AP probe finds drugs in drinking water

"A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows." Read more...

WTF???

Dear Pablo,

I am trying to decide whether to have a second child. I am wondering about the environmental impact that an American/U.S. person will have over the course of his/her life. Our home is very green: veggie oil car, organic foods, mostly used items are purchased -- but I am wondering if you can possibly give me an answer. Sometimes I think that it would be wonderful for my son to have a sibling when the oceans are rising, and they can be in it together, but then I wonder if, by having a second, I am contributing to the oceans' rising?


So, are you somehow complicit in the coming climate apocalypse if you bring one more child into the world? In fact, your question is more philosophical in nature and does not lend itself to a black-and-white analysis. The answer is both yes and no.

On the one hand, the little one would be entering a model household in environmental consciousness. The fact that you are asking me this question is evidence enough for me. The upbringing of your child would, no doubt, be less environmentally harmful than that of his or her American peers. Large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions would be spared by your veggie-fueled cars, agricultural lands would be enriched, not degraded, by your consumption of organic produce, and the biodegradable diapers would harmlessly decompose in the landfill or compost pile. Maybe your progressive-thinking household would raise the next Nobel Prize-winning climate change crusader, or the scientist responsible for a breakthrough in cold fusion technology.

On the other hand, your child would still be raised in a highly inefficient society that has been conditioned to consume its way out of crises (e.g., the post-9/11 "America: Open for Business" campaign). Every day, America throws away around 20 times of our collective body weight in wasted resources, much more than we see in our trash cans at home. The average ecological footprint is 4.5 acres per person, while the ecological footprint of the average American is 24 acres. If all 6.5 billion humans on Earth lived like Americans, we would need 5.5 planets to sustain our resource and energy consumption. Over his or her lifetime, your additional child would be directly responsible (fuel and electricity use) for approximately 1,500 tons of greenhouse gas emissions and indirectly responsible for emissions from the production of U.S. consumer products that are made with dirty coal power in places like China.

Despite being one of the largest drivers of climate change, the question of population growth is strangely absent from public debate. It seems that addressing our growing global population is as taboo as taking shots of Jägermeister at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Perhaps any dialogue on the matter reminds us too much of the draconian, but arguably necessary, "one child" policy in China. But even China is now considering eliminating this law, which means the country's "annual number of births would increase by nearly 30 percent, or approximately five million additional births," figures the New York Times.

According to John Seager, president of Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth), the lack of dialogue on the matter is due to several factors. First is what he calls the "'illions' problem," the difficulty of grasping an issue of such enormity, and the difficulty of seeing how individual decisions can have an impact. Next is the "CIA problem," not the illegal-wiretapping CIA, but China, immigration and abortion, all of which are divisive and sensitive issues in our society. Finally, we live in a demographically fragmented world where the populations of most developed nations are trending downward, except for immigration, and where developing nations are experiencing uncontrolled population growth.

I would not advocate for a global ban on excessive procreation, although some groups go as far as advocating for "voluntary human extinction." I think voluntary measures to limit family size should be on the table and would ultimately be more effective. According to Robert Engelman of Worldwatch Institute, "hyper-low fertility [in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau] does speak to the feasibility of achieving lower fertility based not on coercive policies but on the reproductive choices of couples and individuals and good access to family planning services." Education and access to family-planning assistance can not only keep the population explosion in check but have a positive impact on poverty.

The population issue requires progressive and enlightened social policy, and the individual decision to have an additional child must be made within a global context. The average replacement rate is roughly 2.1 children per couple, one to replace each parent, and 0.1 to make up for childless couples and infant mortality. So any number of children that is fewer than 2.1 is simply a continuation of your genetic legacy. If your children are instilled with altruism and strong environmental values, their lives might actually represent a decrease in the environmental impact from your own lives. I am certain you are bound to make an enlightened choice about having another child.

(Source: Salon.com)

"Exile toward the Beginning"

by Tariq Ramadan

Someday we are bound to come back to the beginning. Even the most distant pathways always lead us inwards, completely inwards, into intimacy, solitude between ourselves and our self - in the place where there is no longer anyone but God, and our self.

Paulo Coelho, in his novel The Alchemist, has brought in one of the most traditional and deep teachings of Sufism (Islamic mysticism). Go, travel the world, watch, look for the truth and the secret of life - every road will lead you to this sense of initiation: the light, the secret, are hidden in the place from which you set out.

You are on your way not towards the end of the road, but towards its beginning; to go is to return; to find is to rediscover.

Go!...You will return.

The apparent paradox of spiritual experience is the lesson that the constant effort, the jihād, that we make in order to purify, control and liberate our heart is, in the end, a reconciliation with the deepest level of our being (al-fitra) - there where the spark that God originally breathed into our heart gleams, there where our conscience weds our being and gives in to peace (salām).

The peace of recognition, the peace of submission (salām al-islām), is, deep down, a liberation.

God is “The One who created death and life to test you and to find out which of you would behave best.”

Death, life, experiences, ordeals, pain, solitude, as well as joy and happiness, are so many lessons along the road to reconciliation. Wounds, separations, tears, as well as smiles, “say” something: if you live in unawareness, they touch you; with God, they guide and lead you.

Where to? Where to then? Towards Him, towards you, close to Him in you.

Such is the most beautiful and the most difficult lesson of Islam: you find God only by rediscovering your own nature and the essence of your nature is the only thing that can free you from its appearance... “I” must set out to discover another “I”: such is the meaning of life.

Ordeals do not drive you to your limits, but to your origin, where “the need for Him” has its root. Ordeals will lead you back, whether you like it or not, to what you are, to the essence from which He has formed you. Exile will take you home.

A man once exclaimed to the mystic Rabia al-Adawiyya, “I have discovered a thousand proofs of the existence of God!” She closed the conversation by saying that she had only one proof and that was enough for her. “Which?” he asked. “If you are alone in the desert and you fall down a well, to whom will you turn?” “To God,” he said. “That proof is enough for me!”

A strange reply, seemingly simple, even simplistic, that a rationalist or atheist would without hesitation take as confirmation of what he had always believed: “God is the refuge of the destitute, the hope of the hopeless, a consolation, a reassuring invention!”

On the surface, but only on the surface... suffering and the unknown seem to press the mind to look for a refuge, a consolation. This is the logic our reason proposes when it looks on the human being on the outside of its nature.

The Islamic tradition says exactly the opposite: the ordeals of life, sadness, encountering the death of those we love, for example, take the human being back to its most natural state, to its most essential longing. Consciousness of limitation brings it back to the need for the Transcendent, to the need for meaning. To call on God is not to console oneself - it is to rediscover the condition God originally wanted for us - the spark of humility, the awareness of fragility.

Before your eyes is a child ... life, dependence, fragility and innocence.

To be with God is to know how to keep this state: a humble acceptance of your fragility, a comprehension of your dependence - going back to the beginning. In fact, the temptation of pride consists in thinking that man can cut himself off from his nature and attain total intellectual autonomy to the point where he can take on his own suffering, deliberately and alone.

Pride is to affirm outward independence by maintaining the illusion of liberty at the heart of one’s being. Humility is to rediscover the breath of the primordial need of Him at the heart of our being, in order to live in total outward independence.



This passage is the preface for Dr. Ramadan’s book Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, Oxford University Press, 2004

Are the watchers being watched?

"Members of the British Parliament have been shocked to discover that one of their number was bugged by the secret service, violating the forty-year old "Wilson doctrine" that offers MPs immunity from the sort of snooping they are happy for the rest of us to be subject to." Read on...

Consequences of GM crop contamination 'are set to worsen'

"The consequences of contamination between GM crops and non-GM varieties will be much more serious with the next generation of GM crops, an influential group of US scientists has warned.

Mixing between GM and non-GM varieties has already caused serious economic losses for producers in lost sales and exports. But the consequences of mixing will be much more serious with new crops that are altered to produce pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals, the scientists argue. The crops could harm human health and be toxic to wild animals." Read on...

Rumi's love

"...all because of love
when it arrived
my temporal life
from then on
changed to eternal."


Mevlana Rumi (1207 - 1273)
Source: Ghazel 1393, trans. Nader Khalili

Confucius family tree sprouts to more than two million: report

Lineages traced back more than 2,500 years ago:

"More than two million people have registered as descendants of Confucius, tripling the size of the celebrated Chinese philosopher's family tree, state media reported Monday.

The new list, which was last updated in 1930, has rocketed by more than 1.3 million, the Confucius Genealogy Compilation Committee (CGCC) said, according to a report in the China Daily.

The updated list, which includes overseas and female relatives for the first time, will be published next year to coincide with the 2,560th anniversary of the thinker's birth, the report said.

But the actual number of his descendants living across the world could actually be more than three million, the report in the English-language paper added.

'We have more than 1.3 million new entries and have stopped soliciting new ones,' says Kong Dewei, a Confucius descendant, who is directing the update with the Hong Kong-based CGCC, which has 450 branches across the world.

The new descendants have each paid a five yuan fee (70 cents) to register, the report added.

More than 40,000 overseas descendants have been added, including 34,000 in South Korea, after a 54th-generation descendant travelled there at the turn of the 14th century.

The ancient teachings of Confucius, centring on peace and social harmony, have enjoyed a renaissance here in recent years, after being suppressed in Maoist China."

(Source)

Microsoft seeks patent for office 'spy' software

"Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical wellbeing and competence.

The Times has seen a patent application filed by the company for a computer system that links workers to their computers via wireless sensors that measure their metabolism. The system would allow managers to monitor employees’ performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer’s assessment of their physiological state." Read more...

Machines 'to match man by 2029'

"Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent said engineer Ray Kurzweil." Read on...

Knowledge Conventional and Borrowed

Knowledge is conventional and borrowed
when its owner is annoyed
by people who aren't fascinated by it.
Since it was learned as a bait for popularity,
and not for enlightenment,
the seeker of religious knowledge
is no better than the seeker of worldly knowledge.
He seeks to please the vulgar and the noble,
rather than to attain freedom from this world.
Like a mouse he has burrowed in every direction;
afraid of the light, he prefers to work in the darkness.

-- Mathnawi II:2429-2433
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Daylight"
Threshold Books, 1994

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