It’s the simple things in life we treasure that get us through those particular days.
Hat Tip: Mary S. & Buzzfeed.com
Category: Other Blogs
I am unashamedly posting about “reducing, reusing, and recycling”. Why? Because, as the highest form of life on the planet, when the world goes to rock-bottom we can only have ourselves to blame.
Although I do not buy into the ideals of anti-humanism in favor of all things Earth, and over-population is a major hype (btw), the fact that the Earth is still the only habitable planet in our solar system should be enough to make us more environmentally aware. We are the guardians for all life on Earth. This includes the planet itself. I think that makes us pretty hardcore. No other animal, yes I am referring to us as animals, has the rationale to look at their lives and say “I could change my life to better myself and others.”
But it goes deeper than us all being the Earth’s superhero. It’s about our very nature of self, if you think about it. Aristotle did.
There are three levels of souls, as Aristotle says, that encompass all life. Plants and the earth make up the Nutritive soul, and all animals and lesser creatures are Sensitive souls (you got that right). We, Mankind – Humans – have the privilege of possessing the Rational soul, on top of also possessing both the Nutritive and Sensitive souls within ourselves. We are the highest soul; we are the greatest soul on the planet. We are greater than the planet, which depends on us for survival and in return give us the tools to survive. It could be a perfect give-and-take relationship if we, the rational, were willing to give back, and care for, a planet so desperately dependent on us.
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. It’s that easy.
Where I live, we do the usual recycling habits of tins and bottles and cereal boxes. Like everyone does or should be doing. On top of that, I personally make a point of not using a lot of plastic, which is not biodegradable. Plastic water bottles are being flushed out of our household system slowly (although I admit that I will give into the weakness of being in a hurry and vender machine myself up a water bottle now and again). I believe (not really) that plastic is some sort of alien enemy here to poison us and our planet. Grr. Down with aliens directly out of Doctor Who!
So, that’s my contribution to making sure I don’t lax in my human duties to mother earth. What are yours?
Hat tip for giving me the thought: http://www.castleink.com
To read up on Aristotle’s full understanding of Souls, for which I also owe a hat tip to some PHIL 320 class: http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/psyche.htm
Disclaimer: I am not Aristotle, nor Marc Cohen. I am, however, pretty dang cool. Mostly because I worked environment, Doctor Who, Aristotle, and the University of Washington all into once post. sadly, there was no room for Batman or the X-men.
I don’t know how I didn’t know about this website before but thanks to a certain friend (You know who you are) I have been goofing around this place almost always when I have a moment. So, yeah…hooked like a fish. It’s funny stuff – if some of it more than somewhat odd, offensive, or unbelievable.
As a thanks to my “friend”, here’s the link that started me down the path to the Cracked side. See what I did there? I’m hilarious
I love a good video game as much as the next nerd brought-up-in-a-household-of-mostly-engineers-and-so-raised-on-these-things, but this seems a bit like it’s reaching.
What’s reaching? Read here
Now that’s what we call a good tail – er – I mean tale.
it’s no surprise that Pusuke — a fluffy, tan Shiba mix — made headlines nationwide in that country when the pooch -– the world’s oldest dog, according to Guinness World Records -– died this week at the age of 26 years and 8 months, after falling ill and refusing to eat…The dog’s owner told reporters that Pusuke’s condition took a sudden turn for the worse early this week. The dog did not eat breakfast, a first, and died quietly, surrounded by Shinohara and her family.
"I was with Pusuke for 26 years, and I felt as if he was my child. I thank him for living so long with me," said, Shinohara, 42, a housewife.
It’s also no surprise that Pusuke -– who lasted a human equivalent of well over 100 years -– lived in the nation with one of the world’s oldest populations…
So, apparently, if you want your dog to live a long time, you need to uproot yourself and move to Japan, where they obviously have a miracle-life dog food. I do not know what they use in the production of their food, but I would like a couple tons of it please.
Last December, Pusuke made it into the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s oldest living dog, breaking the previous record of 21 years and 3 months, according to the Daily Yomiuri newspaper
I’m just saying, there is something to said for man’s best friend for sticking it out that long. I hope they allowed the little guy to pass on those amazing genes and continue the genetic advancement of dogs everywhere.
But, for the Japanese, the true story of “Man’s Loyal Companion” is still held by Hachiko, who waited for his master every day at the train station until his, the dog’s, death…9 years after the death of his master.
So I was browsing around the internet, because its what I does when looking for a story, when I came across this little beauty on a friend’s blog/page.
In “Moments of startling clarity: Moral education programming in Ontario today,”* Stephen L. Anderson recounts what happened when he tried to show students what can happen to women in a culture with no tradition of treating women as if they were fellow human beings with men:
I was teaching my senior Philosophy class. We had just finished a unit on Metaphysics and were about to get into Ethics, the philosophy of how we make moral judgments…I decided to open by simply displaying, without comment, the photo of Bibi Aisha. Aisha was the Afghani teenager who was forced into an abusive marriage with a Taliban fighter, who…kept her with his animals. When she attempted to flee, her family caught her, hacked off her nose and ears, and left her for dead in the mountains. After crawling to her grandfather’s house, she was saved by a nearby American hospital.
Anderson was waiting for the cries of outrage from his morally intelligent students. But, that’s hardly what he got. This is how he describes it,
Instead, they became confused. They seemed not to know what to think. They spoke timorously, afraid to make any moral judgment at all. They were unwilling to criticize any situation originating in a different culture.
They said, “Well, we might not like it, but maybe over there it’s okay.” One student said, “I don’t feel anything at all; I see lots of this kind of stuff .”
Another said (with no consciousness of self-contradiction), “It’s just wrong to judge other cultures.”
“Wrong to judge other cultures…” Right. Because no war has ever been fought because one culture saw the actions of another culture as wrong, immoral, or unethical. I mean, that is just crazy. This is what separates good men from great men; moments like this. Anderson says it himself,
While we may hope some are capable of bridging the gap between principled morality and this ethically vacuous relativism, it is evident that a good many are not. For them, the overriding message is “never judge, never criticize, never take a position.”
The book that this snippet is from goes into greater depth as to where these atrocious student reactions originate and how it varies dramatically from the actual study and understanding of the word and study of Ethics.
For thousands of years, most thinkers assumed that virtue was something specific; it could be described, and could be distinguished from (vice). Courage, for example, was a virtue—a cardinal virtue. Cowardice was a vice. Those thinkers are—in the students’ terms—judgmental! In recent decades, a new view has taken root. The new view is that courage and cowardice have no intrinsic reality. Neither does the classical virtue of justice or the vice of injustice. It all depends on how you feel about things, which in turn depends on your culture.
Apparently, it is alright to constantly hate upon people of your own ethical background, and judge and condemn or praise (however you might personally choose) but do not, under any circumstances, give way to the notion that, in this world where we are all caretakers, you have any right to question the moral and ethical reasoning of another human being who claims to have different cultural morals.
Or next thing you know, people might even go so far as to think we have a right to aid third-world countries in their fight for survival and equality. Horrors.
Theirs is an education to avoid at all costs.
Thank you.
Read the whole article here: Click Me
This just in (about three days ago) that Kellogg is calling back four of its major cereal brands; Froot Loops, Honey Smacks, Apple Jacks, and Corn Pops.
We might ask why, aside from the obvious being that chemical filled food like this is as dangerous as an atomic bomb going off on our kitchen table. Kellogg had an answer, one that many parents did not appreciate at all…
Kellogg Co. is voluntarily recalling about 28 million boxes of Apple Jacks, Corn Pops, Froot Loops and Honey Smacks cereals, saying a "waxy" smell and flavor coming from the package liners could make people sick, the company said Friday. – Huffington Post
28 million boxes…wow…I got to say that’s a lot of contaminated food.
Kellogg Co. voluntarily recalled certain packages of Apple Jacks, Corn Pops, Froot Loops and Honey Smacks cereals Friday due to a strange waxy-like taste and odor coming from the liner of the package. – Wallet Pop
Wait, so you’re telling me that the pungent smell that has been coming from these cereals (especially when burped back up by the young) is not the smell we should worry about but it’s the new, waxy smell we should fear? A waxy smell that is secreting from the lining of the cereal boxes themselves?
I’ll just…not eat cereal…avoid both the foodage and the poisonous lining.
Let’s first acknowledge that one of these cereals they pulled off the shelves comes wrapped in the infamous astronaut silver wrappings that looks like it’s trying to contain some sort of biological weapon (generally called Corn Pops, in this case).
However, I don’t recall every vomiting after smelling and eating these cereals…
According to Kellogg’s, the recall of their cereals is due to, "Consumers should not eat the recalled products because they do not meet quality standards." The reason that the recall is taking place is due to an odd smell and flavor that could cause nausea, vomiting, and/or diarrhea – Associated Content
Nausea, vomiting and/or diarrhea…hmmm… Well, one of these I know has happened to me a lot after eating any of the four aforementioned cereals but I always assumed that was because I was secretly being fed some sort of chemical compound that gave me superpowers.
Never thought I would find an old guy like this hot, but when a man speaks the truth ya gotta love him.
You will be the first American president that lied to the Jewish people, and the American people as well, when you said that you would defend Israel, the only Democratic state in the Middle East, against all their enemies. You have done just the opposite. -Jon Voight “Washington Post”
Tell it like it is, Jon. Then go and reaffirm your Catholic roots or something and I will be your biggest fan.
Read full (albeit short) letter from Jon Voight here.
Hat Tip: Washington Post
Hat Tip: Mark Tatulli & GoComics
It never hurts to pause your life a moment to thank those who had their lives stopped forever.
God Bless the soldiers.
