High on technology, Low on wisdom

Paul MacCready, back in 1998, made a compelling presentation about what a mess of our solitary planet we have made. 

His talk (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/paul_maccready_on_nature_vs_humans.html) speaks of a nature vs. humans battle and very very sadly - Humans are defeating nature.Humans are not winning however. There can be no winners in this battle, save nature, and Save nature, is the one thing we will not do.

All the kings horses and all the kings men, however many PhDs they have between them, and however many compelling presentations they make, will not be able to turn around the disaster that the industrial revolution brought about. 

Mortality rates, world health and other such civilised issues are some of the prime examples of how "civilized" behavior will destroy our civilization. 

Perhaps I'm in a doomsday mood but all this information and knowledge that we all share globally is fairly worthless in the larger scheme of things. Its good to understand the eco-system with, but it works to destroy the very eco-system we exist in.

Since its all coming to a close, we might as well get in another drink - I'm buying.

Stop complaining and buy some plants

On my daily dose of ted, i saw a 4:04 minute talk by a guy called Kamal Meattle, who has figured out an almost exact way to use indoor plants to improve the air quality indoors in a massive massive way. They have demonstrated this in New Delhi, arguably one of the most polluted cities in the world. 

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kamal_meattle_on_how_to_grow_your_own_fresh_air.html

I will type out the recipe for happy indoor air as described by Kamal

3 plants are all it takes to improve air quality. They are

1. Areca Palm

2. Mother-in-laws tongue

3. Money Plant

All very commonly found and meant to survive easily. 

2 Things deeply impressed me about this talk. 

First, guys with non-american and non-scandinavian accents can make fantastic presentations.

And second, an extremely powerful message can be communicated in under 5 minutes. 

Kamal's talk underlines the strength of a short, sweet and powerpacked message and walking the talk. Please go check it out.

TED

If you haven't beent to www.ted.com yet, you absolutely must right now. Stop reading this and go there.

If you are still here, thanks a ton! What is TED. Its a forum about ideas worth sharing, quite unlike this blog, which is mostly crap. TED is global thought leadership in one neat website. You better have some decent bandwidth though!

Enjoy! 

A sense of purpose

Finally, perhaps, this blog may have found a sense of purpose. After having blogged on anything, everything, and more often than not, nothing, I have found a topic that I feel I will be able to write blogs that are interesting, informative and implementable. Well, at least one of the above, some of the time.

Planet Earth, how we are messing with it and how we can begin to fix it. 

It all started for me when Al Gore invented global warming. Apart from letting the biggest idiot in the world become president of US&A, Al Gore's biggest crime was global warming. If it wasnt for him, the world would have been perfectly ok - no warming, no climateincrisis, nothing - right uptill the day everything went up in flames. The Day after Tomorrow, so to speak.

After you see his spectacular documentary An Inconvenient Truth, if you are not moved to action - then there is obviously something wrong with you. You may think he is alarmist, (I personally think he might be playing it down a little bit, just to not panic you too much), but you cannot deny the issue.

There are a million other issues to be dealt with like education, healthcare, free speech,human rights,  democracy, protectionism, but this one seems to be closer to my heart than others. So I will try and stay close to this track from now on.

Here is an interesting video, for those with ample bandwidth - Its from Ted.com which is a fantastic site to say the least.

Its about how Willie Smits converted a patch of land in Indonesia from a barren, fire-prone worthless patch to a beautiful, self-sustaining, green landscape. Its not simple to do, its not a quick fix - but these are beginnings of a solution to a problem that we, humans, have brought upon ourselves. 

Save the rainforest, Save the world!