A nimble mind changes when new information is consumed. Not change willy-nilly, the way a rabbit changes direction to avoid a charging predator. Changes with a graceful arc as new information is validated or changes course when it turns out to be faulty. Even if faulty, the information is not useless; rather, it can be stored as comparative reference when future ideas waft their way. An immature mind will bend to any gentle breeze while a neglected mind holds steadfast, refusing to deviate no matter how convincing the evidence, even if it arrives on the wings of a Category 5 tornado. The trend is for older adults..

I spent the past five days at the edge of a forest on two sides, a pond on one, and open prairie punctuated with tall trees on the fourth. The multitude of habitats should, in theory, attract a wide variety of birds and other wildlife. Mostly, I encountered birds by their vocalizations, occasionally glimpsing them as they emerged from deep shadows, flying from tree to tree in their unending quest for food and to defend their territories against invaders. Or, as with Lord Vulture, I would glass them as they soared effortlessly and silently on broad wings that rarely flapped, angled expertly to circle, rise, and descend, covering vast distances with minimal exertion. What a glorious life!

I was born at the cusp of the 'Cultural Decade,' the 1960s, an era of massive cultural shifts. My formative years spanned the 'Me Decade' of the 1970s. Those 20 years witnessed massive social upheaval and the rise of the counterculture that challenged entrenched norms around family, gender, authority, and morality. The old guard had the US entrenched in the deeply immoral Vietnam War, a war lost, taking the shine off the imagined invulnerability of the US Military-Industrial Complex. The youth of the day, tired of being cannon fodder and beholden to the whims of the powerful elite, engaged in the largest, sustained anti-war protests in US history. Their slogans included the iconic "Make love not war,"

It is a human cognitive defect that we call some animals good and put them on a pedestal, with dogs and cats on the highest pedestal, while labeling those we don't like as evil, including rats and roaches, whom we target for annihilation. The warped approach is an offshoot of our obsession with sin, a word that meant missing the mark. It has come to be associated with offending God and is saddled with moral baggage that would see the sinner destined for an eternity in Gehenna as punishment for a finite transgression. Humans are the only beings the God freaks claim have free will, a necessary component in the moral equation without which the knowledge of right or wrong, good or evil cannot exist. This gainsays the Adam and Eve narrative, exposing the Abrahamic deity for the evil bastard it is. Neither Eve nor Adam had a comprehension of good or evil before eating of the tree's fateful fruit. They could not be morally culpable for their act of so-called disobedience. Punishing not only them but saddling every human born since with Original Sin exposes Sky Daddy's dereliction of duty. He should have taught them to navigate life's challenges with integrity rather than punishing the unaware. Sky Daddy failed mud man and rib woman and had the nerve to blame them for his shortcomings.

A jaundiced approach toward divergent cultures is to rate them with reference to their own, which, unsurprisingly, is typically viewed as not only the best culture for all people but the only correct cultural expression. It is a form of jingoism with undercurrents and overtones of racism. It is perfectly normal to compare and contrast an unknown entity against a known quantity with the goal of understanding differences. The problem arises when the unknown, such as cultural norms and practices, are judged with a ruler calibrated

In terms of being a manly man, Crazy Horse was a virtuoso. To the colonizers, he was a bloodthirsty savage standing in the way of white prosperity and of the god-ordained Manifest Destiny. The term was a gimmick, a euphemism masking the horror of genocide and used to justify the forced removal of the indigenous, breaking treaties, military violence, reservation confinement, and the destruction of cultural life. At its core, it was a racist ideology...not surprising in a land where nonwhites were, still are, routinely savaged by individuals and governments.

I assiduously monitor my beliefs, whittling away those that don't stand up to scrutiny and evidence, keeping those that do and adding them to my constitution of true truths...held loosely so they don't twist into a noose. Doing this helps ensure I am not weighed down by the burdens associated with untruths. I revel in the lightness of the freedom that comes with not carrying unnecessary falsehoods. It enables me to channel my thoughts and actions into real realities, which underpins my devotion to a personal policy of truth. In some sense, being beholden...

It is not long after growing out of our layette that we become conscious of who we are, concerned about how we are perceived, and learn to wear the mask likely to show us in rose light when interacting with others. As we mature, those masks multiply commensurately with the number of people we encounter and engage with. The person we are with our parents bears little resemblance to the persona we express around

In human minds, our species, for those willing to acquiesce to the simple, indisputable fact that we are animals, is indomitable; that we are antipodes with respect to all other species with whom we share the grand and glorious planet Earth. That we are animals is hotly disputed by those believing mud man and rib woman are made in the image of a god...further proof we dwell in a special realm a smidge lower than the gods and significantly higher than the nonhuman beings. That imagined separation, an act of arrogance, is an excuse to

Despite being portrayed as wifty, as beings easily distracted by bright, shiny objects, ravens are considered to be in the top 10 of the smartest animals on the planet. Humans set the criteria for measuring intelligence, meaning it is no surprise humans are ranked first on the intelligence scale. Intelligence, for the purposes of the rankings, is understood as the mental or behavioral flexibility of an organism to solve problems occurring in its natural environment, culminating in the appearance of novel solutions not previously part of the animal's normal repertoire. By this arbitrary standard, the Raven people rank sixth