Wake Up!

Today is Yom Kippur, possibly the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. But there is a clear message for all peoples.

Over the 10 Days of Repentance (and sometimes for the whole month preceding), Jews close their eyes and blow the Shofar, the ram’s horn. The ram’s horn comes from the Biblical story – the Akedah – where Abraham almost sacrifices his son, Isaac, to show his utter faith in Gd.  

During this intense period of retrospection, Jews are commanded to judge themselves and their actions, to make amends to both their fellow humans and Gd, and to commit to leading a better life.

The ram’s horn wakes us from our complacency and pushes us to step outside our comfort zone. This is a universal message. We are destroying the earth, using chemicals on fellow humans, allowing children to go to be hungry, women in fear for their safety, and people denied basic rights.

Take a moment and listen to the shofar (ram’s horn) being blown around the world (from Africa in this case) and wake up!

——————————————————————————————————

Alon Shalev is the author of the 2013 Eric Hoffer YA Book Award winner, At The Walls of Galbrieth, Wycaan Master Book 1 and The First Decree, both released by Tourmaline Books. Ashbar – Book 3 – is due for release in October 2013. Shalev is also the author of three social justice-themed novels including Unwanted Heroes. He swears there is a connection. More at http://www.alonshalev.com and on Twitter (@elfwriter).

Cat Caller Form

WARNING: The form below contains offensive language. Feel free to skip this post if you might be offended.

Two weeks ago, I shared a revealing conversation (revealing for maybe 49% of the population, I mean) I had with a young woman about the thoughts that go through her mind and those of most young women when out walking.

She sent me this form (you will need to double-click it to see bigger) to share.

I was never brought up in an environment where we cat-called. I  find it difficult to understand what makes a man feel such power over a person he has never met that he would call out a derogatory comment. But it still happens and in areas of the world where you would imagine a more enlightened and aware populace.

In hebrew, the same word is used for husband and owner. I understand how this came about in Biblical times, but fail to comprehend how it has remained in our vernacular. Still, I recently followed a link about a story regarding my beloved soccer team and reached a daily English newspaper – The Daily Star – every page had pin-ups, including one which reported on a horrific case of sexual abuse. I remember this happening when I was growing up in the UK, but today?

Last month, I introduced my youngest son to an intensive dosage of Star Trek. He asked me if I thought there were races from other planets watching us and, if so, why they had not made first contact. I responded that maybe our world is simply not evolved enough to make contact with: we still have wars, famine, poverty, etc.

It just occurred to me: perhaps the commanders of these star ships watching Earth are female (must be a 50% chance). Judging by our behavior to more than half our population, I understand why they might give our planet a wide berth.

—————————————————————————————————–

Alon Shalev writes social justice-themed novels and YA epic fantasy. He swears there is a connection. His latest books include: Unwanted Heroes and the 2013 Eric Hoffer Book Award for YA – At The Walls Of Galbrieth. Alon tweets at @alonshalevsf and @elfwriter.   For more about the author, check out his website.

 

The World is Your Facebook – Roger Ingalls

This afternoon I received an interesting email from a friend that contained a PowerPoint presentation showing facts about the world. It proportionally represented the entire population on Earth as if we were only a village containing one hundred people. It made the numbers more comprehensible.

Let’s do something similar and bring the facts even closer to home by making the world our Facebook page. I’d like you to imagine that the only people in existence are also your Facebook friends. The average user has 130 friends. You may have more, or less, but let’s represent the entire human race relative to the average Facebook user. We have demographically shrunk the world proportionally.

Your world, your Facebook:

1)      You have friended all 130 people on Earth.

2)      You are friends with 67 women and 63 men.

3)      Seventy-four (74) of your friends are Asian, 27 are European, 18 are from the Americas (north, central and south), and 10 are from Africa.

4)      You have 43 Christian, 29 Muslim, 18 Hindu, 9 Buddhist and 1 Jewish friend.

5)      While worshipping their God, 60 of your friends live in fear of assault or death.

6)      Fourteen (14) of your friends are gay.

7)      You have 8 very rich friends that control 60% of the world’s wealth.

8)      Poverty hurts 104 of your friends.

9)      Sixty-five (65) of your friends are hungry or malnourished.

10)   Ninety-one (91) of your friends cannot read or write.

11)   One of your friends is giving birth.

12)   One of your friends is about to die.

13)   Only one of your friends has a college degree.

14)   Only one of your friends has a computer.

15)   If you have clothes on your back, sleep with a roof over your head and have food in the fridge, you live better than 98 of your friends.

Proportionally shrinking the entire population down to the size of the average Facebook user’s friendship-reach, did make it easier for me to rationalize the true state of the world. It was a good mental exercise.

I’m fortunate and should be more thankful.

Interview with a Blogger – Kymberlie Ingalls

Roger Ingalls has been authoring on this blog for just over a year now, and through his posts, you’ve learned his philosophies and hopes for the world.  But who is the man behind the words?  Here, in this exclusive interview, we learn more about the wizard behind the curtain.

I asked Roger what the most important advice is that he’s ever received.  “When in doubt, fake it. This advice came from Mr. Davis, a high school teacher and it got me through many a tough circumstance. As a leader, you’re expected to be the guiding hand in most, if not all, situations but the problem is nobody knows everything. So you have to fake it to instill confidence in your team. In reality, very few people will challenge you because they’re either scared or lack confidence themselves. However, faking it should be used as a last resort tool and not as a primary game plan.

Roger agreed that books are a most important influence on us as a society.  “I can’t choose just one because they’ve both taught me so much.”  He responded when asked to name his favorite.  “The first book was written 2500 years ago by Sun Tzu called the Art of War. The second book is titled Competitive Advantage by Michael Porter. Both books teach strategy and tactics with one being from the perspective of war and the other from business. They’re both great reads for people wanting to develop competitive thinking skills.”

Having survived decades in the competitive hi-tech industry of Silicon Valley, then transitioning in to blue-collar ownership, how has he survived this downtrodden market and economy?  “Adaptability or willingness to change. If we don’t. we become obsolete. The sure way to gain advantage over a foe or competitor is to change because they will always be one step behind.”

Everybody has a hero, and Roger is no exception.  “Muhammad Ali.”  He goes on to explain: “He was strategically the greatest fighter of all time. He studied his opponents and adjusted his boxing tactics accordingly.  He overcame racism and fought the U.S. government when his beliefs were attacked. He became a great humanitarian and is the most recognized person in the world.”

Roger has touched on religion often in his writings.  I asked him what he considered to be the good, the bad, and the ugly.  “Religion is good for discipline. But it also teaches inflexibility and squelches thinking outside the ‘good book.’. In western cultures, those who routinely practice the three original monotheisms (Judaism, Catholicism and Islam) are the hardest and the most devoted workers. Religions that promote discipline through routine are synonymous with a good work ethic. The down side of this is a lack of understanding of different cultures and religions.”  He paused, seeming to reflect upon his own past.  “Sometimes straying from one’s path is the best plan.”

To sum things up, I asked Roger to give us the world in a nutshell.  “We are a naïve society. Immersed in greed and the belief that Earth has an endless supply of resources to fuel an economic system based on perpetual growth. In the back of our minds we know this is not possible but few of us are willing to step up and say so. It’s a tough situation because the whole world now follows this economic agenda.”

“Only the inevitable collapse will force a change.”

The iPhone Does Not Exist – Roger Ingalls

Imagine you’re sitting in Starbucks holding an iPad, iPhone or iPod and someone walks up to you and says, “that thing in your hand does not exist”. You’d look at them, think they were off their rocker and quickly scurry away. When climate-deniers tell me increased levels of CO2 are not responsible for global warming, I believe they are either brainwashed (followship syndrome), have a political agenda so truth doesn’t matter or they’re just plain crazy.

You may be scratching your head and asking why I’m drawing parallels between Apple products and manmade climate change but the answer is simple. The same technology used to predict how CO2 impacts temperature change is also used in the manufacture of the advanced computer chips (integrated circuits) that go into cell phones, iPhones and all similar devices including computers. However there is one big difference, predicting CO2 related climate change is magnitudes simpler than controlling the manufacturing of integrated circuits.

Destructive SEM Photo of Chip, sciencedirect.com

Computer chips, which are about the size of a finger nail, have millions of components inside them (called gates or transistors) with dimensions smaller than 100 nanometers. For comparison sake, the width of a human hair is about 100,000 nanometers. These chip components are so small they cannot be seen through the lenses of the most advance optical microscopes and aren’t clearly visible with multi-million dollar scanning electron microscopes. The shape and dimensions of these super small parts can only be “inferred” or predicted by analyzing how light (similar to sunlight) reflects, absorbs and scatters off the parts. A special machine shines light onto the part and then captures the light coming off them. The light-data creates a “kind of” fingerprint that resembles an up and down squiggly line. The light-fingerprint is compared to millions upon millions of stored fingerprints, which were created by computer simulations, until a match is made. Once a match is detected, the shape and dimensions are provided.

Climatologist use the same technique as described above except the problem is much simpler. The sun is the source of light that is analyzed as it reflects, absorbs and scatters through and off the atmosphere as well as the Earth’s surface. Computer chips are more complex because they have forty or more material layers or atmospheres with varying chemistry while the Earth has just one atmosphere with a few elements such as oxygen, CO2, nitrogen and so on. The dimension that climatologist look for is temperature as it relates to CO2 concentration. Computer simulations are used to predict or “infer” temperature change as the chemistry of our atmosphere varies; computer simulations predict a rise in temperature as CO2 amounts go up. CO2 concentrations have increased from 175 ppm (parts per million) to 395 ppm since the start of the industrial revolution. This is the fastest increase in Earth’s history and we know this from another type of scientific analysis but I’ll save that explanation for another day.

If you believe iPhones, high-speed internet and similar products exist, you must also believe in manmade global warming because the computer simulations that allow the manufacture of these gadgets also predict an increase in temperature as CO2 concentrations rise.

You can’t believe in one and not the other, it’s illogical.

Bankrupt Earth – Roger Ingalls

Today, humanity is using 50% more resources than the earth can sustainably provide. By 2030, the world will require the equivalent of two Earths to sustain current levels of population growth and resource use. Even more shocking, if all countries consumed like the U.S., we would need four Earths to sustain current levels of resource burn.

World economies emulate the U.S. system which is based on infinite growth and consumption. Earth is a finite planet floating through space; therefore, the infinite growth scenario is an inevitable dead-end street.

picture from animal.discovery.com

There is no magical American bullet or militant-might that will fix this problem. There are no leaders stepping forward to forge a new path. We are now a government of, by and for the corporation and corporations are judged and rewarded on their ability to grow, consume and hoard. Power lies in the hands of big Wall Street massaged corporations and they will not deviate from their current path because doing so means a transfer of power. Why would these corporate Gods give up their power? They will never do so willingly.

Shamefully, history defines humanity’s quest for greed, power and eventual destructive fall. Given this, there is only one true solution; we must bankrupt the earth and deplete it of all economically viable resources as fast as possible. Let’s join forces with the current power structure and fast track the death of a balanced planet. When Earth dies – as we know it – so will the power that killed it.

This is not a sad ending; it is a rebirth. From the ashes a smarter humanity will rise.

Operation Burning Man – Roger Ingalls

Operation Burning Man (a.k.a. OBM) has no connection to the week long event in the Nevada desert that celebrates radical self-expression and self-reliance. OBM is a newly proposed theory that provides an alternative explanation for global warming.

Until recently, the few remaining climate change deniers claimed global warming was not really happening. Faced with overwhelming data these deniers are starting to acknowledge that the Earth’s temperature is increasing. Even a scientific denier hired by the Koch Brothers is changing his tune. However, the deniers are holding firm to the notion that man is not the cause of climate change. The denying has shifted from “global warming is not occurring” to “man is not causing global warming”.

The new OBM theory is presented because all other crutches used by the deniers have scientifically fallen apart. One crutch claimed the rising temperature was caused by the Earth’s precession, orbit, tilt and wobble but these do not correlate with the warming. Another claim falsely accused real scientists of creating fake data. A common statement made by deniers is Mars and Pluto have increasing temperatures and Earth is just doing the same thing. However, Kindergarten-science can easily explain the environmental changes on Mars and Pluto which have no relevance to changes on Earth. Pluto has an elliptical orbit and recently had a near Sun flyby so it will continue to warm for a few more years before cooling again. Periodically, Mars has huge dust storms and its atmosphere heats dramatically while the surface cools. Deniers cherry pick the data to claim a rise in temperature but it is just as correct to claim the opposite if you’re examining the Martian surface.

With all denier crutches debunked, the new OBM theory was developed. Aliens are using a large lens to focus the radiation from a distant star onto Earth to warm it.  This experiment is similar to a young boy using a magnifying glass to burn ants on the sidewalk (click for video). It is speculated that this is an alien military experiment, hence the name Operation Burning Man which is similar to the naming convention used by the U.S. military (e.g. Operation Desert Storm and Operation Shock and Awe). The purpose of this alien experiment is unknown but the deniers are currently putting the question to their Magic 8 Ball so a convoluted answer should soon be delivered by a Mermaid riding a Golden Unicorn.

The deniers have also given new life to an old motto…Truth is Stranger than Fiction!

Picture by Susan Brack

—————————————————————————

Roger Ingalls is well traveled and has seen the good and bad of many foreign governments. He hopes his blogging will encourage readers to think more deeply about the American political system and its impact on US citizens and the international community.

The Problem is Nuclear Waste

I am trying to establish an argument against nuclear power, without any grasp of the scientific exchanges that are going on. One aspect, however, seems to be clear. It is the entire process of nuclear energy production that must be scrutinized and there is a growing belief that the Achilles heel of nuclear power is the issue of nuclear waste and what to do with it.

From what we understand, it might take thousands of years for nuclear waste to break down into a compound that is not dangerous to the environment. This fact alone makes the storage of nuclear waste to be one of (if not the most expensive) stage of the process. There are several methods that are currently used, though none purport to have such lasting ability.For a list and explanation of current methods, please click here.

I'm sure that helmet is excellent protection if there is a leak!

As the storage of nuclear waste builds and the experiments work or not (how do you measure the success of a storage technique that needs to last thousands of years?) there inevitably will be failures. I am not trying to be obnoxious, but this is the nature of experimentation. It’s a shame that my chemistry teacher didn’t subscribe to this when I blew up some compound over a Bunsen burner.

He works at a nuclear power plant - it never seemed to have affected him.

Do we even want to experiment with such dangerous materials? Our lab is our planet and so far, it is the only one we’ve found with decent cappuccino.

——————————————————————————————————

Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist (now available on Kindle) and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/and on Twitter (#alonshalevsf).

Grounds for Saving the World

When I grow up, I want a coffee machine that makes that first cup of the day automatically and perfectly. I want to come downstairs and be greeted by the rich aroma of caffeinated creativity. Then, with steaming cup in hand, I am ready to go save the planet.

Now it is heartening to discover that all this is possible. The coffee machine you can research for yourself, but I recently received a comment in response to a post in which I wrote about an initiative by two young Cal entrepreneurs who grow mushrooms in coffee grounds.

Now meet Shane Genziuk and friends, who run an initiative called Coffee Grounds to Grounds. They organize groups to collect their coffee grounds and recycle them in the garden. The nutritional worth of these grounds for the earth, plants and wildlife is impressive. The work that these young women do is as well. What is also encouraging is that we can all do our bit here – coffee drinkers to save the planet.

Now excuse me while I go pour myself a cup of Fogbuster coffee. By the way – Fogbuster is made by a great local coffee company called Jeremiah’s Pick.

——————————————————————————————————

Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist (now available on Kindle) and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at www.alonshalev.com