Eleven days into the new year. How many
times have you started to write the year down(2012) and gotten it
wrong? Seems like it is a right of passage every year, learning the
new numbers so you don't even have to think about it.
There are so many things we don't think
about as we go about our days i thought i'd shake things up a bit.
How many of you know that flooding in
Thailand is three times normal for January? Eleven days and its
already three times worse than the average for the whole month.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2012/jan/10/weatherwatch-floods-thailand-temperatures-us
“2011
sets a new U.S. record for combined wet and dry extremes
If you weren't washing away in a flood during 2011, you were probably baking in a drought. The fraction of the contiguous U.S. covered by extremely wet conditions (top 10% historically) was 33% during 2011, ranking as the 2nd highest such coverage in the past 100 years. At the same time, extremely dry conditions (top 10% historically) covered 25% of the nation, ranking 6th highest in the past 100 years. The combined fraction of the country experiencing either severe drought or extremely wet conditions was 58%--the highest in a century of record keeping. Climate change science predicts that if the Earth continues to warm as expected, wet areas will tend to get wetter, and dry areas will tend to get drier--so 2011's side-by-side extremes of very wet and very dry conditions should grow increasingly common in the coming decades.” Jeff Masters http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html
If you weren't washing away in a flood during 2011, you were probably baking in a drought. The fraction of the contiguous U.S. covered by extremely wet conditions (top 10% historically) was 33% during 2011, ranking as the 2nd highest such coverage in the past 100 years. At the same time, extremely dry conditions (top 10% historically) covered 25% of the nation, ranking 6th highest in the past 100 years. The combined fraction of the country experiencing either severe drought or extremely wet conditions was 58%--the highest in a century of record keeping. Climate change science predicts that if the Earth continues to warm as expected, wet areas will tend to get wetter, and dry areas will tend to get drier--so 2011's side-by-side extremes of very wet and very dry conditions should grow increasingly common in the coming decades.” Jeff Masters http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html
Or that 171 inmates still live at
Guantanamo. 600 have been released and only 6 ever convicted.
According to our own government reports 92% of the prisoners in
Guantanamo never fought for Al Qaida. The close Guantanamo banner i
used to have here mysteriously disappeared when the site went down,
but it doesn't mean i've forgotten it or have changed my mind about
its closure. It has been open ten years too many.
Or about all that killing going on in
Pakistan and Afghanistan. Just yesterday 10 “Taliban” were killed
by joint NATO and Afghan forces. In Pakistan 29 were killed and 40 injured in a bomb blast. And two of our drone missles killed 4
over the border in Pakistan. All deaths are always labeled as
militants, taliban or al-quaida with no mention of civilians caught
up in the conflict. i wonder when civilian deaths will be counted the
way our soldiers are? Or if we will ever care.
Or that UN inspectors have had and
still have access to Iran's Fordow nuclear enrichment site. According
to Juan Cole at Informed Comment our sanctions are about regime change and not stopping
nuclear proliferation. In fact he thinks our sanctions against
Iran could be a war crime.
“I think blockading a civilian population for the purpose of instituting regime change in a state toward which no authorization of force has been issued by the UN Security Council may well be a war crime. Even advocating a war crime can under some circumstances be punishable, as happened at the Nuremberg trials.” Juan Cole
And its not just civilians getting
slaughtered in our wars more than 100 species go extinct every day.
The beautiful video up at National Geographic is large and powerful. Go visit.
Experiment with thinking about things you usually don't think about maybe it will open up new ways of viewing ourselves.
See ya next week.
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