Don’t know about you but I find that it is all too easy to get wound up by so much that is going on in this crazy world. That’s not to marginalise the threats to society that are all around us and there are some powerful writers out there who work so hard to inform the world as to the truth of those threats. (As an aside, one of my favourite authors is this context is Patrice Ayme, just see this recent Post of his as an example of his depth of analysis.)
But my dear friend of over 40 years, Dan Gomez, recently sent me a link to a video of the 10 most extreme airports in the world. That stirred some memories from my own flying days.
First settle back and enjoy 7 minutes of reasons why you don’t want to think about flying! 😉
The YouTube video has this information, which I republish below,
Pictures and videos of the top 10 most extreme airports in the world!
San Diego: Busy airspace lots of buildings on approach
Madeira: Difficult approach and did have a short runway
Eagle Vail: High altitude, short runway & mountainous approach & departure
Courchevel: Short runway, bumpy runway, high altitude
Kai Tak: Difficult approch, fly through tall buildings, short runway
Gibraltar: Short runway, building on approach, winds from the Gibraltar rock
St Maarten: Short runway, has to fly over the beach with alot of people on there, steep takeoff because of mountains
St Barts: Short runway, has to dive.
St Barts: To land, the low approach on that hill thingy
Toncontin: Difficult approach, short runway
Lukla, short runway, only was cemented a few years ago, no go around, if land too low you land into a cliff
First song: La Perla by Kobojsarna
Second song: Feel It – Explicit Album Version by Three 6 Mafia vs Tiesto with Sean Kingston and Flo Rida
Now to a personal recollection.
I was a private pilot for many years, first learning to fly at the Suffolk Aero Club at Ipswich Airport in Suffolk, England. My first lesson was on the 3rd March, 1984!
Some twenty years later, on the 13th August 2004 to be exact, I was checked out to land at Courchevel Airport in an aircraft type known as a TB20, a French-built aircraft. Here’s the page from my log book with the necessary authorisation stamp affixed.
Cleared to land at Courchevel, LFLJ!
The following year, 19th July, 2005, I added my wonderful Piper Super Cub to that authorisation. (See here for a part picture of the aircraft.)
So thanks to YouTube as someone has uploaded a film of a light aircraft operating into Courchevel. It really is rather thrilling!
Finally, back to Dan. Here’s his recollections included in the email that he sent with that first film.
Just found this. I’ve landed at two of these. Eagle Vail was a piece of cake compared to Toncontin as Marty and Bruce know. BAE146 and small Boeing jets. I flew in and out of Toncontin 5 times in the 90’s and had no idea it was as scary as it was. That is to say, I knew it was scary because my palms sweated and heartbeat was about 140 but when I look at it now I go “what was I thinking?”
Take offs were like Orange County, Full brake power straight up. The big difference was you were shuttling along the runway and then down the runway and finally, up the runway to get the wheels up.
One time, on a connecting flight from Medellin, we taxied in, were boarded by military police with drug dogs who sniffed their way through the aisle. Bags were searched while everyone waited in intense heat. It took about 2 hours, three time longer than necessary. Then the interior was fumigated with everyone aboard. All the big machine guns too. Nobody said a word!
There’s one thing about flying a light aircraft, especially into ‘interesting’ airfields, you don’t have a moment to worry about the state of the world!
I hadn’t come across Mr. Hanauer before but thanks to some Facebook comments by Patrice Ayme found this YouTube video that is well-worth watching. That’s an understatement!
The fundamental message that is contained in this short video seems critical, well to me it does, to society (that’s all of us, by the way) understanding why so many things seem to be going so very wrong for so many people. But let me stop there before it becomes another of my rants!
Who is Nick Hanauer? Here is a small extract from Nick Hanauer’s website,
Nicolas J Hanauer is a partner with Second Avenue Partners, a Seattle venture capital partnership specializing in early state startups and emerging technology. He has had a hand in such companies as Amazon.com and aQuantive among others.
Hanauer’s career began with a position as executive VP of Sales and Marketing at Pacific Coast Feather Company, a family owned manufacturer of basic bedding. In his time in that role, he helped grow Pacific Coast from several million dollars to more than $300 million in sales. Hanauer subsequently served as the company’s Co-Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer and remains Chief Executive Officer.
In 1988, Hanauer co-founded Museum Quality Framing Company, a company that has emerged the largest of its kind on the west coast with 60 locations. Hanauer was also one of the first investors in Amazon.com in 1995, where he served as a Board Advisor until January of 2000.
In 1996, he founded and served as CEO of internet media company Avenue A Media (later re-named aQuantive, Inc.) and became Chairman of the Board upon the first public offering in 2000. aQuantive was purchased by Microsoft in August of 2007 for 6.4 billion dollars; the largest acquisition in Microsoft history.
Now the video; less than 6 minutes long – do watch it!
As a one-time entrepreneur back in the 80’s I can vouch for much of what Mr. Hanauer proclaims in his video. The essence of successful marketing for any business, large and small, is understanding your market. Seeing the customer’s world through the customer’s eyes would be another way of putting that.
In plain language that means carefully and closely understanding what your customers, both actual and prospective, require, objectively and subjectively, and providing it to them profitably. As the middle-classes (don’t like the term but it will have to do) are often the largest market opportunity, then it does follow that a healthy and vibrant middle-class is going to be best overall for the health and vibrancy of a country. Indeed, in this very inter-connected world, that really equates to the health and vibrancy of our planet.
Which so easily leads on to a core truth. This one. If all the Governments democratically elected on this planet truly acknowledged the democratic foundation, as Lincoln so ably put it, “government of the people, by the people, for the people” then those governments would be united in the one most important task facing the people – creating a sustainable way for us to live on the only planet we have!
Take a couple of minutes off and bury our crazy world with a laugh. With big thanks to Dan Gomez for forwarding on what had been sent to him by Greg H.
How lady luck brought joy for a ‘down-and-out’ Londoner and a cat called Bob!
I was chatting with my son yesterday and he happened to mention that perhaps I should write about a cat for a change! Alex mentioned a book recently published in the UK called A Street Cat Named Bob: How One Man and His Cat Found Hope on the Streets.
This is how the book is described on Amazon (UK site),
When James Bowen found an injured, ginger street cat curled up in the hallway of his sheltered accommodation, he had no idea just how much his life was about to change. James was living hand to mouth on the streets of London and the last thing he needed was a pet. Yet James couldn’t resist helping the strikingly intelligent tom cat, whom he quickly christened Bob. He slowly nursed Bob back to health and then sent the cat on his way, imagining he would never see him again. But Bob had other ideas. Soon the two were inseparable and their diverse, comic and occasionally dangerous adventures would transform both their lives, slowly healing the scars of each other’s troubled pasts. A Street Cat Named Bob is a moving and uplifting story that will touch the heart of anyone who reads it.
A quick web search found volumes of material, so let’s start with this video,
The local London newspaper the Islington Tribune wrote this back in 2010,
Two cool cats… the Big Issue seller and a stray called Bob
Inseparable: musician James Bowen with Bob
Down-on-his-luck musician teams up with ‘wonderful loyal friend’ he rescued from streets
Published: 24 September, 2010
by PETER GRUNER
NOT since the legendary Dick Whittington has a man and his cat become such unlikely celebrities on the streets of Islington.
Big Issue seller James Bowen and his docile ginger cat Bob, who go everywhere together, have been attracting comments since they first appeared outside Angel Tube station.
The story of how they met – widely reported in blogs on the internet – is one of such extraordinary pathos that it seems only a matter of time before we get a Hollywood film.
James, 31, who lives off Seven Sisters Road, Holloway, is a musician who has fallen on hard times.
He ekes out a basic living selling the homeless people’s magazine Big Issue at Angel and Covent Garden.
Bob was a stray discovered by James outside his accommodation one day.
The cat was limping after apparently being attacked by another animal, possibly a fox.
After failing to discover the cat’s owner, James took him to the RSPCA hospital at Finsbury Park, which prescribed a course of antibiotics.
“I kept him for two weeks until he was well enough to go on his way,” said James. “But when I opened the front door to let him out Bob wouldn’t move. He seemed to me to be saying: ‘I want to stay with you.’
“Now we go everywhere together. I even have a cat harness when we go out and Bob gets really excited when I show it to him.”
Read the rest of the article here and if you want more information, a web search on Bob the Cat will finds loads more.
It’s a fabulous story with a great message of hope for not just for James and Bob but for all of us that find ourselves ‘up a creek without a paddle’ at points in our lives.
Here’s how the newspaper The Daily Mail wrote about it on their website,
[last half of the story]
But then Bob started following him and it became increasingly difficult to shoo him away, especially as there were dangerous roads to be crossed. One day there was nothing for it but to put Bob on a makeshift lead and take him along. Bob travelled sitting on James’s shoulders.
The trouble was, so many cat-mad passers-by stopped him to stroke the animal that James arrived late at his pitch, secretly cursing Bob for thereby costing him some of his usual £25-a-day takings. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Within minutes, people who would normally have walked by without giving James a second glance were lingering to make a fuss of the cat sitting sedately in his guitar case, and most made a donation. By the end of the day, he’d racked up more than £60.
It was the beginning of a phenomenon as tourists and commuters befriended Bob and James, many bringing titbits for the cat. People were amazed at how placidly Bob would sit all day, quite happily watching the world go by while James earned a living. Not that it was always without a hitch; on a couple of occasions Bob bolted when startled, leading to a frantic chase through the crowded streets.
Bob’s popularity continued when James switched from busking to selling the Big Issue, the magazine produced and sold by homeless people. This change in direction was part of James’s growing sense of a need to get his life in order, which he puts down to the responsibility of looking after Bob, and the example the cat offered of the possibility of a second chance.
It enabled James to make the final push to end his drug dependency, going through the necessary cold turkey to get off heroin substitutes, and to mend broken contacts with his family. The final result of Bob’s influence came when a literary agent who passed the duo every day and had seen them on YouTube suggested James tell their story in a book. The result is this heart-warming tale with a message of hope that will appeal especially to the many cat obsessives out there.
A Biological Basis for the Unconscious? Surely not?
Ten days ago or thereabouts, I saw a piece on Big Think about the unconscious. The title of the piece was as the sub-heading: A Biological Basis for the Unconscious? I was intrigued, to say the least, and wanted to write about that on Learning from Dogs.
Today, the question of how people make decisions is an animated and essential one, capturing the attention of everyone from neuroscientists to lawyers to artists. In 1956, there was one person in all of New York known for his work on the brain: Harry Grundfest. An aspiring psychiatrist who was born in Austria in the 1930’s, Eric Kandel took an elective in brain science during medical school and found himself studying alongside Grudfest at Columbia University.
“What is it you want to study?” Grundfest asked Kandel. “I want to know where the id, the ego, and the super-ego are located in the brain,” Kandel replied. Grundfest looked at him as if he was crazy. “I haven’t got the foggiest notion whether these constructs exist,” he said. “But the way to approach the brain is to study it one cell at a time. Why don’t you study how the cells work?”
Now it would be improper to republish the whole article, not having permission to so do, and I thoroughly recommend you going to the article here and reading it completely from the Big Think website.
But there are a number of interesting videos on YouTube and the one I have selected is a great example of Kandel’s power of mind. As the short description of the video reveals, “A Conversation With Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel, Who Continues to Look Forward at 80.”
It’s been a while since Sue of Dreamwalker’s Sanctuary and I started following each other’s Blogs and from time to time Sue sends me an email with something for Learning from Dogs. On the 20th March, I published a guest post from Sue called the Winds of Change. If you didn’t read her wonderful poem then do go there and read it.
Anyway, just a couple of days ago Sue sent me an email with a link to a YouTube video. Put aside a few minutes and be entranced.
So you have just watched the video. How do you feel? I bet that your feelings are not a million miles from the realisation that, like Fiona the dog, being ‘lost‘ is an uncomfortable, unsettling but necessary step along the journey of being ‘found‘. As I wrote in the concluding part of my story Night messages, “The message from the night, as clear as the rays of this new day’s sun, the message to pass to all those he loved. If you don’t get lost, there’s a chance you may never be found.”
When the bond between a human and a dog is expressed as deep love, as it so often is, we relearn the most important lesson of all creation. That mankind’s only hope for the future comes from the pool of love.
No better portrayed than by the photograph below that I presented in a Post on the 17th March, Change out of Hope.
The power of love.
“The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog.“ Samuel Coleridge
The second of an unmissable series of four 1-hour videos from National Geographic.
The background and introduction to the first episode was published yesterday. So I won’t natter on today saying more or less the same thing.
But I will add this thought.
The videos are tough viewing but compelling because they show the complexity and inter-relatedness of all forms of life on our Planet. It shows that the debate about climate change/global warming/call it what you will is not a simplistic do you or do you not believe mankind is at the root of the changes. No it’s a much more complex question about the threat to our whole biosphere, as Patrice Ayme so eloquently spelt out on March 2nd. These videos make that crystal clear.
Here’s the second episode,
National Geographic – Strange Days on Planet Earth – Part 2 of 4 – One Degree Factor
An unmissable series of four 1-hour videos from National Geographic.
In my summary yesterday of what had come out of the Posts about man’s influence on the planet, I wrote, “But one of the most wonderful aspects for me was the incredible sharing of ideas and resources.” I then gave many details of those resources. One of the great links was a blogsite called Dogs of Doubt. On that blogsite I came across an item published on the 8th March, called Strange Days on Planet Earth. With permission I repost how that item was introduced.
While the average global temperature on Earth has increased by 1 degree Celsius in the last century, in some places on Earth the temperature has increased by a phenomenal 11 Degrees, for some species, already adapted to life as it has been for millions of years such changes puts them in great danger.
Inter-species transfer from one continent to another through what many thought were harmless human activities has placed great pressures on the survival of local animals, insects and even plants, all of which were not prepared for the arrival of newer, more aggressive species.
In many areas of the world some ocean species are actually relocating themselves in order to survive the loss of their food resources and habitats due to the warming of the oceans.
Herds of animals are vanishing as they struggle with warming temperatures which bring in longer breeding seasons for many insects in turn affecting the living standards and health of the many animals they attack.
On land and across the world entire lakes are either disappearing or being reduced in size through the effects of long lasting droughts, the lack of rain waters in some parts is changing much of our surrounding environment and the dust this causes in some parts of the world is affecting the health of children thousands of miles away.
In the oceans plankton are down 20% to what they were in the 1950s, when the waters are cold they do well but now that the waters are warmer their numbers are falling drastically.
Every little change that occurs on earth through global warming might not mean much to some, but all these changes will eventually add together until our environment reaches a breaking point from which none of us may survive.
This video series from National Geographic aims to create an innovative type of environmental awareness by revealing a cause and effect relationship between what we as humans do to the Earth and what that in turn does to our environment and ecosystems, the series creates a new sense of environmental urgency.
Each of the four episodes is constructed as a high-tech detective story, with the fate of the planet at stake.
Jean and I have watched the first two episodes in full and are about 60% through the third. They are both spell-binding and eye-opening. I believe they were first aired by PBS back in 2005 but, no matter, they are even more relevant today.
So for today and the rest of the week I shall provide a link to the YouTube copy of each programme. Please, if you can, do put aside an hour to watch each video and, even better, please give us your feedback to Learning from Dogs.
The first episode is called Invaders.
National Geographic – Strange Days on Planet Earth – Part 1 of 4 – Invaders
Around the globe, scientists are racing to solve a series of mysteries. Unsettling transformations are sweeping across the planet, and clue by clue, investigators around the world are assembling a new picture of Earth, discovering ways that seemingly disparate events are connected. Crumbling houses in New Orleans are linked to voracious creatures from southern China. Vanishing forests in Yellowstone are linked to the disappearance of wolves. An asthma epidemic in the Caribbean is linked to dust storms in Africa. Scientists suspect we have entered a time of global change swifter than any human being has ever witnessed. Where are we headed? What can we do to alter this course of events? National Geographic’s Strange Days on Planet Earth, premiered on PBS, explores these questions. Drawing upon research being generated by a new discipline, Earth System Science (ESS), the series aims to create an innovative type of environmental awareness. By revealing a cause and effect relationship between what we as humans do to the Earth and what that in turn does to our environment and ecosystems, the series creates a new sense of environmental urgency. Award-winning actor, writer and director Edward Norton (Primal Fear, American History X, Italian Job) hosts the series. A dedicated environmental activist, Norton has a special interest in providing solar energy to low income families. Each of the four one-hour episodes is constructed as a high-tech detective story, with the fate of the planet at stake.
All my life, well all the years that I have appreciated a ‘tea-break’, stopping for a cup of hot tea has been laden with symbolism. A chance to let the brain catch up with whatever one is doing. When working with others an opportunity to stand back and evaluate how the particular project is going. When sharing a project with a loved one, an opportunity to lay down memories for future years, and so forth. (Jean and I were building a chicken coop yesterday afternoon.) Sure there are millions of people that share these feelings.
Anyway, as many of you have been aware, the last 10 days or so on Learning from Dogs have been pretty ‘full-on’ in terms of man and Planet Earth. It started with me publishing on the 27th February a Post called Please help! – A plea to those who understand climate science so much better than I do!. Then on the 2nd March, I republished a Post from Patrice Ayme called The collapse of the biosphere.
That there were a total of 6,313 viewings of those Posts and 69 comments (OK, that doesn’t mean different individuals) was incredibly gratifying – a very big ‘thank you’ to all of you that read the Posts, and likewise to those that commented.
But one of the most wonderful aspects for me was the incredible sharing of ideas and resources. So the point of today’s Post is to bring all those links and contacts onto one ‘page’, so to speak.
Martin Lack was the first to point me in the direction of the book, Merchants of Doubt. There are a number of videos on YouTube but the one below is a good introduction to Naomi Oreskes.
On October 28, 2010 historian of science Naomi Oreskes gave a presentation at Forum Lectures (US Embassy Brussels), based on her new book, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, about how right wing scientists founded the George Marshall Institute which has become a key hub for successfully spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about climate change, along with other environmental issues, and how myths about science enable these political strategies to work.
An in-depth video of over an hour from the University of Rhode Island’s Spring 2010 Vetlesen Lecture Series, hugely worth watching, is here.
Then there is the powerful blog site, De Smog Blog. As the site explains, “The DeSmogBlog Project began in January 2006 and quickly became the world’s number one source for accurate, fact based information regarding global warming misinformation campaigns. TIME Magazine named DeSmogBlog in its “25 Best Blogs of 2011” list.”
Moving on. One of the challenges is knowing how to look up some reasonably reliable information about a person who is claiming this or that. That’s where SourceWatch is invaluable. The website describes itself, “The Center for Media and Democracy publishes SourceWatch, this collaborative resource for citizens and journalists looking for documented information about the corporations, industries, and people trying to influence public policy and public opinion. We believe in telling the truth about the most powerful interests in society—not just relating their self-serving press releases or letting real facts be bleached away by spin.”
Let me give you an example of how SourceWatch works. In my Post A skeptic’s view, Dan offered extensive comment about U.S. Senator James Inhofe’s book The Greatest Hoax. A quick search on SourceWatch revealed (a) (my emboldening)
Arthur B. Robinson is one of the three co-founders of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, a group best known for organising a petition disputing the scientific evidence for human-induced global warming.
On January 7, 2009, the Willamette Week reported that Robinson is “in the vanguard of a small but vocal and persistent collection of scientists, industry advocates and commentators who dismiss human culpability for climate change. … Robinson’s critics say his analysis is simplistic, but it remains persuasive a decade later with powerful policymakers like U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a visible and effective player in blocking a bill to limit greenhouse-gas emissions last fall.
James Mountain Inhofe, usually known as Jim Inhofe, has been a Republican Senator for Oklahoma since winning a special election in 1994.
Oil
James M. Inhofe has voted in favor of big oil companies on 100% of important oil-related bills from 2005-2007, according to Oil Change International. These bills include Iraq war funding, climate change studies, clean energy, and emissions.
On to another book. I forget who recommended the book by James Hansen, Storms of my Grandchildren but it’s another ‘must-read’ for all those wanting to better understand the risks that lay ahead. As the book’s website explains,
In Storms of My Grandchildren, Dr. James Hansen—the nation’s leading scientist on climate issues—speaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: The planet is hurtling even more rapidly than previously acknowledged to a climatic point of no return.
On that website there is a section Hansen On The Issues that includes this 2-minute YouTube video of Dr. Hansen talking about his book.
I can’t close without mentioning some other wonderful websites. There is Skeptical Science, described thus,
Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation
Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to improve their understanding. Yet this isn’t what happens with climate change denial. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that refutes global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?
Then there’s ClimateSight, a wonderful effort by Kate, “Kate is a B.Sc. student and aspiring climatologist from the Canadian prairies. She started writing this blog when she was sixteen, simply to keep herself sane, but hopes that she’ll be able to spread accurate information about climate change far and wide while she does so.” Kate’s interest and passion in the subject is unmissable and it’s a real pleasure to subscribe to her postings.
Bill McKibben’s famous site, 350.org, is a must for the thousands of people that are working for a better future. As the mission statement opens up,
350.org is building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. Our online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions are led from the bottom up by thousands of volunteer organizers in over 188 countries.
350 means climate safety. To preserve our planet, scientists tell us we must reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level of 392 parts per million to below 350 ppm. But 350 is more than a number—it’s a symbol of where we need to head as a planet.
350.org works hard to organize in a new way—everywhere at once, using online tools to facilitate strategic offline action. We want to be a laboratory for the best ways to strengthen the climate movement and catalyze transformation around the world.
RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science. All posts are signed by the author(s), except ‘group’ posts which are collective efforts from the whole team. This is a moderated forum.
There are so many more fabulous sources of real caring about the society we are and, more importantly, the society we hope to be. In this category comes Wibble. Then there’s Dogs of Doubt, that I shall be referring to tomorrow on Learning from Dogs, and The Green Word and so on and so on. It shows the power of ‘hands across the ether’ that the modern world of web sites now offers. I put great faith in this power becoming the power of truth and the power of change. (If you have a blog or a website that resonates with the ones mentioned here, please do drop me an email giving me details.)
Finally, I’m closing with this. If it all sometimes feels too much for you and you want to drift away into the world of the inner consciousness, into the world of dreamtime, then you can do no worse than to call by Sue Dreamwalker‘s wonderful website. Try this, for example. Dan and I had no idea what we were getting into. 😉
Learning from Dogs 