blog
All posts that do not belong in the categories of buddhism or philosophy goes in here. Please check tags for more details about what the post is about.
This morning’s NHK News featured a story on the opening of a factory which can produce plastic from wood (in Japanese) bypassing the need to use petroleum, the usual resource for its production.
This could be the start of the decline of our reliance on oil but it is still early days yet. The production is labour intensive and costly for now but it is a start.
Today is World Population Day.
Theme this year is Universal Access to Reproductive Health Services and it is part of the Millenium Development Goals for 2015.
Friend: So, did you read the story about moss surviving on poo from 8,000 years ago?
Me: That’s nothing. Man has been surviving on dead things that’s 650 million years old!
Did you know only ten glaciers among 54,000 in the Himalayas have been studied in any great detail. Just how little do we know.
Global warming brings about extreme weather and climate. Should expect this to be any different for mountain terrain and glacial ice?
Dear friends,
Some of you may have seen media coverage about my decision to step off the board of directors of the David Suzuki Foundation. I am writing to tell you more about this and what it means.
After my children and grandchildren, my greatest pride is the David Suzuki Foundation.
I am fiercely proud of how the Foundation brings science and solutions to environment problems. I’m determined to ensure that the Foundation continues to have the ability to solve critical environmental issues and bring hope for the future.
But I have reached a point in my life where I would like to consider myself an elder. I want to speak freely without fear that my words will be deemed too political, and harm the organization of which I am so proud. I am keenly aware that some governments, industries and special interest groups are working hard to silence us. They use threats to the Foundation’s charitable status in attempts to mute its powerful voice on issues that matter deeply to you and many other Canadians.
This bullying demonstrates how important it is to speak out.
The Foundation’s science-based, solutions-oriented research and educational work has enriched our democracy and reflected Canadian values for two decades. While not always happily received by governments or industrial interests, this work is strictly non-partisan, as required by the laws governing charities, and has made the Foundation one of the most trusted environmental voices in Canada.
Our opponents, however, are redoubling their efforts to marginalize the Foundation by getting at me, personally.
So last year, I made the decision to step off the board of directors of the David Suzuki Foundation. I remain one of its most active volunteers and committed major donors. This way I can fulfill my personal mission and the Foundation can continue to build on its inspiring work—for us and our grandchildren—in finding solutions to our shared, and very real, environmental challenges.
I hope you understand this decision and will continue to show your, steadfast support for my work in this concrete way:
Please share this letter with your family and friends and, at this critical moment, invite them to become supporters of the David Suzuki Foundation, by joining our online community or donating today.
Sincerely,
David Suzuki
Numbers are deceptive, especially catchy headlines quoting stupid statistics.
Apple is apparently worth more than the nation of Poland. Well, not quite. Apple is worth 500 billion making this more than Poland’s GDP.
So there you have it. Measuring market worth against a country’s GDP … um, no comment.
It doesn’t take a math genius to figure out that Apple, a company with 60,400 workers cannot be equated to Poland, a nation of over 38 million people. If somehow the numbers make sense then Apple must churning so many iPhones, iPads and iWhatevers that there must one for every person in Poland or the planet. But clearly this is not the case.
No, don’t listen to stupid numbers. Count what is important. Count the starving people. Count the number of deaths from war. Count the growing population in developing nations and the declining population in the developed (‘developed’ as compared to what?) nations.
If you count everything in monetary terms you will only see what’s in it for you and not who is dying for your selfishness.
This is why I hate politics.
Vietnam has decided to send monks to the Spratly Islands to lay claim to the Islands as their territory. But why not just send civilians? And I don’t think much of monks who would agree to go over probably knowing full well why their task is. It isn’t Buddhism and Buddhism has nothing to do with this.
It is a human shield in not so much as a disguise. Atrocious.
Children draw conclusions from what they can see.
I remember asking myself I was young where did ham come from, and not being able to give an answer. Processed food look so far removed from what they are made from that it is impossible to deduce what it is simply by looking at it.
So I am not surprized to read that Australian children (I grew up there) think cotton sock are from animals and yogurt come from plants. The logic could be mixing up cotton (from plants) for wool (from animals). Perhaps the logic for yogurt too is that it is from plants because the flavours are mostly fruit (strawberry, mango, apple, etc) or plants (aloe, which is a popular flavour in Australia).
Television, in a way, is a good window for information. The other source of information for me back then is books and public libraries. At least ithese were for me when I was a child in an age without the internet. Today’s children have no excuse for ignorance and laziness. The democracization of knowledge is one of the great achievements of our time now.
But the ease of obtaining knowledge in this age of information superhighway is also perhaps a loss of the ability to find out things for oneself in a genuine form of discovery and intimate understanding. Today’s children perhaps therefore rely on packaged information as much as packaged food that is, what I call, our supermarket culture.
But I think it is not only children who have trouble drawing logical conclusions about the world but also adults. Our world is complex. In this day and age learning to filter out the noise from the music is by no means easy. Nonetheless we must learn to filter it.
This speech is still a classic. It is by the environmentalist Severn Suzuki. In 1992 when she gave this speech she was twelve years old. Environmentalism runs in her family. Her father is David Suzuki but that should not taken away from her sincere and powerful message. What she said can be plainly seen by all with their own eyes, and heard with their own ears. Her father brought her up to see and hear these things.
And it is a message still relevant today, if not more.
signature103 