Carlos Lozada:
Coates wrote in the earlier memoir. “All the great wars had been fought, and I was left to rummage through the myths of my fathers.” Coates has found his new wars, mainly by realizing that the old ones never really went away. And now “Between the World and Me” seeks to impart that consciousness not just to his son but to all of us.

Khalil Gibran: "The people are the slaves of Life, and it is slavery which fills their days with misery and distress, and floods their night with tears and anguish…I have followed man from Babylon to Cairo, and from Ain Dour to Baghdad, and observed the marks of his chains on the sand. I heard the sad echoes of the fickle ages… she is an everlasting ailment bequeathed by each generation unto its successor. I found the blind slavery, which ties the people’s present with their parents past, and urges them to yield to their traditions and customs, placing ancient spirits in the new bodies."

"The potency of myth is that it allows us to make sense of mayhem and violent death. It gives a justification to what is often nothing more than gross human cruelty and stupidity. It allows us to believe we have achieved our place in human society because of a long chain of heroic endeavors, rather than accept the sad reality that we stumble along a dimly lit corridor of disasters. It disguises our powerlessness.”― Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

Washington Post – Researchers are scrambling to determine what’s behind the death of 30 whales in the Gulf of Alaska as unusually warm ocean temperatures continue to wreak havoc on the region.

Since May 2015, 14 fin whales, 11 humpback whales, one gray whale and four unidentified specimens have been found dead along shorelines in the Gulf of Alaska, nearly half of them in the Kodiak Archipelago. Other dead whales have been reported off the coast of British Columbia, including four humpbacks and one sperm whale.

This year’s total is roughly three times the annual average for the region, leading the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to declare the deaths an “unusual mortality event.” The investigation into the deaths will take months, or even years, according to a statement released by the agency.

Predation, starvation, or disease could be behind the deaths, but researchers say there have been few signs of physical trauma to the whales. The more likely culprit is unusual water conditions.

For the Stoic, death is an open door, and the freedom to walk through it enables us to live a virtuous life. Video

The end of walking:
Human beings evolved to move at a pace of three miles an hour, breathing easily, hands free, seeking food and shade. We tread without thinking, toes pushing off from the soil, cheeks lifted to catch the air, dirt caking in our nostrils. Walking is the first legacy of our post-ape genes, the trait that makes us most human: H. sapiens came only afterH. erectus. We walked, and began our intellectual toddle toward the Anthropocene.

Our most basic access to health comes from walking. Walking for just 30 minutes five days a week has been shown to have a significant impact on everything from obesity to depression and colon cancer. A normal day’s errands would easily take more than 30 minutes on foot. When we get around by driving instead we’re liable to become overweight, insular, edgy. 

In his book The Story of the Human Body, the evolutionary biologist Daniel E Lieberman dissects the widespread chronic health problems that he thinks are linked to sitting for long periods, including in cars: muscle atrophy, lower-back pain, cardiovascular disease, diabetes. ‘We are inadequately adapted to being too physically idle, too well fed, too comfortable,’ he says.

Only the most recent neuroscience research is beginning to grasp the bidirectional link between cognitive and motor functions, and the role cardiovascular health plays in our mental well being.

Antonia Malchik