142...hrmmm

There is something special about that number-i just can't recall what...any suggestions welcome. But no linguists suggesting that it is prime, the answer to life the universe and everything or the first three Fibonacci numbers will be tolerated! I mean there's ignorance and then there's linguists. I don't quite know why the attack on linguists by the way, and i do apologise to all linguists who may be offended. I dunno, this is the way society has gone, that as soon as i insult a certain group i feel i have to immediately apologise. Just like old popey...

Popey is hardly my best friend (And i would like to take this opportunity to point out that he is NOT a representative of Christianity, merely Catholicism), anyway, there are plenty of reasons i could dislike him. Reasons too numerous to mention in fact. However give the poor guy a rest over the whole remarks thing. He quoted a very old person (not actually still alive, what i mean is he lived a long time ago) in what appeared to be a context which was misunderstood. Very few people even heard his speech, and yet after the media latched on, are now burning figures of the pope!?!

Has everyone gone insane? Can no one voice what they think these days? So second challenge of the blog...insult me!! Leave a comment insulting me. Don't worry i wont burn effigies of you, because i am an ADULT, i can cope with people disagreeing with me. Unlike the rest of the world it appears. We could even start something where you insult the person who left a comment before you...a kind of chain insult-revelling in our free speech-go on give it a click!

Right few explanations to finish. Firstly this is the 142nd blog, hence the number which i still haven't figured out...and also i did very little today, but i did watch V for Vendetta which is a very good film!

Thought for the Day: A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having!

schllluurrrp

That is the noise of me licking an envelope. For today i have 'licked and sticked or 'luck and stuck' roughly 200 envelopes. Unfortunately for you this does not mean lots of letters to my lovely friends. Instead it was merely some admin work for my dad. It was two hours work sorting named letters into named envelopes, which as you can probably guess was greeaaaat fun, and landed a £10 in my back pocket which is always good.

So the tidying went ok today. The packing i'm afraid hasn't really started. But...i still have at least 48hrs so i am absolutely fine! No need to panic at all! I also now have a scanner which is highly useful as well as being very entertaining, scanning all kinds of things-just because i can!

Hi Griff! Just wanted to say a quick hi to my newest reader! That's all i have to say for today.

Thought for the Day: Today is a new Day... (chicken little)

You've seen the film, now read the facts!

Ok, firstly i apologise because these last two blogs have been a bit serious. This is not intentional, merely happened that these thoughts entered my head these last few days.

So firstly in response to a certain comment from Tajudin Abdullahi-named and shamed! lol. No, i think he makes a good point. It's very easy to say we should change, and to even want to change. However to actually go ahead and change is something very different. BUT, it is something we really must consider even if it means giving up one or two of our home comforts. So, just thought i'd say what i aim to do: avoid using air travel, buy local produce where possible, cut down on the amount of meat/eggs/dairy i eat (not massively, just making sure i don't eat too much), try to walk where possible, and try to stick an extra jumper on rather than use extra fuel heating the house. There you go, a few of the things i am going to try and do...

So the title of todays blog refers to The Constant Gardener. I don't have much to say about it. Except if you have not seen it-see it, and if you have seen it check out some of these-scarily similar facts. (I mention this because i watched it again a few days ago).
What the movie missed
Drugs testing

Ok, serious stuff over, jus a quick note to say Happy Birthday to Katherine, 21 today, and in a retirement home tomorrow. Tehehe. I promise the blog will have a lighter topic tomorrow!

Thought for the Day: As the film says...'Big pharmaceuticals are right up there with the arms dealers. It's how the world f***s Africa.

A comment on Sustainability and Global Warming

You’ve heard it all before: Ice caps are melting, the oceans are heating up and within the next few decades many animals will become extinct. All in all, a big bunch of bad news. Of course we are fully to blame, with all our nasty fossil fuel burning power stations, which in the end will be responsible for the extinction of the human race…or is that really true?

In Al Gore’s recent film, An Inconvenient Truth, we see pictures of glaciers and ice sheets 30 years ago and then today. Audiences gasp as they see just how much ice has disappeared. But is this really due to us? The problem is that if you’re going to understand anthropological climate change (caused by humans), you first have to understand natural climate change. The fact is that over the last 60 billion years the Earth has been heating up and cooling considerably. If we take the last 2 million years (known as the Quaternary) we can see that the Earth has been alternating between glacial and interglacial periods (lots of ice and then very little ice). No prizes for guessing then that we are in the middle of an interglacial. These are periods of time characterised by melting ice, and guess what…global warming!

It is this global warming over the last 20 000 years since the last ice age (glacial) that has enabled the Earth to sustain human life. So, given the temperature graphs for the last few thousand years, how can we begin to analyse the extent to which global warming is natural, and the extent to which we are causing it. The truth is that it isn’t really of much relevance.

You see, the main problem is with our perspective. Humans have never been good news for the Earth. In the short time humans have been around, they have had a massive effect on the Earth. We do not fit into a natural food chain; we do not live within a natural ecosystem and therefore we are the equivalent of a virus/cancer on the Earth (very similar to what Agent Smith says in the Matrix). That’s not true I hear you cry, but look around you-our idea of nature is an area of cultivated land, covered with one species of cow, with fences and walls, and perhaps the odd windy road. When was the last time you saw ‘real unadulterated nature’? (Probably on 'Walking with dinosaurs'). Now of course this all sounds very depressing, but it is the necessary background on which to base our thinking.

Living in perfect harmony with the environment may be impossible, but achieving the best balance possible should be our aim. In other words, minimising the impact we have on the Earth. This way, we are managing cause rather than effect. This is where our current approach goes wrong-we look at the effect we are having and then decide what to do. There are two main flaws with this approach. Firstly, as I have mentioned, it may be the case that some of the effects we are seeing are natural and not a result of human activity, and secondly there may be problems which are equally as important but less evident currently, which are paid no attention.

The solution? Global footprints. This is no new idea of mine; it is a widely known but not largely recognised method. Basically it involves considering the effect we have on the Earth by measuring it as a footprint, left on the Earth. For example a carbon footprint is often measured as the amount of trees that it would take to absorb the CO2 released by us. The focus is therefore on limiting the overall effect you have on the Earth. There are various ways of calculating such footprints, and the results are often very scary

So how is this approach different? Well it calls for an understanding that global warming, ecosystem management, water management, agriculture, pollution, waste, deforestation, land use, development, diversity, food production, energy sources etc all require consideration..

For example, current thinking is that burning fossil fuels = bad, hydroelectricity = good, because there are no emissions. But few people stop to consider the negative effects of building a dam, on habitats, local climate, water distribution, etc. This doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea-but it is important to take every impact into consideration.

The Keyword here is sustainability. Sustainable development is defined as ‘Development that meets the needs and aspirations of the current generation without compromising the ability to meet those of future generations.’ This definition is as old as me, so how comes in 19 years it has not been implemented on a macro scale? Sustainability is about limiting our effect on the environment, and managing social footprints too (the effect we are having on peoples lives i.e. Exploitation of 3^rd world).

So forget the hype and drama. What we need to do is change our lifestyles to minimise our global footprint, and then leave the Earth to do what it will.

Spot the Difference (and no it's not the clothes!!!)