Check List

CROSS CULTURAL OUTLINE congratulates
Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for winning the
2007 Nobel Peace Prize


How about taking some time to pay attention to even just one or two of the global issues on the list that are due to the effects of human activity on the natural environment.

How about finding and defining your own personal strategy to help preserve our planet?

: Climate change - Global warming; Greenhouse gas emissions; Sea level rise

: Conservation - Invasive species; Species extinction; Habitat destruction

: Energy - Energy conservation; Petroleum dependence

: Genetic engineering - Genetic Pollution; Genetic Erosion

: Agriculture - Intensive farming; Overgrazing; Irrigation; Monoculture

: Soil - Soil conservation; Soil erosion; Soil contamination; Herbicides; Pesticides; Soil salination

: Land degradation - Desertification; Crop decimation; Famine

: Overpopulation - Urban sprawl; Increased longevity

: Air Pollution - Acid rain; Air Quality Index; Atmospheric dispersion modeling; Chlorofluorocarbon; Global dimming; Haze; Ozone depletion; Particulates; Smog

: Water Pollution - Marine pollution; Ocean acidification; Oil spill; Surface runoff; Thermal pollution; Wastewater; Waterborne diseases; Drinking water quality

: Depletion of natural resources and non-renewables - Overfishing; Deforestation; Depletion of fossil fuels; Over-consumption

: Waste - Waste types; Waste management; Waste collection; Toxicity; Contamination; Waste treatment technologies

It is easy for us to forget about how much garbage we produce because once a week the truck comes along, sweeps up that trash and whisks it away to a landfill out of sight and smell.

_______________________________________________

UPDATE: A Message from human rights activist and poet Ana Elsner on March 12, 2012:

It is now 5 years later. The year 2012. German Filmmaker Valentin Thurn has made his documentary TASTE THE WASTE calling attention to the issue of worldwide food waste and the problem with its disposal. Precisely one of the issues that Al Gore raised these many years ago...
HAVE WE LEARNED ANYTHING in these five years? Have we taken any steps to protect the environment and the billions of people that share this planet? The sad answer is: Clearly NOT! The same old problems still persist, have even escalated and gotten worse on a global level.
How stinging an indictment this is for our so called 'civilized society' that acts as irresponsibly as ever. When will we wake up and rally to the rescue of our abused planet earth? Perhaps not until it is too late...

->CLICK HERE AND WEEP<-
_______________________________________________

::

At the Supermarket Checkout:


Commenting on winning the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Gore said,

"We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

Gore plans to donate his share of the $1.5 million that accompanies the prize to the non-profit Alliance for Climate Protection.


[See also An Indictment]

[Pass on the plastic]

[Try out a different product]

.

Where is the Wisdom

:

Where is the wisdom

we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge

we have lost in information?

- Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965), poet, dramatist and literary critic

"La injusticia me hace hervir
la sangre"

- Fernando Botero, Colombian painter and sculptor



Dam ist der Name der ersten und bekanntesten Rap-Band Palästinas. Auf Arabisch steht das Wort für "ewig", im Hebräischen für "Blut". Seit 1998 rappen Tamer Nafar, sein Bruder Suhell und ihr gemeinsamer Freund Mahmoud Jrere aus der palästinensischen Siedlung Lod in Israel gegen den Frust über die Situation des palästinensischen Volkes und für ein größeres Bewusstsein für dessen Schicksal.



Palestinian rap group DAM (Da Arab MC's) created this Hebrew music video about the struggle of Palestinians in Israel. Living in Lod, a town between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, they are Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, so-called "Israeli Arabs".
DAM's music is a unique fusion of East and West, combining Arabic percussion rhythms, Middle Eastern melodies and urban Hip Hop.

.

[See also: Uncensored Testimony]

.

Sit and ponder this

-:- -:- -:- -:- -:- -:- -:- -:- -:- -:- -:- -:- -:- -:- -:-

I Sit and Look Out

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world,
and upon all oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children,
dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband -
I see the treacherous seducer of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love,
attempted to be hid -
I see these sights on the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny -
I see martyrs and prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea - I observe the sailors
casting lots who shall be kill’d,
to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations
cast by arrogant persons upon laborers,
the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these -
All the meanness and agony without end,
I, sitting,
look out upon,
see, hear, and am silent.

-Walt Whitman, (1819-1892),
American humanist, poet, journalist, editor, teacher, and clerk at the U.S. Department of the Interior

Visit the world of Ana Elsner, a contemporary poet who was inspired by Walt Whitman

.

Human Body Plastination - Science or Exploitation

Thanks to a technology called plastination, the general public now has a chance to physically view what only doctors and scientists could once see: the very real and intricate architecture of human anatomy and individual organs, unaffected by decomposition.


Actual human bodies are preserved by a process called polymer impregnation,whereby water and lipids in biological tissues are replaced by curable polymers,silicon rubber, epoxy resin or polyester (all commonly known as plastic).

The plastic is initially pliable, enabling the bodies to be placed in different life-like positions.Depending on the plastic used, it can be hardened by heat, light or gas (see image right) so to retain their shape.

It takes from two to six months to transform a cadaver into a full-body plastinate. Organs are identical to their pre-preservation state down to the microscopic level, providing durable specimens invaluable for study and analysis.

Properly plastinated specimens are completely dry and odorless.

Before plastination, the only method for preserving human cadavers was by storing them in formaldehyde.


[Further reading: Body Worlds]

.


The 'Universe Within' is a travelling public exhibit of plastinated human bodies that has been shown in Europe, the US and Japan, presented by the Chinese Society for Anatomical Sciences and the Museum of Life Sciences in Beijing.

It is allegedly supported by Beijing University and the University of Vienna.

The human bodies in this display were said to have been donated to the Museum. Nobody knows who they are.


The assertion by the exhibitor is that these corpses were unclaimed and unidentified at the time of death. Non of these claims can be verified.

One may question whether the cadavers had been properly obtained in a nation where individual rights are not always respected.

With ticket prices ranging from $15 to $20, with a discount for children (!!!), to view the preserved remains of real people, this exhibit of flayed and dissected human corpses artfully exploits the technique of plastination:

One male body stands holding his entire skin draped over a hanger like a coat, his mustache and beard still on the flayed face.

Another, muscles exposed, is poised to throw a baseball.

Down the hall, a man sliced down the middle, so that his internal organs will be displayed, is in an odd minuet with himself, one half reaching out to the other.

What was once a 5-foot-10-inch woman is cut in pork-chop-thick wafers from skull to toes and stretched out to 20 feet in what is essentially a CAT scan made real.

This exhibit and others like it, where bodies of dubious provenance are used for commercial exploitation purposes, have met with huge regional and international outcries of protest on moral and ethical grounds.


[See also: Gunther von Hagens' website with online store]

.

Inadvertent Discrimination

:

"Most people, no doubt, when they espouse human rights,

make their own mental reservations

about the proper application

of the word 'human',"

Lafollette, Suzanne (1893-1983), American Journalist

: