Category: Environment

Are you really sure about your cell phone?

Society may be cooking up one hell of an issue.

Like most people if most western nations, for many years I had a cell phone, or a mobile phone as they are known in the UK.

I can recall a few years ago there being a scare in the UK about the microwave radiation hazard involved in using a cell phone but it certainly passed me by in terms of not really worrying about it.

Now a recent report in GQ Magazine seems to be gathering some momentum: once again, it’s about how your cell phone may be hazardous to your health.  It would be too easy just to dismiss this as just another poke at a very successful technology but something about this article caused me to write this Post – make of it what you will.

Here’s an extract:

Earlier this winter, I met an investment banker who was diagnosed with a brain tumor five years ago. He’s a managing director at a top Wall Street firm, and I was put in touch with him through a colleague who knew I was writing a story about the potential dangers of cell-phone radiation. He agreed to talk with me only if his name wasn’t used, so I’ll call him Jim. He explained that the tumor was located just behind his right ear and was not immediately fatal—the five-year survival rate is about 70 percent. He was 35 years old at the time of his diagnosis and immediately suspected it was the result of his intense cell-phone usage. “Not for nothing,” he said, “but in investment banking we’ve been using cell phones since 1992, back when they were the Gordon-Gekko-on-the-beach kind of phone.” When Jim asked his neurosurgeon, who was on the staff of a major medical center in Manhattan, about the possibility of a cell-phone-induced tumor, the doctor responded that in fact he was seeing more and more of such cases—young, relatively healthy businessmen who had long used their phones obsessively. He said he believed the industry had discredited studies showing there is a risk from cell phones. “I got a sense that he was pissed off,” Jim told me. A handful of Jim’s colleagues had already died from brain cancer; the more reports he encountered of young finance guys developing tumors, the more certain he felt that it wasn’t a coincidence. “I knew four or five people just at my firm who got tumors,” Jim says. “Each time, people ask the question. I hear it in the hallways.”

Continue reading “Are you really sure about your cell phone?” →

Brief encounter

A gift from one stranger to another

I was waiting for a flight to London one day in January, a spare seat opposite me at the table in the lounge.

A middle-aged German woman asked to sit down. She was she stopping briefly in Dubai on her way back from Australia and it seemed from the conversation that her month long trip had been some sort of possible life changing experience. By her simple back pack and even her shoes I could tell she was an individual with character.

In the minutes that passed by she talked about Tasmania and how different life was there from the one she knew at home.  I don’t recall exactly what I said to share the pleasure of her trip but did agree that it was possible to make major changes in one’s life; it obviously struck a chord.

Not so long after this brief meeting, I received an email.  She had made those big changes and she sent me a picture that she took in Tasmania as a thank you.

A Tasmanian bird greeting the morning sun

You never know how sometimes people just need someone who can see that their dreams are possible!

By Bob Derham

Organic milk in the USA

The unacceptable face of the big agricultural businesses

Another wonderful link from Naked Capitalism.  This one refers to the way that the definition of ‘organic’ as in organic milk is being twisted and distorted to favour the huge indoor milking herds, up to 10,000 cattle, that in any sensible mind could never be regarded as the organic production of milk.

This to me is a picture of organic production of milk:

An English meadow

This to me is NOT! Yet the milk from these cows is defined as organic!

Organic milk?

This last picture is courtesy of The Cornucopia Institute, another web site worth a visit whether or not you take an interest in farming – after all, one presumes that you do eat!

The article is on the Politics of the Plate website, worth your visit whether or not you are an American, and is, to me, so important that I am taking the liberty of publishing the article in full.
Here it is:
Read this very important article

A Guilty Verdict for Bomber is not “Success”!

Wartime issues – assuming we are at war!

The debate about the Christmas Day Bomber continues.   The pundits continue to define “success” in this case as finding him guilty in a court of law.  They go on and on, repeating over and over again, how the evidence is so strong, how the civilian court system is so reliable, how the shoe bomber was tried in civilian court, and how a guilty verdict is virtually certain.  

This is so wrong.  The definition of success is not whether we find the Christmas Day Bomber guilty in a civilian court.  This man intended to blow himself up on Christmas Day, and take hundreds of innocent Americans with him.  The fact that he is alive today, facing a jury or a judge and possible jail time or, at the worst, the death penalty, is a mere footnote to him.

Has it occurred to anyone that if the military had interrogated the shoe bomber as the failed terrorist that he was, that the odds of the Christmas Day Bomber getting on that plane with those explosives would have been diminished?  And interrogating the Christmas Day terrorist instead of shipping him off to the local prosecutor — for reasons Eric Holder, the U.S. Attorney General, has yet to articulate– diminishes the odds of some future terrorist act?

Eric Holder

We are at war!

These people attacked us as part of the ongoing war with terrorists.   No one should “rest easy” because some lawyer is going to sleepwalk through a trial that may or may not successfully reach the painfully obvious conclusion that the Christmas Day Bomber is guilty! On the contrary, it makes me very uneasy that he is in the civilian court system at this point in time at all, because every moment spent reading this man his rights is a moment that could have been spent gathering intelligence from a terrorist.  His punishment will come in due time.  In the meanwhile, we have to extract as much information from his as we can in order to defend ourselves.

We are at war.

By Sherry Jarrell

Growth is BAD for us

Growth is good for us?  Sorry, wrong!

An interesting story on the BBC recently. It seems that growth is now “bad” and incompatible with reducing global warming.

I have to say that this always seemed obvious to me (and despite appearances  – or indeed pretentions – I am not that clever) since IF industrial production and emissions are creating too much CO2 then it is surely obvious that more of the former will produce more of the latter. Any flaws in this argument will surely be pointed out to me pdq, but I won’t be losing any sleep – or indeed I suspect – the argument!

Well, the theory that growth is bad has now been confirmed by a scientific study …..  of course, we have learned to take some of these studies with a pinch of salt, and it doesn’t help when scientists on the “we are doomed” side sex up their findings to make their case, as was revealed just recently. I found this hilarious!! Once again, a dishonest intention to achieve ONE kind of result (boost the doomsayers’ cause) actually achieved the OPPOSITE!!! When will they ever learn?

An aerial view of the Siachen Glacier, which traverses the Himalayan region dividing India and Pakistan. Photograph: Channi Anand/AP

As for the evils of growth, I am wondering if the British Prime Minister has been informed? His entire strategy (if that is not too noble a word to use in this context) has for well over a decade been based on growth (indeed growth triumphantly trumpeted in advance as likely to be at a level far higher than it actually turns out to be) bringing in enough money to pay for his humungous over-spending.

He must be urgently rearranging his matchsticks in an effort to cook the books once again ….

And there is another side of the “no-growth” movement. YOU may very well decide that in the cause of saving the planet you will keep your consumption where it is, but – logically – that also means people in the developing world who are incredibly poor keeping THEIR consumption where IT is.  That is one hard sell. Of course, YOU may then decide to REDUCE your consumption down until it meets theirs coming up ….. No? Oh well …..

The way I see it, growth is inevitable, whether it is good for the planet or not. Which is a bit of a poser if growth is going to doom us. Still, I remain an optimist – some genius will find a way out of this enigma …. but please make it soon before we grow too much!!

By Chris Snuggs

Moscow’s dogs

Another example of the very tight bonds between man and dogs.

A couple of weeks ago Learning from Dogs published a series of videos originally broadcast by the BBC Horizon programme called The Secret Life of the Dog.  It revealed a hitherto unknown depth of understanding of dogs by man and man by dogs.  Part One of those six parts is linked to here.

Now it turns out that Russian Muscovites are fascinated by stray dogs and it is estimated that there are 35,000 stray dogs in the Russian capital city.

Interestingly, because we tend to associate the newspaper with financial matters, the British Financial Times had a fascinating article a couple of weeks ago, from which is quoted:

Where did these animals come from? It’s a question Andrei Poyarkov, 56, a biologist specialising in wolves, has dedicated himself to answering. His research focuses on how different environments affect dogs’ behaviour and social organisation. About 30 years ago, he began studying Moscow’s stray dogs. Poyarkov contends that their appearance and behaviour have changed over the decades as they have continuously adapted to the changing face of Russia’s capital. Virtually all the city’s strays were born that way: dumping a pet dog on the streets of Moscow amounts to a near-certain death sentence. Poyarkov reckons fewer than 3 per cent survive.

Do read the article as it is a revealing piece about our interest in dogs in all corners of the world.  Indeed it mentions a web site devoted to stray dogs on Moscow’s Metro railway.

Russian stray

By Paul Handover

Track – the puppy

Yet another lovely dog rescue story

Once again, we are indebted to Naked Capitalism for bringing this lovely story to our attention.  It was originally published in the Birmingham (Alabama) News.

Track inspector for CSX railroad Gary McLean found this puppy frozen to the tracks in last weekend's cold snap. The puppy, now named Track, has found a home with a dog lover in Bessemer.

One near victim of the cold is now happy and warm and residing in Bessemer.

Last Saturday, Gary McLean, a track inspector for CSX Railroad, found and rescued a tiny shivering puppy who’d become frozen to the train tracks.

It was 7:30 a.m. and the temperature was about 14 degrees. McClean, a resident of the Trussville-Argo area, was riding in a rail mounted truck near Caro lina Avenue looking for any obstacles in advance of a train that would be headed down that track about an hour later. He heard something go bump on the track, stopped and looked back, but saw nothing. He turned forward and, ahead of him, he saw a tiny ball of fur on the tracks.

McLean is accustomed to encountering dead dogs along the tracks, but as he got closer, he saw the little ball of fur moving.”It was big timeshivering,” he said. “I felt so sorry for him.”

Apparently, the 5-inch-tall mutt had gotten wet in a nearby ditch. When he tried to jump the 7-inch-tall rail, he got stuck and his icy fur froze to the track. McLean tried applying warm water and lifting him off. That didn’t work. So he took a knife and carefully cut him off the track.

If the train had come, the dog would never have been able to set himself free, McLean said. McLean took pictures of the puppy and sent them to his wife, Lois.
The McLean’s already have three dogs and couldn’t adopt another. So they turned to the Internet to find the dog a home.

She posted the picture on Facebook and the story found its way to the blog of ABC 33/40 meteorologist James Spann. The e-mails started pouring in.

Sorting through the of fers, the McLeans decided to give the dog to Terry Walls of Bessemer.

“He is doing great,” Walls said as the puppy she’s named Track chewed on her slipper.

“Track had a manly ring to it,” she said.

Walls estimated the puppy is 7 or 8 weeks old. It has a full set of sharp teeth and has German Shepherd and possibly some husky in his ancestry.

'Track' the lucky puppy

By Paul Handover

“FACE” and the Human Spirit

Putting on a face with deadly consequences!

I worked for 10 years at ISUGA, a school in Quimper, France dedicated to multi-cultural understanding and international co-operation in business. This was an extremely rich experience at a school where the majority of the foreign students were Chinese.

The campus at ISUGA, Quimper, France

It is also, incidentally, the place where I had to good fortune to meet Jon Lavin and Paul Handover, fellow authors on Learning from Dogs.

I like to think that I have always been sensitive to the cultural differences between different nationalities. Having lived abroad for long periods in both France and Germany, the idea of living in a sort of English enclave somewhere, jealously guarding such cultural practices as endless burgers and fish and chips, is totally anathema to me.

I am human first and English second and if I live in Germany, France or anywhere else I want to live like the natives as far as possible …

This also means making an effort to understand and accept their “culture”. Now this normally poses no problem, but with my Asian friends there is one aspect of their culture that I could not accept. And of course, if one DOES put one’s humanity first, then there is always the risk that the culture of one’s hosts – in some respect – may have to take second place. The “culture ” of Germany in the 1930s was fascist, and I certainly could not have lived with that.

No, what causes me problems with Asians (and particularly Chinese) is this question of “FACE”. One is supposed – and one learns this on “cultural-understanding” courses for businessmen (which of course I organised at my school!!) – to so arrange things that EVEN IF the Asian negotiating counterpart is a complete fool and/or makes the most idiotic errors one must ALWAYS find a way to avoid humiliating them in any way.

Well, “humiliating” is too strong a word in fact … one is supposed to arrange things that they never seem to be in an “inferior” position in any way.

My problem with this is that it is in fact the antithesis of everything this site stands for, which is integrity, truth and honesty. Now if a negotiating partner does in fact make some sort of mistake then to pretend otherwise just to preserve their “face” is dishonest, isn’t it?  And what are we in fact preserving? An IMAGE and not the reality.

Claudia S

It is, in fact, totally AGAINST the Human Spirit. We are all fallible. I know of no perfect men or women (though Claudia Schiffer comes close 😉 ). It is simply DISHONEST to deny this to preserve “FACE”.

The current British government could have done with learning this lesson. For YEARS there was never ANY acceptance that, yes – perhaps – they might have got some things wrong. Funnily enough, this is coming now in short bursts, but not enough to be convincing – shame!

“FACE” is of course a FACADE.  I no longer am interest in facades, but the truth. But the worse aspect of this Asian FACE thing is that it is so totally accepted by them (and by us, but that’s our fault) as being “normal” and acceptable. No, it is NOT acceptable.

The stimulus for this post came from the recent execution of a British drug-smuggler in China. Now it is quite clear from what has been revealed that this guy was A) not fully compos mentis and B) was set up as a mule by a handler. He was caught, tried, sentenced to death and executed by the Chinese. No, I have no sympathy for drug-smugglers, but Mr “Big” he was not.

What muddied the waters even more was that the British Prime Minister made a special plea for clemency, which might very well in normal cases have been granted. But these were not normal circumstances. Just before this incident the British had severely criticized the Chinese for their stance on Global Warming at the Copenhagen Conference. Now, ANY criticism of the CPP (Chinese Communist Party) is likely to be taken as a “loss of face”. One suspects – but there is no way to know – that the Chinese refusal to listen to Prime Minister Brown’s very strong plea for clemency was the CPP’s way of putting the British government in its place and restoring its “face”.

The point is, BEING WRONG is HUMAN. Pretending to be RIGHT all the time is NOT HUMAN. It is IMPOSSIBLE. We should accept this and learn humility. Sadly, the words “humility” and “Chinese Communist Party” are unlikely bedfellows.

By Chris Snuggs

[When Chris wrote this Post, he was unaware of one that I had written that was published on the 28th.  Interesting parallels! Ed.]

“He Hamster”

For anyone lucky enough to be around in the 1970s, the British comedy program Fawlty Towers was a must to watch, and still today has a cult following.

In the last episode Manuel the waiter has a Siberian Hamster called Basil, which just happens to be the name of the hotel owner, who is convinced that the creature is a rat, and all this when the health inspector is due to arrive.

Fawlty Towers - Manuel on the right!

With this idea and memory firmly in my mind I would never have looked at getting a Hamster, but for some reason our middle daughter Stephanie wanted one, and kept up constant daily pressure to get one.

I knew something was happening, because there were phone and internet messages about cages, and finally Poppy arrived.

We now have the cage which because it is made of clear plastic means you can see the little creature all the time, and watch her activities. The children have learnt the meaning of being responsible; fresh water, buying food, and making sure the bowl is topped up have become part of the daily routine. Keeping the cage clean and making a warm comfortable nest are big things in a young persons life !

This is a very up-market cage, even the toilet area is a Harrods tea caddy laid on it’s side.

Poppy has become part of our lives, a lovely little animal, who we take with us in a special box sometimes when we go out. Stephanie picks her up first thing in the morning, and keeps her in the pocket of her dressing gown. We have a special exercise wheel which is set up in the lounge of an evening. The dogs lay and watch this spectacle but don’t touch!

We have had bits of fun, especially when Stephanie put Poppy in her dolls house while she was cleaning the cage, and Poppy got stuck up the chimney. Paul, her brother, has left the lid off the cage a couple of times, and learnt from Stephanie about the need to pay more attention to his role in all this. Poor chap !

The love and care for a little creature is very special, and the having Poppy is proving a great learning tool for the children, and even I have weakened and enjoy her being with us.

Funny what can happen in family life!

By Bob Derham

The secret life of the dog, Concluding Part

Concluding this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.

If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

Part Three is here.

Part Four is here.

Part Five is here.

By Paul Handover