i challenge you...

to click on the following link and watch a film if you dare.

it is two hours long, but i promise you it will OPEN your eyes, to things you've never seen, and to things you've never known.

there have been countless books and films documenting the environmental catastrophe of our era, not many have offered solutions. and this film does EXACTLY THAT.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/158468/fuel

if you don't feel the urgency or the impetus to take action right away, i daresay your soul is devoid of any humanity. so take the plunge. it will be the best two hours you've spent in a while. in case your region does not permit you to watch the film, more info is available at: http://thefuelfilm.com/

i was watching the tragedy in the gulf continue to unfold on the news, and this pearl jam song came to mind. and this video pretty much sums up all there is to say about it.

our oceans are beautiful, and only someone who has been truly touched by its magic can write a song that delicate and emotional.


Pearl Jam Oceans from Pearl Jam on Vimeo.

if i ever get a pet rabbit, you know his name would be mr. vedder.

+listening to: oceans by pearl jam

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ok facebook rocks... for once

i've always thought that friendster, facebook, et al. are synonyms of aimless social circle-jerking: largely targeted at formulating a mass illusion to make people feel good about their status/popularity in their "social network" based on how many friends they've got.

but how many of them actually matter?


then again that's besides the point, i'm not going to tread down that path. i want to thank facebook, at least for today, for helping me find a very good childhood friend who'd seriously gone MIA, whom i haven't heard from in 6 years.

i have tried various methods of tracking him down, but to no avail and then this morning all the stars seemed to align together - all it took was a few key strokes and simply hitting the search button and bam! the name popped up with photo id confirmation to boot.

literally within hours we started a conversation on the wall (you're probably more than familiar with that) before we realised it was quite retarded since there's msn, and the rest was history. lots of memories, lots of catching up to do.

so maybe these aimless social circle-jerks do serve useful purposes? i wouldn't know, i'm just a social conformist who sometimes does what everyone else does, albeit a rather thoughtless and occasionally unwilling one at that.

oh and before i forget, it's april 22 again: salút! to earth day.
peace.


+listening to: for the love of money by the o' jays

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we can solve it? really?

i'm not a person who assumes a clear-cut stand over political issues at the blink of an eye. i don't like being force-fed ideas. in fact i'm skeptical towards most of such "campaigns", anti-global warming included.

i'm not anti-global warming per se (though i still do my bid to conserve the environment), neither am i an advocate of wasting away precious energy resources. for that you have to look to petrol-heads like jeremy clarkson on top gear going "POWERRRRR" every other episode. he ought to have a conspiracy theory or two of his own about what global warming is all about.

now al gore, the former US vice president and author of an inconvenient truth (i've seen the movie, which proves my point), and his nonprofit climate group have begun what they say will be a three-year $300 million advertising blitz to recruit 10 million advocates to seek laws and policies that can cut greenhouse gases. check out their initiative at http://wecansolveit.org.


while i applaud their spirit to change the world, i think $300 million dollars over a period of 3 years is simply too little, too late, and for too short a time. guess how much pepsi or coke spends annually on promoting their brand name in hopes of swaying the population towards each of their own product? over $1 billion EACH. they call it "brand preference". that is the kind of money you need to have even the slightest impact on people's awareness.


just imagine what kind of money and effort is needed to suddenly influence the population to become environmentally conscious. personally i have my doubts. but then again what do i know? the last time i checked i had the intelligence of a 6-year-old and the intuition of a door knob. so i guess nothing is impossible as adidas would put it. i didn't think people were gonna really turn off their lights during Earth Hour, neither did i expect to see people wear green for the Live Earth weekend. both happened, in fact i saw some kid in green from head to toe (yea that includes shoes) on a bus.

and finally on a totally unrelated note: have you often been feeling tired lately? or experiencing temporary blurry vision? maybe it's time to get your eyes checked. xD




+listening to: any fule kno that by deep purple

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The world as we know it... post armageddon?

While aimlessly hopping through stories of prince harry's adventures in afghanistan, now that it's literally splashed everywhere (i wouldn't say i'm a fanatic of the british royal family, but i have always been curious about the establishment) i came upon a rather interesting article in the new york times dated Feb 29th.

pretty cool entrance to the global seed vault huh?

It seems that scientists and other concerned individuals really have put in some serious thoughts about the possibility of a post armageddon world, and they've already started stockpiling seeds from around the world at the Global Seed Vault, bored into the middle of a frozen arctic mountain topped with snow, buried 500 feet under the permafrost and the entrance tunnel to the seed vault is designed to withstand bomb blasts and earthquakes. The editor dubbed it the "Fort Knox of Food" (in case you don't know Fort Knox is where the US treasury department houses its gold). Apparently the vault’s goal is to store and protect samples of every type of seed from every seed collection in the world. And it's got a digital monitoring system to maintain stable temperature. Does that sound serious or what.

Now i'm not ususally a pessimist, but it really got me started thinking, where would i be if there really was an armageddon in my lifetime. It could result from anything: the impending fuel crisis, a global pandemic, food shortage, war, or hell a giant meteor. We have seen tell-tale signs of what those things can do. People rioting over fuel price hikes, SARS, mass starvation in third world countries, the world wars, etc.

Just a case in point: did you know that all the bananas that you eat everyday, in every corner of the world are identical genetically because they are of a single species from india. and now there are no longer any wild specimens left because of deforestation. that means its gene pool has literally dried up. Even the seed vault wouldn't have helped because if you still remembered the stuff you learnt in primary school, bananas don't produce seeds, they reproduce by grafting. which also means if some unforeseeable "disease" were to strike bananas, the whole world would literally all go bananas because there wouldn't be any bananas left! what'll happen next? I don't know.

you know what, i am kinda thirsty now, i better go grab myself a banana milkshake before they become all extinct...


See more photos of the Global Seed Vault: The Photo Slideshow

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