Millions of Sea Turtles Trapped by Fishing Nets

I'm passing this on from Guy Kawasaki who writes the blog

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Millions of sea turtles trapped by fishing nets

The number of sea turtles inadvertently snared by commercial fishing gear over the past 20 years may reach into the millions, according to the first peer-reviewed study to compile sea turtle bycatch data from gillnet, trawl, and longline fisheries worldwide. Six of the world’s seven species of sea turtles are currently listed as vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

“Fisheries bycatch is the most acute threat to worldwide sea turtle populations today. Many animals die or are injured as a result of these interactions,” says Bryan Wallace, lead author of the study and an adjunct assistant professor at Duke University. “But our message is that it’s not a lost cause. Managers and fishers have tools they can use to reduce bycatch, preserve marine biodiversity, and promote healthy fish stocks, so that everyone wins, including turtles.”

Conservation International has posted some amazing and heartbreaking sea turtle images.
Full story at Futurity.

The Vanderbilt Republic: “The Mechanical”

THE VANDERBILT REPUBLIC is non-profit creative agency that partners with arts/culture/human justice organizations to assist in the realization of their goals.
A “MECHANICAL” is a prepress proofing tool, and this one was made as part of the process of creating the top-tier reward from our last, record-setting project.
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All funds raised from this project will go towards the processing of the 1,600 sheets of 4” x 5” film we brought back from Cambodia. Resident within each of these unprocessed sheets are the building blocks of an entirely new kind of iconography.
CAMBODIAN LIVING ARTS (CLA) is our current partner organization. The CLA has the vision “that by the year 2020, Cambodia will experience a cultural renaissance so dynamic that the arts have become the country's international signature.” To guarantee this, we staged a 6-week, large-format, film-based shoot in Cambodia, applying professional-grade creative concepts and solutions to the formulation of a new Cambodian iconography. Our plan is to make the CLA's vision a concrete reality, and sooner than 2020, by harnessing the power of the photograph.

This really is "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away"...

Read the full article from the Yale Bulletin and gain a new appreciation for the Cosmological Argument for God's existence at Deepest Image of Universe Yet Reveals Most Distant Galaxies Ever Found

First Thoughts on My Fifty-eighth Birthday

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down. - T.S. Eliot 

It is not by muscle, speed or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment; in these qualities old age is usually not only not poorer, but is even richer.  - Cicero  

A wise professor of mine in divinity school, Paul L. Holmer, said in response to my perpetual questions whether he had read this new book or new article or new theory: "For every new book published, I go back and read two old ones." I didn't understand him at the time; I do now. 

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. - Psalm 90:12

American Health Care "TBTF"?

      A good friend of mine just observed the two year anniversary of his open heart surgery with dutiful appreciations to his surgeons. I too am grateful for his successful surgery and continuing health and presence among us; he is a good friend with whom I shared, among other experiences, many delicious meals and refreshing beverages. Yet my friend's "good outcome" reminds me of far too many "negative outcomes". I work in a nationally recognized hospital and in spite of highly trained specialists, new equipment, new ICUs, new diagnostic scanners and so forth, I spend most of my time with patients highly anxious about their health, family members worried about their loved ones, and staff heroically caring for patients while operating in a health care system badly in need of reform. Immersed in the massive environment and campus of my hospital, a troubling thought often percolates to the surface. Could it be that our American "health care system" is actually an entity more "TBTF" (too big to fail) than some of the financial institutions bailed out by our government in the recent financial upheaval which is still sending tremors through our economy?
      Sadly, most of the so-called debate I hear and read about regarding health care reform is of the most pedantic and polarizing of political partisanship. Most of what I hear and read is shrill and vitriolic, far from thoughtful and civil. If those elected "public servants" and public personalities so opposed to reform, who happen to have quality insurance and financial resources, would spend the night with me in our Emergency Room or in the Operating Room waiting area or on the floor for Labor & Delivery, I believe they might have a change of perspective, if not a change of heart.
       As the sun rises, I walk to the parking garage by way of the ten story out patient treatment tower adjacent to the Eye Institute and the Children's Hospital. It sometimes feels as if my hospital is "TBTF", is impersonal, too concerned with ever shifting bottom lines. If my hospital environment can feel that way, how about the entire health care system in our country. I feel like a tiny piece in a complicated puzzle. Yet I hear far too little from local physicians and hospital administrators and nurse managers, chaplains and others about health care reform.
      I have been reading, in addition to the "less than all the news fit to print" on this subject, three books entitled And a Time to Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life by Sharon R. Kaufman, 

Living Well and Dying Faithfully: Christian Practices for End-of-Life Care by John Swinton, Richard Payne, and Stanley Hauerwas, and Accompany Them with Singing--The Christian Funeral by Thomas G. Long. When I started them, I wasn't consciously thinking of the first dealing with end of life, the second with dying, and the third with the funeral but they have turned out to be an interesting constellation of viewpoints on issues that I deal with on an almost daily basis.  I wish I could report that the insights imparted from them have been revelatory and life-changing. They haven't been; at least not yet. However, the books have provided a tremendous amount of food for thought and reflection. Depending on what one does with the majority of one's working day, I recommend at least one of these books to you. 

      I continue to struggle and be disappointed with the health care reform debate in our country. I believe we can do better. In a blog dated February 12, 2010 entitled Frozen Reform, Robert D. Francis writes: "The federal government finally reopened today after four days closed due to record snowfall in the DC area. As for health-care reform, it’s seemed frozen since Scott Brown was elected to the Senate last month." It doesn't have all the answers, but at least it's a thoughtful attempt at addressing the "TBTF" elephant in the room. Follow this to rest of blog: http://theolog.org/2010/02/frozen-reform.html.

      If our health care system is "TBTF", what are we going to do? Run back into our burrows like Punxsutawney Phil and hide? Let those with other agendas make decisions in their best interest, not the interests of patients and taxpayers? I hope the spring thaw arrives soon; Lord, real soon.

Massive Star Blows Fancy Hourglass Nebula

Massive Star Blows Fancy Hourglass Nebula 
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I love these pictures. Words seem inadequate; but that is why we have poets:

A Clear Midnight
Walt Whitman

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou
    lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.

Another Night Poem

The Want of Peace

by Wendell Berry 

All goes back to the earth,   

and so I do not desire

pride of excess or power,   

but the contentments made   

by men who have had little:   

the fisherman’s silence

receiving the river’s grace,

the gardener’s musing on rows.

I lack the peace of simple things.   

I am never wholly in place.

I find no peace or grace.

We sell the world to buy fire,

our way lighted by burning men,   

and that has bent my mind

and made me think of darkness

and wish for the dumb life of roots.

Wendell Berry, “The Want of Peace” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Copyright © 1998.