Category Archives: ethics and morals

Whales

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So, I finally got around to turning my calendar over to the month of February this morning.  It’s a nature based one, and this month has a whale majestically propelling itself out of the deep blue, much like this one.

A cool event here with a whale.  Playing hide-and-seek…gotta love it.

This once again proves that we know very little about wildlife and how they can display compassion.

Greenpeace is still fighting the good fight. 

This bears repeating:  the sad story of seagulls attacking the whales. Argentina has this plan to thwart them, but I think it’s not really addressing the reason behind the gulls’ attacks.  Something has caused them to begin attacking eight years ago…I hope that they’re going to test the dead gulls for mercury and other toxins, since it’s been documented that the birds are pretty messed up with mercury.  This would explain why they suddenly began this eight years ago–the rubbish aspect doesn’t really make sense to me because we’ve had garbage around for decades…why now?

Finally, a wonderful story here. The will to survive never ceases to amaze me…no matter how we screw up, nature still tries to come back.  Awesome.

Acts of Kindness

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You know, going through my metamorphosis, one of the hardest things for me to reconcile was that just because someone is believed to be a progressive doesn’t necessarily mean that they follow through with that ideal.

I had a boss that “did all the right things” (attending a peace vigil against the Iraq War as an example), but when it came to acting in a progressive manner, he was the opposite on many accounts.  One of which was that he would hire someone at minimum wage, keep them for six months or so, and when it came time to start giving raises or including them on the healthcare plan, they were suddenly terminated.  And with at least one employee, he was more generous with the wage….but he expected something in return, if you get my drift.  Not a good character.

I repeatedly found this and it really messed with my mind.  I couldn’t *get* that disconnect between spouting off progressive ideals and then behaving in the opposite way.  And one could be conservative and be more apt to follow the progressive ideal.

Chief Wilma Pearl Mankiller mentions this in her autobiography, Mankiller.  She stated that there were “rednecks” who helped the Native Americans out—perhaps just as much or more so than those that claimed to be progressive.

So I am always skeptical (in a healthy way) of those who put it out there that they’re progressive…I’m cautious to take it at face value because I’ve been disappointed so many times.

I was glad to read of this.   Being considerate of others is somewhat of a lost art.

Thanks for keeping the faith, George.  Little acts of kindness are truly acts of Peace.

More on Education

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…wow, there’s something going on when there are so many education posts in 24 hours.

Link here and here .

I should mention the connection between the Bushes and the McGraw-Hill publishing house that publishes education texts and materials.

I picked up my college history book to look at the reference to Ronald Reagan again.  It was a glowing report on him without much critical analysis of his actions nor was it all inclusive of his destruction of the Fairness Doctrine, unions, consolidation of the media markets, etc. I looked at the publisher: McGraw-Hill .

More on the profiteering by the Bushes here.

Yep, where there’s money to be made and destruction of society…you’ll find the Bushes and Cheneys….

Freedom town

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Jon Stewart takes a look at the Freedom Towns being promoted by the fundamentalist/conservatives.  Wow.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-29-2013/america-2–now-with-more-freedom—a-glenn-beck-holiday

In the beginning of this segment, when they are just outlining what it is about, I’m thinking….they’re talking Communes?

Well, okay, not exactly communes, where everybody is supposed to share food and chores and stuff, but yeah, this comes pretty close to it, by demanding residents adopt the same narrow view.

The thing is…it’s not that far from Communism, which requires everyone be the same—by discouraging independent thought and creativity and action.  (And I wonder what they do with someone who loses their job and becomes homeless in this Utopia? Or *gasp* someone who develops an independent thought and starts expressing liberal ideals…?)

And to link into the previous post on the Fourth Amendment–it along with the First Amendment are parts of the Constitution that kept us from becoming Communist China, Communist Russia, and Nazi Germany.  Without them, we’re toast.

So…..you would think that the conservatives would be fighting like the despised liberals to preserve them.

Why aren’t they??

The right to privacy

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…is slowly being eroded, we know, but then there are among us the rebels who won’t go quietly.

Oh, the imagination is running into overdrive with all the fun I could have of this…but I want to keep this blog, um, family friendly. haha.

From Cornell Law:

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

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I have a Paralegal Certificate and my professor told me that this means that if a police officer pulls you over, you have the right to refuse to give your name or any information unless you are put under arrest.  And with my experience with this, you don’t even have to be in suspicion of a crime–you just have to be in the area–doing your job–to be treated like you were a criminal.

There’s no climate change…

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Well, I shouldn’t be surprised, but yet, I still am about the gushing by the nooz broadcasters on the spring weather…

They were just all over the “nice” weather we’ve had the past few days—-50-and 60-degree days.  They even went out “on the street” to ask the public their opinion about the great weather we’re having….and they were all positive comments on how great it was to wear a light jacket or no jacket at all in January in Indiana…and they even mentioned that all the comments were positive, except one…guess which one didn’t make it to the broadcast?  This was a deliberate choice, folks.  Newsroom editors wield huge power in what gets on the air and what doesn’t.  And what does get on the air has an enormous impact–they know this.

So…I was a little beside myself with this broadcast.  I mean, are people really that dense?  Do they not know what is happening?  Do they even think about how this summer is going to be if we’re having 60-degree weather in January?  Good Grief, how soon they forget when we had 90 degree heat throughout the summer, with a drought, last year, and how dangerously low the rivers were.  Thankfully, we’ve had some good rain and that good snow in December, and the rivers are now up to level.  A small victory, but it won’t last if we start having 80-degree heat in March like we did last year.

But there’s no Climate Change.  These people will just go on their merry way until the last drop of water comes out of the tap…

I mean, seriously, doesn’t anyone think beyond their nose?

What about the too warm water that is a threat to nuclear power plant ability to cool the nuclear core?  If the warming trends continue, we will lose the ability to cool the core….can anyone say meltdown?  I hate to even think of a worse case scenario of a plant in a scramble that cannot be cooled because the water is too warm to cool it.

Another scenario is this.  Discharging hotter water into the already warm water, leading to fish kills and other destruction of the carefully constructed eco system is not a good, well thought out plan.

Speaking of the effects of the warmer weather, the plants are also being affected, as my Sedum Autumn Joy is starting to pop up from the soil.  (I brought it here with me–it’s a plant that I’ve had since my son was a baby.  I dug it up when I lost my house.)

This weather is not normal and not something to be celebrated.

Earth will survive.  We won’t.

Boycott Kellogg’s

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Organic Consumers posted this a while back (I’m sooo far behind in emails).  Financially supporting the companies that truly have the best interests of their consumers at heart is the best way to go.  Well, that and labeling our food.

Read the note on Kashi’s using genetically engineered soy in their “organic” products.  It is such a cop-out to claim pollination was the reason the soy was GMO–an easy way to escape accountability.  Instead of fighting GMO labeling, they should be fighting against Monsanto and the others involved in genetically modified food.  This food is highly likely involved in leaky gut, as the body cannot recognize the grain anymore, and treats it as a foreign substance and that leads to gut inflammation and eventually leaky gut.

A link here to eye problems and leaky gut and GMO’s.  Very interesting.  My eyes have begun to improve–I was using 1.50 readers and now am able to use the 1.25 magnification.  I’m also able to distinguish fine degrees of color, and I had lost some of my ability to determine colors.  I know this by my embroidery thread that I used for counted cross-stitch–the thread is numbered and has very minute distinctions, and it was difficult for me to separate them by color.  I grew so frustrated at it that I just put them all in one bag, unable to organize them.  This began to change when I started to detox.

Here’s a good opinion on the GMO’s.

More here on the global effort to get GMO’s labeled.

A debate between a professor and a neoliberal. (hat tip to organic consumers).

Lastly, I really wonder about the exposure even if you’re not eating GMO foods (or at least trying not to by buying organic).  I say this because every year, around late July, I begin to have more severe allergy symptoms, culminating in September, when I usually have headaches several days out of the month (this has been after mercury poisoning–at least, that’s when I first noticed it).  I found a link here on the increase in allergies and GMO’s.

Here is a paper that must have been written by a Monsanto toadie, it is so slanted towards GMO’s and gives very little attention or support for research towards health concerns.  This is what I was seeing when I was a student in college and I took a class in science writing:  they had a forum at this strongly agricultural school on GMO’s when they were first being introduced in 1997-98 (only we found out later that they had been unleashed onto the unsuspecting public earlier.)

A good blog here on GMO.

 

 

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Related to this is an stunning affirmation of those in power that amalgams are safe.  Just stunning. Absolutely stunning.  (hat tip to organic consumers).  It just goes to show that Washington is bought by those whose interests don’t include the health and well being of the public, but of who has the $$$ to fund their campaigns.

And my previous blog  with this on how not only mercury affects us, but the animals, as well.  My other blogs on it here and here.

And I’m finished.  So much for catching up on my emails. 😛