Dithering. In all contexts.
People wearing back-packs on crowded trains.
Women walking along like giant Ws with enormous bags in the crook of each arm.
People thrusting free newspapers in my face.
(I've got a feeling that this will be a frequent strand of posting.)
To return the arty present that I gave for her birthday, my wife commissioned her up-and-coming artist cousin, Charlotte Jackson for my Christmas present. This is the work in progress photo that Charlotte emailed through. Looking forward to the finished article!
Mattel is grumbling that the Scrabulous application on Facebook infringes its copyright on the game Scrabble. It probably does.
However, Scrabulous has meant that thousands more people are playing the game across the globe than would be otherwise.
Why doesn't Mattel sponsor the site? Make Scrabulous legit? Wow, they could even find a new way of making money from their board game. I'm assuming that board games are not exactly all the rage these days, so a new revenue stream would be good, surely? Mattel could even put a link on the page for Scrabulous users to buy a copy of the board game direct.
Why don't they make some of their other board games available on Facebook?
Mattel's luddite, "this is how we've always made money so it's how we'll always make money", "let's not change the game", "let's not react to new opportunities", thinking makes me mad!
We don't need to save the planet. It will be around a lot longer than humans.
We don't need to save life on the planet. Life finds a way.
We don't even need to save human beings (in the short term). We're bound to be able to survive somehow. Dinosaurs are still about, albeit as dinosaurs 2.0.
When people say "save our planet", do they really mean "save my current lifestyle"?
I don't care about my carbon footprint. I care about my footprint.
Current thinking (and associated media frenzy) is too linear. Nature is a system. Changing one part of the system impacts all of it. Nature has frequently demonstrated its ability to counterbalance events - the basic predator / prey dynamic for example.
Human attempts at controlling nature are riddled with disasters that resulted from linear thinking. Releasing myxamitosis in 1950s Australia is just one fine example. Killed off the bunnies admittedly. But also endangered the predators that eat the bunnies. How on earth could someone think that introducing an incurable virus into an ecosystem is a good idea?
If we are to stay living our current little existence, we need to think more generally about our impact on the ecosystem. Yes, please reduce your CO2 output. But that's only part of it. In a few years time we'll no doubt learn how some of our CO2 reducing tactics have damaged the ecosystem in another, equally disasterous, way.
And please go and speak to a geologist to get a proper perspective on climate change through the ages.
