The Labax Foundation

05/19/2026

So I posted this a while ago. Am posting it again because I need to remember what is in my soul:

03/27/2026

I remember cutting this photo out of the newspaper the day it came. Page 3, upper right corner of the New York Times was always reserved for Tiffany; the upper left corner was always some interesting story from somewhere else on the planet.

On this day they converged into one of the more horrific ironies of the human condition: our ability to be lavish with ourselves, while we ignore the greater suffering occurring all around us. The dogmas of cultural indoctrination and acculturation, never prepare us for the dichotomy of life on this tender and beautiful planet.

This photo was from 1993; one year after the start of the mural exhibit now known as:

THROUGH THE EYES OF THE LION AND THE LAMB; THE JOURNEY TO ISAIAH.

The exhibit's first title was: Through the Eyes of the Lion and the Lamb; Mankind's Epic Journey.

When it became clear that historic significance depended upon where you were born on the planet, I realized that the images we created to depict history, had to be from a Western Perspective. But then, even so, individuals would certainly still view history from their own perspective; so I realized I'd have to take ownership of the decisions made on behalf of this project to determine which historical events were most significant in my own eyes, and it became: Through the Eyes of the Lion and the Lamb: The Journey to Isaiah. A very personal discovery of self, of nation, and of our shared humanity across the globe and across species.

This project will soon be available to anyone who wants to believe in the better part of our human spirit again. And it will be affordable so everyone will benefit from its wisdom.

Watch here for more information.

02/14/2026

Speaking of human imagination and building our own environment (see previous post), THIS is a stunning fact of our place in the universe! Stuff like this keeps me awake all night dreaming of possibility, seeking answers for all those questions that still have yet to be explored! Amazing!

Voyager 1 will travel this far in 1 million years — let that sink in.

Voyager 1 is the furthest human made object in existence and it is currently screaming through the void at 38,000 miles per hour (61,155 kilometers per hour).

Launched in 1977, the spacecraft has already crossed the heliopause, the boundary where the sun’s solar wind meets the interstellar medium. It is now more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away from Earth. To put that in perspective, a radio signal traveling at the speed of light takes over 22 hours to reach us from the craft. While it seems like Voyager has traveled an impossible distance, it has barely scratched the surface of the cosmos. In about 300 years, it will reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud, a vast shell of icy objects surrounding our solar system. It will take another 30,000 years just to fly out the other side.

The red line on a galactic map representing Voyager’s path over the next 1 million years is surprisingly short. Even at its incredible speed, space is so vast that the craft remains a slow mover on a cosmic scale. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will pass within 1.6 light years (9.4 trillion miles or 15 trillion kilometers) of the star AC plus 79 3888 in the constellation Camelopardalis. After that, it will continue to drift through the Milky Way for millions, perhaps billions, of years. Because the vacuum of interstellar space is so empty, the chances of Voyager hitting an asteroid or a planet are nearly zero. It is effectively immortal, destined to outlast the very civilization that built it.

Inside the craft sits the Golden Record, a copper phonograph record containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. It is a message in a bottle cast into the cosmic ocean. Even when its plutonium power source finally dies in the coming years, silencing its instruments forever, the craft will remain a silent monument to human curiosity. We are a species that dared to reach into the dark, leaving a permanent mark on the galaxy that will endure long after our own sun begins its final transformation.

02/14/2026

The Labax Foundation studies how the imagination has contributed to human development. Before human industry, the world itself was all humans had to "create" a scenario of meaning to stir their intelligent, but raw consciousnesses. It was imagination and curiosity that pushed humans into creating for themselves a world of meaning and substance. Every generation builds on the one before it...where in early days, most of our ideas came from the earth itself, today we have Industry, Science, Art all of which have erected a massive fabricated structure on which future generations will be inspired to build their own societies.

It might be very interesting to know, the very first public buildings ever built by human hands were places of worship, such as the Ziggurat. The world around us must have been a great and beautiful mystery, awesome and fearsome for proto-humans craving understanding.

Maybe.

The oldest known rock art 👋🏼

67,800 years ago, someone pressed their hand to a cave wall, filled their mouth with ochre, and sprayed paint around their fingers — leaving behind the oldest known work of art ever found.

This ghostly red handprint, discovered on Muna Island in Indonesia, is now the earliest confirmed example of rock art, predating even the famous Chauvet Cave paintings in France by more than 30,000 years.

Researchers from Griffith University used uranium-series dating to analyze the thin layers of calcium carbonate that slowly formed over 11 cave paintings. The oldest was a faded hand stencil almost hidden beneath mineral crusts and later paintings. It was made by Homo sapiens, scientists say, part of the same population that reached Australia by 65,000 years ago.

This suggests that early modern humans carried a rich artistic tradition as they spread across Southeast Asia — possibly using dugout canoes to island-hop to the ancient continent of Sahul, which once connected Australia and New Guinea.

The find raises new questions about the origins of art. Just last year, a 66,000-year-old Neanderthal hand stencil was found in Spain. But while Neanderthals may have created isolated works, early Homo sapiens went on to develop intricate scenes, story-driven paintings, and evolving styles — from Indonesia to Europe.

This stencil may be just a trace of a single hand — but it speaks volumes. It marks the beginning of something deeply human: the drive to leave a mark, to be seen, and to turn life into memory.

Read the study:
"Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi." Nature, 2026.

📸Credit: Griffith University

02/04/2026

We all know this stuff isn't good for us but how it baits, lures, and overwhelms us is now scientifically calculated. Interesting article; maybe just the catalyst we need to finally turn our backs on JUNK FOOD...

I know I know. But pizza!

A recent study published in The Milbank Quarterly by researchers from Harvard, the University of Michigan, and Duke University argues that ultra-processed foods (UPFs)—such as sodas, crisps, sweets, frozen pizzas, and packaged snacks—share far more traits with ci******es than with minimally processed items like fruits or vegetables.

The authors highlight how both ci******es and UPFs are industrially engineered to maximize consumption and foster compulsive use.

Manufacturers optimize the precise "dose" of reinforcing substances—nicotine in to***co, and combinations of refined carbohydrates, fats, and additives in UPFs—to rapidly trigger reward pathways in the brain, leading to cravings, overeating, and habitual intake that disrupts natural appetite regulation.

The parallels extend to production techniques, where extreme processing transforms raw ingredients into hyper-palatable products designed for quick, repeated consumption.

Marketing tactics also mirror those once used by the to***co industry, including "health washing" claims like "low fat," "sugar free," or "high protein" that create false perceptions of safety, much like past promotions of "light" or filtered ci******es that offered little real benefit.

These strategies help evade scrutiny and delay regulation while driving widespread harm. UPFs are strongly linked to serious public health issues, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, mental health problems, and premature death.

The researchers emphasize that UPFs meet addiction science benchmarks for compulsive potential, though their harms stand regardless.

Unlike to***co, food is essential for survival, making complete avoidance of the modern food supply nearly impossible and underscoring the urgency for action.

They advocate shifting focus from individual blame to industry accountability, drawing lessons from successful to***co control measures such as marketing restrictions, clearer labeling, higher taxes, limits on availability in schools and hospitals, and curbs on child-targeted advertising.

Such policies could help mitigate the epidemic of preventable diseases fueled by these engineered products.

02/04/2026

In almost every species, even our own, the Mother is the key to survival, especially in the first few moments of her offspring's life. So many of the earth's young, are not able to navigate the dangers of a violent world.

One can almost understand why and how humans are also so violence prone that our world, always when on the verge of greatness, sadly falls back into a primitive past where imagination hovers far on a distant horizon, and ignorance dances in the streets with bravado.

I would believe that we are so like the animals, that we have no choice but to remain our violent, destructive selves, fighting to survive, if not for the grace of our imaginations.

Imagination is the only thing humans embrace that is as vast as the Universe, as able as a mother guarding her young, and as powerful as the will to make the world a better place. To succumb to arrogance, hubris, and greed, is to fail completely at imagination.

She knows the odds.
That’s why she never looks away.

Cheetah cubs are born fragile, slow, and highly visible.
Most will never reach adulthood.
Predators watch.
Time is unforgiving.

So the mother stays alert.
Those dark lines beneath her eyes are not markings of beauty.
They reduce glare while hunting, keeping her focused when every second matters.

She will move them often.
Hide them better.
Hunt while they wait.
Risk everything for a future that may never come.

In the wild, love is not comfort.
It is vigilance.
And sometimes, it is knowing the danger…
and choosing to protect anyway.

09/08/2025

I've posted about Octopi before on this page; I had seen the movie, My Octopus Teacher, and wept throughout the entire movie for the lessons it taught about the intrepid tenacity of many of these independent and marvelous creatures. So many touching and harrowing moments in the movie; I only have two arms but wanted to hug as if I had more!

This information here is just another amazing detail to be learned about these beautiful creatures. Hoping it prompts many of the viewers here to delve a little deeper and understand a little more about how lucky we are to be witnesses to an amazingly wondrous planet in this seemingly infinite Universe! Enjoy!

05/26/2025

Not just millions, but TENS of millions of animals were loaded onto ships and sent across the seas to war zones during the WW's. MOST never came back. Too costly to bring those who survived back the same way they were sent, others too sick to even make the voyage. Domesticated, trained, unable to forage and care for themselves, they were left to die.

Today we honor the fallen soldiers who died for our freedoms, to protect the world from tyranny; my grandfather and father among them, both lived to carry on the work of others, both gone now inducted into the memorial services. We miss our loved ones at these occasions; we honor them with stories of valor and friendships.

But as stewards of this earth, we should find it in our hearts to also remember the others--dog, equine, bird et al--who went to war not to fight for something abstract as we did, but to do as commanded because they trusted their handlers and learned their roles in these horrific times.

I long for the day when we will recognize our mutual humanity, the tenderness of other creatures, and start electing honorable men and women to administrate our countries with strength, courage, integrity.

Leadership that recognizes the sanctity of all creatures on this tiny "mote of dust," an enchanting and breathtakingly beautiful planet; itself in a seemingly infinity and eternal universe that is so far, void of life aside from our own, is worth fighting for too.

02/11/2025

What an interesting question! One of the most iconic photos of all time, humans putting a (an American) flag on the moon--those of us who can remember it in the first place, and those of us who learned about it in school, may have the image seared into our minds as if it were yesterday. And yet, as time will do to our minds, the image got further and further from the newly established moments of our lives, where now, we stop and think: Wow! What ever happened to the flags on the moon.

I love what Buzz Aldrin reflected on the moment when he and Armstrong planted the first flag (there are six total) in the ground---which evidently was only a couple inches deep--got into their spaceships and flew home.

He said of the moment, and from this article: ...looking at the flag from a short distance, as he saluted, he sensed an "almost mystical unification of all people in the world at that moment."

A MYSTICAL UNIFICATION OF ALL PEOPLE...where do sentiments like this go when at first they are so firmly embedded in our hearts and souls like a call to the greater side of our humanity that propels us to our potential as sentient, intelligent stewards of this beautiful earth? How does that nobility get washed away until the only thing left of it is worn pieces of driftwood we step over at the beach.

We may all be proud to know that when NASA imagined planting that flag on the moon, it was a symbolic gesture, designed to represent humanity as a whole, and they did not claim ownership of the earth's only satellite; the seeming lonely, desolate figure in our solar system that, like the Giving Tree (Shel Silverstein) does whatever it can to inspire us, to bring us hope by lifting our sights to a greater sense of being, to light the way in the darkness of night, and to slowly, monthly fade from view, to remind us that darkness will never elevate humans to the next level of our evolution; only light can do that. And only if no one claims ownership of others' and their moons.

Even if the flags have remained standing when crews rocketed off the moon, it is almost certain that they are not in the same condition as when they were first deployed on the lunar surface.

10/01/2024

So this article caught my eye because I was wondering whether ordering from food companies will just be a trend or is it part of an evolutionary movement away from home cooking all together.

I wonder because since the dawn of the agricultural movement, when humans began setting up more permanent communities and allocating tasks to "specialists," cooking meals-eating in familial groupings-and cleaning "dishes," has been the norm for our species. Someone is always doing the cooking and washing of dishes, often three (3) times a day, every single day of our lives.

Food has also served as a ritualistic symbol of survival for families, for organizations, for communities, nations, et al. To eat, is to survive and many holiday rites, as well as national events involve the consumption of specific foods all designed to show strength and endurance of that group.

So if the idea of home cooking is going extinct, will less and less people know how to do it? Will we be relying more and more on specialists to do it for us? Will specialists be harder to find; what about growing crops? And what about that archaic notion of survival?

I know it seems farfetched to consider that our reliance on a human tradition, cultivated for thousands of years, will someday become extinct. But what if it does? Makes me hungry for a good platter of gourmet vegan chocolate just to think of it!

Searching for recipes, shopping for ingredients, chopping and prepping, then finally cooking can be overwhelming for anyone. Fortunately, meal kits offer a convenient solution. They're designed to help busy individuals save lots of time and stress.But which meal kit truly stands out?