Virtual Reality

When Philadelphia cleaned up vacant lots and planted trees in them, gun assaults across most of the city dropped by 8 percent. In Baltimore, a 10 percent increase in large tree cover correlated with a 12 percent decrease in crime. Urban forests are just one example of a growing momentum to address city problems like air pollution, flooding, carbon emissions, and more by restoring and conserving biodiversity. Epidemiological evidence details how living in greener city areas is associated with lower probabilities of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, asthma, stroke, and mental health issues, and with better cognitive development. It's a hopeful feedback loop: according to researchers, people who spend more time in nature, including hanging out in city gardens or engaging in urban birding, grow attached to the places they frequent and become more likely to push for projects to conserve them. Trend: Hello solutions The science of bright spots A growing number of researchers now investigate bright spots: places where a species or ecosystem is doing far better than one might expect given the stresses they face. When you consider the fact that you are a gift, how might you live so that your spouse feels that he or she has been given a special gift? How can you, as a gift, be used in the life of your spouse to lift his or her spirits and outlook on life? On the receiving end of the gift, how do you react when you receive a special gift that brings you delight? Think of your childhood or earlier years. Can you remember the most exciting or special gift you ever received? Can you remember your thoughts and feelings as you received that gift? How did you treat that gift? Did you take special care of it and protect it from harm? Perhaps you gave the gift a special place of prominence and were carefully possessive of it. If your spouse is a special gift to you, how do you treat this precious gift? They give us bases of self-worth and imbue life with meaning and purpose. All of this is great stuff.

But one major problem is inherent in living within groups: It separates us from other human beings who live within other groups. Prejudice is the all-too-common consequence of this distinction between us (the ingroup) and them (the outgroup). Virtually every known culture has been hostile to members of some other culture or oppressed certain segments of its society. Indeed, recorded history is riddled with the bloody consequences of a seemingly endless parade of oppression, persecution, colonization, crusades, wars, and genocides. Lethal human violence fueled by intergroup conflict has been dated back at least to between 12,000 and 10,000 BC, when evidence suggests that a battle near Jebel Sahaba, Sudan, resulted in 59 well-preserved casualties (Wendorf, 1968). Of course that was just an early drop in the bucket relative to what happened during the Crusades, the European invasion and colonization of the Americas, the two world wars, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin's purges, the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, and the Hutu genocidal campaign against the Tutsi in Rwanda . The violent heritage of our species led a character from James Joyce's classic novel Ulysses to comment, History . We will explore the many reasons that history has been and continues to be such a nightmare of intergroup hatred and violence in two articles, this one and article 11. The goal is to understand what they're doing right. In a massive global study of six thousand coral reefs across forty-six countries, a team of thirty-nine scientists from thirty-four universities revealed that conservation is possible, even in areas heavily used by people. Josh Cinner, the lead researcher on the reef study, got the idea of looking for positive outliers from the field of public health. Thirty years ago, Jerry and Monique Sternin went to Vietnam to fight malnutrition on behalf of the charity Save the Children. They set out to find children who were bigger and healthier than average, despite suffering the same levels of poverty and disadvantage as their neighbors, and to figure out why. They discovered that the mothers of the better-nourished kids did two things differently. The mothers divided the food into smaller portions so they could feed their kids four times a day rather than the norm of twice a day, and they supplemented that food with things they could gather or forage in their area, like tiny fish, shrimp, and sweet potato greens. By identifying what was working and then teaching it to other mothers in the village, the Sternins helped cut child malnutrition by 65 percent. Eventually 2. By adopting this proven approach of looking for positive outliers or bright spots, Josh and his colleagues discovered that strong local involvement in how reefs were managed and high dependence on these fisheries were important. Are you careful to give your spouse the finest care, attention, protection and a place of prominence in your life? Does your partner feel as though he or she really is a gift to you?

We give a gift as an expression of our love and as an act of grace. We do not give it based on whether the recipient deserves it or not. WHAT DO YOU THINK? What is the best tangible gift your spouse has ever given you? What is the best intangible gift your spouse has ever given you? What is the gift you would like to give to your spouse? What would your spouse appreciate? Marriage Is Servanthood In article 11, we will consider how prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination affect those targeted by these biases. We will also consider ways in which we might hope someday to awaken from this nightmare to an egalitarian reality in which people treat each other fairly, regardless of their differences. In this article, we focus on: The nature of prejudice Three basic causes of prejudice Who is prone to prejudice Prejudice in the modern world How stereotyping arises and affects the way people perceive others and behave toward them The Nature of Prejudice: Pervasiveness and Perspective Learning Outcomes Community ownership rights to reefs enabled people to commit to and develop creative solutions to problems. Solutions-oriented environmental assessments

Scientific studies from a large and diverse range of fields are analyzed by large groups of scientists and other experts to create global environmental assessments (GEAs) of complex issues, which are used to inform policy makers. The updated assessments issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are a familiar example of a GEA. These assessments built the evidence base that tells us we are in a climate crisis. The climate crisis is here. As policy makers, political leaders, and decision-makers of all kinds increasingly seek evidence-based advice on the best ways to tackle it, GEAs are transforming to meet that demand. Increasingly they are providing not only problem analyses but also rigorous analyses of specific solutions. The rise of solutions journalism In the burgeoning field of solutions journalism, reporters bring the same rigorous reporting skills they apply to covering societal problems to the investigation of what's working: what interventions have the greatest success rate in tackling the opioid epidemic, or proven approaches to prevent school shootings, for instance. Marriage is a call to servanthood. This is not a very popular concept and not high on the list of priorities for most marriages. We would much rather be served than serve. Take a look at what Scripture gives us as a guideline for Christian marriage: If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care--then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don't push your way to the front; Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. Define prejudice. Explain why prejudice is viewed negatively and as unjustified.

Differentiate stereotyping from discrimination. Prejudice is the most heavily studied topic in social psychology. The historical pervasiveness and destructiveness of prejudice is probably why. Virtually every person currently living on this planet has been profoundly affected by prejudice. In most if not all cultures, women are to varying degrees targets of violence and restricted in their freedoms and opportunities. Likewise, every ethnic and cultural group has been powerfully influenced by historical intergroup conflicts and oppression. The French have been involved historically in conflicts with England (including a 100-year war) and Germany. Japan and China have exchanged many acts of hostility and violence over a long period of time. Solutions journalism reveals ways people are responding to crises and focuses on effectiveness and outcomes, not just good intentions. Rather than advocating for a specific solution or approach, solutions journalism reports on responses others are using to tackle the problem that is being investigated. Solutions journalism is quickly spreading through newsrooms and journalism schools worldwide in print, digital, and now television media, thanks to the creation of the Solutions Journalism Network. Since its inception in 2013, its Solutions Story Tracker has amassed more than eight thousand stories produced by over a thousand news outlets across 165 countries. It's a brilliant resource for searching for solutions-oriented stories on any subject you can imagine. The turn toward reporting on solutions is further fueled by the rise of digitally born media. The majority of Gen Z get their news from digital-first publications such as BuzzFeed, Vice Media, Business Insider, Huffington Post, and Quartz. They are more likely to focus on solutions than legacy or traditional media, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Solutions journalism is forward-looking. It moves beyond the familiar role of exposing wrongdoing: detailing the problem, of course, but then rounding out the story by including the innovative ideas and pathways people are already using to solve or fix what's broken, and reporting the evidence of what results are being produced. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all.