Lynn Margulis, biologist and Distinguished Professor of Geosciences, composed a grand and powerful view of the living and the non-living. Integrating the work of obscure Russian scientists, DNA pulled from cell organelles, computer-generated daisies, and the hindguts of termites, her vision was wider in scope and more profound in depth than any other coherent scientific world view. At the time of her death on November 22nd, 2011, it was and is a vision that remains misunderstood and misconstrued by many scientists.

“What pattern connects the crab to the lobster,” muses anthropologist, philosopher, and systems theorist Gregory Bateson in An Ecology of Mind (2011), filmmaker Nora Bateson’s award-winning tribute to her father. “And the orchid to the primrose,” he continues, “and all the four of them to me? And me to you?”

I sensed that he felt the book to be his intellectual last will and testament, and in summing up a life's work, he had also summoned up the ghost of his famous father and the shadow of inferiority it had cast across his life. Gregory Bateson had resolved to prove himself to the scientific patriarchy...

Up on his platform he was still the timeless, majestic Mirko Pindar, ascending to the dangers of the sky, afterward autographing the T-shirts of young girls (usually, but not always, disappointed to see his age up close), selling off old photos of Mara and himself, then going back to his motel alone (but not always) to relax with a liter of slivovitz.

I’m envisioning a “power triangle” between America, Iran, and Turkey suggesting that peace in the Middle East could be possible as these countries have the means to achieve this.