I dream of a Star Trek world. This think tank will focus on creative actions designed to initiate a global paradigm shift towards a world where racism, poverty and war will be a thing of the past.
"I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others " Jiddu Krishnamurti
We are a disastrously unfinished species. We are hardwired with tendencies that do not serve us well in the twenty-first century. The human species can be extremely aggressive, xenophobic, petty, acquisitive, obsessive and often delusional. These are attributes that may have served early humans well in the primeval competition for survival. But that is in the past. We have supposedly tamed nature to the point at which our unabated intervention in the flow of natural processes is now endangering our own collective survival. We have proclaimed ourselves to be free, yet vast numbers of individuals are tied to the yolk of a failed vision in regards to human commerce and political infrastructure. We believe ourselves to be released from the restraints imposed by superstition, yet the motivation for living remains tethered to a profound subservience to a superhuman superhero in the guise of what is referred to as God. We pride ourselves in the advancements made in science, our understanding of the workings of the natural world, yet we are clueless about our own inner workings.
Without a deep understanding of our own essential natures, we will never be freed from the disastrous future that will necessarily come from our own collective and profound ignorance. There is an immense beauty and simplicity that underlies our conscious life and that is accessible through the inner workings of the intellect. Living without an appreciation for the life of the mind, is an incomplete life at best. This reality lies, in my mind, at the very heart of education. In essence, understanding how to think and how to utilize the vast resources of the intellect, how to discipline and corral the barrage of emotions, impulses and affectations that undermine our well being both individually and as a group can provide release from the savage wheel of human history upon which we seemed to be impaled.
Just for worldwide consumption of bottled water in 2004 alone it took roughly 87.4 million barrels of oil. You can imagine that with statistics for 2008, we have a figure in the hundreds of millions of barrels of oil being used just to produce bottled water. Don't buy water in plastic bottles, water is free!
America and the world’s addiction to plastic doesn’t end there. Plastic bags take oil, just like plastic bottles to produce. Currently the U.S. consumes 100 billion plastic shopping bags in a year and worldwide consumption is estimated to be from 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags a year. That is roughly 1 million plastic bags a minute being consumed and less than 1% is recycled. If we legalize hemp we could make bags from a profitable and sustainable source and avoid wasting all that oil and energy making "trash that lasts forever."
I guess it's okay to pollute our waters now because, "we can $ell them clean water in a pla$tic bottle." Clean water is a right, not a commodity to be exploited. I bet next they will try to $ell us air and fire and dirt.
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano will announce legislation on Monday to legalize marijuana and earn perhaps $1 billion annually by taxing it.
Quintin Mecke, Ammiano's press secretary, confirmed to SF Weekly that the assemblyman's 10 a.m. Monday press conference regarding "new legislation related to the state's fiscal crisis" will broach the subject of reaping untold -- and much-needed -- wealth from the state's No. 1 cash crop.
Mecke said Ammiano's proposed bill "would remove all penalties in California law on cultivation, transportation, sale, purchase, possession, or use of marijuana, natural THC, or paraphernalia for persons over the age of 21."
The bill would additionally prohibit state and local law officials from enforcing federal marijuana laws. As for Step Two -- profit -- Ammiano's bill calls for "establishing a fee on the sale of marijuana at a rate of $50 per ounce." Mecke said that would bring in roughly $1 billion for the state, according to estimates made by marijuana advocacy organizations.
SiCKO is a 2007 documentary film by American film maker Michael Moore. The film investigates the American health care system, focusing on its health insurance and pharmaceutical industry. The film compares the for-profit, non-universal U.S. system with the non-profit universal health care systems of Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Cuba.
Sicko opened to positive reviews, but also generated criticism and controversy. Some policy specialists have praised the film while others have criticized the film for its positive portrayal of the publicly funded health systems of Canada, the United Kingdom and Cuba, and for its negative portrayal of the health care system in the United States.
In his first television interview since leaving the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter tells Bill Moyers why he left his successful career as the head of Public Relations for CIGNA, one of the nation's largest insurers, and decided to speak out against the industry. "I didn't intend to [speak out], until it became really clear to me that the industry is resorting to the same tactics they've used over the years.
I am disabled by all the time it takes to maintain the healthy balance of sanity. To exercise as many physical therapy prescriptions that it take to progress. I prescribe less mandatory work mandatory. It is the industrious imbalance that created commercialism of domination qualities.
Maintenance depart-mental-izes. Discouragement is from the critical side so supportive reflex is natural balance
The use of desire can be healthy respect for education appreciation as better attitudes evolve healthy indulgence can (and should ) mean (individual or shared) experiencing encouragement.
Personal value is an entitlement of individual rights but the difficulty of defining equality is institutionalized with certifications.
Time spent being healthy could become credit that doesn't enforce indebted tensions.
In the 1950's the average sperm count was 120 million per milliliter. The average sperm count today has been halved to an average of around 60 million per milliliter in the Western world, a decrease of 1-2% per year.
My guess is that all the poisons, chemicals and female hormone mimicking compounds we've introduced into our environment and food have begun to concentrate in our bodies and are slowly trying to turn boys into girls. Male infertility will be the method of our self-annihilation. We are killing ourselves and the planet with our waste.
"Disposable" lighters are only one of the many items being made of plastic. "Trash that lasts forever" is the only phrase that can describe "disposable" plastic items. This "disposable" plastic finds its way into the ocean and collects in rotating ocean currents like the North Pacific Gyre, an area of concentrated plastic trash the size of Texas. The plastic to food ratio in this area is 6:1.
As you can see, this bird ingested several plastic "disposable" lighters along with other various plastic bottle tops and miscellaneous "disposable" plastic items. This bird died because it mistook our "disposable" plastic trash for food. Only 3.5 % of worldwide "disposable" plastic is recycled.
Zippo lighters are reliable and re-usable, a quality American made item not made of plastic. Buy a Zippo and stop using plastic "disposable" lighters and avoid buying "disposable" plastic products and packaging. It may even stop a bullet and save your life. "Disposable" plastic is the bane of our age.
This national deficit may be perfectly timed to prove government is reflexively opposing the social best interest. I will try to suggest that the deficit created for taxpayers is actually owed to us. The governmental responsibility is relative to economic balance. Aggressive tendencies are too expensive and are being overly represented in military spending and corporate favors. The energy that flows through our currency has become so powerful it has burned out our infrastructure and delivery systems. The industrious motives of the corporate Federal Reserve conglomeration needs the healthy balance of National Service Departments to keep our values diverse enough to remain democratic. The socialistic request for bail-out proves the mutation of getting too big to maintain itself is an obsolete domination behavior. Branches of economy could be created to represent victims of industrious disregard for better intentions to represent integrity. The whole purpose of government is as an example of self-supportive resource management. The authority to create credit from the debt has been attempted by presidents before when private money dissolved trust by buying into toxic power exploitation. "Power to the people" (democracy) can only come from a national credit for participation in supportive behavior. Most of the jobs today seem to be for discouragement and thus need downsizing. Healthy behavior allows for proportional emergency compensation as an indicator of care full education. Government only half cares for this social imbalance of prerequisites and conventions. I would like to offer observations of concern. People of indulgent needs that create (production) needs for others to pay for are committing crimes of entertainment like watching their victims suffer for improvement.
The Government could declare Federal Reserve currency creates illegally unequal cultural values unless balanced with a U.S.Note for the Health support that could create a service branch of economy inclusively networking medical and educational departments. The multi-branching of government is in public interest that yields more appreciation (when needed) if viewed as self-supported.
Regarding the human brain- It intrigues me that in the current era with all the knowledge that has been made available through the remarkable work of neurobiologists, a controversy still remains regarding the source of our humanity. There are those who maintain that the human mind is separate from the organic brain and that the self resides in that ethereal and indefinable quantity referred to as the soul. Descartes, the father of modern calculus, believed that the soul resided in the area of the brain now known as the pineal gland. This gland is now known to be the site of the neuronal activity that is responsible for regulating the biological clock. He can be forgiven for this error on account of the total lack of understanding of how the human brain functions during his lifetime.
The preponderance of scientific evidence regarding brain function strongly suggests that the totality of the self, including thoughts, perceptions, beliefs, emotions, ideas and imagination is a natural and necessary outgrowth of the functioning of the organic brain. The idea, often stated, that thoughts, ideas and imagination being insubstantial cannot emanate from physiological processes, is nonsensical, especially since there is no other rational explanation.
I am convinced that this line of thinking is a rather intricate rationalization for the belief that humans are products of a special creation and are, therefore, not bounded by biology and its inherent limitations. To accept the reality that our organic brains, destined to dissolution, are the seats of our humanness, is to accede to the obvious truth of our own fragile mortality.
We all need to laugh. There is a style of recognition that could develop the truth. The paradox of humor is how it can reveal insight beyond science. Within every HA HA is an AHA
I wonder how long it will take before someone declares that Michael Jackson isn't dead? That it has all been an elaborate hoax, one designed by Michael to either escape the glare of publicity or possibly a fraudulent way not to perform his forthcoming tour. We had it with Elvis didn't we? The few wacko's who said they had seen him eating burgers in a diner downtown. Already Michael's family are speaking of something sinister having happened to their son and sibling and of having another autopsy. Perhaps they are right but for this weary Englishman far too many conspiracy theories have driven me to the conclusion that most are the overactive imaginations of those who have little else to do with their lives than to create madness where there was once only insanity. God's bless Michael where he rests but let us all hope he is allowed to rest in peace before the media slice his myth into pieces.
In these past ten years or so we in Ireland, North and South, have been enjoying a stable and hopefully lasting peace. The thirty years of conflict, bloodshed and loss of life are more or less over. (It ended in the early to mid-nineties of the last century) Yet, as peace-makers we can never become too complacent, because there is much hatred and bitterness North of our border. Now, I am not saying for a minute that our brothers and sisters in the North of Ireland have a monopoly of these two vices - far from it. I readily admit that there is not a little hatred and bitterness in the hearts of some South of the border. However, statistics show that the North of Ireland is an extremely racist country. A report recently declared that some 20 or so Romanian people of the Roma ethnic minority had to flee back to their homeland because they had literally been burnt out of their homes. I am old enough to remember such happening in the Catholic areas of the North of Ireland in the early to mid 1960s. So, all people of good will, North and South of the border, and, indeed, all people of good will everywhere must be peace-makers with a deep compassion for all our fellow human beings! There is too much conflict in the world today - and there probably always was - but in these more enlightened days let's be conflict breakers or conflict busters.
Sadly religions of all hues have been more often than not repositories, and indeed often promoters, of hate and bitterness. Anywhere in the world where there is inter-national and indeed intra-national war oftentimes religion or interpretations of that phenomenon lie at its heart. We have to go beyond religion and find a spiritual ground or baseline - the only solid foundation for intra and inter-national peace.With these thoughts in mind I offer here some words from the wonderful Dalai Lama on the matter of the difference between Religion and Spirituality:
I believe there is an important distinction to be made between religion and spirituality. Religion I take to be concerned with belief in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition or another--an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of meta-physical or philosophical reality, including perhaps an idea of heaven or hell. Connected with this are religious teachings or dogma, ritual, prayers and so on. Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit--such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony, which bring happiness to both self and others.
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama From "The Pocket Dalai Lama," edited by Mary Craig, 2002. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Boston, www.shambhala.com.
(Note: This is a slightly revised form of a comment I left in Amrit Hallon's blog, Writing Cave.)
I find myself unable to ignore the death of Michael Jackson, as much as I might like to. The death of this sad man-boy-freak has become the usual media circus and I'm a bit sorry to join in. I do, however, have a few thoughts and ideas of my own to express.
This reminds me of the hoopla when Anna Nicole Smith died. There IS a difference, of course. Michael Jackson was a talented performer who actually did something of note with his talents. He has been at least on the periphery of my life since the late 1960s. Someone who had "always" been there is gone. It leaves a blank space.
Love is a strange thing. I have learned, to paraphrase R. A. Heinlein, the more I love, the more I CAN love. Each love teaches me to love a little more.
I care deeply about poor people, hungry people, cold people, sick people, oppressed people, hurting people - but I have learned that if I don't distance myself a bit, I'll go mad. (Some say I already have.) I do what I can, mostly by alerting people online, as I am physically unable to do much and my financial resources are small and dwindling. Then I do just a little more than I can, push myself.
My friends and doctors insist that I cut down on these 16-18 hour days, the world will go on just fine if Mai takes a nap in the park. They are right. Sometimes I wonder if all I try to do has any impact on anyone. Still, love compels me to try.
Was he a pedophile or simply a strange guy who had an innocent interest in children, being childlike himself? Was he an ogre of immorality or merely eccentric? I do not know. It is possible he did all the nasty things he was accused of. It is also possible that those were all false charges from people who wanted to open their wallets to put in large amounts of Michael's cash.
The death of Michael Jackson is just this: He brought music, dancing and joy into the lives of millions. He gave us a lot to talk about with his weirdnesses and eccentricities. He made our lives a little more interesting, a little less mundane. And that, my beloved readers, (as Martha Stewart would say) is a good thing.
Good-bye, Michael! The human heart is big enough to care about you and all suffering humanity at the same time.
In memory of two people who deserve to be remembered, this is my martyred son Sandeep's favourite MJ song. I must admit that there is something endearing about a love song to a (literal) rat!
I entered GlobaLove Think Tank in the Google 10 to the 100th contest months ago. I was expecting to get the results of the contest in January but it seems the response was so great it bogged down the process and the announcement date is up in the air. Here's Google's comment.
Thank you to everyone who submitted an idea. We received over 150,000!
Due to the enthusiastic response we received, it's taking us longer than we expected to review all the ideas. Check back later, or sign-up to receive an email update when we've announced the top ideas.
