Archive for October, 2006
Fellow writers and friends
Please go to the area titled “TDS Team” and add yourself to the map… please.
Let’s see where we all are coming from.
Saving Our Children From Nature Deficiency.
I myself am no stranger to nature, nor am I one who has spent little time enjoying the outdoors. From building forts, biking to backwoods fishing holes, learning to trap in my early teens through trial and error, and relentlessly pursuing squirrels with homemade blowguns. I even showed up once to a test in one of my classes in grad school wearing chest waders because I had been out duck hunting early that morning and spent too much time chatting with a conservation officer. What I am trying to say is that even though I have had all these wonderful experiences with nature and believe me there are too many to count, the simple stories from my dad’s childhood make me feel like there was something missing from mine.
I am by no means very old, I am only in my mid twenties. Growing up, I was exposed to an ever increasing amount of electronic gizmos, from the original Nintendo to cell phones and laptop computers with wireless internet. I have witnessed these devices begin to take control our daily lives. Today’s kids are becoming wired in to this technology and are being raised in a world of electronics that do everything for you. Forget spending time outdoors, computers are where the knowledge lies and technology holds the jobs of the future. I am afraid this is becoming more and more common. Children are spending more of their time indoors on the internet, watching TV or playing video games. Want proof? Just look at today’s obesity epidemic. Sure we run on our treadmills or rollerblade around town, but how many people actually get off the pavement?
Nowadays our lives have become so intertwined with electronics that we spend our time indoors instead of out. Not many understand the ways of the natural world anymore and the number of those who do are declining at a rapid pace, a pace that frightens me. In a world of children being raised on electronics, we have almost successfully de-natured childhood. Society has already begun to suppress the adventurous spirit of children. We impose too many rules on children and natural play, we are afraid to let our kids play outside for fear of them getting hurt, adults would most likely be viewed as having poor parenting skills if they were to let their children explore the forest on their own, etc. This separation from nature not only includes an absence from the outdoors, it also includes other aspects of daily life. Fewer and fewer people participate in the growing or harvesting of their own food, and the family farm has become all but extinct. Let me make this perfectly clear; Meat is not born plastic wrapped on a shelf. But what chance do the younger generations have to learn these valuable lessons if we do not encourage them to participate in the natural world.
In this ever increasingly high tech world sometimes low tech is the key. Let mother Earth be the great teacher that she is once again. I say let the children explore, let them forget the rest of society and rediscover the woods, let them bond with and learn to love the natural world. For man is not separate from nature but a part of it. If we continue to let our children grow apart from nature, who will carry on the outdoorsman’s traditions, who will be the next stewards of nature?
Do your part, be a mentor, take a kid fishing, hunting, trapping or hiking, get them into the garden and let them understand where food exactly comes from; teach them the laws of nature. Don’t give your kid a cell phone, give him or her a map and compass. Kids who grow up with and maintain a relationship with nature and will live happier and healthier lives and will also make sure it is available for the generations to come.
A skunk with no name…
Hello,
Soon we will have a skunk to call our own. A graphic artist is putting him together over the next week.
So, lets try and come up with some names… submit them to the site and then we will set up a poll for an official vote.
Thanks
William
Own Your Life - The 7 habits
In the next few weeks I’m going to put out several articles on personal development. I will go through a very well known book by Stephen R. Covey ,“The 7 habits of highly effective people”. I plan on reading a chapter a week, I’ll summarize it, and then tell you how I will apply this to my life.
I hope that you the reader will use these articles in an interactive way and apply the information to your own life. I would also appreciate your feedback, if you think there is something I haven’t considered or something that might be more efficient or effective, please comment.
Over the next week I want you to write out your goals, not just think about them, actually write them out.
If any of you actually have your goals written out and are working towards them on a daily or weekly basis I applaud you, you are one of the few.
Quite a number of years ago someone told me that they had seen a statistic that said “approximately 5% of the U.S. population actually writes out their goals”. At first glance that seems like a very small number. Think about it though, how many people do you know, have written goals with a deadline? If they do have their goals written out, how many actually follow them to reality? I bet it is 1% or less of the people you come in contact with on a daily basis. I think 5% of the U.S. population is a huge over estimate, and of that 5% I would be amazed if half follow through on their goals by their self imposed deadline (assuming they have one).
So, welcome to a better class of statistical classification! You are going to be that 1%. This will be for most of you the first time in the 99th percentile - Congratulations! By actually realizing your goals and embracing them it won’t be the last. The next few weeks are going to be a turning point in your life - so buckle up and get ready for the ride.
Where do we begin? There are 3 steps to follow according to Dr. Donald E. Whetmore, who is a professional speaker of the Productivity Institute.
When establishing your goals -
Step 1: Put your goals into writing. This is a stronger affirmation of what you are working towards, rather than having a vague, wispy notion floating in your head.
Step 2: Quantify your goals. Be specific in writing your goals. Don’t just write “I want to be rich”, write I want to have $1,000,000.
Step 3: Set a Deadline: Deadlines move you to action , be sure to hold yourself accountable.
Now, go and think of your goals, write them down. Have your goals with you next week so you can get more out of my articles on “The 7 habits of highly effective people”.
Until next week I will leave you with this quote:
“The difference between a goal and a dream is the written word”
-Gene Donohue
William
-Giving you a first class ticket to a better future.
On Pope John Paul II and his discontents.
I was drunk in a pub in St. Andrews with my good friend, AJ, a good-old-boy southerner, when we got on the topic of the recently dead Pope. Now AJ is a good Christian, meaning he’s tried more than once to convince me to give up my depraved lifestyle and return to the fold (yeah, fucking lot of chance that’s gonna happen). So when we started talking about the Pope, I naturally assumed that Alan would besiege my ears with a lot of Christian propaganda about the many wonderful things the Pope accomplished. But no, AJ’s a lot smarter than that. To my surprise, he mentioned that now that the pope (I’m fucking sick of capitalising the word “pope”) is dead, the Church can finally reform itself and try to enter the 21st Century.
“Well shit,” I thought to myself, “someone’s beaten me to the most offensive, radical, and unpopular opinion.” In light of the pope’s accomplishments, we need to remember the offensive failings of this essentially political figure. As Christopher Hitchens writes in an article in Slate, “By the time the church apologizes for saying that condoms are worse than AIDS, or admits that it was complicit at best in the mass murder in Rwanda, another few generations will have died out.” And to this list of notorious accolades, lets add either complicity with, or complete and utter incompetence in preventing/remedying the problem of, paedophilia in the priesthood. As if the situation weren’t bad enough as stands, recall that the pope granted Cardinal Law a sinecure at the Vatican. The Guardian, a British newspaper, ran an article stating, “Pope gives top position to disgraced Boston cardinal.” The article went on to explain that, “The former Archbishop of Boston, accused of covering up the activities of paedophile priests and forced to resign, was given a prestigious sinecure by the Pope yesterday.” Being cloistered in the Vatican, Law isn’t accountable to international law and is protected by the Vatican’s special status. Basically the Pope gave him diplomatic immunity for covering up the rape of children. Awesome. Fucking Awesome.
So given all this, how can you reasonably expect me to feel sorry that this violently conservative (look at his position on gay rights and abortion, among others) is finally dead? I think that any sort of reasonable Catholic who believes that the Church has erred in its decisions on the aforementioned issues should look at the passing of pope John Paul II as an opportunity for progress rather than a “tragic moment.” Ding dong, the witch is dead. Move the fuck on people.
PS: Hey, about life after death… If being gay is morally wrong, and Cardinal Law helped keep priests who performed sexual acts on young boys from being prosecuted, and the pope granted him immunity, then in the grand scheme of things, the pope is an accesory to both rape and homosexual behaviour. And while that may not hold up in any mortal court system, do you really think God and St. Peter are going to look highly on a man who is in the larger sense of the term, an accessory to paedophilic rape and homosexual behaviour? Sorry, I’ll be chillin’ in Hell (if there is one) with John II and Cardinal Law. But I won’t be there for rape at least.
PPS: Joey Rats, as the prolific social and political commentator John Stewart refers to the new pope, is also a douche-bag. They should’ve picked the African guy, not that I’d like him any more, but because I’d love to watch conservative Catholics squirm at the thought of a black pope.
PPS: Don’t tell me I’m going to hell. I know this already. I’ll be running the place.
Here’s a link to Hitchens’ article that I referenced earlier in this post. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116443/
Here’s a link to the The Guardian article. http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,12272,1226651,00.html