I learned a surprising thing from an unusual source the other day. The unusual source was Elizabeth Gilbert, in her novel The Signature of All Things, about a fictional 19th century woman who studied moss. Gilbert is best known for…
Reconciling Injustices in a Pluralistic Canada
The Centre for Dialogue organized an event last week, “Reconciling Injustices in a Pluralistic Canada,” that focused on how we’re all affected by the legacy of injustice, even generations later. For more, see an op-ed piece in today’s (28 January)…
Bee Time: Lessons From the Hive
We finally have a title for my upcoming book: “Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive.” Authors, unless they are considerably more famous than I, don’t get to choose their book titles. You can suggest, and I have, but it’s the…
What’s in a Name?
Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue recognized Chief Robert Joseph of Vancouver Island’s Gwawaenuk First Nation this week with our most prestigious award, the Jack P. Blaney Award for Dialogue (http://www.sfu.ca/dialogue/programs/blaney-award.html) It’s presented every other year to an individual who…
Difficult choices
Honeybees are known for their collective capacity to make good choices. For example, when faced with a decision about whether to forage on flowers yielding copious amounts of nectar vs. those that are weak nectar producers, colonies learn quickly to…
Experience your education
I was a seriously underperforming undergraduate student at Boston University in 1970, bored by classes and distracted by, well, all the things that distract a young man of 20. But I needed a summer job, and as a Biology major…