Disrupting the status quo can be scary, but sometimes it’s necessary to make the world a fairer place. Reclaiming what it means to be a troublemaker, author Luvvie Ajayi Jones shares three questions to ask yourself when tackling fear and standing up for what you believe in — and urges all of us to speak up in ways that honor ourselves and others. (This conversation, hosted by TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers, was part of an exclusive TED Membership event. Visit ted.com/membership to become a TED Member.)
TRANSLATION CLASS Friday – Saturday, June 25 & 26 Al Haferkamp, H.W., M.
Translation class provides the fundamental resource required for shedding limitation, disorder, and confusion from your world: straight thinking in the abstract. When we judge by appearances we judge amiss. “That which is essential is invisible to the eye,” as Antoine de Saint Exupéry wrote. Learn to see through what seems to be – limitation, anxiety, oppression – to Truth which lies waiting for your discovery. Not “the Truth” – there is no “the Truth” – but Truth: reality, wholeness, innate integrity. Your Ontological identity is ever-present, awaiting recognition.
This will be a monitor class with Al employing Thane’s audio lessons and augmented by live instruction.More Info or Register HereClass DetailsHours for this class will differ from our usual presentation plan.
June 25 – Day 1 – Friday afternoon U.S, Saturday morning Brisbane Class begins at 14:00 PT, 17:00 ET, 07:00 Brisbane and runs until about 19:00 PT, 22:00 ET, 12:00 Brisbane
June 26 – Day 2 – Saturday afternoon U.S., Sunday morning Brisbane Class begins at 14:00 PT, 17:00 ET, 07:00 Brisbane and runs until about 19:00 PT, 22:00 ET, 11:00 BrisbaneBreaks of 15 minutes between lessons and a 30-minute meal break
Gregor Johann Mendel (/ˈmɛndəl/; Czech: Řehoř Jan Mendel;[2] 20 July 1822[3] – 6 January 1884) was a meteorologist,[4] mathematician, biologist, Augustinianfriar and abbot of St. Thomas’ Abbey in Brno, Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was born in a German-speaking family in the Silesian part of the Austrian Empire (today’s Czech Republic) and gained posthumous recognition as the founder of the modern science of genetics.[5] Though farmers had known for millennia that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favor certain desirable traits, Mendel’s pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance.[6]
Mendel worked with seven characteristics of pea plants: plant height, pod shape and color, seed shape and color, and flower position and color. Taking seed color as an example, Mendel showed that when a true-breeding yellow pea and a true-breeding green pea were cross-bred their offspring always produced yellow seeds. However, in the next generation, the green peas reappeared at a ratio of 1 green to 3 yellow. To explain this phenomenon, Mendel coined the terms “recessive” and “dominant” in reference to certain traits. In the preceding example, the green trait, which seems to have vanished in the first filial generation, is recessive and the yellow is dominant. He published his work in 1866, demonstrating the actions of invisible “factors”—now called genes—in predictably determining the traits of an organism.
The profound significance of Mendel’s work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century (more than three decades later) with the rediscovery of his laws. Erich von Tschermak, Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns independently verified several of Mendel’s experimental findings in 1900, ushering in the modern age of genetics.[7][8]
Life and career
Mendel was born into a German-speaking Czech family in Hynčice (Heinzendorf bei Odrau in German), at the Moravian–Silesian border, Austrian Empire (now a part of the Czech Republic).[5] He was the son of Anton and Rosine (Schwirtlich) Mendel and had one older sister, Veronika, and one younger, Theresia. They lived and worked on a farm which had been owned by the Mendel family for at least 130 years[9] (the house where Mendel was born is now a museum devoted to Mendel[10]). During his childhood, Mendel worked as a gardener and studied beekeeping. As a young man, he attended gymnasium in Opava (called Troppau in German). He had to take four months off during his gymnasium studies due to illness. From 1840 to 1843, he studied practical and theoretical philosophy and physics at the Philosophical Institute of the University of Olomouc, taking another year off because of illness. He also struggled financially to pay for his studies, and Theresia gave him her dowry. Later he helped support her three sons, two of whom became doctors.[11]
He became a monk in part because it enabled him to obtain an education without having to pay for it himself.[12] As the son of a struggling farmer, the monastic life, in his words, spared him the “perpetual anxiety about a means of livelihood.”[13] Born Johann Mendel, he was given the name Gregor (Řehoř in Czech)[2] when he joined the Augustinianmonks.[14]
When Mendel entered the Faculty of Philosophy, the Department of Natural History and Agriculture was headed by Johann Karl Nestler who conducted extensive research of hereditary traits of plants and animals, especially sheep. Upon recommendation of his physics teacher Friedrich Franz,[15] Mendel entered the AugustinianSt Thomas’s Abbey in Brno (called Brünn in German) and began his training as a priest. Mendel worked as a substitute high school teacher. In 1850, he failed the oral part, the last of three parts, of his exams to become a certified high school teacher. In 1851, he was sent to the University of Vienna to study under the sponsorship of AbbotCyril František Napp so that he could get more formal education.[16] At Vienna, his professor of physics was Christian Doppler.[17] Mendel returned to his abbey in 1853 as a teacher, principally of physics. In 1856, he took the exam to become a certified teacher and again failed the oral part.[18] In 1867, he replaced Napp as abbot of the monastery.[19]
After he was elevated as abbot in 1868, his scientific work largely ended, as Mendel became overburdened with administrative responsibilities, especially a dispute with the civil government over its attempt to impose special taxes on religious institutions.[20] Mendel died on 6 January 1884, at the age of 61, in Brno, Moravia, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic), from chronic nephritis. Czech composer Leoš Janáček played the organ at his funeral. After his death, the succeeding abbot burned all papers in Mendel’s collection, to mark an end to the disputes over taxation.[21]
Contributions
Experiments on plant hybridization
Main article: Mendelian inheritanceDominant and recessive phenotypes. (1) Parental generation. (2) F1 generation. (3) F2 generation.
Gregor Mendel, known as the “father of modern genetics”, chose to study variation in plants in his monastery’s 2 hectares (4.9 acres) experimental garden.[22]
After initial experiments with pea plants, Mendel settled on studying seven traits that seemed to be inherited independently of other traits: seed shape, flower color, seed coat tint, pod shape, unripe pod color, flower location, and plant height. He first focused on seed shape, which was either angular or round.[23] Between 1856 and 1863 Mendel cultivated and tested some 28,000 plants, the majority of which were pea plants (Pisum sativum).[24][25][26] This study showed that, when true-breeding different varieties were crossed to each other (e.g., tall plants fertilized by short plants), in the second generation, one in four pea plants had purebredrecessivetraits, two out of four were hybrids, and one out of four were purebred dominant. His experiments led him to make two generalizations, the Law of Segregation and the Law of Independent Assortment, which later came to be known as Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance.[27]
Initial reception of Mendel’s work
Mendel presented his paper, “Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden” (“Experiments on Plant Hybridization“), at two meetings of the Natural History Society of Brno in Moravia on 8 February and 8 March 1865.[28] It generated a few favorable reports in local newspapers,[26] but was ignored by the scientific community. When Mendel’s paper was published in 1866 in Verhandlungen des naturforschenden Vereines in Brünn,[29] it was seen as essentially about hybridization rather than inheritance, had little impact, and was only cited about three times over the next thirty-five years. His paper was criticized at the time, but is now considered a seminal work.[30] Notably, Charles Darwin was not aware of Mendel’s paper, and it is envisaged that if he had been aware of it, genetics as it exists now might have taken hold much earlier.[31][32] Mendel’s scientific biography thus provides an example of the failure of obscure, highly original innovators to receive the attention they deserve.[33]
Rediscovery of Mendel’s work
About forty scientists listened to Mendel’s two groundbreaking lectures, but it would appear that they failed to understand his work. Later, he also carried on a correspondence with Carl Nägeli, one of the leading biologists of the time, but Nägeli too failed to appreciate Mendel’s discoveries. At times, Mendel must have entertained doubts about his work, but not always: “My time will come,” he reportedly told a friend,[13] Gustav von Niessl.[34]
During Mendel’s lifetime, most biologists held the idea that all characteristics were passed to the next generation through blending inheritance, in which the traits from each parent are averaged.[35][36] Instances of this phenomenon are now explained by the action of multiple genes with quantitative effects. Charles Darwin tried unsuccessfully to explain inheritance through a theory of pangenesis. It was not until the early 20th century that the importance of Mendel’s ideas was realized.[26]
By 1900, research aimed at finding a successful theory of discontinuous inheritance rather than blending inheritance led to independent duplication of his work by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns, and the rediscovery of Mendel’s writings and laws. Both acknowledged Mendel’s priority, and it is thought probable that de Vries did not understand the results he had found until after reading Mendel.[26] Though Erich von Tschermak was originally also credited with rediscovery, this is no longer accepted because he did not understand Mendel’s laws.[37] Though de Vries later lost interest in Mendelism, other biologists started to establish modern genetics as a science. All three of these researchers, each from a different country, published their rediscovery of Mendel’s work within a two-month span in the spring of 1900.[38]
Mendel’s results were quickly replicated, and genetic linkage quickly worked out. Biologists flocked to the theory; even though it was not yet applicable to many phenomena, it sought to give a genotypic understanding of heredity which they felt was lacking in previous studies of heredity, which had focused on phenotypic approaches.[39] Most prominent of these previous approaches was the biometric school of Karl Pearson and W. F. R. Weldon, which was based heavily on statistical studies of phenotype variation. The strongest opposition to this school came from William Bateson, who perhaps did the most in the early days of publicising the benefits of Mendel’s theory (the word “genetics“, and much of the discipline’s other terminology, originated with Bateson). This debate between the biometricians and the Mendelians was extremely vigorous in the first two decades of the 20th century, with the biometricians claiming statistical and mathematical rigor,[40] whereas the Mendelians claimed a better understanding of biology.[41][42] Modern genetics shows that Mendelian heredity is in fact an inherently biological process, though not all genes of Mendel’s experiments are yet understood.[43][44]
Mendel began his studies on heredity using mice. He was at St. Thomas’s Abbey but his bishop did not like one of his friars studying animal sex, so Mendel switched to plants.[47] Mendel also bred bees in a bee house that was built for him, using bee hives that he designed.[48] He also studied astronomy and meteorology,[19] founding the ‘Austrian Meteorological Society’ in 1865.[17] The majority of his published works were related to meteorology.[17]
Mendel also experimented with hawkweed (Hieracium)[49] and honeybees. He published a report on his work with hawkweed,[50] a group of plants of great interest to scientists at the time because of their diversity. However, the results of Mendel’s inheritance study in hawkweeds was unlike his results for peas; the first generation was very variable and many of their offspring were identical to the maternal parent. In his correspondence with Carl Nägeli he discussed his results but was unable to explain them.[49] It was not appreciated until the end of the nineteenth century that many hawkweed species were apomictic, producing most of their seeds through an asexual process.[34][51]
None of his results on bees survived, except for a passing mention in the reports of Moravian Apiculture Society.[52] All that is known definitely is that he used Cyprian and Carniolan bees,[53] which were particularly aggressive to the annoyance of other monks and visitors of the monastery such that he was asked to get rid of them.[54] Mendel, on the other hand, was fond of his bees, and referred to them as “my dearest little animals”.[55]
In 1936, Ronald Fisher, a prominent statistician and population geneticist, reconstructed Mendel’s experiments, analyzed results from the F2 (second filial) generation and found the ratio of dominant to recessive phenotypes (e.g. yellow versus green peas; round versus wrinkled peas) to be implausibly and consistently too close to the expected ratio of 3 to 1.[57][58][59] Fisher asserted that “the data of most, if not all, of the experiments have been falsified so as to agree closely with Mendel’s expectations,”[57] Mendel’s alleged observations, according to Fisher, were “abominable”, “shocking”,[60] and “cooked”.[61]
Other scholars agree with Fisher that Mendel’s various observations come uncomfortably close to Mendel’s expectations. A. W. F. Edwards,[62] for instance, remarks: “One can applaud the lucky gambler; but when he is lucky again tomorrow, and the next day, and the following day, one is entitled to become a little suspicious”. Three other lines of evidence likewise lend support to the assertion that Mendel’s results are indeed too good to be true.[63]
Fisher’s analysis gave rise to the Mendelian paradox: Mendel’s reported data are, statistically speaking, too good to be true, yet “everything we know about Mendel suggests that he was unlikely to engage in either deliberate fraud or in unconscious adjustment of his observations.”[63] A number of writers have attempted to resolve this paradox.
One attempted explanation invokes confirmation bias.[64] Fisher accused Mendel’s experiments as “biased strongly in the direction of agreement with expectation … to give the theory the benefit of doubt”.[57] In his 2004 article, J.W. Porteous concluded that Mendel’s observations were indeed implausible.[65] However, reproduction of the experiments has demonstrated that there is no real bias towards Mendel’s data.[66]
Another attempt[63] to resolve the Mendelian paradox notes that a conflict may sometimes arise between the moral imperative of a bias-free recounting of one’s factual observations and the even more important imperative of advancing scientific knowledge. Mendel might have felt compelled “to simplify his data in order to meet real, or feared, editorial objections.”[62] Such an action could be justified on moral grounds (and hence provide a resolution to the Mendelian paradox), since the alternative—refusing to comply—might have retarded the growth of scientific knowledge. Similarly, like so many other obscure innovators of science,[33] Mendel, a little known innovator of working-class background, had to “break through the cognitive paradigms and social prejudices of his audience.[62] If such a breakthrough “could be best achieved by deliberately omitting some observations from his report and adjusting others to make them more palatable to his audience, such actions could be justified on moral grounds.”[63]
Daniel L. Hartl and Daniel J. Fairbanks reject outright Fisher’s statistical argument, suggesting that Fisher incorrectly interpreted Mendel’s experiments. They find it likely that Mendel scored more than 10 progeny, and that the results matched the expectation. They conclude: “Fisher’s allegation of deliberate falsification can finally be put to rest, because on closer analysis it has proved to be unsupported by convincing evidence.”[60][67] In 2008 Hartl and Fairbanks (with Allan Franklin and AWF Edwards) wrote a comprehensive book in which they concluded that there were no reasons to assert Mendel fabricated his results, nor that Fisher deliberately tried to diminish Mendel’s legacy.[68] Reassessment of Fisher’s statistical analysis, according to these authors, also disproves the notion of confirmation bias in Mendel’s results.[69][70]
In this truly inspirational memoir,Anita Moorjani relates how, after fighting cancer for almost four years, her body—overwhelmed by the malignant cells spreading throughout her system—began shutting down. As her organs failed, she entered into an extraordinary near-death experience where she realized her inherent worth . . . and the actual cause of her disease. Upon regaining consciousness, Anita found that her condition had improved so rapidly that she was able to be released from the hospital within weeks . . . without a trace of cancer in her body!
Within these pages, Anita recounts stories of her childhood in Hong Kong, her challenge to establish her career and find true love, as well as how she eventually ended up in that hospital bed where she defied all medical knowledge.
As part of a traditional Hindu family residing in a largely Chinese and British society, she had been pushed and pulled by cultural and religious customs since she had been a little girl. After years of struggling to forge her own path while trying to meet everyone else’s expectations, she had the realization, as a result of her epiphany on the other side, that she had the power to heal herself . . . and that there are miracles in the Universe that she had never even imagined.
In Dying to Be Me, Anita freely shares all she has learned about illness, healing, fear, “being love,” and the true magnificence of each and every human being!
This is a book that definitely makes the case that we are spiritual beings having a human experience . . . and that we are all One!
Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.Start by marking “Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts” as Want to Read:Want to Read
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
Why do people dodge responsibility when things fall apart? Why the parade of public figures unable to own up when they screw up? Why the endless marital quarrels over who is right? Why can we see hypocrisy in others but not in ourselves? Are we all liars? Or do we really believe the stories we tell?
Renowned social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson take a compelling look into how the brain is wired for self-justification. When we make mistakes, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right — a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong.
Backed by years of research and delivered in lively, energetic prose, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) offers a fascinating explanation of self-deception — how it works, the harm it can cause, and how we can overcome it.
When Trauma and Recovery was first published in 1992, it was hailed as a groundbreaking work. In the intervening years, Herman’s volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims.
In a new afterword, Herman chronicles the incredible response the book has elicited and explains how the issues surrounding the topic have shifted within the clinical community and the culture at large. Trauma and Recovery brings a new level of understanding to a set of problems usually considered individually. Herman draws on her own cutting-edge research in domestic violence as well as on the vast literature of combat veterans and victims of political terror, to show the parallels between private terrors such as rape and public traumas such as terrorism. The book puts individual experience in a broader political frame, arguing that psychological trauma can be understood only in a social context.
Meticulously documented and frequently using the victims’ own words as well as those from classic literary works and prison diaries, Trauma and Recovery is a powerful work that will continue to profoundly impact our thinking.
International authority on child development Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D., joins forces with bestselling author Gabor Maté, M.D., to tackle one of the most disturbing trends of our time: Children today looking to their peers for direction—their values, identity, and codes of behavior. This “peer orientation” undermines family cohesion, interferes with healthy development, and fosters a hostile and sexualized youth culture. Children end up becoming overly conformist, desensitized, and alienated, and being “cool” matters more to them than anything else.
Hold On to Your Kids explains the causes of this crucial breakdown of parental influence—and demonstrates ways to “reattach” to sons and daughters, establish the proper hierarchy in the home, make kids feel safe and understood, and earn back your children’s loyalty and love. This updated edition also specifically addresses the unprecedented parenting challenges posed by the rise of digital devices and social media. By helping to reawaken instincts innate to us all, Neufeld and Maté will empower parents to be what nature intended: a true source of contact, security, and warmth for their children.
He would probably dispute it, but Gabor Maté is something of a compassion machine. Diligently treating the drug addicts of Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside with sympathy in his heart and legislative reform in mind can’t be easy. But Maté never judges. His book is a powerful call-to-arms, both for the decriminalization of drugs and for a more sympathetic and informed view of addiction. As Maté observes, “Those whom we dismiss as ‘junkies’ are not creatures from a different world, only men and women mired at the extreme end of a continuum on which, here or there, all of us might well locate ourselves.” In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts begins by introducing us to many of Dr. Maté’s most dire patients who steal, cheat, sell sex, and otherwise harm themselves for their next hit. Maté looks to the root causes of addiction, applying a clinical and psychological view to the physical manifestation and offering some enlightening answers for why people inflict such catastrophe on themselves.
Finally, he takes aim at the hugely ineffectual, largely U.S.-led War on Drugs (and its worldwide followers), challenging the wisdom of fighting drugs instead of aiding the addicts, and showing how controversial measures such as safe injection sites are measurably more successful at reducing drug-related crime and the spread of disease than anything most major governments have going. It’s not easy reading, but we ignore his arguments at our peril. When it comes to combating the drug trade and the ravages of addiction, society can use all the help it can get. –Kim Hughes
“The fundamental thing that happened and the greatest calamity, is not that there was no love or support. The greater calamity which was caused by the first calamity is that you lost your connection to your essence.” –A.H. Almaas
“The good news is our essence is here and we can reconnect.” –Gabor Mate
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