What would the world be like if we, as a global people, focused our minds and money on hopeful technologies such as this one, rather than on the development of new weapons of destruction?  What if we could somehow, someway, turn the minds that are now focused on the development of new ways to destroy one another onto the development of new ways to sustain each other?  We could, without a doubt, advance humanity and the planet we live on. Call me a dreamer, I suppose, but I think about these things.

My hope is that the following film could help inspire one child, one person, to live a life for the advancement of humanity. The God given intelligence to advance our world has been given to each of us. It is up to each of us to use that intelligence.

Somthing to think about…..

The elected politicians were elected to care for the problems of the people they represent – not the political viewpoints of their party leaders, and not for their own re-election campaigns.  I want a politician who will do what is morally and ethically right – regardless of whether the “right” thing is popular with party leaders or the President.  I want politicians who will find a way to achieve common ground, and work to solve the problems of the society they represent.

Each of us has been brought into this world carrying our own unique set of values, priorities, and belief systems.  Each of us knows that when we sit in a group conversation, most people in that group will express a unique point of view. Given that reality, I would expect that uniqueness to spill out onto the floor of the House of Representatives during the speech – and yet it doesn’t.  Every congressman and senator seems to ignore their inherent unique points of view and simply applauds (or fails to applaud) ideas and positions that conform to their party’s established viewpoints – a type of lock-step group-think.

I see many of our Senators and Congressmen behaving in rude, inconsiderate, and arrogant manners.  We hear so much about the “Party of NO!”, and the Democrats who exclude others.  Were they not raised better than that?  Did they miss basic Kindergarten etiquette?  If I were raising children, I would discipline them for that type of behavior – and so should you.

I would say to each Senator and Congressman:  To Hell with your damned party.  Stand up for what YOU believe in. Applaud for what YOU believe in. Fight for what YOU believe in.  Represent the people who elected you.  Be respectful towards others – even if their viewpoint differs from your own. People elected you (I hope) not because you were a Republican or a Democrat, but because they placed some level of trust in you, your ideas, and your values.  Please help all of us to achieve a solution to the problems that confront us.  ”My Way or NO WAY” is not a defend-able position.  It’s childish and rude.  If you cannot help solve the problems that confront us, the American People need to vote you out of power in favor of someone who can.

If you happen to be a politician reading this, I hope that you will read some of my other blog entries.  You see, I am not a person to be rude or inconsiderate.  In fact, I am far from that. Yet, this is where I find myself with career politicians. The profession no longer seems noble to me.  I know that I am not alone in my views.  The general public disgust is toward your behavior, and standard Washington politics.  Without solving that, we can’t solve anything else – and we have LOTS of problems we need you to solve.

After President Obama’s speech, I was amazed to hear people immediately start bickering about party lines on taxes, the deficit, health care, etc., etc., but very little was said about President Obama’s words on Washington politics. Washington politics as usual have got to stop, or we can’t move forward.  Period.

Something to think about…..

I’ve also gotten to spend some time researching and thinking about life purpose. I found a few good books along the way, as well as a couple of good websites that I will introduce you to.

I was inspired by another TED Video. This time, the video is by a Pakistani man speaking at TED India. With him, he had brought pictures and greetings from ordinary Pakistani citizens. He read about each of their lives, their life aspirations for their children, and brought a greeting of peace from each of them. He was successful at separating the politics of the nations from the daily dreams and aspirations of everyday people. It occurs to me that these dreams and aspirations are universal, regardless of the nation, religion, or ethnic background we happen to be born into.

We all want to make a difference. We want adequate food, health, and shelter. We want to be known. We want to prepare a better life for those who are to follow us.  We want to be able to follow our dreams. We want our rights to be respected. We want a government that allows us to achieve these goals. I believe that these dreams and aspirations are universal, regardless of the country, religion, or ethnicity you happen to have been born into.

For this holiday season, I wish for each of you to have the opportunity to experience your life dreams.  I believe it is our common birthright, regardless of our country or religion of origin. I wish this for every citizen of the United States, Canada, Britain, Iran, Japan, China, Taiwan, and the citizens of every other world country. I wish this for every Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, and the participants of every other religion.  My prayer is that we learn to embrace our commonality of desire, not our differences.

Blessings for a bright, safe, and healthy Holiday Season.

Something to think about…..

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Here are two things you can consider doing this holiday season, to make a difference in the life of others.

KIVA (www.kiva.org) – KIVA is a Micro-Finance company that lends money to entrepreneurs from poor countries, to assist them in their efforts to help themselves.  KIVA allows you to view each entrepreneur’s profile to decide whether you want to loan money to help them achieve their business goal.  KIVA states that 97+% of the loans given on that site will be repaid within a year, so the money can be reinvested in another worthy project.  Thus, your gift can become a gift that keeps on giving.

Heifer International (www.heifer.org)  is an organization devoted to providing tools for families in poor countries to help themselves.  While on that website, you can purchase goats (to provide milk for the family), hens (to provide eggs), cows, ducks, sheep, etc.

Neither of these organizations require that you fund the entire need.  You can donate what you can afford.  Donated money is pooled together to purchase the needed items.

In addition to these two charities, there are many other quality charitable organizations who could put a donation of any size to good use.

Together we can all donate a little and still make a difference in someone’s life.

Something to think about…..

We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. – Howard Zinn – Playwright and Social Activist

Of the 10 people picked, five of them fell into my category of being the types of people that I don’t want our younger generation to emulate!  Of the rest, OK, but there are SO MANY deserving people out there who deserve the honor much more – people who serve humanity on a daily basis.

Who are they?  Well, the list is far longer than this space will allow.  Everyday people do great things everyday. We have the work of many people to thank for making our lives as good as they are today.  We live in the age of everyday air travel, the Internet, cars that will transport you anywhere, medical miracles that are too numerous to mention, the longest human life spans in history, and scientific advances that are truly unbelievable.  Each of these advances have been brought to you through the tireless effort of someone, somewhere, performing their everyday tasks.

Of those, some touch thousand, millions, or more lives.  Those are the people that I want our society to hold up before others.  Let’s be inspired by those whose work touch many.  Here are a few links of places that list people who may deserve that recognition.  For everyone listed, there are many, many more who should be.  Let us hold these people in our hearts and minds as people deserving of the “Fascinating People” awards.

Something to think about…..

Time Magazine’s Top 100 People

AARP’s Inspire Award Honorees

BeliefNet’s Most Inspiring Nominees of 2009

Amazing Facts Inspirational People

Dean Kamen’s Artificial Arm

Visit www.TED.com for scores of fascinating people

Bear in mind that the wonderful things you learn in your schools are the work of many generations. All this is put in your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children. – Albert Einstein

I thought about this recently when people reacted negatively to President Obama bowing in greeting to Emperor Akihito from Japan.  I believe that the negative reaction President Obama received was from Americans who understood what the action meant in their culture, based on their upbringing.  In the Japanese culture, however, the bow (or lack thereof) may mean something far different. I am reluctant to pass any judgement on that bow, since I understand that I am not well versed in Japanese customs or culture, nor am I well versed in diplomatic protocols.  I do, however, understand that the bow may have been a component of achieving a mutually satisfying exchange of ideas, informal agreements, etc.

From my perspective, a bow may simply have been a respectful greeting, honoring the humanity of the person being greeted in a manner most appealing to the person being greeted.  From my perspective, it did not signify American subservience to Japan, nor did it signify any weakness of America.  I don’t believe the bow in any way weakened our position to negotiate or discuss our relative positions.  In fact, I think President Obama may have strengthened our negotiating hand by greeting the Emperor in a manner meaningful to his traditions.

This is similar to how I hope to greet you, should I ever have that opportunity.  I hope that I have the knowledge and grace to greet you in a manner that is pleasing to you.  With that greeting, I intend to honor your humanity.  After the greeting, we can go to work to discuss anything that is of importance – including those areas where we may strongly disagree.

In a recent TED presentation, Devdutt Pattanaik presented a far clearer picture of how this works than I can do here. His 19 minute presentation discussed the difference between the Western and Eastern culture, religions, traditions, and resulting mindsets. In a world hungry for conflict resolution, I think it is a video worth watching.  Just click on the link that follows.

TED Video

Something to think about…..

What is BOINC, you say?  Well, BOINC stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.  If you install the free BOINC software on your computer, BOINC will make use of your computer’s unused processor time to help solve some of humanity’s most important problems. By making use of unused processor time on millions of computers world-wide, scientists are making great progress on these problems.

The most well known of these is SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.  But, that’s only one of the projects we can tackle with the use of your computer.  Below, I will share a few of the many other projects you can assist with. Can you share some of your unused computer time to help find a resolution to these problems?

1.  Clean Energy Project — tries to find the best organic compounds for solar cells and energy storage devices.Phase 1 has been completed.Phase 2 will start soon.

2.  FightAIDS@Home identifies candidate drugs that have the right shape and chemical characteristics to block HIV protease.

3.  Help Conquer Cancer — improves the results of protein X-ray crystallography in order to increase understanding of cancer and its treatment.

4.  Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy — investigates protein-protein interactions for more than 2,200 proteins whose structures are known, with a particular focus on those proteins that play a role in neuromuscular diseases.

5.  Help Fight Childhood Cancer — finds drugs that can disable three particular proteins associated with neuroblastoma.

6.  Human Proteome Folding Project — studies proteome folding in conjunction with Rosetta@home.  Currently on Phase 2.

7.  Influenza Antiviral Drug Search — finds drugs that can stop the spread of influenza strains that have become drug resistant as well as new strains.Phase 1 has been completed.Phase 2 will start soon.

8.  Nutritious Rice for the World — tries to predict the protein structure of rice in order to help rice breeders create more abundant, resilient and nutritious harvests.

9.  Climateprediction.net — attempts to reduce the uncertainty ranges of climate models.

10. Quake-Catcher Network — uses accelerometers in, or attached to, internet-connected computers to detect earthquakes.

11. MilkyWay@Home — uses data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to deduce the structure of the Milky Way galaxy.

12. http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ identifies new AIDS Treatments.

Want to pick from all projects?  Visit this site

Together, with just a bit of donated computer time, we can help change the world.

Something to think about…..

While I was half watching, the thought came.  These are the people who are leading our country?  People who engage in personal attack, disrespectful behavior, and congressmen who insult others to their face?  Politicians who work to instill fear of the future into the hearts and minds of it’s citizens, as they search for a political advantage?  Speaking for myself, this behavior is far more discouraging than the individual policies they may represent.

Our problems are too big, and too complex to be playing a game of political football.  From my perspective, we need our representatives to muster all of the Love and Spiritual Power they can find, along with their best understandings of compassion, respect, and kindness, and then put them to use to solve our problems.  The congressmen I see represented in the media  spend a lot of time fighting the ideas / bills / laws they don’t want, and not as clearly emphasizing what they want to build.

We simply cannot build what we want by fighting what we don’t want.  It doesn’t work that way.  You want Health Care that works for everyone?  Put a plan in front of us that will allow us to make the best possible choices from a wide list of selections, and help us to understand why your plan is better – don’t try to sell your plan by attacking someone else’s plan.  All that tells me is that your plan is not that good.  The time you spend attacking and insulting another’s plan is time you have wasted.  Better to spend time developing and educating the public about your own plan.

Equally unacceptable is the News Media’s role in this.  We need a news media who will report to us what is happening – objectively.  It is not acceptable for the news media to simply give time to the extreme elements of society – people who rudely disrupt proceedings and pundits with narrow views in an increasingly complex world.

This is what I mean by “Spiritual Leadership”.  We need politicians and news media to be guided by the common spiritual principles of kinship, compassion, fair play, and Love.  We need leaders who are worthy of the public trust, and who work to develop a greater society.

I understand the concept of the Separation of Church and State.  The founders of the United States did not want the government led by one faith’s set of religious principles.  They wanted people of all faiths to have an equal say in how their country is governed.  They did not intend that our leaders would have to disregard all spiritual principles before they entered the halls of Government.  Although I don’t want the Government led from a perspective of strict Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Jewish, Muslim, or Buddhist doctrine, I also don’t want my government leaders to discard the core spiritual traditions of Compassion, Love, Justice, and Fair Play. I want the Media to do the same.  I want them to embrace core spiritual values, which are shared by all major world religions.

Of course, it’s not enough that we demand this of our leaders, if we don’t also demand it of ourselves.  Our politicians are, in the end, a reflection of the people who elect them. One of the lessons I’ve learned in my life is that I usually cannot change other’s beliefs by force, but I can often change them by example and by positive leadership. Does our daily behavior exhibit the values that we want our children and our politicians to display?  Will you join me in my attempt to set a better example for those in our world?

Something to think about…..

We live in the house we all build – www.earthshare.org

The Halogen channel can be found on the web at http://www.halogentv.com/index.php/welcome/. The introduction to the TV channel can be found below. I hope that the concept succeeds, and I intend to support it through communications to both Halogen and DirecTV. If you know anything additional about this channel, please let me know.

Hope you enjoy.

Something to think about…..