This is truly wonderful!
I think that this part of her speech is one of the only parts that really made sense, and it makes even more sense as a poem - an ode to Alaska. Hat tip to Robert Service.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Good Climate Change Video
How It All Ends
Be sure to check out the "expansion pack" of support/detail videos to go with this - see the sidebar (More Info) on YouTube.
I'd say the risks associated with "column A" are much less, since it looks like they are already happening, and not related to any policy changes about climate change. In fact, those policy changes may be some of what SAVES our economy - investing in the future through alternative energy, reducing dependence on oil, especially imported oil, etc.
Me? Solar panels on the roof, "Victory Garden" in the backyard, increased efficiency, decreased consumption, focus on sustainability, and spreading the word. Oh, and we buy Terra Passes, too.
Thanks to Loren for this video - Science teachers rule!
Friday, January 2, 2009
Mini-Blog in the Sidebar
In case you hadn't noticed, I've got a mini-blog of sorts going in the sidebar. My decrease in posting frequency doesn't mean I stopped paying attention - I have links to pertinent articles that have come my way with my commentary added in the bookmarks sidebar. I use Diigo to do this - it's a great social bookmarking tool that allows you to bookmark sites online, add notes, comments, highlights, etc. Very useful for research! You can also post your comments directly to a blog, or do what I did and link to the RSS feed for a particular topic. Enjoy!
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
More Economic Woes Predicted
Economists Warn Anti-Bush Merchandise Market Close To Collapse
Somehow I think no one will be too sad to see this market collapse, though...
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Prop 8 - The Musical
See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die
I've been collecting lots of links and thoughts about California's Proposition 8's passage... it was a dark shadow on"Obama Day" joy for me, and much worse for so many of my friends who are in the GLTB Community. I've been thinking about what to write, what to say about this... then I saw "Prop 8 - The Musical"! Ha! Say it with humor - that's the ticket!
What it comes down to, for me, are a few key points:
- It's an issue of equality, not sexuality - equal rights under the law for all people
- Most of the opposition to gay marriage comes from religion, and we have a separation of church and state in this country
- Even if you feel it is wrong, based on your religion, you do NOT have the right to legislate your religion, to enforce YOUR religious beliefs on those who don't share them (or even on those who do)
Here is a collection of serious articles which emphasize these points, some of which I've shared before, but which bear sharing again:
Why churches fear gay marriage | Salon News
Richard Rodriguez' thought-provoking article -
"While conservative churches are busy trying to whip up another round of culture wars over same-sex marriage, Rodriguez says the real reason for their panic lies elsewhere: the breakdown of the traditional heterosexual family and the shifting role of women in society and the church itself. As the American family fractures and the majority of women choose to live without men, churches are losing their grip on power and scapegoating gays and lesbians for their failures."FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right: Prop 8 Myths
This is interesting - I trust Nate Silver's take on statistics, and it looks like prop 8's passage may be more generational than race/religion-related. I mean, of COURSE it's religion-related, but within same race/religion groups, voters over 65 voted more for and younger voters voted more against. That makes more sense to me. And is, in a way (as stated in the article), more hopeful for the future of equality.
YouTube - The West Wing - bible
President Bartlet totally PWNS the "Dr. Laura" character, Jenna Jacobs, on Old Testament Biblical Law. Awesome. Homosexuality is an abomination, and also... death is the punishment for working on the sabbath, selling your children into slavery is condoned, the punishment for planting two different crops side by side is stoning, mixing two types of thread into one fabric is punishable by burning, etc, etc - just awesome.
Utah Legislators Call Mormon Leadership’s Bluff on LGBT Rights
This will be interesting. But even if they DO support "equal" rights in these areas - haven't we learned? Separate is NOT equal.
Gay marriage is a question of love - Countdown with Keith Olbermann- msnbc.com
This is powerful, and I have to say that I like ~reading~ Olbermann much more than watching him. There is a link to a video, too, if you like watching/listening better. It's all about honoring LOVE. Honoring commitment. HONORING marriage for what it ~should~ be.
Why Gay Marriage Was Defeated in California - TIME - Annotated
In this case, fear, unfounded fears fanned by propaganda of religion-based beliefs, won out over hope and fairness. So sad, and so ironic that African Americans, who voted in record numbers for a candidate that gave them hope, also voted against equal rights for another group, crushing ~their~ hope.
- a remarkable story about Rick and Pam Patterson, a Mormon couple of modest means — he drives a 10-year-old Honda Civic, she raises their five boys — who had withdrawn $50,000 from their savings account and given it to the pro-8 campaign. "It was a decision we made very prayerfully," Pam Patterson, 48, told the Bee's Jennifer Garza. "Was it an easy decision? No. But it was a clear decision, one that had so much potential to benefit our children and their children."
- It is my fervent hope that at least one of their children, who they think they are benefiting by taking away the rights of others, IS gay, and someday wants to marry their same-sex soul mate. Only then might people like this see the error of their ways through the blinding veil of their dogma. - post by naturegeek
- African Americans voted against marriage equality by a wide margin, 69% to 31%
- So, African Americans, who finally have realized a dream with this election, vote for others to have their dreams deferred. This is painful. - post by naturegeek
- The irony. Ugh. - post by naturegeek
- David Paterson, is one of the nation's most eloquent pro-marriage-equality representatives. He is also, by the way, African American. Perhaps he can help bridge the gap between gays and blacks that widened on Nov. 4
- Let's hope so! - post by naturegeek
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Not Shopping For a Better Future
I hope you all enjoyed celebrating Buy Nothing Day - I know I did. If you don't know, Buy Nothing Day is on what retailers call "Black Friday." Yeah, the day of the biggest sales of the year, the day we are all supposed to go out on massive shopping sprees and buy all sorts of crap we don't need or buy other people all sorts of crap THEY don't need in a grand celebration of American Consumption! No Thank You.
The worker trampled to death by bargain-frenzied crowds at a Wal-Mart (Wal-Mart? Come ON people - WTF?) and the shootout at the toy store are two horrible, ugly stories that came out of Black Friday, but they are not why I celebrate Buy Nothing Day. Buying more than we need, buying things for the wrong reasons, buying things we can't afford are all part of what's gotten us into the current economic mess - I don't think we're going to be able to shop our way out of it.
We need to make the shift from conspicuous consumption to conscious consumption. Yes, we need to buy things to live, but we must learn to separate need from want, function from fashion, and smart choices from marketing - we have been fed this idea that part of the "American Dream" is that if we want something, then by god, we should have it! "Mastercard, I'm bored" sums up the essence of this idea. Can't afford something? Nonsense! Buy on credit! Pay nothing until 2010! Living above our means has become the norm rather than the foolhardy object lesson it should be. We've been taught personal accounting based on Ponzi Scheme economics - as our homes' values ballooned ever higher, we went further into debt because we had these "assets" - not thinking that balloons burst when inflated too high, and assets based on those balloons evaporate just as surely.
Good people out there in organizations such as the Center for a New American Dream have for many years been advocating conscious consumption, and other groups, such as the Compact, advocate for as little consumption as possible. It turns out that not only is reining in our consumptive culture better for our personal finances, the environment, and our health, people find they enjoy life more when the focus is less on things and more on what matters to them.
Living in under 250 square feet of space for almost two years now has certainly had an impact on my personal relationship with stuff. It's very easy to be overwhelmed with too much stuff in a small space, and also very easy to see how little we actually need. We do have a storage unit, and we are shopping for a house - one we can afford, and I wonder how I'll feel when we unpack that storage unit and see all the things we have not needed for two years? I'm thinking some things are going directly to Freecycle. I hope we can retain the lessons of living small when our quarters expand, but I know how easy it is to accumulate stuff when you have room for it. At least, maybe, it will be sustainable stuff - eco-friendly, healthy, stuff that is built to last and not throw away, stuff we use, stuff within or below our means not purchased on credit. That's ~my~ "American Dream."
Here is some more reading from my bookmarked websites on the topic - enjoy!
The worker trampled to death by bargain-frenzied crowds at a Wal-Mart (Wal-Mart? Come ON people - WTF?) and the shootout at the toy store are two horrible, ugly stories that came out of Black Friday, but they are not why I celebrate Buy Nothing Day. Buying more than we need, buying things for the wrong reasons, buying things we can't afford are all part of what's gotten us into the current economic mess - I don't think we're going to be able to shop our way out of it.
We need to make the shift from conspicuous consumption to conscious consumption. Yes, we need to buy things to live, but we must learn to separate need from want, function from fashion, and smart choices from marketing - we have been fed this idea that part of the "American Dream" is that if we want something, then by god, we should have it! "Mastercard, I'm bored" sums up the essence of this idea. Can't afford something? Nonsense! Buy on credit! Pay nothing until 2010! Living above our means has become the norm rather than the foolhardy object lesson it should be. We've been taught personal accounting based on Ponzi Scheme economics - as our homes' values ballooned ever higher, we went further into debt because we had these "assets" - not thinking that balloons burst when inflated too high, and assets based on those balloons evaporate just as surely.
Good people out there in organizations such as the Center for a New American Dream have for many years been advocating conscious consumption, and other groups, such as the Compact, advocate for as little consumption as possible. It turns out that not only is reining in our consumptive culture better for our personal finances, the environment, and our health, people find they enjoy life more when the focus is less on things and more on what matters to them.
Living in under 250 square feet of space for almost two years now has certainly had an impact on my personal relationship with stuff. It's very easy to be overwhelmed with too much stuff in a small space, and also very easy to see how little we actually need. We do have a storage unit, and we are shopping for a house - one we can afford, and I wonder how I'll feel when we unpack that storage unit and see all the things we have not needed for two years? I'm thinking some things are going directly to Freecycle. I hope we can retain the lessons of living small when our quarters expand, but I know how easy it is to accumulate stuff when you have room for it. At least, maybe, it will be sustainable stuff - eco-friendly, healthy, stuff that is built to last and not throw away, stuff we use, stuff within or below our means not purchased on credit. That's ~my~ "American Dream."
Here is some more reading from my bookmarked websites on the topic - enjoy!
'Buy Nothing Day' a sign of the times? | Crave - CNET
This article is a good synopsis of Buy Nothing Day and other ways to fight rampant, senseless consumerism
Op-Ed Contributor - Dying of Consumption - NYTimes.com
"...there is a deeper, potentially positive, meaning to all this: Consumers are now abandoning the asset-dependent spending and saving strategies they embraced during the bubbles of the past dozen years and moving back to more prudent income-based lifestyles."
This is right on! The "MasterCard, I'm Bored!" mentality has got to change - we have come to believe that we are entitled to anything we want, even if we can't afford it. That is NOT the "American Way" as some people seem to think.
Zakaria: A More Disciplined America | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com
Excellent article by the brilliant Fareed Zakaria - serious and yet very hopeful at the same time. We have the chance to go back to being ourselves - our best selves, and that is a good thing.
Forget commercialism! The new realities of consumption and the economy.
"Spending our way to prosperity? Not this time around.
As a “New Dream” economist, I am asked all the time: won’t consuming less hurt the economy? When there’s less spending, people get laid off, their incomes fall and businesses, especially small ones, go bankrupt. This question is especially urgent today, given that the recession is deepening and spreading. George Bush was widely (and rightly) criticized for suggesting shopping as the patriotic response to 9/11. Would Barack Obama be wrong if he suggested the same?
Short answer: Yes. But with this topic, there’s rarely a short answer. So here’s the longer one."- Let’s remember, first, that the economic crisis wasn’t caused by a decline in consumer spending. It was triggered by the bursting of the housing bubble, Wall Street excesses, and some other factors. Consumers are cutting back now, but the decline in spending is one of a series of falling dominos—more an effect of recession than a cause.
New Dream Blog » Blog Archive » Holiday shopping–just don’t
"We can find better ways to support one another than funneling our money through giant multinationals in hopes that some trickles down to its employees."
- For the last two decades, the U.S. has been a consumer-driven economy. Bursts of spending have lifted us out of a series of short, not-too-painful recessions. And consumers are well aware of their “heroic” role. They’ve been told over and over that their spending is the basis for our economy. (Less discussed is how the consumer binge led to our gaping trade deficit.)
- While some consumers have been on a debt-fueled binge for quite awhile, apparently they haven’t forgotten how to sober up. And fast. They’re acting smart and cautious. That’s a good thing. Scaling back on gifts and holiday spending this year suddenly seems like the socially acceptable thing to do. Spending liberally can feel unseemly.
- Roughly a quarter of annual spending, garbage and ecological impact occurs between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.
- We can find better ways to support one another than funneling our money through giant multinationals in hopes that some trickles down to its employees.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Obama's Thanksgiving Day Message
Link to this video on YouTube
Transcript:
Good morning.
Nearly 150 years ago, in one of the darkest years of our nation's history, President Abraham Lincoln set aside the last Thursday in November as a day of Thanksgiving. America was split by Civil War. But Lincoln said in his first Thanksgiving decree that difficult times made it even more appropriate for our blessings to be - and I quote - "gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people."
This week, the American people came together with families and friends to carry on this distinctly American tradition. We gave thanks for loved ones and for our lasting pride in our communities and our country. We took comfort in good memories while looking forward to the promise of change.
But this Thanksgiving also takes place at a time of great trial for our people.
Across the country, there were empty seats at the table, as brave Americans continue to serve in harm's way from the mountains of Afghanistan to the deserts of Iraq. We honor and give thanks for their sacrifice, and stand by the families who endure their absence with such dignity and resolve.
At home, we face an economic crisis of historic proportions. More and more Americans are worried about losing a job or making their mortgage payment. Workers are wondering if next month's paycheck will pay next month's bills. Retirees are watching their savings disappear, and students are struggling with the cost of tuition.
It's going to take bold and immediate action to confront this crisis. That's why I'm committed to forging a new beginning from the moment I take office as President of the United States. Earlier this week, I announced my economic team. This talented and dedicated group is already hard at work crafting an Economic Recovery Plan that will create or save 2.5 million new jobs, while making the investments we need to fuel long-term economic growth and stability.
But this Thanksgiving, we are reminded that the renewal of our economy won't come from policies and plans alone - it will take the hard work, innovation, service, and strength of the American people.
I have seen this strength firsthand over many months - in workers who are ready to power new industries, and farmers and scientists who can tap new sources of energy; in teachers who stay late after school, and parents who put in that extra hour reading to their kids; in young Americans enlisting in a time of war, seniors who volunteer their time, and service programs that bring hope to the hopeless.
It is a testament to our national character that so many Americans took time out this Thanksgiving to help feed the hungry and care for the needy. On Wednesday, I visited a food bank at Saint Columbanus Parish in Chicago. There - as in so many communities across America - folks pitched in time and resources to give a lift to their neighbors in need. It is this spirit that binds us together as one American family - the belief that we rise and fall as one people; that we want that American Dream not just for ourselves, but for each other.
That's the spirit we must summon as we make a new beginning for our nation. Times are tough. There are difficult months ahead. But we can renew our nation the same way that we have in the many years since Lincoln's first Thanksgiving: by coming together to overcome adversity; by reaching for - and working for - new horizons of opportunity for all Americans.
So this weekend - with one heart, and one voice, the American people can give thanks that a new and brighter day is yet to come.
Yes. We Can. And We Will.
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