Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.
Category: Environment
The work ethic!
I moved out to San Carlos, Sonora State, Mexico in September 2008 and while San Carlos is a favourite holiday & second home place for North Americans, it is still possible to watch the way that Mexicans approach their lives and view the world.
This lovely tale was sent to me recently (thank you Jonathan) and it is published because it not only illustrates the Mexican attitude but also reminds us ‘Westerners’ that we aren’t necessarily correct with our Western views.
Is blogging the same as journalism?
There is a very interesting Post on the Blog TechCrunch. Let me quote a little from that Post:
Last week two bloggers, Steven Frischling and Chris Elliot, were visited by TSA agents and threatened with jail time if they did not reveal their source of the TSA Travel Directive that they each published shortly after the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas day. Frischling caved
immediately and handed over his computer. Elliot did not. Since then the Department of Homeland Security has dropped
I’ll never be surprised by a tyrannical government. In a sense, it’s their job. It’s our job as bloggers to stand up to that tyranny, even if our liberty has been threatened. Journalists have gone to jail
A walk in two continents.
For many years it’s been traditional for me and the family to take a walk on New Year’s Day. But this time, without me, my wife and family back in the UK decided to go to Stonehenge for a walk, on a cold crisp day.
Why ‘back in the UK’? Because I was in Sharjah, one of the seven emirates in the UAE.
When here I always stay in one of the original hotels of the country, built on the edge of the corniche. As the day was warm and bright I decided to vary my walk.
Instead of going some 5kms round the lagoon, I made my way towards the area where the shops are mostly run by Indian people. For many years their influence has been very strong, indeed the rupee was used as currency until not long ago.
It didn’t take long to leave the main area that is regularly seen and head down towards the old port where the Dhows are moored. There is an ancient feel to this area, and the water front is full of activity.
There was one man who had been unloading coal from his boat onto the quay side. You could hardly see his features until he smiled. All along there were people onboard their various craft, none of which really looked seaworthy, but which obviously make a regular and long journey to India.
The pathway was broken, and the occasional cat appeared from a rubbish bin. I made my way past the open market where animals are sold. Nothing is hidden here ! It was prayer time, and from many different minarets came the sound of the chanting. There was a lot of dirt and rubbish, uneven walk areas, and tatty shops. All with quite an East African feel. I passed a selection of tents where many plants and flowers were for sale; no garden centre as we have come to expect in England.
I finally worked my way down to the fish market, and was amazed at the white covering to the broken pathway, which turned out to be made up entirely of fish scales.
The next part of the walk was back towards the lagoon where directly in front of me was the Burj Dubai, which has taken
just over 5 years to build, and measures 2684 feet. It is due to open this week, and if you want some office space, the cost is $4000 per square foot. The contrast from such back street filth to the glitter of the world’s tallest building separated by only a few miles brought home the stark contrast of what for most people is reality, and the unreal.
Sadly the amount of rubbish in all its forms is a huge problem, but I did smile when I saw one fisherman improvising, for instead of a float on the end of his line he was using the upturned remains of an old plastic bottle, but it did work!
Nobody bothered me, and I was quite happy taking in the sights and smells, and lost in my own thoughts, amazed that if you smiled and caught somebody’s gaze they would likely wish you Happy New Year.
By Bob Derham
The best place to live? It’s all down to your neighbors!
No offense to anyone else, but I live in the perfect neighborhood.
My neighborhood is not big; it consists of only one street, a circle; where you enter the street is the same place you exit. There are only about 30 homes on my street. None of them are very fancy or very big. Most of the houses are older. Some need repair. One or two are empty now. No, it isn’t the size of the neighborhood or the grandeur of the houses.
I live close to the University where I work. I could walk to work if I needed to. But I haven’t needed to, except for the one time, when the Presidential debate was held on campus and security closed it down to all but pedestrian traffic. Although it is certainly convenient, proximity to work is not the reason my neighborhood is perfect.
My girls are unlikely to agree just yet with my assessment of our neighborhood. But they are still young, and there are no kids their age on our street. One neighbor does have grandchildren their age who visit sometimes, but that doesn’t really count, they tell me. Off and on, they complain and say they want to move. My 15-year-old wants to live in a city, the bigger the better, the more people the better; my 13-year-old wants to live on a horse farm, the bigger the better, the more horses the better.
But I tell them that some day, when they are married and have children and are busy with life, they will look back on this time in our neighborhood, and will understand what I meant when I told them how very lucky we are to live here.
Because we have neighbors; real neighbors!
They welcome new families with home-baked bread; take in your mail when you are away; call to check on you when you are sick; give you a ride to get your car out of the shop; lend you their extra tall ladder. All without hesitation and without expecting anything in return. And they let me do what I can for them. 
There’s genuine warmth and support between neighbors on my street. It’s like an extended family.
Maybe even a little better! Why? Because they do all of this without pushing, without invading your privacy, without crossing into your personal space. They are supportive without being nosy. How totally wonderful: to have support when you need it but, as important, perhaps more important, you also have your privacy. I can’t imagine a better combination. I can’t imagine feeling safer. I can’t imagine a more wonderful neighborhood. I can’t imagine a better home. My neighbors are the best.
What comes around goes around!
A few years ago I saw an advert for a small piano sized electric organ in our local shop window.
Great I thought, that will be a good way to introduce some music into the home, and see if I can add pedals to the idea of playing the piano.
It didn’t take long to track down the owner, but unfortunately the organ was in a back room, down two sets of stairs, round a corner, in a house which was isolated and difficult to find. Whereas I should have gone along with a team of
people, there were only three of us to move the instrument, but we eventually managed to move the thing out of the house, and into a trailer which we used to transport it to our house.
My wife thought I was mad, but I really liked it because it only had the sound of an organ, not a choice of sounds. It even had stops, not buttons to choose the different pipes you wanted to use.
Actually we were undertaking a great deal of building work at the time thus when our local church’s organ came to the end of it’s life, it seemed a good idea to offer them the chance to have this piece. It was ten times better than the original and sounded wonderful: job done!
However, last year some kind soul left money to the church and it was decided that the churcch could afford a new organ.
It duly arrived and our old one was moved to an alcove at the back of the church: I was asked to remove it.
Where was I going to put it? By chance we had acquired an almost new one ourselves and nobody seemed to want this old but wonderful piece.
We tried Ebay – no luck. Adverts – again no interest. The pressure started to grow.
People were asking me to move that old organ of mine. Letters started to arrive. Could I please take it away – I became the bad guy.
Eventually, I made contact with a man in London who would be happy to take it away for free, but he wanted to hear it play. Whoops! It was already loaded on my trailer!
But I managed to position trailer and load near an electric socket and in broad daylight, with the aid of the mobile phone, I stood and played a range of music! Our customer was happy.
He agreed to come at about eight o’clock one Saturday morning, but actually arrived two hours ahead of time at six in the morning!
The man brought his wife, dressed in her national dress, explaining that they wanted the organ for a church in their village back in Ghana. They had never ventured outside London, so this visit to the country was a major event. They joined us for breakfast and we showed our children a map depicting where the organ would eventually go.
The man was built like an ox and he and his wife together were quite happy to lift the instrument and put it in the back of their vehicle.
Funny old life!
By Bob Derham
Trust is both taught and learnt!
Thanks to Naked Capitalism, we posted an item on the 19th December about an unknown wild-life ranger working in the wildlife refuge area of Lanseria, South Africa. Here was one of the pictures included in that Post:
The Post finished with an appeal to anyone that knew the name of this Ranger. Many of you did and responded; thank you!
Another example of the power of social media.
I subscribe to Naked Capitalism, as much for the Antidote du Jour, as for the fine economic commentaries. In my inbox of the 16th December was this wonderful antidote. A quick Google search shows that these pictures are spreading like wildfire around the world’s email servers. Not without reason.
Maybe these pictures resonate in all of us when we long for some simpler way of life …..
This Ranger is assigned to prevent poaching around the wildlife refuge area of Lanseria, South Africa. The way these animals interact with him is absolutely stunning! The lions seem to know he’s there to protect them. His charm works with hyenas and cougars too. Hyenas are usually vicious. Check out the pictures taken in the river – amazing because lions hate water.
As they say, don’t try this at home!
How to approach the global warming dilemma.
Yesterday, a Post was published a Post about Greg Craven. It made the point that social media was becoming a very real force in influencing opinions and how that threatened traditional politics. Here’s an extract:
I was doing some research for an earlier Post about Copenhagen and came across a YouTube video created by Greg. More details and links later after making a more fundamental point.
This video of Greg’s has had 2,704,000 viewings! The information on that YouTube ‘page’ has had over 7,500,000 viewings. Greg has now written a book and so on, and so on.
Now I want to return to the core subject of how we deal with very complex issues that have the power to decimate humanity, e.g. global warming.
The fact is that the majority of people who think about such issues as global warming don’t have the skills and knowledge to determine what to do for the best. It comes down to determining risks, which was the theme of an earlier Post acknowledging the work of Peter L Bernstein.
That’s also the theme of Greg Craven’s video on YouTube. It’s a noble effort by a concerned citizen of Planet Earth. Watch it.
By Paul Handover
It’s getting crowded down here!
For those readers who are not regular BBC television viewers, the Beeb has for many years run an excellent factual/science & nature series under the name of Horizon. Just recently there was a programme with the title of How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?
It was presented by that familiar face on the BBC in terms of the natural world, Sir David Attenborough. It was an appropriate and worthy person to present the information.
But before getting into some of the details underpinning the programme, there seems to been an enormous and unspoken omission at Copenhagen – why no debate about global population trends?
Luckily the media noticed the rather obvious exclusion. Here’s the UK Daily Telegraph newspaper (online version) of the 8th December, 2009. An extract:
Population growth is the one issue accused of causing driving climate change that no one at the Copenhagen climate summit dares to talk about.
The argument is that more people consume more resources, therefore producing more greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
The global population is currently at 6 billion and could rise to 11 billion by 2050 if fertility rates continue, not only threatening the climate, but food shortages and conflict as well.
Organisations like the Optimum Population Trust, that is backed by Sir Jonathan Porritt, Dame Jane Goodall and Sir David Attenborough, advocate birth control as a way of slowing climate change.
As Sir David has said: “I’ve never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more.”
A study by the London School of Economics found contraception is almost five times cheaper as a means of preventing climate change than conventional green solutions such as investing in green technology.
There’s a new power on the streets and it may make politicians feel very uncomfortable!
Like me, you probably haven’t heard of Greg Craven. I hadn’t until about 24 hours before starting to write this Post (that would be Friday afternoon, Mountain Time, on the 11th December).
I was doing some research for an earlier Post about Copenhagen and came across a YouTube video created by Greg. More details and links later after making a more fundamental point.
This video of Greg’s has had 2,704,000 viewings! The information on that YouTube ‘page’ has had over 7,500,000 viewings. Greg has now written a book and so on, and so on.
In other words, the personal message that Greg is conveying has reached an unbelievable number of people. That would have been impossible without the power and reach of modern social media software systems: YouTube, Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, at al.
In the past, information has flowed outwards in a much more ‘top down’ way. Hierarchical, as it is called. That has suited those that wish, in some way, to control the message. While individuals would always chatter and gossip with their peers, there was a finite limit to that before “Send reinforcements, we are going to advance” morphed into “Send three and fourpence, we are going to a dance”!
The example of Greg Craven shows only too well how information can now flow. Out of anyone’s control, spreading virally.
Having made my point, I want to return to the subject matter that Greg is championing – but will include that in a separate Post.
Politicians! Be very careful what you say. We are all listening now, in one way or another, and ready to pounce if we don’t trust your words!
Learning from Dogs 