Finding a globally understood language

Improv colleague Belina Raffy posted this onto the AIN website. Bobby McFerrin demonstrates a language that can be understood in every culture and country in which he has 'spoken' it.

Maybe it's time for us to find the equivalent of the pentatonic scale for climate and sustainability. What would the intervals be?

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

pure genius

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Mark Vernon writes a thoughtful blog that's worth turning to from time to time for inspiration on all things philosophical, and many others beside. I liked this post last week, highlighted to me by fellow blogger Mark Charlton

More evidence that we belong to the hugely successful species, homo rapiens. Tomorrow, World Ocean Day, will be marked by screenings of the film The End of the Line. It's billed as focusing on the collapse of stocks of the luxury bluefin tuna, Nobu dish of choice. That's the genius of so much human exploitation: it can be taken for progress.

Our use of words such as progress, developed, civilised, needs to be pulled close. Progress, I thought, meant moving forwards. You'd think that the developed world would be harming the planet less slowly than the developing world. As for civilised? When the world's biggest arms manufacturers are permanent members of the Security Council, something has gone wrong definition of civilised. Etymonline describe its roots as "first recorded 1772, probably from Fr. civilisation, to be an opposite to barbarity"