M.J. Rose

In the wake of so much bad news lately, here’s a bit of bright optimism–dare we say hope–for the future on planet earth…

From Aeon,

Rethinking extinction
by Stewart Brand

The idea that we are edging up to a mass extinction is not just wrong – it’s a recipe for panic and paralysis

The way the public hears about conservation issues is nearly always in the mode of ‘[Beloved Animal] Threatened With Extinction’. That makes for electrifying headlines, but it misdirects concern. The loss of whole species is not the leading problem in conservation. The leading problem is the decline in wild animal populations, sometimes to a radical degree, often diminishing the health of whole ecosystems.

Viewing every conservation issue through the lens of extinction threat is simplistic and usually irrelevant. Worse, it introduces an emotional charge that makes the problem seem cosmic and overwhelming rather than local and solvable. It’s as if the entire field of human medicine were treated solely as a matter of death prevention. Every session with a doctor would begin: ‘Well, you’re dying. Let’s see if we can do anything to slow that down a little.’

Medicine is about health. So is conservation. And as with medicine, the trends for conservation in this century are looking bright. We are re-enriching some ecosystems we once depleted and slowing the depletion of others. Before I explain how we are doing that, let me spell out how exaggerated the focus on extinction has become and how it distorts the public perception of conservation.

Many now assume that we are in the midst of a human-caused ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’ to rival the one that killed off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. But we’re not. The five historic mass extinctions eliminated 70 per cent or more of all species in a relatively short time. That is not going on now. ‘If all currently threatened species were to go extinct in a few centuries and that rate continued,’ began a recent Nature magazine introduction to a survey of wildlife losses, ‘the sixth mass extinction could come in a couple of centuries or a few millennia.’…

For the rest, click here.

Yo ho ho, it’s the world’s only pirate graveyard. (If we had been one of them, we would have hidden our treasure here in coffins…hmmmmmm?) The coolest part about this story though, is the fact that this graveyard is located on an island which is rumored to have been a hideout and home to many of history’s most widely-feared brigands.

From The Vintage News,

The Pirate Cemetery of Madagascar is the world’s ?nly pirate graveyard

“In the 17th and 18th centuries, Ile Sainte-Marie (or St. Mary’s Island as it is known in English), a long, thin island off the eastern African coast, became a popular base for pirates. Up to 1,000 pirates reportedly called the rocky island home, including widely-feared brigands Adam Baldridge, William Kidd, Olivier Levasseur, Henry Every, Robert Culliford, Abraham Samuel and Thomas Tew. They lived in the île aux Forbans, an island located in the bay of Sainte Marie’s main town, Ambodifotatra.

This place was not far from the maritime routes along which ships returning from the East Indies sailed in transit, their holds overflowing with wealth, it was provided with bays and inlets protected from storms and finally, it had abundant fruit and was situated in quiet waters. The beautiful tropical island’s numerous inlets and bays made it the perfect place to hide ships. The pirates sailed mostly from England, Portugal, France and America to make this island off the coast of Madagascar a home, a hideout and a strategic place…”

For the rest, click here.

We have posted about this incredible woman and story before, but it’s always worth another dive in, particularly because this is the story that inspired M.J.’s interest in reincarnation and sparked her muse for The Reincarnationist series…

From Ancient Origins,

Omm Sety – A British Woman Whose Life Was Lined by Reincarnation and Connected to a Pharaoh

“When Dorothy Eady arrived to Egypt for the first time, it was obvious to her that she had been there before. But her last visit near the Nile may have taken place thousands of years earlier.

Dorothy was born on January 16, 1904 in the London suburb of Blackhearth. Doctors believed that she would not survive a terrible fall when she was three years old. However, it seems that the accident she faced was the beginning of her unbelievable life – a moment of opening the gate to the memories of a past life. Over the years, many skeptics tried to disprove Eady’s mystifying tale, but nobody could ever fully negate that she was one of pharaoh Seti I’s (c. 1290 – 1279 BC) lovers.

An Ancient King’s Lover?
Dorothy grew up in a Christian family and she attended church regularly when she was young. One day, her parents took her to the British Museum. While looking at the photograph of the temple of Seti I, a pharaoh of the 19th dynasty of the New Kingdom Period (and the father of Rameses II), she said that it was her home. She couldn’t understand why there were no gardens and trees around the temple, but she recognized the monuments and other artifacts in the rooms of the Egyptian collection. She kissed the feet of the statues, and very soon after, decided to study ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

One of her teachers was the famous E.A. Wallis Budge, who encouraged her to study the history of ancient Egypt. Dorothy was 15 years old when she described the first dream “meeting” she had with the mummy of Pharaoh Seti I. She claimed that he made her remember her past life. With time, she turned more and more to the ancient religion and stopped feeling attached to Christianity…”

For the rest, click here.