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.
A story telling the truth about radiation from Fukushima nuclear disaster. This video is to raise funds for our crowd funding campaign for 'In Transition 2'. If you want to see how Transition Initiatives are responding to the situation then please donate! The money will pay for a film maker to shoot a story about the importance of setting up local renewable energy companies.
How do we know whether to believe what government officials tell us about the danger of radiation after a nuclear accident like Fukushima? New technologies are making it possible for citizens to break the government’s information monopoly, so that citizens can double-check the “no danger” announcements that government officials tend to issue after nuclear accidents.
Perhaps we can divide humankind into two categories with regards to truth, viz., those who use the upper case form of the word, i.e., Truth and those who utilize the lower case form, i.e., truth.Those who use the former belong to the religious camp while those who prefer the latter are more likely to be more flexible minds with a more scientific bent. Religionists and believers of all hues believe that truth exists in a pure metaphysical sense in some heavenly vault presided over by a heavenly banker called God.
Then there are other ways in which we use the word “truth,” viz., in the singular or in the plural number.Once again those who use the singular number are more likely to be religionists or believers, insofar as they assume that there is one homogeneous form of the truth – a Platonic Idea of the Truth somewhere out there.They readily equate that with God – the Ultimate Idea.In their metaphysical world, capital letters abound. Also, those who use the singular number are more likely to use the upper case form of the word, while those who use the plural number are more likely to be those of a scientific bent who see the world in a more plural sense.
In Western cultures we are called on to swear upon the Bible in court, which in itself is a naked declaration of a Christian take on what truth means.Leaving this aside, let’s say that such a swearing is a metaphorical action rather than any religious declaration per se. One could swear on a constitution of a country or on the UN Declaration of Human Rights for that matter. That sometimes our law courts get it wrong, and that historically innocent people have been executed, testifies to how hard it is to arrive at what the real truth of a situation actually is.
Then, there is the psychological nature of truth.In this respect we recall Polonius’advice to his departing son Laertesto be true to himself.Those of us with an existentialist bent will call this our desire for authenticity. Freud and Jungand their followers, taking inspiration from Kant, have taught us that truth has a very personal shape and that we can see things more as we are than as such things are in themselves. Then the fictional, if eccentric, Dr House reminds us in a most timely and contemporary manner that we all lie for various personal purposes. Objectivity, it would seem, like truth is not as easily defined as we might at first superficially and naively think.
Asteroid YU-55, also written as 2005 YU55, is a potentially hazardous asteroid approximately 400 meters (1,300 feet) in diameter. It was discovered on 28 December 2005 by Robert S. McMillan at Steward Observatory, Kitt Peak. On 8 November 2011 it passed 0.85 lunar distances (324,600 kilometers or 201,700 miles) from the Earth. This is the closest known approach by an asteroid with an absolute magnitude this bright since 2010 XC15 (H = 21.4) approached within 0.5 lunar distances in 1976. (read more)(video clip)
Belarus: Annya's parents lived in a town so contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that it was destroyed and buried. When she was four Annya was diagnosed with a brain tumor...
After the first few posts it became basically a news blog about the ongoing Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe with related nuclear news and commentary - not so random anymore, it has become progressively more activist...
Andrew Aitken "Andy" Rooney (January 14, 1919 – November 4, 2011) was an American radio and television writer. He was most notable for his weekly broadcast "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney", a part of the CBS News program 60 Minutes from 1978 to 2011. His final regular appearance on 60 Minutes aired October 2, 2011. He died a month later, on November 4, at age 92.
Andrew Rooney was born in Albany, New York, the son of Walter Scott Rooney (1888–1959) and Ellinor (née Reynolds) Rooney (1886–1980). He attended The Albany Academy, and later attended Colgate University in Hamilton in Central New York, where he was initiated into the Sigma Chi fraternity, until he was drafted into the U.S. Army in August 1941. Rooney began his career in newspapers while in the Army when, in 1942, he began writing for Stars and Stripes in London during World War II.
In February 1943, flying with the Eighth Air Force, he was one of six correspondents who flew on the second American bombing raid over Germany. Later, he was one of the first American journalists to visit the Nazi concentration camps near the end of World War II, and one of the first to write about them.
During a segment on Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation, Rooney confessed that he had been opposed to World War II because he was a pacifist. He recounted that what he saw in those concentration camps made him ashamed that he had opposed the war and permanently changed his opinions about whether "just wars" exist.
In London, during the war, Mary Hemingway made an accusation of plagiarism against several fellow journalists, including Andy Rooney, although the accusations were proven false.
Rooney's 1995 memoir, My War, chronicles his war reporting. In addition to recounting firsthand several notable historical events and people (including the entry into Paris and the Nazi concentration camps), Rooney describes how it shaped his experience both as a writer and reporter. (read more)
Andrew Aitken "Andy" Rooney (January 14, 1919 – November 4, 2011)
Easter Island (Rapa Nui: Rapa Nui, Spanish: Isla de Pascua) is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people. Easter Island is claimed to be the most remote inhabited island in the world.
It is a World Heritage Site (as determined by UNESCO) with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park. In recent times the island has served as a warning of the cultural and environmental dangers of overexploitation. Ethnographers and archaeologists also blame diseases carried by European colonizers and slave raiding of the 1860s for devastating the local peoples. (read more)
The world's first view of Earth taken by a spacecraft from the vicinity of the Moon. The photo was transmitted to Earth by the United States Lunar Orbiter I and received at the NASA tracking station at Robledo De Chavela near Madrid, Spain. This crescent of the Earth was photographed August 23, 1966 at 16:35 GMT when the spacecraft was on its 16th orbit and just about to pass behind the Moon. Reference Numbers: Center: HQ / Center Number: 67-H-218 / GRIN DataBase Number: GPN-2000-001588 / lo1-h102-123
(enlarge this image to clearly see the structures found on the moon)
As Occupy protests against inequality and corporate greed continue across the United States and around the world, we’re joined by Michael Moore, Academy Award-winning filmmaker and activist, and Princeton University Professor Cornel West. "We expect [President Obama] to do the work of the people," Moore says. "The people are not going to go away. So he can either go down as a historic president, who become the FDR of this century, or he can be remembered as the man who was in the pocket of Goldman Sachs." West added, "What we’re trying to do is connect what’s going on on Wall Street with what’s going on in Harlem... If in fact we continue to have this kind of magnificent movement here and around the world, we want to be able to connect the corporate greed not just on Wall Street, but in the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, and the corporate-media multiplex." [includes rush transcript]
Democracy Now! - Occupy Wall Street
Democracy Now!: Inspired by the massive public protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Madrid’s Puerta del Sol Square, hundreds have camped out in Zuccotti Park near Wall Street since Sept. 17, 2011, as part of a campaign dubbed "Occupy Wall Street." Developing a common slogan "We are the 99 percent," solidarity encampments and demonstrations have been organized across the United States and the world to call for financial, political and social change. A global day of action on Oct. 15 drew protests in 1,500 cities world-wide, including more than 100 in the United States. #OWS #OccupyWallStreet
