My wife and I went to Arizona last week for a swimming competition she participated in. Her parents flew in from France to see her participate and we decided to take a few extra days off to do some sightseeing.
Overall impressions: People we encountered were very nice, friendly and helpful. We flew into Tucson and out of Phoenix.
What would they say? Probably not much unless you give them human brains. I mean we treat animals, even our beloved pets, so badly by ingnoring them, abusing them (intentionally or unintensionally), “training” them, and they take it without any apparent grudges. A mistreated dog will hardly attack its owner.
Animals who are bred for meat or other products (milk, fur, eggs) are treated much worse [e.g. check out meet your meat, caution explicit images on this site] than pets. A cow bred for producing milk has to spend its entire life in a stall smaller than the length of its body so it can never face forward. I wonder it feels sad or angry. I wonder what it thinks about. I wonder if animals believe in god, or a god-like entity.
If you have not guessed already, I am a vegeterian. I am working on becoming a vegan, but it is tough. I am working towards it and I hope I achieve that goal soon.
I wonder if there is a word for being ashamed of being human.
Today is blog action day. And I just found out. What is blog action day you ask?
“What would happen if every blog published posts discussing the same issue, on the same day? One issue. One day. Thousands of voices.”
That is blog action day in a nutshell. Today’s theme happens to be about the environment. Why not? Environmental crisis, in my opinion, is the single biggest threat to human, indeed many species’ existence. It has been in our radar a long time and all that time should have been enough to avert this disaster. But the threat continues to grow and, according to many scientists, has brought us to the brink of no return. We need to act now. Don’t think what other people are doing, or not doing. What are you doing? How will you answer to your kids and grandkids when they ask what did you do to prevent the natural catastrophe?
Every little bit helps. Recycling a sheet of paper or a pint of oil means that your offspring will have that much more. It sounds silly but I dare you to track the things you waste thinking, “this won’t make a difference.”
There are many organizations that exist that make helping the environment a little more than what you can do just by reducing, reusing and recycling your waster. And best part is that it does not cost you anything more than a few minutes out of your daily life.
Care2.com has a click to donate program where you click on a image that shows you a few ads. Does not cost you anything and you are not obligated to buy anything but you have done a little extra to save the planet for your children. You can even track to see how big a difference you are making.
Join Care2.com’s Race to Stop Global Warming!
Ecologyfund.com and TheRainForestSite have similar programs. None of these programs cost you anything more than a few seconds. You could do this while downloading your email, listening to messages or any number of things that allow you to do multiple things at the same time. Please check them out and help save the future of our children.
I am a lucky man. I may be the luckiest man on the planet. That is not always true but there are definately days where I feel like that.
It may also be true because I don’t really have high expectations. Don’t get me wrong, I am a very ambitious and optimistic person. But who am I? I am nobody. I am insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but I am also connected to everything else in the universe. That makes me very lucky.
Plus my wife makes me lucky. If I had a past life, I must have been a very good person to deserve someone like her.
I volunteer at the local humane society. Every Sunday, for a few hours, I walk dogs. I find it very enjoyable and satisfying. It also gets me much needed exercise I would not get on my own.
Last Sunday when I was in the play yard with a dog, I noticed animals being brought out and loaded into a van. I thought nothing of it since it was common for the humane society to take animals to different events around the area and show them off in hopes of getting them adopted, and at the same time, bring attention to the organization and the good it is doing.
Some other people who were nearby got to talking to the people loading the van and I thought I heard them say they were taking the animals to be blessed. I was not sure so I asked and the answer, indeed, was that the animals were been taken to a “blessing of the animals.”
What good is that going to do? I thought out loud. The animals don’t need to be blessed, they need to be adopted. I don’t know why but this upset me a lot.
So I spend the day thinking about all the cool things to write in my blog and by the time I get home, I am either too tired to concentrate or I have forgotten what I was going to say.
Oh, here is something. Have you ever met a not so smart person who says something that pisses the crap out of you and then you spend the rest of the day, night, perhaps week thinking about what you could have said back to at that moment to put them in their tiny place, only that you can’t cuz that moment has passed and there is nothing that can be done about it? It happens to me more than I would like to admit, and it drives me crazy that stupid little things like that bother me so much.
My first profession of choice when I was really young was to be a medical doctor. That all changed when I had to get my blood taken out for some medical exam. I could/can not handle needles too well.
The second thing I remember wanting to be was a scientist. I had setup a fake lab and everything in my yard and I used to scare the neighbors kids (much younger than me) that I could blow up their house if I wanted to.
Anyway, as time progressed, I still wanted to be a scientist but also wanted to so many more things. I wanted to be a teacher, a doctor (via the virtue of a Ph.D.), a writer, a school bus driver, a movie maker, etc.
I have worked to achieve some of those goals… I studied physics in college (although I don’t consider myself a bona fide scientist yet), I wrote a children’s book, and plan to write others, I was a teacher for a while (although I did not consider myself to be very successful at the task), and I am working on a writing a screenplay for a feature movie.
I don’t think I could picture myself doing the same thing for the rest of my life. I have a very understanding wife who indulges me in my dreams and I am supportive of her in hers. Did I mention I was very lucky?
Indeed it is. You will hear me say that a lot. Life is crazy. I do believe it is true. People care too much about all the wrong things, and in the end it does not even matter. (No, I do not believe in god.)
***Spoiler Alert***
I just finished playing the single player campaign of Halo 3 and here you will find my impressions of the game. Well, it is mostly about how the game ends so be advised that there spoilers ahead. If you continue reading, the ending will be spoiled for you.
***Spoiler Alert***
Some of you may know that I have written a children’s science picture book entitled, “Why Can’t I Jump Very High? - A Book About Gravity.” I published the book myself and do not have a marketing budget for it. As I have a full time job, I also do not get to publicize my book as much as I would like. It is only available from a handful of places, Amazon.com being one of them.
This last week, my book reached its highest sales rank ever and was in the bestseller list (#14 for best physics book for children) for a brief period. These numbers change by the hour, so it is likely that my book was ranked higher before I noticed it. Given that there is no active publicity campaign for the book, I guess that is pretty good.
Amazon.com sold all copies of my book that they had in stock and for some reason, even though they ordered more and I shipped it to them right away, my book was listed as unavailable. Someone thought they could make some extra money by selling my book for $210 when Amazon.com’s price is just over $10. Maybe they were trying to pass it off as a rare item.
