What Makes People Tick?

Sometimes it feels like the world is, to use a phrase I like the sound of, going to hell in a handbasket. Which is, as strange an explanation as this is, why it's been such a long time since I wrote anything for this blog. Not sure I still wanted to, in all honesty. Did I lose my faith, my conviction, my drive? Certainly not. However with the world being as it is, the question "Why do I even bother trying to make a difference?" crosses my mind more and more. I pray, I read scripture, I meditate, I try to do good, be kind, give charity, love others. I write about equality and love for our fellow human beings, I write that as far as I am concerned we are all equal and the same - human beings: people of flesh and blood. I want to write about religion and faith, want to encourage people to seek a closer bond / relationship with God / The Divine, want to explore the many similarities between different religions and speak about the beauty of compassion, kindness, love, hope, ...

The Wire reported yesterday that rising sea levels in the Marshall Islands are disturbing the dead as well as the living. According to the article, Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands, Tony de Brum, recently announced that 26 skeletons of World War Two soldiers have washed up. Rising sea levels have caused the graves to become exposed. The bodies are believed to be those of Japanese soldiers. The Marshall Islands are particularly precarious in their perch; the nation, made up of 29 atolls, is roughly just six feet above sea level. With sea levels predicted to rise by three-to-six feet by the end of the century, the alarm is obviously growing.  Source: Rising Sea Levels Are Exposing Bodies of Buried WWII Soldiers , The Wire The Marshall Islands are a prime example of the damages global warming can cause. As our world becomes warmer, ice caps melt and sea levels rise, causing extreme damage to low-lying countries such as the Marshall Islands. In the same article, Marsh...

The Earth is 4.6 billion years old.  Let's scale that to 46 years. We have been here for 4 HOURS. Our industrial revolution began 1 minute ago. In that time, we have destroyed  MORE THAN 50% of the world's forests. Source:  Science Alert Facebook Page I find it unimaginable that so few listen while environmental agencies the world over are screaming about climate change, global warming, the need to reduce greenhouse gases and CO-2 emissions, the effects of the industrial revolution and really - the overall negative impact humans have had and continue to have on our planet. Wars, famine, floods, crop failures, droughts and the like - these are always localised events. An entire country or region or continent may suffer the effects of a flood or a war, yet in other parts of the world people simply continue on their daily business, oblivious to the suffering of people they don't know who live in a country they may have never even heard of. Global warmin...

This awesome image comes from the "I Fucking Love Science" Facebook page . I'm sharing it because I agree! "I don't want to protect the environment, I want to create a world where the environment doesn't need protecting."

Most people don't think of themselves as actively working to change the world's climate. Yet in today's industrialised plastic-fantastic society, it is something we all do whether we like to face that fact or not. Smithsonian Magazine's April 10 2014 article by Sarah Zielinski entitled " Eight Ways That Climate Change Hurts Humans " looks at ways that the changing climate will influence human life in the future - and how it is already doing so today. Some of the ways mentioned in which humans can be hurt by climate change are through heat waves, droughts and flooding. Climate change is "a long-term change in the earth's climate, especially a change due to an increase in the average atmospheric temperature" ( Dictionary.com ). We've all heard of 'global warming' however climate change is more than just the atmospheric temperature getting warmer - it is the climate of the entire world changing. According to the blog of Roger A. Pi...

The necessity of renewable energy sources Interesting article and blog about wind power and the necessity of renewable energy sources. Global warming and climate change are real, they are not fantastical stories thought up by sensation-seeking scientists. Humans and out use and abuse of our planet are the cause. Be part of the solution! For The Wind blog @ Wordpress Enjoy this read and don't forget to check back often for new content!

Happenings like the most recent quake and tsunami in Japan, the Christchurch quake in New Zealand, the draughts in Australia, widespread war, unrest, and disease in the world, the most recent uprisings in the Middle East, coupled with it now being 2011, make me think about the End of the World prophesies and how it´s all supposed to happen at the end of 2012. What if? What if pretty much every religious and spiritual system in the world is warning us in some way or another, and we are too busy with our electronic gadgets, our cars, our appearance and popularity to see these warning before it is too late? I don´t follow any one religion or system of beliefs. I believe in a higher power, a creating force that shaped the world we live on, the universe we live in, and everyone and everything we see and know. I believe that all roads lead to Rome, and that no matter what one believes exactly , eventually we all worship the same divine force and all religious systems teach the...

Reading a newspaper article about an iceberg four times the size of Manhattan that recently broke off the Petermann Glacier in Northern Greenland, the phrase “It’s been a summer of near Biblical climatic havoc” jumped off the page at me. The recent forest fires in Russia and the flooding in Asia are cited as examples. What I find interesting about that phrase is that it could refer to several different things. My first thought was that it referred to the Book of Revelation (the final book of the Christian New Testament) in which the end of the world is described. Thinking on it some more, I realised it could also refer to the Flood or perhaps even the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (both from the Book of Genesis ). Interesting how an article from a New Zealand newspaper referring to something being “biblical” straight away makes me think that it refers to the New Testament. The article continues and mentions climate change and global warming, and how the breaking off of this i...

Global Warming. Climate Change. Greenhouse Gases. Terms we hear on an almost daily basis and should be familiar with. A quick explanation follow below. Please note that these are, as stated below the quotations, NOT MY OWN WORDS and I am merely copy/pasting small sections of text while giving credit where it's due. Scientists have spent decades figuring out what is causing global warming. They've looked at the natural cycles and events that are known to influence climate. But the amount and pattern of warming that's been measured can't be explained by these factors alone. The only way to explain the pattern is to include the effect of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted by humans. To bring all this information together, the United Nations formed a group of scientists called the International Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. The IPCC meets every few years to review the latest scientific findings and write a report summarizing all that is known about global warming. Eac...