Dave Pollard's essays and reviews of literature, the arts, and science.

	May 10, 2008

Saturday Links of the Week -- May 10, 2008 Photo of an electrical storm that formed in the plume of the erupting Chilean volcano Chaitén. Photo (c) Terra Networks taken by Carlos Gutierrez for UPI. Thanks to Our Descent Into Madness for the link. Is EndGame's Inevitability Beginning to Dawn on Us? -- Another brilliant essay by my friend Joe Bageant suggests that we're all getting chronically depressed for a very good reason -- a Dark Age is imminent. Thanks to Jon Husband for the link. How to Ground Yourself -- Forget anxiety drugs and behavior mod: Recalibrate yourself. Thanks to Lugon for the link. Meditation for Beginners -- At last, a simple, intuitive approach to meditation that doesn't seem harder than it should be. I've ordered the book, and it's also available on CD. Thanks to Beth for the link. Ideas by Podcast -- CBC has put some of the best episodes of its once-great Ideas program on podcast. Thanks to Christopher vanDyck for the link. How Not to Do Intentional Community -- A guilty Wall Street millionaire environmentalist has created an IC for millionaires, by destroying and 'privatizing' wilderness. As Food Emergency Deepens, Big AgriBusiness Fights Change -- The NYT muses: "The developing world needs to develop its own ability to feed itself. For that to happen, American farmers will have to be weaned from American food aid. There is more that Washington must do. Especially with corn and oil prices as high as they are, the time has come to put an end to subsidies to transform corn into ethanol." Finally they get it. Still, no one else is listening. Nicholas Stern Says He Underestimated Climate Change Dangers and Rate -- "Emissions are growing much faster than we'd thought, the absorptive capacity of the planet is less than we'd thought, the risks of greenhouse gases are potentially bigger than more cautious estimates and the speed of climate change seems to be faster." Investigative Journalists Still Face Death and Worse Every Day -- "As long as I live, I will continue to write and writing will keep me alive." says Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho Ribeiro (45), laureate of this year’s UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize. Thanks to Barbara Dieu for the link. Ontario Finally Acts on Animal Cruelty -- After two federal governments knuckled under to the factory farm and pharma labs, the Ontario provincial government has had the balls to advance a reasonable anti-cruelty law. Let's hope it passes. The Last Lecture -- If you haven't seen/heard this yet, don't miss it. Thanks to Matt for the link. Thoughts for the Week: from Barbara Dieu (in answer to my Big Question "Where Do I Belong?") -- You belong to yourself man! from Patti Digh: Maybe life is very simple. Very, very simple. And to make it more interesting we complicate things. We seem to love to impose laws (marriage laws, for example) that do nothing more than allow us to abdicate our personal responsibility. 10:12:13 PM  trackback []  comment []

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