Tuesday, December 27, 2005

From:
Radical Evolution:
The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies - and What It Means to Be Human
by Joel Garreau :
http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews2/0385509650.asp

"The future is already here; it's just not evenly distributed."
William Gibson

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"The world is now too dangerous for anything less than Utopia."
- Buckminster Fuller

http://images.indymedia.org/imc/congo/colorblind.txt

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http://www.backyardnature.net/101/quotes.htm

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"If people are good only because
they fear punishment, and hope for
reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."
-- Albert Einstein
http://www.oasiscg.com/quotes.htm
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http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s34496.htm
Faraday

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"The world is now too dangerous for anything less than Utopia."
- Buckminster Fuller

http://images.indymedia.org/imc/congo/colorblind.txt

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http://www.backyardnature.net/101/quotes.htm

Quotations for Backyard Naturalists



From the Bible:
But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will teach you: or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In His hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind
sent by Cheryl K. Mast in Michigan, USA

Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, committed for our safety to its security and peace, preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.


Richard Nelson (? still creating):
It is the ancient wisdom of birds that battles are best fought with song.


Mark Twain (1835-1910):
There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior, there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.


Martin Luther King (1929-1968):
Our age is one of guided missiles and unguided men.


unknown author
In the beauty of nature lies the spirit of hope.

Hubert H. Humphrey (1911-1978):
As we begin to comprehend that the earth itself is a kind of manned spaceship hurtling through the infinity of space - it will seem increasingly absurd that we have not better organized the life of the human family.


Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881-1955):
Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity we shall harness the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world man will have discovered fire.


Charles Darwin (1809-1882):
The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
freespeech.org

Thomas Berry (1914 - ):
We will go into the future as a single sacred community, or we will all perish in the desert.


John Muir (1838-1914):
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything
else in the universe.


Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit - not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviæ from their graves ... You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into.


Aldo Leopold (1887-1948)
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

William Blake (1757-1827):

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.


Rachel Carson (1907-1964):
The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.


Kenyan Proverb:
Treat the earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children.


George Washington Carver (1864?-1943)
I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.


Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965):
Until mankind can extend the circle of his compassion to include all living things, he will never, himself, know peace.

Helen Keller (1880-1968):
No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the horizon of the spirit.

Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982)
To see the earth as we now see it, small and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the unending night - brothers who see now they are truly brothers.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948):
I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such things as crawl upon earth.
freespeech.org

Albert Einstein (1879-1955):
"Our task must be to free ourselves from our prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Victor Hugo (1802-1885):
First it was necessary to civilize man in relation to man. Now it is necessary to civilize man in relation to nature and the animals.


Daniel J. Boorstin (1914- ):
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)
Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds along rocks

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http://cgd.best.vwh.net/home/quotes.htm#nature

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If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
Mother Teresa

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It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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The Glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.
William Blake

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To love is to think, speak, and act according to the spiritual knowledge that we are infinitely loved by God and called to make that love visible in the world.
Henri Nouwen

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Failure is an event, never a person.
William D. Brown

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Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of things.
Thomas Merton

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Love doesn't sit there like a stone. It has to be made, like new, like bread; remade all the time, made new.
Ursula K. LeGuin

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We cannot live for ourselves alone. OUr lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.

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The intimate, amorous relation which God sustains with the heart of man is a secret between Him and the heart.
St. Catherine of Genoa

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The future will be different if we make the present different.
Peter Maurin

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Who has not found the heaven below will fail of it above. God's residence is next to mine, his furniture is love.
Emily Dickinson

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Nothin is impossible to a willing heart.
John Heywood.

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Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.
Vaclav Havel

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Now whatever is to be regarded as coming within the sphere of the beautiful becomes the character of God.
St. Gregory of Nyssa

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The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.
Frederick Buechner

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You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.
Marian Wright Edelman

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We aim above the mark to hit the mark.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life - happinesss, freedom, and peace of mind - are always attained by giving them to someone else.
Peyton Conway March

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St. Jerome was fond of saying "To solve a problem, walk around."
Gregory McNamee

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We are each of us angels with only one wing. And we can fly only by embracing each other.
Luciano De Crescenzo

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We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them.
Charles C. West

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Joy is very infectious; therefore, be always full of joy.
Mother Teresa

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An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Mohandas Gandhi

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Peace hat higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.
John Greenleaf Whittier

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We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate - it oppresses.
Carl Jung

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Love and trust in the space between what's said and what's heard in our life can make all the difference in this world.
Fred Rogers

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Saturday, December 03, 2005

BioEverything

GreenWay article for Dec.05/Jan.06
submitted to
http://hazelwoodhomepage.com
hazelwoodeditor@yahoo.com

What Are Our Future Transportation Needs?

Jim McCue, composter and biotech researcher

With so much to be unsure about nowadays, how does a person make decisions? With so much up in the air, how does a whole city plan for it's future? The possibilities are endless and the dangers are all about. Every step taken toward one worthy goal seems a step away from some other. Will we someday be filled with regret that we didn't put our money down on some sustainable regional plan? Are we so busy with surviving the crises that we forget to dream and prepare for a better Pittsburgh to come?

Right now the debate in the area of transportation is whether public transit should be subsidized. To many, the idea that they as taxpayers should help pay for other people to get on the bus or trolley is unfair. Owning, keeping repaired, paying insurance on, and keeping fueled one's own vehicle is no small chore - why should the vehicle owner pay for others to get on the bus for less than cost? The question is similar to that of education, or funding for police and fire, or for the health department: Why should I pay for someone else's? But ultimately the answer lies in the fact that, like it or not, we're stuck with each other. Neighborhood to neighborhood, municipality to municipality, worker to employer - we need each other. It's silly to complain about taxes for education or disease prevention or a workable transportation system - everyone benefits directly or indirectly from these. Just as a single human body has many systems which provide services for that body as a whole, the public transportation system of a city is an essential part of it's core. If it doesn't do a good job, the whole city suffers.

It's necessary to our survival as individuals to recognize that we are in a whole system emergency. Investing in a better future is not impractical, as those who would make cuts in vital public services imply. Yes, we do have breathtakingly difficult budget problems; the way to solve them is to take a look at our priorities.

For instance, do we need sports players to be paid half a million dollars a year or more? Where is this money coming from? My fellow citizens - The money you are coughing up for sports is giving players and owners more money than they have the wisdom to spend wisely. Don't you think the old-fashioned stickball game in the back yard or alley or field provided the same benefits of learning teamwork, healthy exercise, and enjoyment of entertainment with other people?

As another example of misplaced priorities, has anyone considered how we have literally invested in our own ill health by our transportation and energy decisions? The replacement of the trolley as the primary mode of transport in American cities paid off well for those invested in industries related to manufacture of motor vehicles and the oil industry. But our skyrocketing asthma rates, and the increased time it takes to get from one place to the other now with so many vehicles on the road - among other drawbacks of a car culture - has more than made up for that financial benefit for some. Our failure to use energy efficiently, encouraged by some who profited by increased use, has polluted our cities and set us at odds with other countries who compete for the same energy sources. Had we continued to expand the trolley and railway sytem, by now the country could have been honeycombed with a delightful, comfortable, fast, clean, and inexpensive means of getting from one place to the other - for all, not just for the ones who can afford it.

Competition against public transit, often unethical and sometimes even illegal, made it possible for well-endowed corporations to knock smaller concerns out of the running - such as by forming subsidiaries to corner a market rather than make a profit. This is part of the history of the United States. The fact that we live in the country with the most extreme difference between poor and rich shows that there's something wrong with our system. This is not democratic free enterprise, despite all the hifalutin' talk. It's sometimes just cutthroat capitalism.

We need fast, affordable, safe, clean, efficient transportation. The only way to get that is to break through the mean dog-eat-dog atmosphere now prevailing in government and business. The number of people being thrown off the merry-go-round of spiraling costs and lowered incomes is increasing. As we rally to help each others get through these trying times, we need also to work together to put into gear future solutions that help everybody, not just certain groups. Displacing poor people and buying out small homeowners to add more complexity to the highway system is not going to make it better. We need a whole new way of thinking. More roads and vehicles is not necessarily better. More cooperation, such as being willing to car pool and take the bus or trolley, is what civilization is about. Being cooped up alone in your car in daily traffic jams is what you're asking for if you don't want subsidized public transportation, and more asthma and other health problems for you and your loved ones.

With advances in communication, it is possible to decrease the need for communication. The assumption that we will continue to need to have as many vehicles on the road as there are at present is incorrect. The word "telecommute" was coined because people realized there's no reason to drive to work when you can use the telephone and/or computer to accomplish the same thing cheaper and faster. If we're to get off our addiction to dirty power (fossil fuels AND nuclear - both currently subsidized), we need to make better use of our communication systems. We will always need transportation, but many things we travel for now are unnecessary.

Investment in renewable fuels, upkeep of existing roads, and public transportation should be where the money goes - not in another toll road, soon to be clogged and in need of repair as it pollutes the neighborhoods it has barged through. Energy for transportation and other uses can be produced locally, adding well-paying jobs rather than continuing warfare overseas for oil. Like the fossil fuels we need to transition away from, the idea of building new roads to handle traffic problems is a dinosaur that belongs in a museum.