I found a great article on good email practice. I’ve already started using a few of the tips, including being more conscientious about using a summary rather than a description as the subject line of emails.
“A great productivity enhancer? Ha! E-mail can be a tremendous waste of time unless you know how to tame the savage beast,” says Stever Robbins. Article here
Global warming is approaching the critical point of no return, after which widespread drought, crop failure and rising sea-levels would be irreversible, an international climate change task force warned Monday.
According to the report, urgent action is needed to stop the global average temperature rising by 2 degrees Celsius above the level in 1750 — the approximate start of the Industrial Revolution when mankind first started significantly polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.
Beyond a 2 degrees rise, “the risks to human societies and ecosystems grow significantly” the report said, adding there would be a risk of “abrupt, accelerated, or runaway climate change.”
It warned of “climatic tipping points” such as the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melting and the Gulf Stream shutting down.
No accurate temperature readings were available for 1750, the report said, but since 1860, global average temperature had risen by 0.8 percent to 15 degrees Celsius.
The two degrees rise could be avoided by keeping the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere below 400 parts per million (ppm). Current concentrations of 379 ppm “are likely to rise above 400 ppm in coming decades and could rise far higher under a business-as-usual scenario,” the report warned.
Read CNN’s coverage: CNN.com - Report: Global warming approaching critical point - Jan 24, 2005
Download the report itself here
Here are the pdfs of the new Loft publicity material. These files were created using Scribus, an open source / libre software package that does a fine job of Desktop publishing. The Scribus source file of these flyers is available on request. These are print quality pdfs so they weigh a little.
Small folded flyer side A (450K)
Small folded flyer side B (508K)
DLE flyer (300K)
Reporting from Colombo, Sri Lanka
Serving Food "Military-style"
On Saturday we traveled down South to meet our food relief team in Matara. On the way we witnessed the incredible scale of the destruction as literally hundreds of miles of coastlines was wiped out. At one point we stopped to view a train that had been hit by the wave. As I surveyed the area I came across hundreds of personal items, including a child’s shoe. Nothing more needs to said.
Our team in Matara have been cooperating with the Sri Lankan military to provide hot meals to various refugee camps in the area. The people down here have a very particular taste — they love chilies, salt and loads of rice cooked a very particular way. So our team made the adjustments and began serving thousands of meals daily. The other unique feature of this program was how the meals were served. Rather then sit everyone down or have everyone line up in front of our pots, the local soldiers and some villagers helped us to scoop the rice, dhal and vegetable curry into plastic wrap and then package them with newspaper.
Major General Kulatunga told me, "this is military style." And I must say it was very efficient under the circumstances. The meals stayed hot for a long time while we traveled to each refugee camp to distribute them.
Food for Life Relief Coordinator, Indradyumna Swami (Maharaja) meets with Major General Kulatunga in Matara.
Afterwards we gave out Food for Life Volunteer T-shirts to all the children that helped us. Talk about enthusiasm, the kids swarmed us like a Rugby scrum pleading for one of our bright yellow t-shirts.
The next day the military suggested we move our operations to more needy areas on the island. We had to agree, it was becoming clear now that the military had done an excellent job of providing food for these camps. Food for Life was instrumental in making sure no one went hungry during the early stages of the relief, but it was time now to move on. Our team packed up, loaded the truck with our rice and headed back to Colombo. Next stop, Batticaloa, on the far east side of the Island and one of the hardest hit areas, where we will join our other relief team.
Since the beginning days of the Tsunami relief, Food for Life has been operating in the East in the main port of Trincomalee Our teams continues to provide much needed food and counseling in this area, and soon our team from the South will join them in the nearby city of Batticaloa. We expect to also close down these operations in one month as the situation continues to normalize and go from relief to reconstruction.
A Democratic Australian Senator linked to last week’s commentary on the Lamb ad, and included a link to an article on Surgical Mutilation of animals.
The article discusses, among other things, the practice of “mulesing”, or mutilation of a lamb to prevent it from getting fly strike. Fly strike kills an estimated 3 million sheep a year in Australia. Mulesling involves slicing flesh off the hindquarters of a lamb so that it grows back as scar tissue, without the wrinkles that provide a place for flies to lay maggots.
In the article the authors mention other methods of prevention that have been developed, including breeding for sheep without wrinkles in the breech area, vaccination to increase sheep immunity to strike, chemical applications to kill the wool follicles in the breech area, biological and other control of blow flies, and the traditional methods of applied chemicals to repel flies; but how about this for a radical concept: What about stopping the industrialized wholesale slaughter of animals for meat?
Previously a shepherd would look after his flock. That phrase still carries with it a powerful evocation of pastoral care and concern. He would tend to each one and make sure that it was clean and healthy. Today huge stations run by a few people and some machinery churn animals out for slaughter in an impersonal fashion.
Previously people would mainly get wool from their sheep and only occasionally, and in some cases never, eat them. Today people eat sheep all the time without even thinking about it - simply going into the supermarket and buying a slickly wrapped package, taking it home and popping it in the microwave or the oven is all it takes. If eating Lamb is what being Australian is all about, then this is all part of it. Buying that lamb and cooking it up is the direct cause of all this suffering.
All the methods mentioned by the article’s author are expensive and complicated, involving further industrial processing with attendant resource depletion and pollution. Sure you can swallow a spider to catch a fly, but why not simply not swallow the fly to begin with?
Animals Australia federation of animal welfare and animal rights :: Surgical Mutilations
The nuclear family - its majority status long under threat from social change - has finally fallen to less than half of all Australian households.
While still the most common household type, the traditional mix of parents and at least one child is now only 47per cent - or 2.3million - of all households, an annual snapshot of the nation reveals.
NEWS.com.au | Mum, dad and kids the new minority (January 22, 2005)
See also this earlier media summary presenting sociological trends.
Much to their surprise, scientists have found that less sunlight has been reaching the earth’s surface in recent decades. The sun isn’t going dark; rather clouds, air pollution and aerosols are getting in the way. Researchers are learning that the phenomenon can interact with global warming in ways that had not been appreciated.
“This is something that people haven’t been aware of,” says Shabtai Cohen of the Institute of Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences in Bet Dagan, Israel. “And it’s taken a long time to gain supporters in the scientific world.” Cohen’s colleague Gerald Stanhill first published his solar dimming results 15 years ago.
Increased flows of Russian rivers into the Arctic Ocean are due to man-made greenhouse gases and might indicate changing global rainfall patterns, according to a report by leading British climate scientists.
The team at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research - part of the British Meteorological Office - said computer models showed that the cause was human activity and predicted that things would get worse. …
It comes just four weeks before the Kyoto climate change treaty enters into force, aimed at curbing the emissions of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
Critics say the treaty is too late and inadequate to tackle the looming global climate crisis.
They note the world’s worst polluter, the United States, has refused to sign up arguing human activities do not contribute to climate change which is a natural phenomenon.
Read the full article: here
Soot mostly from diesel engines is blocking snow and ice from reflecting sunlight, which is contributing to “near worldwide melting of ice” and as much as a quarter of all observed global warming, top NASA scientists say.
The findings about the snow and ice albedos - their power to reflect light falling on the surface - raise new questions about human-caused climate change from the Arctic to the Alps.
“We suggest that soot is a more all-around ‘bad actor’ than has been appreciated” NASA scientists James Hansen and Larissa Nazarenko wrote in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
MSNBC - Scientists: Diesel soot abets global warming
Date: January 20, 2005 | Contact: Paul Turner | Phone: (+1) 301 987-5883
Reporting from Colombo, Sri Lanka
I arrived in Colombo on Thursday, after an exhaustive plane trip and many days frantically trying to tie up loose ends in Washington DC. It is a big sacrifice for me and my family, but I feel impelled to oversee the relief efforts in Sri Lanka and to make certain that your kind donations are properly utilized.
Mr. Mahakarta Das (left), the director of Hare Krishna Food for Life in Sri Lanka, greeted me at the airport and immediately took me to observe the orphanage that his wife, Nandarani (right) manages.
The children looked very happy and healthy, with beaming smiles as they crowded around the door to greet me. Mahakarta showed me the new construction taking place which will provide more facility to the 80 children presently residing at the orphanage and the many more that will come in the near future.
Caring for the Children of the Tsunami
Immediately after the disaster occurred in Sri Lanka, our local Food for Life representative, Mr. Mahakarta Das, started distributing hot meals to the victims. But since he was already being overwhelmed with an increase in needy children to his orphanage, he requested Food for Life Global in Washington D.C. to coordinate the distribution of food in the affected areas.
Vision:
Mission:
(There is an ancient saying about the futility of “resting” while carrying a heavy load simply by moving it from one shoulder to the other….)
THE US will become Australia’s nuclear dumping ground in a remarkable 10-year agreement that takes the pressure off the Howard Government to find a domestic waste site.
The US already accepts spent fuel containing uranium previously enriched in the US from 41 countries, including Australia, to reduce the risk that residual uranium will be used for nuclear weapons.
ANSTO spokesman Steve McIntosh yesterday hailed the US agreement as a coup for Australia.
“We have always viewed the spent fuel question as the biggest hurdle we had to jump and that seems to be out of the way,” Mr McIntosh said.
| US to be Aussie nuclear dump
Check out this blog entry by Bhakticandrika. It’s a report (text in Spanish, but lots of pretty pictures) on the recent concert performed by the South America Bus Tour (great website by Bhakticandrika) in Barranco, a bohemian suburb of Lima, Peru. This morning one devotee MSN’d me from Cuzco, high in the Andean mountains, where the bus party is now. The bus party has 54 devotees in it and they went through the streets of Cuzco dancing and chanting today. The mayor of Cuzco is vegetarian (watch out Meat Board - there’s another one!), and very favorable to the Hare Krishna movement.
“First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.”
-Mohandas K. Gandhi
Read about the ad here.
I think it’s great. It’s funny - and contrary to the stereotype being portrayed in this ad and others by the Meat Board, vegetarians are not sickly, whiny, politically correct, uptight people. I can certainly appreciate a joke and laugh along with it. I can appreciate a good send up. I’m also a big fan of right wing rhetoric, which is a send-up of itself.
It’s witty. It plays on stereotypes, taking one aspect and exaggerating it, both in terms of the “Aussie bloke” position, and also the “left wing hippy vegetarian” position.
That’s not why I think it’s great, however. The reason I think its great is that from a strategic viewpoint it clearly demonstrates the progress that we are making. We are now defining the agenda. As Kurma mentioned to me last year, advertising meat was unthinkable twenty years ago. It’s not so unthinkable now. It represents a desperate rear guard action. As Kekovich says in the ad: “I’m sickened by the creeping tide of un-Australianism eroding our great traditions.”
Advertising to tell people to eat meat twenty years ago was as unthinkable as advertising to tell them to drink water. It’s just “what you did”. Not anymore. The Meat Board has obviously identified a significant threat in the rise of the vegetarian diet, and has analyzed the situation in order to formulate a response. This ad, and the other “dancing butchers” ad (which clearly mimicks the Hare Krishna devotees) are part of that strategic response. They are on the back foot. They advertise, but they are forced to address our issues - about health, about vegetarianism, about Hare Krishna. The meat industry has a competitor, and they are worried.
The funny thing about these ads is that they have a polarising effect, and probably even a negative one from the perspective of the Meat Board and their objectives. By reinforcing one stereotype in the ad they also reinforce another, driving the youth further away from the position they wish to establish. “Pierced taste buds”? Say good bye to the next generation my friends - All your base are belong to us.
They are on the defensive. We stay on the attack. My pick: next they will be forced to address environmental issues, and ethics.
Twenty years ago, advertising to eat meat was as unthinkable as advertising to drink water. In twenty years, it will be as unthinkable as advertising to smoke cigarettes.
Read my commentary about the ad here.
It is the lamb advertisement that has everyone talking that stars ex-footballer Sam Kekovich. After just a few days on-air the ads that were meant to by funny have been labeled offensive.
Click here to view the ad.
A red-meat rant that calls vegetarians soap-avoiding, pot-smoking hippies, and suggests eating anything other than lamb on Australia Day deserves capital punishment, will be allowed to stay on television.
“I don’t believe that we have offended vegetarians any more than we’ve offended chicken eaters or pizza eaters or any other food,” Mr Thomason said
The ad, produced by agency Brown Melhuish and Fishlock, shows Kekovich sitting in front of an Australian flag, delivering a virtual call-to-arms for lamb eaters.
“I’m sickened by the creeping tide of un-Australianism eroding our great traditions.”
“A balanced Australia Day diet should consist of a few nice juicy lamb chops and beer, and perhaps a bit of pavlova for those with a sweet tooth,” Kekovich says.
“Yet your long-haired, dole-bludging types are indulging their pierced taste buds in all manner of exotic, foreign, often vegetarian cuisine - chicken burger value meals, pizzas, a No 42 with rice.
“It’s an absolute disgrace, and people ask why we need capital punishment.”
Kekovich even invokes the spirit of Anzac, asking viewers if the diggers were fighting for tofu sausages.
“No. They were thinking of grabbing a lamb chop off the barbie with their bare fingers, sustaining third-degree burns, then sticking their hands in a relieving Esky to fish out a cold one,” he says.
“The soap-avoiding, pot-smoking hippie vegetarians might disagree with me, but they can get stuffed.
“They know the way to the airport, and if they don’t, I’ll show them.”
Article from the Age, Melbourne here (soul-sucking registration required)
We never knew we needed them yet suddenly everyone has one. They are called life coaches and they are putting more and more people’s lives back on track, even school students.
Life coaching has been one of the fastest growing industries in the United States and Australia is not far behind.
It is filling that gap where people are now spread out across the world and don’t have access to family, extended family or mentors,” Ms Green said.
Today Tonight on Seven
Here’s my overdue report on the holiday goodness - the first installment. Ratha yatra in Byron Bay on New Year’s Eve with Raivata (yeah boyee!) comes next.
Well, first of all we went to the end of year festival in Christchurch, New Zealand. We didn’t think that we were going to be able to get there, but a generous benefactor facilitated our presence. We stayed with Ekendra Prabhu and his good wife, Seva Kunja dd, and baby son, Sukha-sindhuji.
The festival was awesome. There were about 60 devotees in the morning programs beginning at 4.30am. A lot of the big guns of the Loft preaching force have returned to New Zealand from foreign preaching fields where they have been deployed for the past few years. This year, in the Book Distribution Marathon of the 108th Anniversary of Srila Prabhupada’s Appearance, New Zealand posted a 925% increase over last year’s result, ending up in the top ten in the world - not bad for a small island nation of 3 million or so. Returning Maharathis such as Khela Tirtha das and Dina Dayala devi dasi have been raising the stakes, along with a flotilla of new devotees recruited in preaching overseas and in New Zealand.
Here are a few of the devotees presently powering the different Loft centers in New Zealand: Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland.
It was real nectar for me to have the association of like-minded devotees. Of course Vaisnavas are everywhere, but my realization is that we need to have confidential relationships with devotees who have similar values to our own. As Braja Bihari explained in a post on his blog a while ago, different devotees are, well, just “different”. A few days association with senior God brothers and sisters such as Khela Tirtha, Mahavan, and Krishnaloka, preaching partners such as Ekendra, old ashram fellows such as Tri Yuga and Raivata, was just what I needed to rejuvenate my spirits and put me on track for the next four years.
(more…)
CHILDREN under the age of eight should not use mobile phones, parents were advised last night after an authoritative report linked heavy use to ear and brain tumours and concluded that the risks had been underestimated by most scientists.
On another front the Hare Krishna Movement’s Food for Life organisation has embarked on a food relief project for Tsunami victims in Sri Lanka.
His Holiness Indradyumna Swami, an international leader of the society, will accompany 45 other Hare Krishna devotees to the devastated country where they will set up food distribution camps.
Instead of sending money to the victims, Food for Life will provide them with hot meals. According to a spokesman, the meals will consist of rice, dhall and vegetables.
Daily News - Opening hearts, wallets for disaster relief funds
The Hare Krishna temple in Hertfordshire has sponsored a team of doctors and volunteers to treat the victims of the Asian tsunami.
Since December 26, a team of 60 doctors and 100 volunteers has treated more than 4,000 victims and provided 1,500 stoves in southern India.
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu has also distributed more than 450,000 hot meals.
The latest edition of The Goloka Link is now online at www.golokalink.com. You can subscribe to receive The Goloka Link by email at the end of the issue in the Subscriptions section. If you would like to maintain a local news section for your area and use it as another way to stay in contact with preaching contacts, drop me a line at sitapati(at)worldsankirtan.net.
The race is on to claim the land released by the thawing of ice. An article in the New Zealand Herald describes the competition to claim the North Pole for its possible mineral and oil reserves and to control shipping traffic. A silver lining in every cloud?
Meanwhile the polar bear will be extinct within 100 years according to a BBC News report.
New Zealand (in the extreme south) is experiencing a wet and cold summer with the anomalous appearance of icebergs released due to ice thawing at the South Pole.
New coal plants planned for China, India and the US completely bury any gains from Kyoto Protocol greenhouse gas emission controls, according to this report in Christian Science Monitor. These 850 plants, scheduled to be online by 2012, will produce 5 times more greenhouse gases than the Kyoto Protocol will cut back.
As of January 8th Australians had given $54 million dollars in charity to tsunami victims, in addition to close to $1bn pledged by the government. That’s as much as the US is spending per week in Iraq, and pales in comparison to the $21bn that Australia’s 20 million inhabitants spent on themselves in December (much of it on credit), most of it in the last two weeks before Christmas, including a splurge on SUV and prestige vehicles that is keeping the economy buoyant in spite of Australia’s growing trade deficit and the government’s warnings to control spending.
Communication >> Krishna Consciousness >> Leadership
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