More Special Insights

As promised this blog is about ALL OF US. It is a place for us to share our opinions and insights. Yesterday we posted Lisa's thoughts and today Fred H and Gary T. First Fred:

"I share many of the thoughts posted lately about the difficulties and frustrations in seeing so much suffering, desiring to do what we can, and watching what appears to be limited responses from groups and individuals with the means and/or power to act positively. Disasters such as the recent earthquake bring these issues to our attention, and also remind us of some of the chronic conditions, as there are in Haiti, which so many innocents around the world have to endure as their lot in life. I thought some readers may be encouraged to hear one story (of millions) of someone who has devoted much time and effort to help improve the conditions of those much less fortunate, coincidentally in this case Haitians. I can't help but be proud to say this person is my daughter Mae, who 5 years ago bravely joined me as a 12 year old on a medical mission to the Dominican Republic organized by the UMDNJ School of Public Health to provide care for Haitian immigrants who work there in sugar cane fields under what most all human rights groups agree are slavery conditions. I won't go into many details of how deplorable the situation is there (nothing quite like seeing people scour a garbage dump for food), but offer the link to the Dominican Republic Outreach Program in case anyone is interested. The orphanage that the school sponsors is an especially heart-warming effort.

http://sphweb02.umdnj.edu/sphweb/outreach/

Anyhow, Mae brought along backpacks full of simple art supplies and taught scores of children drawing over the course of the week, and has urged me since that we return again to help more, which we will do in April. In Public Health we consider Health to be a combination of physical, emotional and spiritual aspects, and for me there's nothing better at addressing the health of the spirit than the practice of art. My kudos to all those like Mae who routinely go far from their comfort zone to directly assist those much less fortunate.

Lastly, my suggestion for donations to help in Haiti:
Partners in Health, the group started by a fellow named Paul Farmer who was the subject of a Tracey Kidder biography, Mountains beyond Mountains, a few years ago (great book if interested) http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti

Peace.

fred h"



And here is Gary T:

"Lisa's got it right!!!!

Gary Tomei"

Thanks folks for paying attention and helping to energize not only thought; but I hope action.

Yet Another Insight

One reader of the blog sent the following response. It sure resonates with me. How about you?

"I am not content with the world, and the way it has been run. I hear everyday how lives have been ruined because of the incompetence of people we put in office. I look at how Obama is trying to do SOMETHING, which is more than our past President did in 8 years. Cleaning up a mess doesn't happen overnight, yet people feel it should. Where were all of these people over the past 8 years, when the mess was piling up. How dare they request an immediate fix.

I look at the people of Haiti, and how they can still sing and dance in the streets - they have it right. They know what is important - God, Family and Friends. The rest is all just "Stuff", yet the price we put on it creates wars, bankruptcies and pain.

I, like many Americans feel "stuck" - we want to do more, we want to help but it just does not seem to be enough. We can help in our volunteerism, our contributions - but there is SO much to do, and in my opinion, not enough help. For all of those people sitting on the side line, yelling at the game - GET UP and play - get up and participate in any way you can. We all need to help get us out of this mess..."




Thanks,

Lisa Piccolo

Yet Another Insight

My dear friend Chris Weyant is a political cartoonist whose work appears regularly in a paper in D.C.,called The Hill as well as in publications such as The New Yorker.

He recently did a cartoon that drew many comments. Here is one worth repeating:

"When Cheney was in office, he said public criticism of a war-time President was akin to TREASON. But when he does it, as a former VP no less, it's acceptable? How can you continue to support such morally bankrupt, political gamesmanship? Not only did he and his administration bring America to financial ruin, but he is personally responsible for the deaths and injuries of thousand of American soldiers by leading us into two wars without end or objective. But I guess conservatives never really cared about average Americans who go to war. It's so much easier to just wear their flag pins and sit back as the rest of the middle class does the fighting for them".


Below is the link to the Hill where you can see the cartoon.

http://thehill.com/opinion/weyants-world/74445-weyants-world-january-6-2010(you may have to cut and paste to your browser's address bar)

Question: does Cheney offer any thing supportive to any one or any group? Does he have any of his revisionists facts right? Like many in the ultra right, he does not allow reality or results to get in the way of his opinions.

That said, it is interesting to observe that when in power at the federal level one may do and say as one wants until the next regime does so. Then it is is okay to denigrate and deride what the current administration is doing or saying.

Less any one forget the party of NO, brought us eight years of financial, regulatory,diplomatic and legislative disasters.

So, have a thought and let me hear or see it. Unless of course you are content not to have opinions so long as your life is safe.









http://thehill.com/opinion/weyants-world/74445-weyants-world-january-6-2010

Need Some Help

Like you I am over whelmed with the disaster in Haiti. I am also over whelmed with the response that most able countries in the world have expressed.

I have a question. Some one respond and tell me which Muslim country has stepped up? The Saudis, Kuwaitis? UAEs, Iran, Iraq?

I know that being politically correct is what current Western diplomacy is about. So you may express your views as best you can with in that frame work, or not.

Please understand, this is not a sarcastic post. I have not been able to find any response except for the Islamic Relief Fund that I tracked; but am unable to see a commitment only an appeal for funds.

Holiday Season Over, Back to Work

Wait a minute, not so fast! The real purpose of the season is to get us to slow down, move away from the usual routine and to focus on each other. That focus should carry us into the new year and beyond. Here is a tip. When you are under pressure, for what ever reason, think back to the eve or the day of what ever your favorite holiday was this recent season. Hold that thought and ask your self what made it special? How did you feel? Take a moment, relish and recapture the feeling. It is there for the reliving.

Be careful not to let the January blahs get you. All the wonders of family, friends, holidays are with us all the time. Perspective on things is what makes the difference. If you don't like the reality you have created, change your perspective which will change your behavior and that in turn, folks, changes the reality you create. Sounds simple? It is and it isn't. I think this ability we have to change our reality is what traditionally is called New Year's Resolutions. Few make to February because it is hard work

The process I am talking about takes practice, concentration, mental work, and courage. Try it.

Here is another tip: do something new in your life that is physical and requires some discipline and regularity. I recommend yoga for example. Recently I went back to my practice and find new clarities of thought and a feeling of well being.

Running, gyming, cycling, walking, any thing that requires physical and mental discipline will do wonders for you.

A final thought for you: do something for some one else.

Creating Illusion

Yesterday while awaiting the "blizzard" of 2009", Laura and I went to see the new Bob Marshall film, Nine.

You may have seen this musical theater piece on Broadway distinguished by several memorable songs, great dancing and based on the Italian film maker Federico Fellini's life and times.

Bob Marshall also directed the film version of Chicago a few years back and his work is wonderfully clear.

The story line deals with Fellini creating the world of The Italians as he wanted people to imagine they were; not who they truly were in the 1950s. Fellini wanted the world to see the Italians as glamorous, sexy, amorous and above the mores of morality of the time. Fellini in fact was a tortured, abused, selfish, creative genius(funny how often those words are attached to the term creative genius)who failed at all the female relationships he had. He was at the same time adored, forgiven, tolerated, and pampered by all of the women in his life. Most of them simultaneously!

Like Fellini, Marshall creates a wold of illusion. An illusion within the illusion. How? By casting some of the most beautiful women in the Hollywood genre, and this is the illusion, who are actresses and not musical theater people.

Judy Dench pulls it off because of the material she has to work with. She also carries the story line along with Daniel Day Lewis who is superb. And then, Sophia Loren, well, playing Sophia Loren: several close ups, a bit of dialogue, charming but beneath the dignity of an 80 year old super star. No one else can sing, some look like they can dance but all in all not up to the demands of musical theater.

Why, one could ask, bother to direct beautifully, choreograph superbly, shoot film perfectly, costume people handsomely and do it with people who can not sing and dance?

Think if the likes of Donna Murphy, Chita Rivera(in the role of his mother), Kelly O'Hara, Audra Mc Donald, and even Karen Akers(from the original cast)had the major roles. They can all sing, dance and act.

So Marshall and Harvey Weinstein went with the box office draws($)instead of musical theater talent asking those they did cast to create the illusion that they have musical theater talent!! Ludicrous.

Go to see and let me know what you think.

Inconvenient Truth?

We all know the term climate change. We also know that there is a debate underway as to whether it is real or not. To date it seems it is being acknowledged as real.

A November 24,2009 Wall Street Journal piece sheds some concerning light on the subject, the organizations and the scientists involved.

Who can we trust folks?

Please read the following WSJ piece and let me know what you think.



"The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. . . . We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind."

So apparently wrote Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) and one of the world's leading climate scientists, in a 2005 email to "Mike." Judging by the email thread, this refers to Michael Mann, director of the Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center. We found this nugget among the more than 3,000 emails and documents released last week after CRU's servers were hacked and messages among some of the world's most influential climatologists were published on the Internet.

The "two MMs" are almost certainly Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, two Canadians who have devoted years to seeking the raw data and codes used in climate graphs and models, then fact-checking the published conclusions—a painstaking task that strikes us as a public and scientific service. Mr. Jones did not return requests for comment and the university said it could not confirm that all the emails were authentic, though it acknowledged its servers were hacked.

Yet even a partial review of the emails is highly illuminating. In them, scientists appear to urge each other to present a "unified" view on the theory of man-made climate change while discussing the importance of the "common cause"; to advise each other on how to smooth over data so as not to compromise the favored hypothesis; to discuss ways to keep opposing views out of leading journals; and to give tips on how to "hide the decline" of temperature in certain inconvenient data.

View Full Image

Associated Press
A satellite image of Tropical Storm Ida. Some climate researchers claim that an increase in tropical storms is proof of anthropogenic climate change.
Some of those mentioned in the emails have responded to our requests for comment by saying they must first chat with their lawyers. Others have offered legal threats and personal invective. Still others have said nothing at all. Those who have responded have insisted that the emails reveal nothing more than trivial data discrepancies and procedural debates.

Yet all of these nonresponses manage to underscore what may be the most revealing truth: That these scientists feel the public doesn't have a right to know the basis for their climate-change predictions, even as their governments prepare staggeringly expensive legislation in response to them.

Consider the following note that appears to have been sent by Mr. Jones to Mr. Mann in May 2008: "Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. . . . Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same?" AR4 is shorthand for the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, presented in 2007 as the consensus view on how bad man-made climate change has supposedly become.

Read a Selection of the Emails

Climate Science and Candor

In another email that seems to have been sent in September 2007 to Eugene Wahl of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Paleoclimatology Program and to Caspar Ammann of the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Climate and Global Dynamics Division, Mr. Jones writes: "[T]ry and change the Received date! Don't give those skeptics something to amuse themselves with."

When deleting, doctoring or withholding information didn't work, Mr. Jones suggested an alternative in an August 2008 email to Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, copied to Mr. Mann. "The FOI [Freedom of Information] line we're all using is this," he wrote. "IPCC is exempt from any countries FOI—the skeptics have been told this. Even though we . . . possibly hold relevant info the IPCC is not part of our remit (mission statement, aims etc) therefore we don't have an obligation to pass it on."

It also seems Mr. Mann and his friends weren't averse to blacklisting scientists who disputed some of their contentions, or journals that published their work. "I think we have to stop considering 'Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal," goes one email, apparently written by Mr. Mann to several recipients in March 2003. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal."

Mr. Mann's main beef was that the journal had published several articles challenging aspects of the anthropogenic theory of global warming.

For the record, when we've asked Mr. Mann in the past about the charge that he and his colleagues suppress opposing views, he has said he "won't dignify that question with a response." Regarding our most recent queries about the hacked emails, he says he "did not manipulate any data in any conceivable way," but he otherwise refuses to answer specific questions. For the record, too, our purpose isn't to gainsay the probity of Mr. Mann's work, much less his right to remain silent.

However, we do now have hundreds of emails that give every appearance of testifying to concerted and coordinated efforts by leading climatologists to fit the data to their conclusions while attempting to silence and discredit their critics. In the department of inconvenient truths, this one surely deserves a closer look by the media, the U.S. Congress and other investigative bodies.