Category: Uncategorized

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You (You kindhearted soul) Are The Target

The competent magician compels the audience to turn their attention elsewhere while the switch is made, seemingly unseen. Magicians are Old School though, because entire industries have adopted the mechanism of deception as their entire public relations strategy. The tobacco industry got away with it for fifty years and now the fossil fuel industry is well into its fourth decade of deceit. Their latest target is your growing desire to address climate change.

The Exxon-Mobil’s, Shell’s and Koch Brothers know they can no longer suppress or delay your fear of climate change consequences. All forms of communication are beaming video, pictures, and commentary of the rising natural events that are destroying lands, disrupting regions, and leaving swathes of dead creatures, even human beings. The corporations know the entirety of the fossil fuel industry is responsible. They even recognize that most of the world’s population knows of their culpability.

Still, they hope to delay the dismissal and banning of fossil fuels and their byproducts. They have an excellent plan. They are not going to talk about their responsibility, they are going to broadcast your responsibility. They are presenting a marketing plan that declares, “You are the problem, and you are the solution to climate change.”

Yes, you are the problem and all that you need to do is tidy up your little piece personal property. Save the planet by putting in a compost heap. Help your community by consolidating your errands into a minimum number of trips. Dry your laundry on a line in the backyard. Change out lightbulbs. Replace that dirty old furnace with a new, efficient model. Use the Energy Star program and replace all your appliances as they age. Recycle.

Do all these things, the marketing promises, and you will have addressed your personal responsibilities. You are done and you should be proud of yourself for addressing climate change. Sit back and appreciate life.

Each and every step of this pernicious initiative is a lie, a devastating one too. Compared to the gigatons of emissions being pumped into atmosphere, every possible act and deed an individual can do to address their personal responsibilities is negligible. Your actions are a drop of spit off the pier when the freighter is discharging its bilge water in the harbor.

What do you really need to do to address climate change?

  • Hold the fossil fuel industry accountable. This is the action they fear. Bringing attention to their culpability and demanding action against them is what they are paying P.R. firms to help them avoid.
  • Demand loudly and often that your legislators act
  • Elect legislators who support climate change legislation
  • Demand that state agencies and regulatory bodies enforce environmental laws.
  • Go to zoning board meetings
  • Attend public meeting of state and county agencies.
  • Broadcast as loudly as the fossil fuel industry does.

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“We won’t get fooled again!”

While the United States has been locked down, carbon emissions have decreased by 5.5 percent. The skies have cleared over major metropolitan areas and the sunny days are simply gorgeous. However, sheltering Americans in their homes left the rest of the nation producing carbon emissions at an incredible 94.5 percent of the rate before the pandemic struck. How could this happen?

The answer is the fossil fuel industry. The utilities are still running at full tilt. Diesel trucks and trains are still crisscrossing the country at steady rates. Essential manufacturing and cattle management are continuing unabated.

We have been taken for idiots.

For decades, climate change advocates have worked at the grassroots level, encouraging individuals and households to become involved in the fight to save the planet from global warming. The most common method of raising volunteers is teaching them individual responsibility, of reducing their own carbon footprints. Our websites, toolkits, and workshops are full of strategies and advice for individual choices and household choices for green living. Most of material is good and worthy.

In fact, many of the best suggestions for individual greening are also promoted by the fossil fuel industry, particularly utilities. They offer promotions for digital thermostats and LED lightbulbs nearly every month. We should have been more suspicious.

The utilities have been emphasizing their customer’s individual responsibility for climate change while remaining silent about their own outsized culpability. “Don’t look at us,” they are saying, “look at what you are doing. You are guilty of not doing enough.” At a time when households are absolutely doing their part by staying home, the carbon emissions only dropped 5.5%.

The utilities are responsible for most of the rest of the carbon pollution, 60%, 70%, or 80%. The reality could not be starker. Utilities were, are, and will be the worst polluters until we stop them. At this time of pandemic, energy sector bailouts should be targeted at clean renewable energy sources. Natural gas and coal powerplants should be wound down as soon as possible.

Furthermore, the only path out of the pandemic-caused recession/depression is government spending. FDR’s New Deal was a spending plan focusing on infrastructure, of which the United States is already in great need. The new energy structure necessary for the 21st century needs to be built and it must be built for a green energy economy.

Individual responsibility is a still a great entry into the green activism. However, the ultimate goal is not individual actions, but government and industry actions. Let us not allow ourselves to be taken for malleable idiots again.

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A Prayer for these Times

 â€œEvery hand that we don’t shake must be a phone call that we place. Every embrace that we avoid must become a verbal expression of warmth and concern.

Every inch and every foot that we physically place between ourselves and another, must become a thought as to how we might be of help to that other, should the need arise. 

So, as we keep a level of social distance, let us all remain spiritually near to each other, by responding to this health emergency with love and care for everyone’s well-being. 

May Adonai give us the wisdom to continue to react appropriately to this crisis and heal those who have been infected.” 

Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky

B’nai David-Judea Congregation

Los Angeles, CA

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Outstanding education Awesome technology

Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Educational methods include storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, and directed research. Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, but learners may also educate themselves. Education can take place in formal or informal settings and any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational. The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy.

Education is commonly divided formally into such stages as preschool or kindergarten, primary school, secondary school and then college, university, or apprenticeship.

A right to education has been recognized by some governments, including at the global level: Article 13 of the United Nations’ 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes a universal right to education.[2] In most regions education is compulsory up to a certain age.

History

Education began in prehistory, as adults trained the young in the knowledge and skills deemed necessary in their society. In pre-literate societies this was achieved orally and through imitation. Story-telling passed knowledge, values, and skills from one generation to the next. As cultures began to extend their knowledge beyond skills that could be readily learned through imitation, formal education developed. Schools existed in Egypt at the time of the Middle Kingdom.

 

Our Sports Ground

Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi (right) in the Chinese edition of Euclid’s Elements published in 1607
Plato founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in Europe.[5]The city of Alexandria in Egypt, established in 330 BCE, became the successor to Athens as the intellectual cradle of Ancient Greece. There, the great Library of Alexandria was built in the 3rd century BCE. European civilizations suffered a collapse of literacy and organization following the fall of Rome in CE 476.[6]

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Driven by our Curiosity

A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine. I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents. I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now. When, while the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath