underwater eco-sculptures

http://www.underwatersculpture.com/

rant on unwanted involvement

The U.S. should just stop messing around in other countries. It would seem to me that, judging by what's going on in the world daily, we want as many enemies as we can possibly handle.

Edit: Yep, working on positivity here, but I'll tell you-it's a challenge.

Save Undershaw Campaign

A campaign is currently going on to save and renovate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's home in Surrey, UK. This is just as important a place to preserve as Jane Austen's Chawton Cottage, or Victoria and Albert's Osborne House. Simply leaving a quick comment on the Undershaw Project's website is a major help to this cause.

Many of Conan Doyle's most famous works were written during his time at Undershaw, including The Hound of The Baskervilles and The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

I would love to visit this place sometime in the future when it has been restored as a museum, so hurry and post this wherever you can, such as facebook, twitter, etc.

http://www.saveundershaw.com/

cats 2

Things about cats:

I just remembered how awesome the Garfield movies were.

Cute YT video

"To the rats in the barn he's a tiger,

the field mice are scared of his claws,

But for me he's a cuddly bundle

who always has velvety paws."

Unknown

Oh hush you non-cat lovers.

CostumersGuide.com

click here for hours of jaw-dropping movie-costume browsing: costumersguide

!!!!!

random thoughts

I've been thinking of writing more book reviews, so I looked over old ones from 2010. Wow. They are really long. This time I promise I'll keep them short, specific, and secretive!

Quote #4

"The great hope of society is individual character." ~ William Ellery Channing (1780-1842)

videolink

Here is a really interesting link. It's nice to come across things that are inspiring once in a while. http://www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/the_shift

"Can you tell fact from fiction?" UCS global warming quiz

http://www.gotsci.org/?rc=gotsciEV2#

And you get a free sticker, too! This is just a quick quiz about global warming.

Quote #3

"Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them." ~Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

A few good links

earth911.com

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/brainstorm_block.htm

Haven't tried this. Sounds a little like amazon or craig's list. http://bookmooch.com/

ok, all for now. Ta!

Quote #2

"The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" ~ Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

Quote #1

This is the beginning of a series of quote-posts that I'll be putting up here. Basically the quotes will be anything that I find inspirational, important, funny. Enjoy!

"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?" ~Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

animal cruelty, famine and other current events

Something seriously needs to change in this world. First, humans should just freaking leave things alone! This little kid I know turned to me the other day, after experimenting drowning this poor bug in the water, and said "but humans experiment on animals. That's just how it is."
Well, it shouldn't be. We shouldn't do to animals what we wouldn't do to fellow humans. When we go messing around with other species, that's what really irritates me. Children shouldn't be taught that the situation re animal rights, or human rights for that matter, is AT ALL ok right now, because it is SO not.

This of course brings up the question of animal cruelty in conjunction with science and medical schools. We wouldn't know a lot of what we know today if it weren't for all those mice and dogs and cats and pigs injected with vaccines, cancers, etc, etc. More people would be dying if it weren't for those experiments. So, maybe humans have always picked on lesser beings. I don't know. It's just amazing to me that our so highly evolved society is partly founded on such cruel practices. But I suppose we are in the food chain after all. In nature everybody seems to be killing everybody. Are we born as good beings?

Do criminals have bad strains in there blood that incline them to do evil deeds? Is it their surroundings that influence them, or internal choices?

Reading over this I see that I've called what we have a "highly evolved society." Yes, we have technology, we have lots of smart people, we have billions and billions of wonderful ideas. But for some reason, after thousands of years, we still maim and kill each other: we still have wars, we still have starvation, we're still ruining the planet, slowly but surely. There have to be, and in fact I know that there are, people out there who care and are trying to stop this from going on. They have been for a long time. For every war there have been people protesting, somewhere. But for some reason it doesn't prevent bad things from happening. Is it because there aren't enough good people? Or that everyone else just doesn't know about them?

The most recent National Geographic issue (Sep.2011) was very interesting. First of all: The previous issue had had an article about the people in Bangladesh, and how flooding is affecting their lives there: floating schools are being built, and the focus is very much on food crops that can grow on plant rafts.

However, the general attitude does not seem to be one of happiness or hope. Thousands of Bangladesh citizens are fleeing the flooding, crossing the border into India. What really caught my attention were the letters to the magazine by American citizens (and a few of them native to India). Some were cheering the Bangladeshis on, but others were irritating, and made me very angry.

One person states that "Like Bangladesh, India has much to worry about with rising sea levels. The threat is not only to megatropolises like Mumbai" (granted, this is probably true. I haven't looked into it yet.) The person goes on to say that "India has been the catch basin for Bangladeshi refugees. Already estimates have up to 20 million Bangladeshis living in India.....Not only has this caused strains on [India's] already poor infrastructures, it has also masked the successes of India's family planning efforts-and enhanced Bangladesh's." Later: "the world would do well to recall the backlash seen in the US to similar numbers of Spanish-speaking migrants."

The reason that this made me so angry is because I was asking myself the question "what are they supposed to do, then?" If I were in that country, I would be one of the citizens fleeing to India. And I would feel no guilt about it. These people shouldn't be looked at like rats trying to gain higher ground-they should be treated as what they are: yet another race on earth trying to survive.

Should we, when fellow humans are struggling, point fingers and whine about things like this? Ask for repayments from broken countries that have nothing? Absolutely not. The same thing goes for "illegal aliens" coming from Mexico, Honduras and other places in South and Central America. Why would we punish them? I just don't get it. Don't misunderstand-I'm not trying to make out these people as poor defenseless things, but I don't think we should treat them like scum, either. The biggest question, in my mind, anyway, is: how do we adapt to all this change?

Second of all: Another thing I've been trying to figure out lately is the question of where you should draw the line while making a living. For example, poaching and poppy-growing. Poachers in Africa, China, etc., are trying to make money, and opium-farmers in the Middle East are too. If these things are to be completely eradicated, there have to be jobs to replace them. Elementary thinking, but it doesn't seem to happen. Anyway. back to reading NG! There is good stuff in there too, my eye just always latches on the bad.

In the Sep. issue there are pictures of Lake Eyre in Australia (the biggest lake there, although it only floods once every 100 years!) The photographer's work may have been featured in last year's Banff film festival as well, I'm not sure if it's the same guy.

books

Here are some books that I just finished reading and recommend (although most people seem to have read them already):
The Hound of the Baskervilles (as well as all the short stories and the other three novels!)
The Lord God Made Them All (this is from the James Herriot series. The television series is also funny.)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog (lots of confusing philosophical stuff, with a cute story thrown in there, too.)
The Hunger Games Trilogy
I'll think of some more later.

The Chanters of Tremaris Trilogy (I liked the first two books the best, but really worth the read! Kate Constable is surprisingly good at writing about winter, even though she lives in Australia! Ok, so I just found out that they do have winter there, but only in the south. And apparently they don't actually get snow, just cold, rainy weather.)

North and South (I've just started it, but judging by the BBC's version it's going to be amazing, so I'll just save myself the time of adding it to the list later.)

All of Jane Austen's books, of course. Emma was (blasphemy!) a little tedious, but only because it was almost too amazing. Each line on its own was really clever, but page after page was a little hard. Still good. Haven't found a movie version that I like yet.

Watersmeet (a bit like Chanters of Tremaris, so its pretty cool.)

Cats

My cats enjoy it when I act like a complete fool to please them.

This morning the boy cat was wearing a little neckscarf and beret (picture to follow). The girl cat (perfect little flower) would never stand for such rediculousness (she has lots of hidden thorns XD) I'd hoped this blog wouldn't turn into one of those "this is my daily life, here are pictures and funny things that happened," sites, but Oh well. Maybe it will provide some relief from the monotonous complains I put here. Incidentally, "blog" is probably the most unattractive word in the English dictionary (and it actually is in the dictionary. What a disgrace!) It belongs in with words like "hurl," "chunks" and "spew."

a little rant about evil shampoos

Hey, I could totally do a whole series of these!

I was in the store the other day, and out of curiosity I went around to the extremely aromatic beauty/bath section, where I proceeded to inspect each and every container of shampoo in the aisle. Not a single one of them said "no animal testing." I was horrified!
Chicken farms are also terrible (I know it's a way for people to make money, but, goodness knows we need some better jobs). I'm sure there is tons of research about that (beak snipping, crowded conditions, etc.) so I'll save it for a separate post (yippee <.<).

a little rant about pricey watches

I don't understand what's so great about expensive watches. It's like carrying tons of money around with you. I wonder if people insure them. But seriously, it keeps time, people! All you have to do is buy a cheap little watch and set it accordingly. It might not look as great, but it's better than having something on your wrist that costs $16o,000, money that would do much better preserving land or promoting health or something. While I'm on the subject, I saw a watch recently that had a calculator on it. It looked really cool. Maybe they can start building cellphones and little movie flip-screens into them, too!

random thoughts

I've been getting to the conclusion that becoming a doctor is probably the most kind, honorable, and logical thing to do in this day and age. Too bad I feel kind of sick when I see massive amounts of blood and guts, and that I'm bad under pressure...

Another thing: I just heard (haven't researched this yet, but will later) that the reason that there is so much off-shore drilling in Alaska is because that way the oil companies don't have to pay land taxes! Makes sense.

Also, here is a cool article from NG about acclimating your brain to change: okay, scratch that, I have to go. I'll find it later. I never realized how massive NG's online archives are!

I've been hearing lots about the right whales lately. This article is kind of old, but tell me what you think (making an effort to be positive here!): http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/10/right-whales/chadwick-text

And everyone (ehe, everyone, funny), please know that I'm not trying to force opinions on you. There's so much going on in the world, and most of it is many-layered and incredibly confusing, it's so impossible to know what to think. Maybe if we were actually in the countries where everything is taking place (well, we are in one, aren't we, and it's still confusing) we'd be able to form better ideas of what's going on. Everything I post is someone's opinion. Where would we be in the world if no one had opinions? Could we debate? No.

I heard this random philosophical talk by Alan Watts recently, saying that you can't have good without evil. It was kind of odd, but it made perfect sense. here's some info on him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts

I also just found an Alan Watts quote on Determinism (the philosophical belief in fate and that our lives are pre-determined) that I think is clever:

“There was a young man who said ‘damn.

It certainly seems that I am

a creature who moves in determinate grooves.

I’m not even a bus, I’m a tram.'”

Russia Today: Reaping Africa

Interesting perspectives on the situation in Africa: economy, trading, foreign aid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm_2Av3mxIk#

BP Spill

It may be just my impression, but it really seems as if the Gulf Spill disaster has been swept under the rug in the past year. I think of it often, which usually results in ranting and feeling like I can do nothing to stop what's going on in the world. There are so many different types of protests being used now, and it's very hard to tell if they are having any affect.

These days it's so easy to be reminded of environmental blunders, what with Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Lots of nature movies (all stressing longer Arctic summers and plankton loss) have been watched lately (including Oceans and several other BBC nature programs) and don't help at all.

I did come across a recent newspaper article about the gulf, which surprised me and rekindled lots of old outrage. It says that up to 400 dolphins have died, half of them calves and at least 100 just since January. It goes on to say that the number of dolphin deaths could be "into the thousands before the end of calving" which continues in the next six weeks, and also that many residents along the Gulf Coast who helped in cleanup without wearing proper protective gear are experiencing loss of red blood cells, leading to internal bleeding. Chemical used to disperse the oil causes this loss.

I totally agree with the last two paragraphs in the article, which state that there should be legislative action in the gulf to prevent the same thing happening again. After all, the world is peppered with off-shore oil rigs, and the government is still looking into having more of them. It's the same story with nuclear power. Clearly, it takes more than meltdowns to impress upon the powerful that that whole endeavor really isn't a good idea. I shudder to think of what it will take. You really would think that after an incident as massive and catastrophic as the Gulf Spill, there would be some very strict laws made regarding off-shore drilling.

Unfortunately, it's not possible to find the article (which appeared in the Bangor Daily News on April 14) online.

I was at a talk about ice in Antarctica recently and the question of if the earth is able to survive if pollution and melting continue at the current rate came up. There was a slight pause before the speaker said, "well, the earth will survive" and left the sentence hanging.

When I think that the Gulf Spill was a year ago and then think of the projected losses and gains 50 years from now (a population of 10.5 billion, extinct Siberian tigers, Polar Bears, and many other species) it seems like that time is going to go by very fast.

Here is an interesting article from National Geographic, plus some amazing pictures.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/seven-billion/kunzig-text

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/seven-billion/olson-photography

ARTICLE

PHOTOS

Note: wow, sorry for all the negativity. Really I'm just writing this to make everything clear to myself. But I do try to put some solid facts in as well as my own ranty observations.

The Boondocks

Just a quick post. The Boondocks is one of my obsessions. I highly suggest getting the books on Amazon.com. They are by Aaron McGruder. Here are a few random ones: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&sa=X&ei=ksxeTeXyH4a0lQfRxPTlCw&ved=0CC0QsAQ&q=boondocks%20comics&tbs=isch:1

New Years

I completely forgot my planned New Year's post! So, readers, my deepest apologies. Hope it was perfect for you. Did any of you remember to say 'white rabbit' on January 1st?

Here are some neat internet pictures of New Years around the world (thank you to their original photographers-I only wish I could have been in all these places myself!)

Sydney

London

Taiwan

Paris

more:

UCS

Thought this was good. The video about urban tree planting is worth a watch. The UCS is a group of concerned scientists and citizens working on achieving unbiased scientific research results in America and influencing garden-planting and eco-friendly farming across the country. Even reading a little of this website is helpful and informative.

So many decisions seem to be made these days without the government or single companies thinking about what the impact will be on the natural world. Most chemicals shouldn't even exist, in my opinion, and many of them should have been tested far more thoroughly to start out. It's sometimes scary how far the world has progressed in terms of inventions. Inventions are great, but unfortunately man's brilliance has led him to make things like guns, Agent Orange and nuclear weapons as well. Before I go on a long tangent, I'd better sign off. However, we must remain optimistic (somehow!) and remember that a whole is made up of more than one.

I would also like to remind readers (gosh, I do flatter myself! But...I do have a few!) to check a previous post that has a similar link. The post is titled Gulf Spill Photographs, but here is the website: Nat Geo Site That has fun quizzes that will help make a small difference around the house saving energy, etc.