I have many life philosophies by which I live. By life philosophies, I mean principles and attitudes I really live by, not just nod when I hear them in the form of a good quote or speech. I have never kept record of these life philosophies, but I thought I’d take some time to write some down now to see if I had one for every year I’ve lived. Why one per year lived? Because I’ve long thought that if I could learn something valuable enough from life each year to turn it into a life philosophy, a life outlook and behavioral change for the rest of my life, it’d have been a good year for wisdom.
common
Would Canadians Mourn as Much for Stephen Harper as Jack Layton?
It’s been a few days since the passing of New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton as I write this, and the tributes are still pouring in. Thousands have come to Ottawa to say goodbye in person as his body laid in state. Impromptu memory walks and memorials have been set up across the country by people he’s never met. Public reactions from the famous to the infamous to the nonfamous are still pouring in. People are still updating their Twitter and Facebook accounts with more tweets and statuses about Jack days after the fact. They’re talking about it all over the place, too, not just online. It’s a really heart felt national tragedy, one that has overshadowed plane crashes and other tragedies that have also gone on during this time.
While thinking about all this, though, I had another thought.
Would Canadians be mourning as much if Stephen Harper had died the other day instead of Jack Layton?
TED Ads Worth Spreading 2011, Part 3 of 3
This is the final part of 3 posts showing all the ads TED deemed worth spreading. Please click on the links for Part 1 and Part 2.
The TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) community just released its 2011 Ads Worth Spreading contest winners, and the ads are better than the ones I have seen for the Super Bowl in any year! But what did you expect from a brilliant group who’s moniker is “Ideas Worth Spreading”?
These ads aren’t like those in the Super Bowl where they last 30-60 seconds. They tend to be much longer, often the full version of the ad rather than the truncated TV time version. However, with ads like these, I could watch commercials in place of TV shows because I don’t notice how long or short the ads were. I’m actually a little sad once it’s over, alongside whatever mood the commercials left me in.
I have posted the ads here because I have found higher quality versions of the ads than the ones available on the TED website. Otherwise, I’d have just linked to them all on TED’s site.
Enjoy and be prepared to be wowwed!!!
This Blog’s 2010 Performance in Review, Courtesy of WordPress.com
The performance summary below was a nice little features the people at WordPress.com did for their blogs. Now if only I could find a way to turn it into some monetary income.
WordPress.com should set some traffic rewards where you can get credits to use to purchase their services, like storage space, or domain mapping. I pay for these things just to make this blog function the way I want it to. To think, I donate all this time to work on this personal interest, and people came here as much as they did (2.3+ million page views and about 700,000 downloads), and I still had to pay money to maintain it.
That small possible improvement aside, in my opinion, I would like to genuinely thank WordPress.com for all the hard work they do to provide such a wonderful blogging platform! I did do a review of most of the other well-known platforms before deciding on using WordPress.com and I am glad I did!
The stats helpers at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
Crunchy numbers
The Real Shit on Biosolids
There’s a lot of shit going down in Halifax these days in the fight over the safety of biosolids, or human sewage used for fertilizers.
One side is claiming they can get all the bad shit out of the people’s shit so it’s safe to use. The other is claiming there’s no way that shit can be clean and appealing to people’s feelings on eating food grown in shit. I’m not going to advocate for either side because I don’t know shit about the shit data, but I don’t need to. What I will do is point out some interesting shit people who don’t know shit seem to be neglecting that makes this whole shit spit irrelevant. There are some healthy food that’s not subject to this, but most people don’t eat that shit when you look at the big picture.
First, would you rather eat food grown in your shit or someone else’s shit?
A lot of food in the grocery stores are grown in other places, fertilized by other people’s shit. California, Mexico, China and other places all allow shit to be used as fertilizers, and a lot of shit, too! (Halifax Herald story, with research from the Nova Scotia Environmental Network, via the Organic Consumers Association)
So are you telling me you’d rather eat food grown in their shit rather than food grown in your shit?
Hey, lots of people have prejudices against Chinese and Mexicans. They make lots of jokes about them, too. Ironically, the last laugh may be on those people cause they’re probably eating food grown from Chinese and Mexican shit. Ewwhahaha!
You and I are probably eating food grown from foreign shit, too. Maybe not fresh food as you may get your fresh food locally, but think about the processed food. Do you know where all of it comes from?
To be honest, though, if I had to eat food grown from people’s shit, I might well eat those grown from other people’s shit. Part of the fear about eating food grown in our own shit is all the chemicals we ingest that can’t get filtered out, especially drugs we take for illnesses or lifestyle, like birth control pills. The boomer generation is by far the most drugged up generation ever. In poorer parts of the world, those people don’t have access to such “luxuries”. I’d be willing to bet their shit is a lot cleaner than ours and would take the risk to eat food grown from their shit rather than ours. It’s just that they have pesticides and other chemicals that probably make them more harmful overall.
Second, would you rather eat food grown from animal shit than your own shit?
Have you seen or heard about the shit that’s been going into animal feed lately? There’s everything from growth hormones to genetically modified crops to low quality reject foods, and very possibly more of that shit than real food! Those animals are, well, animals! What did you think they were, people, to be worth feeding better shit to? And the shit they get fed is nasty shit, even in the world of shit! Birth control pills and medications are like organically grown peanuts compared to that shit. Watch Food Inc. on this site to get a little taste, though the superb documentary covers a lot more shit than that and is real good shit for anybody to know about the nature of the food they eat.
Animal shit has been used as nature’s fertilizer over the millennia. However, that was when animals ate stuff Mother Nature fed them, not the shit we’re feeding them today. If you know all the shit the animals you eat are fed, whose shit fertilizes fields other food you eat are grown in, I’d be willing to bet you’d take food grown from your own shit any day!
Finally, why are you concerned about fresh food grown in shit compared to all that processed shit you’re eating?
Seriously, few people these days don’t eat processed food, whether frozen dinners or fast food, not to mention drinking pop. Obesity is an epidemic for a reason, you know, not to mention a lot of other health conditions stemming from shitty diets. A little shit here or there that gets through from food grown in shit, or food fed shit in the case of animals, is nothing compared to all that bad shit out there people are eating. Even the good shit, if frozen or processed to much like frozen organic entrees, isn’t all that good shit to be eating.
Conclusions
All in all, worrying about a little shit that might get through after Mother Nature, and possibly filtration plants, have filtered your shit in which you grow your food is misplacing your concerns. There’s a whole lot of other shit out there you ought to be raising shit about.
All right. Enough of this shit.
I hope I won’t get in trouble for talking about this shit…
Oh, shit.
Digital Citizen 