Ecological Intelligence (continued)

Following on the heels of the last post, I found this review of Goleman’s book on the Financial Times. Most of the review follows the line in his interview with Moyers. Sample: > Goleman argues that we can train ourselves to think differently – to develop an innate flight instinct when confronted by, for example, a shampoo that contains methylparaben, or a garden chair made from tropical wood. > > Helping the consumer along the way are new websites which drive “radical transparency”. Skin Deep, a “cosmetic safety database” evaluates the chemical content of more than 50,000 different products and… Read More

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Feeling Good With Goodguide.com

Running through my RSS feed reader tonight, I spotted an entry in [Bill Moyers Journal](http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html) referring to an interview with Daniel Goleman about his new book, *[Ecological Intelligence](http://www.amazon.com/Ecological-Intelligence-Knowing-Impacts-Everything/dp/0385527829)*. I just got a copy of the book from the author as a thank you for a short passage in it, summarizing a conversation we had while he was writing the book. I haven’t yet had a chance to read it, but I draw today’s post from watching the [interview video](http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05152009/watch2.html). I came away with a mixed impression. With this book, Goleman has done more to publicize the use of life cycle… Read More

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Flourishing in Maine

I need to take a day off from the serious stuff I try to post. My wife and I are settling into our summer routine in Maine. Starting in May, we move gradually up to our cottage in Brunswick, or as the Mainers would say we head downeast. Every spring we hold our breath as we open up, wondering how the place fared over the winter. The mothballs that local folklore says keeps the varmints out seemed to have done their job this year. But we always lift up the blankets to make sure that some family of mice hasn’t… Read More

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Marshmallows and Sustainability

The connection between the two words in the title is a bit tenuous, but it is real. I’ve just finished a great story in the New Yorker about connections between delayed gratification and performance in school and similar milieus. The marshmallow serves as the object used to measure children’s degree of self-control in a psychological test. Children are shown a marshmallow and given the following instructions to choose among: 1. Eat the marshmallow right away. 2. Wait 15 minutes until the examiner returns, at which time they will be given an additional marshmallow. 3. If they can’t wait that long,… Read More

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Happiness is Love. Full Stop

When David Brooks stays away from partisan politics, his columns generally make interesting reading. Brooks has become a diligent amateur sociologist (like I am), and now often writes about complexity, post-normal science, and non-Cartesian models of human consciousness and action. Today, he reports on a fascinating study that tracked some 200 Harvard men from their graduation through the rest of their lives. For the past 42 years, a psychiatrist, George Valliant has been overseeing the collection and analysis of the data. Brooks drew his column from an article about the so-called Grant Study to be published in the next issue… Read More

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Still Pursuing Happiness

Happiness is in the air these days. Maybe it’s just that spring has finally sprung in New England. Or maybe it’s that I spent last night in our Maine cottage for the first time since we closed up for the winter, even though the electric blanket was on high and we added an extra comforter. A few days ago I spotted [news](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/world/asia/07bhutan.html?_r=1&sq=bhutan&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print) that the government of Bhutan has officially changed their primary policy metric from the familiar Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to their own, unique concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH). They are developing a system to characterize the new… Read More

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Melting the World’s Highest Ski Run

I don’t normally publish articles about the impacts of climate change. There is already plenty of information around already. But, being a skier, I couldn’t pass this one by. The photo shows the current extent of the snow field at Bolivia’s Chacaltaya Glacier. > [The] Glacier, once known as the world’s highest ski run at 17,388 feet, has completely melted away, serving as a vivid example of the effects of climate change on the glaciers around the globe. > Click on the link to see the changes over the years.

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Still on the Road

I’m still away from home at the kick-off meeting of the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS). The meeting venue is in the brand new, Leeds-certified quarters of the Ross School of Business at UMich. The pleasure of seeing my former students emerge as leaders in this emergent community is hard to describe. I guess the most important sign of success for a teacher is to see one’s students excel. As I wrote a couple of days ago, the ARCS group is striving to establish sustainability ever more deeply in the curricula and research activities in schools of business.… Read More

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