you know, the thing at the heart of all the natural sciences is knowing that you’re part of a system which is establishing a language for a body that (at least in my eyes) is almost inherently indescribable. we come up with terms like ‘trophic cascade’ and ‘entropy’ to label the most complex and intricate and wonderful phenomena, and speak and write and contemplate them often enough to do their beauty real intellectual justice but... boy, does there come a point where you look up from all your papers and reports and readouts, take a moment to really contemplate what you’ve been pouring over, and just think ‘this label is never really going to come close.’ 

... specifically, i was recently thinking about the term ‘mutualism’ which in very simple terms describes a relationship between two species in which both benefit from their association... but i think, especially in biology, forestry, etc. that researchers, professors, and students (myself included) have a tendency to anthropomorphize the conditions/living things that we come across in order to make them more understandable--especially in teaching--but the suggestion of mutual satisfaction/goodwill that i so often see presented paired with this type of symbiotic relationship has always struck me as profoundly odd and misplaced, especially when discussing fauna, which i think is a little more difficult to ascribe human characteristics onto than animals... 

i digress. i just think that the term hardly skims the surface of the depth of many of these relationships. mycorrhizae are just about the best example i can think of. associations between a plants root and soil bacteria found in virtually all land plants, this relationship is one thought to span over four hundred million years. in exchange for structural support/protection and nutrients, the fungi stretches out further into the surrounding soil and shares nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, what have you with the plant. but “share” is just a shadow on the larger form of what i really mean. despite many (abundant) cases made about the intelligence of plants/fungi, you can’t really make a case for their emotionalism. trees in a forest keep the stumps of felled trees alive because they provide a modicum of support in return--providing water or nutrients with their remaining roots or contributing to soil stability. but it’s not something done out of love--which does not denigrate it in any way, but does makes it exceedingly more complex. 

mostly, what i mean is that the term mutualism doesn’t really make you consider the wild chance. at one point in history, there was the first of these two species that made this pairing, and it was so successful that it spread to others, and now dominates every place above water on this little blue planet of ours. mutualism doesn’t encompass the neutrality of them both--neither put initial work into their association, it was just that the specific way that they had come to live happened to be complementary. the probability, and the chance, which has guided life as we know it, is what continually strikes me as remarkable about biology. the things we assume as constant, or are unfazed by because they are common and familiar, arose in a response to environmental conditions no longer seen on this planet, and completely known to us. the long thread of life which led us to this point gets obscured in the simplicity of the term. 

the relationships that we observe between species are older than we can fathom, and are more inextricable than we can imagine: their very evolution has been bound to each other over eons. they are paired together throughout migration, climate changes, geological changes... the persistence of these relationships, their complexity, their unique dependency, and their utter and complete defiance to being described in unadorned human terms will never cease to confound and amaze me. 

Shards of Earth Review

Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky My rating: 5 of 5 stars Earth has fallen, the moon sized entities dubbed the Architects, for their penchant for turning planets into art, march mercilessly across the galaxy. An alliance of Humanity's factions and Alien races come together to launch a last ditch plan. Modified humans, the Intermediaries, make a brief contact with the massive unknowable entities and just like that the Architects stop and withdraw. Years after, in a fractured, traumatized galaxy, a veteran Int Idris Telemmier tries to find a quiet life on the fringes, it's a dangerous galaxy full of fanatics, cults, gangsters and governments who all want their pound of flesh from Idris and a startling discovery may well unleash a long repressed nightmare of galactic destruction. Wow! What a book! Adrian Tchaikovsky is now my favourite sci-fi author, as if he wasn't before! A slight change of focus from the speculative anthropomorphism of his acclaimed Children of Time series to pure space opera results in an epic opening act to an exciting new series. There's so much to love about Shards of Earth, the plot follows a rag tag crew of misfits on the salvage ship Vulture God who make a startling discovery setting in motion an intense journey across the galaxy that takes in ideological fanatics, secret government agents, super soldiers, living planets, ancient alien ruins, symbiont thugs and the terrifyingly grandiose alien gangster The Unspeakable Aklu, the Razor and the Hook, who is now my favourite alien mobster, (have that Pizza the Hutt). Aklu is a perfect blend of bond villain and Roman Emperor, whose ludicrously impenetrable grandiloquence, delivered through a colourful cyborg/insects translator steals every scene, and just when their cartoon villainy gets too much, there is a subtle moment of deep poignancy that just elevates the whole surreal craziness of alien mobsters. The action is non-stop, from fighting off ideological goons, to blistering space bound chases, blood is spilt, gory and visceral, mainly at the hands of the Tothiat the implacable henchmen of Aklu, but the planet where the trees can change form at will is imaginatively nasty. These are just some of the more creative challenges the Vulture God crew face in their perilous jaunt across the galaxy. Perhaps the biggest obstacle is internal division and divided loyalties and as they lurch from crises to crises, it makes for some intense, spiky and emotionally charged dialogue, but it also brings them together, as with all good crews a family is forged through shared struggles. The universe, imaginatively created by Tchaikovsky, is the source of much of the characters tension. A host of human factions and alien races exist in an embattled state, and cultural/species differences simmer away leading to tense political standoffs and identity conflicts for the crew of the Vulture God. The narrative seamlessly bedded into the disparate cultures makes the universe seem real, gritty and lived in, a hard sci-fi gloss over the quasi-fantasy space opera setting, it made me want to stay in the gutter with the Vulture God Crew and their petty humanistic interactions with fanatics, cultists, agents and the alien mob... But there's a galactic level mystery lying at the heart of Shards of Earth, the nightmare of the Architects the world destroying entities who may be returning. As the plot races along we get to know more about these unfathomable destroyers and their links to ancient alien ruins and artefacts of the Originators, yet as their mystery is peeled back a new one emerges that sets up the next book magnificently. Full of action, intrigue, emotion and memorable characters Shards of Earth is a joy to read from start to finish. Epic in every way! View all my reviews

Get Lost in a Book

My first English class in college was the most varied and exciting. “Literature in Film” was probably the best 100 Level class offered in the whole college. The entire lesson plan consisted of reading amazing books that were adapted into movies. Then, of course, we watched the movies. I was introduced to film genres previously unexplored, like noir, and classic films, like Apocalypse Now or Double Indemnity. Best of all was reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and watching the requisite Blade Runner. I was in love with this cyberpunk aesthetic formed by simple and straightforward language. Young Harrison Ford didn’t hurt, either.

Part of what I loved and still love about Do Androids… was the writing style, how I consistently lost myself in the world, even if I didn’t understand it. And so I decided to read more… five years later. The Man in the High Castle was on my fiance’s grandmother’s bookshelf, so I asked if I could borrow it to read.

About a month later, I opened it up.

After some time, I got to the last page.

I finished it.

I closed the book.

I said, “What just even happened?” to the empty room.

I immediately opened up a young adult rewrite of Grease with two teen boys as the love interests (10/10 would recommend, titled Only Mostly Devastated, and out now). I anger-read that one in a day and let The Man in the High Castle rest in the back of my mind. I was so confused by the last twenty pages, the way truth and hallucinations and stream-of-consciousness type monologues floated into the narrative. Aesthetically, I loved reading it. Philip K. Dick is a magnificently pragmatic and forceful writer. Every word was picked meticulously. Narratively, I found the movement of events confounding. Even when I read detailed plot summaries online, I didn’t see what these literary readers found in the work compared to what I read. 

Upon re-reading the last few pages, I got it. Sort of? I am simultaneously enthralled and angry at my inability to read this novel with the proficiency I expected of myself. This was in late November/early December. It’s been a gift to reflect on the experience of being confused and challenged by a book. So often I read books that challenge my point of view but not my reading comprehension. While this experience was frustrating, as any ego-blow is, I am relieved that it allowed me to let go a little bit more when I read and get lost in the language.

Not only was The Man in the High Castle challenging, it also re-acquainted me with a genre I have been long remiss in not reading consistently over the past years. I read Ray Bradbury in middle school, but I think that reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep in college was my first adult sci-fi book since then. And while The Man in the High Castle is not a traditional science-fiction novel, the level of world building, historicising, and uncanny familiarity made reading it a similar experience to reading sci-fi. Ever a student of contextualization and historization, I have decided to put novels like Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler and Neuromancer by William Gibson on my To Be Read list to further immerse myself in the genre.

Since reading The Man in the High Castle, I have read Gideon the Ninth (and Harrow the Ninth, the sequel coming out in June) by Tasmyn Muir. I loved reading these books because of the same process of lostness that I found myself entrenched in. Instead of being frustrated by the experience, this time I enjoyed being immersed in a new world with rules I didn’t fully understand, the challenge of figuring them out, and the joy of seeing all the pieces fall together. Tasmyn Muir does a particularly wonderful job at scattering details and hints that seem unimportant until they are suddenly the most important detail to remember. Gideon the Ninth, for those interested, is a story of necromancers in space, ruled under the watchful eye of a goth God. Gideon is a servant to the Ninth House, the ninth planet in the system formed by God. She doesn’t know her history but knows that she doesn’t belong with the pale, black-haired, and moldering characters on the Ninth House. When she takes the ultimate opportunity to win her freedom, nothing ends up the way she expects. It’s amazing, cheeky, and full of snark. And the sequel only made it even better.

Books that similarly affected me and whisked me away into mysterious worlds and challenging prose seem to all have one thing in common: They are all set in worlds that are uncannily familiar. They are obviously not our world today, but close enough that you want to identify with the characters’ experiences even if you can’t. In Gideon the Ninth, Gideon encounters the archaic technology of white boards and wears vintage Ray Bands, but exists in a world where people can make swords out of old bones. In The Man in the High Castle, many of the facts of the world, the technology, the styles, the racism, is familiar, but the history is not. A book I would consider in the same vein would be Station Eleven, a book we always tout as one of the best of the last decade at Island Books. Emily St. John Mandel has since put out a new release, The Glass Hotel. I am behind the train and only halfway through, but its hypnotic prose, unreliable narration, and unclear timelines qualify the book for this uncanny classification. She even states at one point in the story, “It is possible to leave so much out of any given story,” coaxing us to think of all the moments she might be leaving out (65). I am lost in terms of understanding what is actually happening in the story. I couldn’t quite explain it to you yet. But I absolutely adore being lost in this world.

Escapism has been key to me over the past month or so as uncertainty of the future grows more and more prevalent. These books have reminded me that the world has always been uncertain; we are just able to see how fragile and translucent the construct of the future has always been. Losing myself in the pleasure of this uncertainty in books has made living it feel a little less surreal.

What books have you been getting lost in? Let us know and we will feature them on our social media! Tag us in your posts or send us an email at [email protected].

— Kelleen

Cancer Answers For Today

If you don't mind give me a chance to attempt to answer a considerable measure of your inquiries with this straightforward clarification of Herbal Healing "as I see it."

I had found out about it, I considered it however I didn't trust it for reasons unknown. Perhaps the idea is essentially too simple since it simply does not appear to be sufficient when people say that God implied for us to be solid. Yet, I think Mankind has survived a huge number of years before chemotherapy and radiation.

It is so great to at last have the capacity to disclose to you parents out there on the planet, such a large number of things I have found yet I understand how watchful I should be about the words I utilize, due to the legalities as well as for the most part since what I need to let you know appears to be so odd, relatively like an adventure into another measurement where I trust we may discover a portion of the insider facts of life itself. A mystery is a mystery just until the point when you see the appropriate response. Concealed profound inside the profundities of our brain are numerous privileged insights, where we for reasons unknown or another "don't have any desire to go there." You may discover marvels on this site you may never observe or hear anyplace else on the planet and I will reveal to you a portion of this I am handing-off as we go on the grounds that it appears to be one wonder opens one more and again. "THE" most essential thing I would request that of you is "Research." You won't discover the appropriate responses on the TV, you should see this for yourself and I might want for you to consider me kind of introducing my contemplations as an inquiry to you. Like "What do you think?"

Being a typical truck driver on the most fundamental level and absolutely oblivious about the expert medicinal field, I am essentially and determinedly bound by presence of mind. What's more, the driving inclination in my heart is that God implied for us to be sound, and that He has given all that we have to survive including and in particular our special capacity to get it.

Presently for my clarification of one of our most vital words, "God", now I know a few people have their finger on the Esc catch at the present time, however please hold tight, this isn't about religion, it is about logical reality and presence of mind.

We as a whole needed to begin from a similar place, similar to the narrative of Adam; science has demonstrated that there truly was just a single man before all else. We realized that. The pulse in your chest as in mine, has been passed on age to age with a constant beat like the "Olympic Torch of Life" the distance from Adam. Possibly?

Being the way that we are each of the 99.9% to an ideal blue print with more than Three Billion sections is confirmation enough to me that it is a numerical difficulty that we could have had in excess of one starting; I think it just happened once, it was most likely no mishap and there are no monkeys in Man's tree. From that minute on Man turned into his own "Element" like no other. We as a whole look somewhat changed due to our adaptable cells; measure, shading, appearance, yet we as a whole work the same inside;

"We as a whole need similar things to survive."

Presently this acknowledgment alone will bring us into a different universe. We may see that these fundamental things that we discuss will apply to each Human Being on earth since Adam and perpetually insofar as Man exists. It may uncover why, on the off chance that we as a whole had a decent begin, at that point why am I debilitated and the other 5 Billion individuals on earth are most certainly not? We do get a great deal of outside poisons; we are presented to a ton of smoke, poor water, air and so on and so forth. furthermore, we are tested by hypersensitivities, infection and microbes, and a rundown of medicinal terms like Cancer, MS, PD, AIDS, Osteoporosis, and so forth and so on., therapeutic science has composed libraries of depictions and names for truly everything possible about maladies and unfavorable conditions. I know they should have a name reported and recorded for every single one of those Three Billion cells. "Presently there is a perception from a truck driver's eye view." And let me clarify, I do as such regard the magnificent Medical Professional Angels who work with such upright and devoted determination, "God Bless You All"; you have spared my life more than once.

The point I am attempting to make is that really we are in an extremely juvenile phase of our abilities, with our cutting edge electronic innovative advanced gear, when we contrast it with God's work. It appears to me that God has made and developed this superb perfect work of art from the minerals of the ground, much the same as everything else on this planet, and by definition living things require a consistent supply of crisp minerals perpetually; for our situation, science discovers 90 or more extraordinary minerals in the Human Body. So frequently the assortment in our eating routine river and our movement decreases as we age. Science says that when we pass on of maturity we will be incredibly drained of minerals. I see Herbs like nourishment concentrates, and they like all sustenance contain a one of a kind mix of minerals that every specie has constructed it's underlying foundations, stem, it's leaves and it's beginning and end.

Think about the apple for a minute; the underlying foundations of the apple tree look the ground underneath for it's most loved minerals, and I think the organic product or the meat of the apple that we get a kick out of the chance to eat was proposed to soften into the ground around the seed and supply that seed with the best minerals that the tree could marshal to give that seed it's best begin.

I trust that a large portion of our unfriendly conditions conceived inside or body-conceived conditions are caused by a disappointment or shortcoming in our regular obstruction. Possibly that obstruction can be resuscitated by furnishing it with what it should be as well as can be expected be... Furthermore, I trust that may be an assortment of appropriately acclimatized minerals. I trust that Herbs and mineral supplements can help fill in the splits in a restricted eating regimen. Issues may emerge from what we don't eat more than what we do eat?

I once heard an educated researcher on TV who had composed a book and he was asked "what is the world's absolute best sustenance?" He appeared found napping and his answer murmured something about the astringent nourishments and mutters... What's more, I am thinking what is the enormous mystery; "drain" clearly drain is the world's absolute best nourishment, bovine's drain has enough minerals in it to grow a dairy animals "Hi?" obviously it takes a great deal of movement to process that calcium and now and again I discover a juice vinegar case once in a while is a major help with my processing.

Our body is mind boggling a long ways past sci-fi. Also, we for the most part underestimate it. Here are a portion of my considerations;

Science will NEVER have the capacity to grasp a handfull of earth and make even one Human Body cell. God does it commonly on each great day. We realize that. How did science find there were more than Three Billion sections or cells in the Human Body? (Would you be able to get a visual on a group of researchers working over a Cadaver with tweezers a surgical blade an electron magnifying instrument and a calculator?) "I don't think along these lines, to what extent would it take to tally them?" I don't have the foggiest idea.

As a matter of fact as indicated by science, inside every one of our small cells there is the thing that they call a DNA Ribbon. What's more, with PCs and our best electron magnifying instrument with bifocals they can tally the small shadows that speak to the sections on that strip, and they know now that each portion is a code for the proliferation of the following cell since we are continually supplanting a large portion of our body cells. Three Billion fragments on the strip in every cell speaks to Three Billion cells.

Presently on the off chance that we can get a visual on the extent of these DNA fragments, and understand that "IT IS IN THIS WORLD WHERE LITERALLY ALL OF OUR GROWTH AND ALL OF OUR REPAIR TAKES PLACE "... we may figure what would we be able to do to make this framework solid here where everything happens? Well leading I would state my screw driver, forceps and a bow torque; a "truck driver's toolbox" wouldn't get it. (In any case, it would be similarly as valuable as our best cutting edge.)

It seems evident to me that we have yet three options, we can just harm these little portions physically, harm them likewise with the chemotherapy and the un-finishing cluster of toxic physician recommended drugs,... or on the other hand we can encourage them what they should be as well as can be expected be... we pick...

At Herbal Healer Academy you can discover all that you have to target particular issues and additionally broad basics established upon case chronicles of extraordinary achievement in light of the honest and committed determination of The Doctor Marijah McCain.

New, Feb. 2010

I trust I have at last tied the last string in this circle of our internal life cycle; for quite a long time I have realized that we required the minerals and I trust I perceive how we take them in, yet I couldn't assemble the pieces to see precisely what we did with them?

I think the water conveys the minerals to our cells in through the circulation system; we retain them into our DNA to construct the individual cells. I trust we cook them with our little fire-of-life kept up by the Oxygen and the fat, and serve them like a buffet to our modest fragments inside to develop every cell. In any case, never forgetting that minerals are constants and can't be devastated; so my inquiry has dependably been, what next?

Obviously it is the way toward supplanting the majority of our body cells; the minerals are in the cells and when we kick the old or harmed cells out into the circulation system to be (ideally) eaten up by the white great folks, who take what they need and afterward leave the completely depleted minerals behind as muck that is sifted through by our liver and kidneys and outright... What do you think?

That would complete the circle of the minerals in and the minerals out; this clarifies why we like every single living thing need a consistent supply of the full range of new minerals until the end of time.

To me the most imperative thing I need to pressure, it would be that you are not the only one. You are not the first to have this slap in the face called malignancy. It is your main event from here, or what you will do if tumor ever comes. Keep in mind God made all of us a similar path inside, we as a whole have similar parts despite the fact that they may have moved a bit in light of our adaptable tissue, however we as a whole need similar things to survive, period!

I know the hardest thing on the planet is to trust that there is "anything" outside the Modern Professional