Desert Bounty

We made our first website tonight!!! Itis a websit for Jolon's Mom's business of handmade soap and salve. She is an absolute genius with herbs. Check it out at Desertbounty.com!

Deluge in July

Oh...here is a picture I took of the Delaware River overflowing WAY over its banks.

Skeptical environmentalism or the eco-nazi?

I am currently reading the book The skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg. I would say that it was thirty dollars completely not wasted. For any aspiring environmentalist either proffessionally or by interest, it is a book for you! While there are many, many things that I do not agree with the author about, he does make a few good points. We do need to question what he calls "The Litany." This "litany" is the oft repeated schpeal that the world is going to end and everyone is going to die because there is almost no hope (I am exaggerating a little bit). There is no reason why we should not question it. It will keep our data fresh, and our minds open.

Also, it is not only a look into "the other side's view," but also what is becoming fodder for their "cannons." If we can research this book and find well documented arguments against what he has to say, then we can do our homework in advance.

There are a few things that I do agree with him about. Although I am sure I will have more input when I get further into the book. One: is that things are not ALL doom and gloom. Some things are improving.

Also, some of the environmental agencies used to report statistics do not cite their information of document it well. This is a call for these agencies to be a little bit more careful. In a way I liken it to the OJ Simpson case, where (in my opinion) a guilty man was allowed to go free due to some messed up evidence retrieval and data collection. Faulty procedures...

He is a statistics man, so he is definatly a number cruncher. He knows how to mess with them better than anyone else. I had to keep in mind that these were numbers he was primarily getting from the UN, and not from his own research. Forest cover was one such issue. He has said in his book that forest cover has increased in the last 50 years. Numerically it has...unfortunatly the numbers have a great capacity for being fudged by the localities collecting them. Not only that, but a forest with decreased density was still considered forested area. Plus, old growth forests with diverse wildlife has been diminished while new growth could have taken its place, but offering no refuge for the old growth dependent species (such as the spotted owl).

Where will my opinion be in a week or two? Probably more and more against this guy...but I have challenged some of my beliefs due to his writings. That is definatly a healthy thing, in my opinion.

Global Climate Change and Al Gore

I urge everyone who either agrees or disagrees with global climate change to go out and see the movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." For those who know a lot about global climate change, then it will simply be a very good compiliation of some of the data that you already know. Even for me, an environmental studies major, it was a shock to see some of the numbers that I was already aware of reflected in new ways and different charts. I even went out and bought the book! The book is not a read from cover to cover book. It is a picture book with colored maps, charts and graphs.

Global climate change is here. It is happening. Turn on the weather channel, and you will see it. One of the most repeated phrases against global climate change is that weather is cyclical. Well, certainly it is. Using ice core samples, sediment samples, pollen samples, etc. we know that weather and mass climate changes do occur. The problem is, is that the numbers that we are experiencing now are unprecidented. For 650,000 years, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has vacillated between 175 parts per million to 280 parts per million. Only in the last few decades has it risen to 375 parts per million and is expected to go over 600 within 45 years. I could go on and on, but I will refrain.

Eudemonia

This is a piece of a story...here the charactor explains the myth/history of her world.

In the Beginning, before sound and light, before man and beast, was the Source. Everything, all and nothing was the Source as there was nothing but it. Time rent the Source when it was born thus creating the suns, planets and galaxies from its afterbirth. But the Source was not only comprised of physical matter; it was also of a spiritual substance. This spiritual matter was separated into countless entities. These smaller spirits became the animals, plants and Gods. From the moment of division, all particles of physical and spiritual matter began their long journey back to the Source, ever revolving homeward to rejoin the eternal Oneness.
Those souls closest to the Source became the Gods and Goddesses, whose purpose it was to shepherd the lost souls into transcendence incarnation after incarnation. Earth was one such planet, its people Man and its Goddess Faeth.
Faeth ruled over her people quietly but sternly. As Man became increasingly educated they began to question Her authority. At this point she realized she had lost touch with her people and decided there was need for another God. She journeyed to the Great Forest and ate an apple from the Tree of Knowledge, thus granting her the power to create the God who would be able to teach Man about Her mission.
Made from the cosmic dust from the center of the living Source, she breathed life into this new God who she named Rason. Man enthusiastically embraced Rason and the ideas that He taught them. The people of Earth found that it was easier to relate to their remote Goddess with Rason as an intermediary.
Many centuries passed and soon it became evident that Man had begun to worship Rason more than the Goddess Faeth. As belief in Her began to fade, so did she grow weaker. All too soon Man forgot all about Faeth as Rason became their only God.
A great war erupted and the planet became poisoned with ill-intent and evil. The Earth itself began to die, for the air and water had turned toxic.
With her last breath, Faeth called out to Rason. He heeded her call and prostrated himself upon the floor in sorrow at the sight of the dying Goddess even He had forgotten about. As he held her dying body in his arms, he looked with fresh eyes upon the ruined wasteland and dying peoples that he had sworn to protect. In a moment of perfect clarity he realized that there could be no Faeth without Rason, and no Rason without Faeth.
With a mighty tug he wrenched one of his ribs from his body and placed it in the dying Goddess. Rason then placed her body upon the ground and watched it burst into flame. It was a flame seen from almost all corners of the world. It flew high into the sky like an overgrown mushroom. From that mushroom rained a poison never seen by the likes of man. In her destructive death she left Earth with a severe punishment. The sun was hidden from the people of Earth so that they were shadowed in unnatural night. The winter that followed was one that lasted for many revolutions, seeing no warm reprieve. But the race of Man rose from the ashes and gathered their number that still survived and created a whole new world. Just like Man, Faeth was reborn and remade. This time in the form of the Firebird. As she and her God were now of one flesh, the world would be saved by the combined power of Faeth and Rason as equals.
Most who were living were now dead, and those who remained living were slowly dying. The Goddess spoke to the world of Man who had abandoned her: My wearied people! Thou art liars, cheats, anonymous faces in the sea of One! For when ye ignore the plight of thine neighbor, ‘tis only to thyself you cheat. Brother and sister not only in the helix that makes you so, but in the very incompleteness of thy soul! Follow now! Return to me, or be destined to lie in the black pit of despair as your Fate would decree. Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!
And so it came to pass that the race of man banded together and hid themselves away under great clear domes for six hundred centuries to hide from the poisoned planet. A great revolution yielded the greatest human evolution. And so like the firebird, Man rose from the ashes of their own making and flew to heights of a new golden age: the Age of Eudemonia.

Socrates

Are God's commandments just because he has commanded them, or does he command them because they are just?

Think about this, and think about the problems with each.

Moral Philosophy

I believe that if everyone were to learn something about moral philosophy, or even just philosophy...society would be a better place. Or at least a more thoughtful one. Philosophy challenges the ideas, codes of conduct, ways of thinking and views that are hammered into us at birth my parents, society, TV, etc.

It would not be necessary to take a college class on this, simply read a book. I do not believe that someone is smart only because of the degree they hang on their wall. My Father would call them "textbooks wired for sound." Not all of them, of course, but some.

Big Bro'

Just a small post before I am off to school: cell phones.

A year ago it was passed into Federal law that all newly activated cell phones must be 911 compliant. Well, that sounds nice doesn't it? Call 911 on your cell phone and they can find you to save the lives of your children, others and your own. I got to thinking though; what does his actually mean?

It means that each and every cell phone has a GPS inside of it, which is impossible to turn off. The person carrying the phone can be tracked right down to the inch of where they stand on this earth. It is not out of the realm of speculation that this persons position is recorded somewhere with dates and times as well.

Now, funny thing is, is that it is NOT Federal law to have 911 in every county. So, it IS Federal law to have a GPS in your phone for 911, but it is not law that there IS 911.

Not only can our conversations be wiretapped, listened to, and recorded, but now they can know where we are and when. They know what we are saying, and where we are. What is next? Knowing our thoughts? Making them a crime...like a-hmmmm, like a thought-crime? And this watchful government. This benevolent presence that wishes to keep us all safe. They are like a friendly older relative ready to do battle for us if we have our lunch taken by the bully. They are like a...well, maybe like a Big Brother to us. And They are Watching. Big Brother is watching.

Bring Not Your Tired, Your Poor...

When I was a little girl, my Mother had compiled VHS tapes of many different Christmas shows. One of them was the cartoon "The Matchstick Girl." If ever a show changed the way I viewed the world, it was this show.

For those of you who do not know this cartoon, it is about a little girl whose parents live in a subway. Every day they send her out into the street to sell matchsticks from her little chipped coffee mug. One night it is very cold, and she has yet to sell any matchsticks. She stays out late and goes on a wonderful adventure where she is warm and is given much food. In the end, it turns out it was a dream for her body is the last scene of the show. It is the morning, and she is surrounded by people looking at her. She is laying spread eagle in the snow, her young body never to take breath again. The same people who passed by her in a rush just the last day now look upon her little body in horror and self-contempt.

I remember when I was so young I wanted to go into that show and buy all of the little girl's matchsticks. It was the beginning of my disillusionment of the way the world is. It continued a few years later when I read "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." It continues today as I see it in the streets. How the comfortable ignore these wretched persons, how they feel revolted by them. They are not given a second thought.

I watched a thin lady in Newark New Jersey desperatly try to sell bouquets of flowers in the chilly night on neferious streets. She did not have a stand nor storefront. Just a rugged bucket and a gnarled hand to display the flowers. I would have bought them. I would have bought the lot. It was late at night, and the traffic was dying down, yet still she almost frantically pushed the bouquets up to every passing car window. Her bucket was too full.

The dirty man in Mexico with the stereo round his neck sang. He was so off-key. A scratched pink cup, like the old tupperware kind one could find in an attic, was placed on the ground. No one threw anything into it. I joked with my friends that he might make more if he stopped singing. It wasn't funny, but we laughed our uncomfortableness away.

You hear stories of our own older generation of Americans, old women and men who have seen and heard the stories of the decades, you hear of their suffering. Splitting medicine pills in ha;ves or quarters in order to last longer, eating catfood because other foodstuffs are too expesive. They wait in earnest for their social security check, and huddle in their blankets against the cold nights that cannot be chased away by the lowered thermostat. How could our grandmothers, mothers, aunts and neighbors be these women? These once proud belles of the land, tossing their glossy ringlets in flirtatious dances, casting sons and husbands to their deaths in wars we only vaguely honor, how can they have become these women? They have, as we will one day.

A child mocked in school because his clothers are poor. He is scrawny and not cool. Though they might have the whole kingdom of God to play in, they are poor. Though the very mountains are their playground they are named poor. Every lake their private swimming pool, every tree a special treehouse. They are free of the bounds of Nike and Reebok, yet it is not respected.

There is no more breathing free for these huddled masses. Though they may yearn, the tired and the poor are no longer welcome. Bring them and they will be cast aside. They will be shunned, these untouchables. Called irresponsible or worse. What a world we live in.

There are many matchstick girls out in the world, even here in our America. They become matchstick women, then the matchstick old. Whether they sell matchsticks, flowers, or their own bodies I will say that there is more honor in THAT, than in selling your soul.