suzuki monee passed by him on the street one day he looked just like he did on tv 041211 ... monee or does on tv) i think he was one of the first scientists i ever developed a crush on (in an "i love science because of this guy" kinda way,...similar to stephen hawking and einstein) 041211 ... monee "...David T. Suzuki and his twin sister Marcia were born in Vancouver, B.C. in 1936. His early years were spent living with his family in the back of their dry-cleaning business in Marpole, a primarily white neighbourhood. His father Kaoru "Carr" Suzuki, an avid outdoorsman, helped shape Suzuki's interest in nature early by taking his son on camping and fishing trips. His life was uprooted in 1942 when the Suzuki family was sent to an internment camp following the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbour. The next three years of Suzuki's life were spent living in an abandoned hotel in a former gold rush town. On top of the indignities he and his family experienced, he also became a target for other Japanese youth for his refusal to disavow his Canadian roots..." http://www.cbc.ca/greatest/top_ten/nominee/suzuki-david.html . 041211 ... monee http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/Suzuki/home.html . 041215 ... monee "...All people since the earliest times integrated their observations, speculations, insights, superstitions into worldviews, the sum total of their culture, in which nothing existed in isolation or apart - everything was connected to everything else. In such a world, everything we do has repercussions and therefore, every act carries responsibilities lest order be disrupted. ...Today, most of us live in a shattered world. A world of disconnected bits and pieces, so it is no longer easy to recognize our place. And when we can't see the connections, we fail to recognize causal relationships and therefore feel no responsibility. When we shop at GAP, NIKE or ROOTS, we don't usually ask where the cotton, wool, rubber or leather came from, the working conditions and pay of the workers who harvested the raw materials and whether pesticides and other pollutants were used. We just want a garment to wear. Similarly, upon purchase of an IBM computer, SONY television or GM car, we don't wonder about the dozens of different metals in the components or the consequences of mining, manufacturing, transporting and using the product. We just want to watch TV or get around. In Canada in the middle of winter, we seldom wonder as we buy fresh papayas, lettuce or bananas where they were grown or how they got here. Yet every purchase and every use of a purchase has consequences that reverberate around the world. We just aren't seeing them. And that's the problem..." http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/Suzuki/2004/12/08/773597.html . 041215 ... . "...human beings have almost always lived within a worldview in which everything is interconnected and where we knew we had responsibilities to act in certain ways to ensure nature's generosity and abundance would continue. But suddenly in the past century we've become blind to those interconnections and therefore have lost our sense of responsibility - and now it's putting our future at risk... ...In 1900, most people lived in rural villages - we were an agrarian species. Only a hundred years later, most of us live in large cities as urbanites. This transformation has severed our connection with nature, leading us to assume that the "economy" is the source of everything, as if it exists independent of the world around us. Urban children today don't recognize that wieners and hamburgers are the muscles of an animal. They don't know where water and electricity comes from or where the toilet flushes to or garbage ends up. Too often, urban children are warned not to touch something because "it might bite" or "it's dirty" or simply "Yuk. That's disgusting." We teach our children to fear nature and fail to make connections with the natural world. We in developed countries are lucky because most of us don't have to worry about day-to-day survival. With 80 per cent of us in cities, our world is largely of concrete and steel, and all the amenities we could ever want are at our disposal 24 hours a day. The goods we need come in on trucks and our wastes go out on trucks or through pipes. We don't have to think about these things. Or do we? We are now paying the price for our disconnect from the natural world. Global warming, species extinction and a gradual erosion of our quality of life are all symptoms of the problem. But there is a way out. We can reinvent our future and choose a new path to sustainability..." http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/Suzuki/2004/12/15/784004.html . 041215 ... monee "...The roads become packed with anxious shoppers, driving from mall to mall in search of the right gifts. The malls become stuffed with Christmas goods and trinkets, all vying to catch the shopper's eye. And the shoppers themselves become stuffed with holiday sweets and extra-large gingerbread lattes. The whole enterprise is a monument to excess. For some, this excess typifies everything that is wrong with the developed world. We consume far more than our share of the world's resources. We create huge amounts of waste. We obsess with fads and fancy while species die out, pollutants seep into the food chain and the climate changes. Christmas is the pinnacle of our hyper-consumptive lifestyles, so it's easy to point a finger and condemn the whole stressful, chaotic, overindulgent experience. But the real question is why? Why do people put themselves through all the stress and pressure? Why do they go into debt so they can give gifts that the receiver probably doesn't even need? Why do they complain about the excesses of Christmas and then fall for it again every year? I believe they are trying to fill a void. With fewer and fewer people taking part in the religious aspects of the holidays, many are looking for other rituals to take their place. Humans have an innate need to connect to their families, their communities and to the rhythms and cycles of nature. Throughout human history, we've done that with celebrations and rituals to reflect the changing seasons, the lunar cycles and important stages in our lives. But today's world is very different, very new and in many ways runs against millennia of the human experience. This new world runs 24/7. This world is built on consistency and uniformity, rather than reflecting natural rhythms, local cultural or geographic differences. This world has few rituals to reflect the stages of our lives, the changing of the seasons and the passage of time. It doesn't matter if it's dark outside. We just turn on a light. It doesn't matter if it's cold outside. We just turn up the heat. The seasons may change, but our work schedules stay the same. Fresh vegetables and fruits are available year-round regardless of whether or not they are in season or grown anywhere nearby. A Big Mac is a Big Mac, here or in Turkey. This world we've created is hard on the planet and it's hard on ourselves. We've tried to isolate the human experience from the rest of nature, but it's an impossible task. Humans are a part of nature. Whether we like it or not, our bodies respond to changes in the natural world. The more we try to deny who we are, the less connected we will feel and the more damage we will do to the planet. In the absence of God or spirituality, in the absence of a capacity to respond to seasonal patterns and natural rhythms, and in the absence of meaningful social rituals, people are grasping onto whatever they can to help ground them in their communities. If that means spending days at a time in a crowded mall, then that's what we do. That becomes the ritual. That becomes Christmas. I think people are hungry for change, but feel trapped. We are yearning for meaning, but accepting baubles and trinkets instead. Until we stop denying our biological roots and embrace our humanity, we will never find the meaning we seek. It's just not something you can pick up at the mall..." http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/Suzuki/2004/12/01/752407.html . 041215 what's it to you? who go blather from