(I'll write some stuff first so you have to scroll down to the pictures. Some people might not want to be disturbed.)
I have provided, for your convenience, some simple cut & paste activism, if you'd like to do something (as much as I did) after finding out.
Cut and paste the letter I prepared for you below into an email to the Faroe Islands Prime Minister's Office (address provided).
I'm sure you can all muster 10 seconds of activism!
The Gist:
The Faroe Islands, gained independence from Denmark in 1948. They have a centuries-old tradition of herding a school of dolphins into a bay every summer and driving them to beach themselves. The townspeople then gather on the beach, and in the surf, and en-masse, slaughter the dolphins. The bay turns red. While families, with children, line the shore, looking on.
Where do I start?
With the insensitivity, the lack of compassion, shown towards intelligent mammals, whose bodies are by no means a necessary food item in this day and age?
Or with the morality of encouraging the young to not only witness, but perpetrate, such cruelty and brutality on docile creatures?
We no longer live in isolation from one another. The Faroese can no longer continue this without the world knowing... and judging.
Cut and paste the following text and email it to the Prime Minister's Office, Faroe Islands: info@tinganes.fo.
Let's flood them with disgust. (Feel free to embellish or edit the text to your liking.)
Dear Sir
I was disturbed to see the graphic images ofgrindadráp, and while I understand that historically, whaling might have addressed legitimate food needs, today it is not necessary to slaughter dolphins for food.
I am also troubled that young people are encouraged to participate, and that children are brought to watch. This does not paint your people in a very positive light before the world.
We know that more and more Faroese are beginning to question the need for this practice. Please let compassion be your legacy and end this cruel practice.
1. The current system of education is outdated and ineffective. 2. Learning is moving to the real-time internet. 3. Schools must change or become obsolete. 4. The trend is unavoidable, unstoppable, and benefits individuals and the world. The Thought Process: 1. The way we educate was developed during the industrial revolution to feed the “machine” with workers. It no longer serves our children or the world. Sir Ken Robinson makes this point impactfully at TED talks. Watch it at your leisure… but watch it. 2. Students today are fully engaged with the real-time internet, whether their schools like it, embrace it, or not. (Usually not.) The internet they access is the most unprecedented, remarkable, and powerful platform in human history because it contains all of human knowledge — content as well as explanation — while also being a communications portal. I can find a youtube video on how to change the brake pads on my Jetta and a forum post on how to find the second derivative of a quadratic equation. In seconds! Add to that the ability to interact with — co-create with — anyone, anywhere on earth, via text, audio and/or video, in real time, and you have nothing less than a new age in human development. And while many teachers are technologically challenged, my friend’s 4 year-old is proficient with an iPhone (he has left me messages to say hello), a flipcam, and can navigate from a blank browser to Hulu.com, find the Family category, and start the Woody Woodpecker video he wants. Can the current schools even relate to the world in which he is growing up, let alone prepare him for success in it? In his world, he will no longer be limited to learning with a handful of peers from his neighborhood, nor even from a teacher in the same room! His education will be largely self-directed, though guided, and will prepare him for the path of his own choosing, that draws him in the direction of his passion. Or at least, that is how it should be! 3. Now turn your vision to this imminent future. Education migrates from the classroom to the real-time web. And since teachers are also online, students only need in-person guidance to reinforce the framework of their learning and keep them on task. In this remarkable world, children learn with others from across geographic, cultural, racial, and language barriers, with peers based on interest rather than demographics. The dogma of teaching a group of children the same age, from the same neighborhood, the same set of skills, regardless of their interests and passions, and assessing them based on their short-term recall of this information, is not only ineffective, but encumbers free thinking and independence. While this might not have held them back in the 20th century, it will certainly handicap them in the 21st. Of course, children benefit from and need social interaction with their peers. So schools should not go away, but must morph into something that complements and supports learning in this new paradigm. The school now becomes a learning center, a technology portal into the real-time web, as well as a facility to provide children the opportunity for the physical, hand-on experience, which the real-time web cannot provide. These learning centers might each have a different focus — sports, the arts, etc. — but none will pigeon-hole students or learning. But the cornerstone of this new learning paradigm will be the real-time community that supports it. Curriculum and standards should be set, collaboratively, by teachers, students, parents, academics, and professionals. The system must also provide parents and educators with the tools to oversee their child’s educational journey, as guides, as custodians, but not as dictators. The role of many educators will change. There will be resistance to that, as there always is, thanks to human nature. But teachers must serve education, not the other way around. There is a fundamental shift required in our thinking, a point beautifully made by Principal Chris Lehmann of the Science Learning Academy. A great watch, now or later: http://ipp.io/5351 4. In the end, the overarching benefit to children learning in this manner is that it will teach them the uniqueness of every person’s journey: Just as they get to choose their path, based on their interests and passions, so do others. We don’t all have to think alike. Our differences are enriching and should not be feared but encouraged! But even more than that: a geographically unbounded learning platform means that children are raised and educated while interacting with other children of similar interests from around the world, form across national, cultural, language, and racial borders. No tyranny could withstand it. Imagine what a generation of children, thus freed, could accomplish!
The question is: how do we get from here to there?
I watched my grandmother die of cancer. I have seen many members of my family diagnosed with and fight cancer. Many, successfully, thank God. But not all. Like most worldly and educated Westerners, I thought I had a pretty good handle on what cancer was, how dire its diagnosis was, and how it was treated. All that remained was to hope that I never get it. Several days ago, my mother-in-law, a pathologist, gave me a copy of a book on tape that has altered my view on the subject, explaining the mechanisms of cancer formation and promotion, as well as how to more effectively avoid the disease and help fight it. Over the years, there have been many books that have inspired me and that I have wanted to share with all of the people I know. This will, no doubt, not be the last — because I believe in sharing beneficial knowledge with those I care about — but at this moment it certainly seems the most powerful and the one able to effect the greatest good. The book does not deal with miracle cures, nor does it dissuade you from using modern cancer treatments. It is scientific and historical, and the conclusions are self-evident. I encourage you to read it, or get the audiobook for your car. LINKS: “Anticancer: A New Way of Life” by David Servan-Schreiber BOOK: http://www.amazon.com/Anticancer-New-Life-David-Servan-Schreiber/dp/0670020346/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254012611&sr=8-1 AUDIO BOOK: http://www.amazon.com/Anticancer-New-Life-David-Servan-Schreiber/dp/B0023RT072/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254012744&sr=1-1 Thank you, Arell. Peace, Arnie
I suspect the future of marketing video content online will involve micro payments. PER CLICK The marketing and advertising worlds are still reeling from the internet paradigm shift. No vision has yet crystallized from the confusion. People are now used to getting whatever video content they want, whenever they want it, and for free. That's more than a market correction. That's a market redefinition. Perhaps the new internet entertainment (YouTube) economy is measured in large volumes of small sales. Perhaps 1 penny per view. With seemless paypal integration.You want to spend the evening browsing 40 YouTube videos, it’s cool. You only spent 40 cents. And now those most-viewed viral videos pay out at a rate of $1,000,000 per 100 million views. Sounds reasonable. (But banner ads across my YouTube videos... go away not soon enough.)
Justin, on the other hand, makes a strong case that there will always be a large (& monetizable) volume of free content on the web.PER EPISODE As palatable as a penny-per-click is, paying 50 cents per episode for a show you really like is just as palatable. It isn't much money, especially if the production value is high. And it would have to be high, because there is plenty of low-production-value content out there, let's face it. The new paradigm sees more and more recognizable faces appearing in more and more independently-produced, low-overhead, high-production-value pieces, independently distributed online for profit participation and no up-front talent fees. Which will, of course, be more than a handful for the numerous middlemen lubricating the Hollywood machine. But there is nothing to be done. Technology has spoken and the herd is moving
Justin and I are facilitating a very inspiring creative journey.
Our friend and gifted composer, Roy Zu-Arets, has allowed us to intrude into his creative space and film his improvisation/composition session every morning.
We don't know where the process will go, but even a few days in, we are all experiencing a clarifying of creative purpose and vision.
Please feel free to engage with us during this process. Watch as many or as few of the sessions as you like (they usually run around 3 to 5 minutes in length), and if you do visit, please leave your comments.
I acknowledge Roy's generosity of spirit for allowing us to film and share what has always been a very private experience for him.
That animals have no sense of reason is no reason to treat them like animals.
People who speak about animals, or their “rights," with any degree of sensitivity are usually marginalized as “activists,” and their ideas dismissed just as quickly.
But the biological and genetic differences between humans and animals are fewer than the similarities! We apply study from one group to the other, and can even exchange organs with some. We can because we have the same chemistry.
Humans obviously have abilities than animals lack — reason, speech, dexterity — but it seems we acknowledge only the added abilities, and completely ignore the many ways that we act entirely according to our (animal) instinct.
We live in a world of limited resources. We are also mortal. Our natural, instinctive state is therefore competition and fear. We fear for our survival, and we fear death. The decisions we make and reactions we have are rarely intellectual. They are almost always emotional and visceral. That means they are coming from our programming. Emotions do not emanate from intelligence and reason. They are chemical indicators of our instinct's response to what is happening.
The same instinct, governed by the same chemistry, as animals!
Just like animals, we strive for security to shield us from our fear, and we do it in many different ways — some big, some small. Groups feel the safest, and therefore attract people with a power we do not usually realize. We disguise our flight from fear in layers of sophistication: communication, rationalization, etc.
As a result, we continue hurting each other, hurting our environment, and hurting animals. But when we face our true motives, it is our animal instinct we find staring back at us.
We know that animals experience physical and emotional pain. But we don’t seem to care, because after all, they can’t really communicate. Like witnesses who have been silenced.
We cage them with impunity. We keep them, en masse, in conditions of shocking cruelty.
And all the while, we congratulate ourselves on our advanced degree of evolution. We dare not acknowledge animal suffering, because the conscience and paradigm shift it will necessitate seem too unpleasant to face.
In our denial, we also fail to acknowledge an ability that animals lack and we have in excess: malice. Ironically, it is the gift of our cerebral cortex -- the part animals don't have, the part that is supposed to make us "better"!
Animals will never be our equals, nor should they be. But the way we treat them will always be the true barometer of our own evolution!
So add a degree of consideration. Add a degree of sensitivity.
Is the internet forcing an evolution in the concept of copyright/intellectual property?
From two directions: 1. The Market: People are used to total and instant access to almost all content. They are connected online like a neural web and expect to continue sharing, commenting on, and even editing content with, for, and between each other. Freely. 2. The Artist: Content producers must garner attention for their product in this neural web space. (This might mean giving content away for free to generate a monetizable following.) It seems that certain types of copyrights become harder to enforce. Boundaries smudge. So, although the legal definitions might not change easily, the monetizable potential of product seems unavoidably reduced by the delivery system that is the internet. Sort of like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Or perhaps Le Chatelier.
What is a blog if not to share the remarkable? A revolutionary new way of interacting with information online, such as being able to track the feelings of people anywhere, anytime, gleaned from the words used in people's own digital footprints. And a beautiful graphical interface. Let Jonathan Harris explain, and see if you are as compelled as I was: www.bit.ly/DyGaP The sites are active. Check them out and play: www.wefeelfine.org www.universe.daylife.com Other sites by them: www.phylotaxis.com www.wordcount.org www.tenbyten.org
A very promising way to generate cheap, clean, safe and unlimited electricity is in development. Imagine a 5 MegaWatt power station costing $300,000 and about the size of a small office. This can potentially revolutionize the availability of electricity in the Third World. Thanks to Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc. (http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/index.php?pr=Home_Page)
A short video describing the Focus Fusion process:
Dr. Eric Lerner's presentation for Google TechTalk in 2007, which led to investment in the technology:
To qualify as a legitimate political party, 1% of the people who voted in a state's primary election must register as members of your party. That's it.
In California, that is less than 90,000 people, which makes signing up 1% of the primary electorate so manageable!
