Kindness

Happy Wednesday, everybody! :P

"One kind thought spoken is worth two unsaid." - Anon.

I do believe that even unspoken kind thoughts have existential value. However, spoken ones can be worth infinitely more to the recipient. Dear Lord, preserve us from stinginess of heart and any silence that amounts to a withholding of kindness.

Poetry: Be a Man

I keep this poem on my fridge because I think it contains wisdom well worth aspiring to. Please excuse the non-gender-inclusive language - Kipling lived too long ago to know better. One doesn't need Y chromosomes to "be a man" in the sense spoken here.

If - by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

1984

Popular media is really unbelievable. (In several senses of the word.)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070201/ap_on_sc/france_climate_change

This article was featured on Yahoo! News today. It's 2007. In 1997, the world held a meeting in which pretty much every country of any size (except for the U.S. and Australia) put their names on a document, The Kyoto Protocol, acknowledging the issue of climate change and promising to address it. Global warming isn't news. A thorough representative sampling shows that 100% of peer-reviewed articles in scientific publications over the last decade or so raise no questions about the reality of global warming and its correlation to human activity. Still, over 50% of popular media articles make it sound like the issue is still a "theory" surrounded by significant doubt.

Napoleon is quoted as saying, "It's not necessary to censor the news, it's sufficient to delay it until it no longer matters." (Or until it matters very much but is too late.) With issues that refuse to go away, governments resort to coming out with confident, "honest" disclosures spun to appear as though whatever information they are presenting is a late-breaking revelation. The general public cooperates with this arrangement by having the memory of a goldfish. Today's global warming headline was news a decade ago, if not more. Bush's pronoucement on our "oil addiction" during last year's State of the Union address is actually a 30-year-old story that was all too happily forgotten. Evidence for climate change and petroleum scarcity was presented to the Carter administration and he tried to start doing something about it, then was laughed out of office in favor of someone who would tell the American people exactly what they wanted to hear.

Last week, I finally got around to seeing "An Inconvenient Truth". I am not as optimistic as Gore about our ability to right the problem through higher fuel economy vehicles and renewable energy, but otherwise I thought the film was excellent. Gore is very well-spoken and presents a compelling scientific case as well as making valid ethical and emotional appeals without getting overly sappy. He also manages some much-needed comic relief.

If you're not going to watching the film, please at least read this.

http://www.xanga.com/ingrado/499603238/global-warming-101.html