Nihil est agricultura melius nihil uberius
Nihil dulcius nihil homine libero dignius.“Nothing is better, more fruitful, more pleasant
and more worthy of a free man, than agriculture”.- Cicero (106BCE-43BCE)
(Today I completed my new vegetable garden. I’m exhausted but happier and more fulfilled than I’ve been in a long time.)
Less than a week ago, Act leader Rodney Hide sent an “open letter” to John Key outlining his stance on the Emissions Trading Scheme. In it he says:
So I’m not as worried about the future of the planet as I used to be. Even the UN now admits the globe stopped warming in 1998. [emphasis mine]
Take a look at the graph above and see what he’s done here. Technically 1998 was a very warm year and we’ve not had temperatures to match it since. Up until now people who have had an axe to grind have been misleading the public by phrasing this in ways to make it appear as if global warming has miraculously stopped somehow but Hide goes a step further and turns misdirection into an outright lie.
The UN have never, to my knowledge, said that global warming has stopped. The figures, even when taken selectively, don’t lend support to this concept.
Now, I like Hide as a person but we can’t afford to have people in his postition of influence spreading outright lies like this to the general public and for policy to be made based on these lies.
(sources: Open Parachute, Hot Topic, UK Met Office, Scoop)
Yesterday, after eight weeks of training, I ran in the Auckland Half Marathon. When I started I wasn’t able to run for more than 20 minutes without having to stop. Within just six weeks I had already managed to complete a full training run of the 21km required for the half marathon non-stop and without having to be taken away in an ambulance.
I have to say it’s quite liberating getting over that initial hurdle of becoming fit enough to run continuously (within limits!) and was surprised at how little time it took.
The secret to my couch potato success was to invest in good running gear and to follow a training regime (note: this book is by the same author and mine seemed to cater for a more diverse number of styles) specifically designed for someone of my fitness to get up to speed.
The regime essentially consists of running three days a week with fairly easy runs on Tuesday and Thursday followed by a more challenging one on Sunday. It starts you off easy and gradually builds you up in waves in order to give your muscles time to repair in between runs.
So, if you are a bit of a couch potato like me, I fully recommend signing up for an event like this as it gives you the motivation to get off your arse on a regular basis. And get yourself a good training regime as well as some good running gear! It is well worth it.
[edit: also, if you are a chap, I recommend tape on your nipples for runs over one hour.]
These are fairly old but I only just stumbled upon them. Some good insights from David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins, Richard Leakey and Jane Goodall on the environment and the future of our planet.
In 1973 the BBC released a TV documentary series in 13 episodes by mathematician Jacob Bronowski called The Ascent Of Man. 35 years later I purchased it as a DVD box set on the recommendation of a fellow science documentary aficionado.
It’s extremely good! And I’m not just saying that in the context of the era in which it was produced. Sure, some of the music grates on the nerves and some of the graphics don’t compare to what we are capable of these days but overall it’s got a depth that is often missing from the kind of documentaries found on the Discovery Channel. Actually, I take back my comment about the music; it features music from Meddle - my second-favourite Pink Floyd album - which, for me, redeems a multitude of musical sins.
Bronowski is thoughtful, poetic and very deliberate in every sentence. He gives you the feeling that he is treating you, the viewer, as an equal throughout and he conveys a sense of awe that is impossible to resist.
Most moving for me was a scene where Bronowski is visiting a Nazi concentration camp where many of his relatives were murdered. According to the interview with Attenborough in the bonus material the entire scene was spontaneous and filmed in a single take:
Bronowski died a year later of a heart attack at the age of 66.
Last month I signed up with New Scientist and ended up automatically sponsoring an orangutan in Borneo. We received the pack with photos of “Roy” (who’s very cute and undoubtedly adorning the fridges of many other people) and I never thought all that much else about it.
For my last post I was scavenging around for photos of apes and came across this and thought it worthy of a post of its own:
I’ve been bellyaching for years now about how silly it is that there is no way to cycle from Auckland’s North Shore to the city centre. I discovered getacross.org.nz yesterday and encourage everyone to take a moment to visit and register your support for the idea.
The bicycle is the most energy-efficient machine ever made. You give it a drop of oil each month and all you have to do is eat some food to power it. Bicycles take up far less room on the road and can travel almost half as fast as a car on the open road and it often faster than cars in city traffic. Cycling is also far better for your health than sitting in a car.
The next time you are able to observe a traffic queue at lights try to imagine all the cars gone and the occupants standing on the road exactly where they are. You’ll see that cars are a cumbersome and grossly inefficient way of getting around within a city.
The downside of riding a bicycle in a city built for cars is that you act like a human pollution filter (especially if you are puffing a bit) and it is horrendously easy to get yourself killed.
I’d like to see our cities redesigned to favour walkers and cyclists and have car traffic relegated to motorways and as second-rate citizens within cities themselves. Cars are still useful and are probably here to stay but we need to recognise that there are better ways of getting around our cities and that one of the things holding this back is the fact that our infrastructure is often designed exclusively for motor vehicles without regard to walkers or cyclists.
I live and work from home which means I don’t get out as often as is probably healthy. A lot of my view of the world is formed by the news I read and sometimes I find myself getting a little pessimistic.
I came across the following statistics last week while reading Freakonomics (thoroughly recommended) which helped put things into perspective. If you think humanity is going to hell in a handbasket I hope these figures help you as much as they did me:
| HOMICIDES [not incl. wars] per 100,000 people | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| En | N+B | Sc | G+S | It | |
| 13th and 14th c. | 23.0 | 47.0 | na | 37.0 | 56.0 |
| 15th c. | na | 45.0 | 46.0 | 16.0 | 73.0 |
| 16th c. | 7.0 | 25.0 | 21.0 | 11.0 | 47.0 |
| 17th c. | 5.0 | 7.5 | 18.0 | 7.0 | 32.0 |
| 18th c. | 1.5 | 5.5 | 1.9 | 7.5 | 10.5 |
| 19th c. | 1.7 | 1.6 | 1.1 | 2.8 | 12.6 |
| 1900-1949 | 0.8 | 1.5 | 0.7 | 1.7 | 3.2 |
| 1950-1994 | 0.9 | 0.9 | 0.9 | 1.0 | 1.5 |
*En = England, N+B = Netherlands and Belgium, Sc = Scandinavia, G+S = Germany and Swizerland, It = Italy
(Source: Manuel Eisner, “Violence and the Rise of Modern Society” Criminology in Cambridge, October 2003, pp 3-7)
I’ve just received the following email announcing that the Encyclopedia Of Life has finally gone live with the first 30,000 pages:
The new Encyclopedia of Life portal has gone live with more than one million species pages!
In celebration of this big event, our first EOL newsletter is available at:http://www.eol.org/content/page/newsletter.
You can see the new pages at http://www.eol.org. We also invite you to take the survey at the site so you can help us improve.
Unfortunately I’ve been unable to get on it due to the sheer volume of people who must be hitting it right now.
The EOL aims to catalogue the 1.8 million known species and is an open collaboration that’s expected to take 10 years or so. Take a look at EO Wilson’s talk that started it all off:
