Every Dog Has Its Play
Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce: Studying canid play may offer a glimpse of the moral code that allowed our ancestral societies to grow and flourish. (Scientific American Mind)

Green Graves
Nationwide, dozens of cemeteries advertise green practices as a way of countering modern burial practices that many now see as ecologically unsustainable. Church officials say they expect baby boomers to increasingly opt for it. (Jeff Diamant, Religion News Service)

Helper’s High
Christine Carter: I think of kindness like laughter: We might be laughing because we want someone else to feel good about their joke, but mostly we laugh because it feels good. Like laughter, kindness is a terrific happiness habit, good for both our physical and emotional well-being. (Psychology Today)

Q&A
Jeremy Rifkin
In The Empathic Civilization, Jeremy Rifkin argues that before we can save ourselves from climate change we have to break a vicious circle and embrace a new model of society based on scientists’ new understanding of human nature. I asked him how we can do it. (Amanda Gefter, CultureLab, New Scientist)

BOOKS
Bible Babel
Kristin Swenson’s Bible Babel is wide-ranging, objectively factual, and written for the common reader. In its pages, Swenson, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of World Studies, aims to present “big-picture information about the Bible—what it is, what’s in it, and how to understand ‘Bible speak.’” (Michael Dirda, The Washington Post)