, planet-decimating ‘climate bombs’.

Since 2023, 108 new terminals (8 export, 99 import) have increased the world’s export capacity by 7 per cent, and the global import capacity by 19 per cent.

Big banks have committed funding for completion of another 156 LNG terminal projects (63 export, 93 import) by 2030.

These monstrosities will bleed the equivalent methane of the current annual emissions of all coal-fired facilities combined, 10 billion tons of HEAT during the next five years.

LNG is a dirty fossil fuel. It’s at least 24 per cent worse for the climate than coal.

SAN FRANCISCO, December 20 – From 2014 to 2016 an unrelenting marine heatwave, ‘The Blob’, stoked by fossil fuel, wood pellet and palm oil combustion heat lambasted marine life along the west coast of North America.

That ocean heat, as much as 5.5C (10F) above normal, decimated Alaska’s Common Murre population. An estimated 4,000,000 seabirds starved to death. Alaska’s most prominent seabirds are in a deadly tailspin – half the population is gone and showing no signs of recovery, a decade later.

Murres are carnivorous, depending mostly on fish. They forage alone or in flocks, often with other seabirds. These Majesties ‘fly’ underwater using their wings for propulsion. They can dive as deep as 180m (591ft), usually they hunt between 20-50m (66-164ft) below the surface. Murres consume prey underwater, except when bringing fish to feed young.