“Whenever you find you’re on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.”“The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.”
“Great people make us feel we can become great.”
“The difference between the right word and almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
“When in doubt, tell the truth.”
Mark Twain – Wikipedia
A new friend, Tom Mangan from California, I met through the network of outdoor bloggers. I check his websites every day.
This holiday post got me assessing my place in this biosphere:
Christmas reminds me that I could be a more giving person, that I could spend more time with the aged, the young, the hungry, the suffering. Not in my nature to be that kind of person.
Yet if you were to ask me “So Tom, how do I start me a blog,” I could give till you’re blue in the face. If you were to ask how to hike off a few extra pounds, how to pick the best of 100 shots from your vacation, how to get a newspaper section to the press on time, you might find me generous to a fault.
I take a lot from the world … I use more fossil fuels than I have any hope of replacing. I eat food irrigated from precious natural water sources; I use products manufactured in distant nations where forests and rivers are being fouled so somebody can turn a buck selling me this stuff at “affordable” prices (which are merely a discount against the cost of repairing the damage down the road).
None of us give back as much as we could, or even what we should. But we should be giving back something. And just as the weight of everything you put in a backpack adds up, the weight of everything we do adds up too.
I don’t think I’m entirely self-deluded to believe that I’ve been doing at least a little bit of good in the world by posting pictures from the outdoors and writing about walking in the woods. At the very least I’m distracting people from further degrading the earth, and at best I’m encouraging them to get out in their own woods and maybe come to realize why we need these wild places.
Want to give something worth having? How about a down payment on giving your great-great-great-great granddaughter a planet as good as the one we’ve got now? You don’t need to be a tree-spiking enviro-terrorist to believe future generations have as much right to a livable planet as we do.
Call that my Christmas wish: that folks wake up and realize we’re not merely taking what’s here today for ourselves, we’re stealing it from those who come after us.
Buy Nothing Day is symbolic.
Every November, for 24 hours, we remember that no one was born to shop. If you’ve never taken part in Buy Nothing Day, or if you’ve taken part in the past but haven’t really committed to doing it again, consider this: 2006 will go down as the year in which mainstream dialogue about global warming finally reached its critical mass. What better way to bring the Year of Global Warming to a close than to point in the direction of real alternatives to the unbridled consumption that has created this quagmire?
Buy Nothing Day – ADBUSTERS.ORG
Not sure about the tie-in with global warming, but I support Buy Nothing Day because of my philosophy of voluntary simplicity.
Just saw the film Munich , the Hollywood version of the story of Israeli retaliation after the kidnapping and murder of 11 athletes at the 1972 Olympics.
Steven Spielberg directed and the quality is excellent.
I thought it was remarkably unbiased. Both the Palestinian terrorists and the amateur Israeli retaliation team are shown as people, not heroes or villains.
Spielberg focuses on “the cyclic nature of revenge and the moral price of violence”.
Everyone is a loser in this film.
I might have liked the movie better if I had not read the book on which it is based, Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team by George Jonas.
Jonas attempted to document the true story of one of the Israelis, Yuval Aviv, who is played by Eric Bana in the movie.
In the book the assassinations of people on a list who may or may not be involved in Munich was much uglier than in the film.
Well … the movie is “inspired by the true story”. The book criticized as being inaccurate regarding the true story. The facts are muddled.
But one thing is clear to everyone. Assassination and counter-assassination do not work, long-term.
I recommend both film and book.
Everyone is raving about Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel.
More a philosophy book than than travel guide, Rolf Potts urges that “anyone with an adventurous spirit can achieve the feat of taking extended time off from work to experience the world.”
(via World Hum)
Stephen Hawking is worried. He’s been asking around how mankind can survive another hundred years or more.
What’s your guestimate on our longevity as a species?
“Giddy-up.”
That’s all you need. It worked for Cosmo Kramer and it will work for you.
Life is short.
Thanks Dana.
The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, has warned against portraying Islam as a religion of violence, saying Muslims have been wrongly demonized in the West since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Promoting religious tolerance, the world’s most influential Buddhist leader said Sunday that talk of “a clash of civilizations between the West and the Muslim world is wrong and dangerous.” Terrorist attacks have distorted people’s views of Islam, making them believe it is an extremist faith rather than one based on compassion, the Dalai Lama told a press conference in the Indian capital.
All religions have extremists and “it is wrong to generalize (about Muslims),” the 71-year-old spiritual leader said. “They (terrorists) cannot represent the whole system,” he said.
Life would be simple if you could list tasks by priority and check them off one-by-one. I admire those who try.
In reality, getting things done is more complicated:
1) Context – Where are you? What tools are available? What are the limits and possibilities unique to this moment?
2) Time available – Do you have, for example, 30 seconds, 30 minutes, or 30 hours available to you right now? What tasks could you accomplish given the time you have?
3) Energy available – Are you full of energy, is your ass dragging, or are you somewhere in between? Which of the tasks on your list could you finish, given that energy level?
4) Priority – If you had access to all the tools, opportunities, time, and energy you needed, what’s the most important or time-sensitive thing you could do right now?
Check the excellent 43 folders website: GTD: Priorities don’t exist in a vacuum
Preaching to my choir with this innovative ad campaign.
Thanks George.
