With the continuing failure of governments to reach agreements on combating climate change, the outlook for both humans and nature remains bleak.
And nowhere is the failure more conspicuous than in the avoidance of the subject of population growth. Population is a double-barreled environmental problem — not only is population increasing; so are emissions per capita.
In 1970, when worldwide greenhouse gas emissions had just begun to transgress the sustainable capacity of the atmosphere, the world population was about 3.7 billion; today it’s about 6.9 billion — an increase of 86 percent.
Eternal Earthbound Pets seeks to fill a certain niche. When a believer ascends to the clouds to meet their particular bronze-age solar deity, what will happen to their pets? Well, a dedicated group of atheists will swoop in and rescue them, that’s what.
We are a group of dedicated animal lovers, and atheists. Each Eternal Earth-Bound Pet representative is a confirmed atheist, and as such will still be here on Earth after you’ve received your reward. Our network of animal activists are committed to step in when you step up to Jesus.
They call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains. East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilization. And under our feet, according to archeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot—the exact spot—where humans began that ascent.
Imagine holding the entire sun in the palm of your hand. Now you can. A new iPhone app developed by NASA-supported programmers delivers a live global view of the sun directly to your cell phone. Users can fly around the star, zoom in on active regions, and monitor solar activity.
“This is more than cool,” says Dick Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division in Washington DC. “It’s transformative. For the first time ever, we can monitor the sun as a living, breathing 3-dimensional sphere.”
The community of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel is half a million strong and growing. They live in a parallel universe cut off from the modern world in tight-knit communities where everything revolves around religion. Only a few dare to abandon this life — and the price for doing so is high.
When she left, she left everything behind — even her name. She no longer wanted to be known as Sarah, the name her parents had given her. She’d felt imprisoned by that name for too long; it made her feel different and subject to laws that others imposed upon her. So, she started her new life with a new name, Mayan, the Hebrew word for “source.”
It’s been seven years since Mayan “landed on planet Earth,” as she puts it. But the 27-year-old doesn’t feel completely at home here yet. She’s a young, modern Israeli woman. Still, despite the dragon tattoo on her shoulder and the loose top offering occasional glimpses of her bra, there are always some moments that betray her past. For example, when her friends talk about old TV series, classic pop music or their first schoolyard crushes, Mayan can’t join in. Until she was 17 years old, Mayan lived in another world, a world where those things simply didn’t exist.
New co-workers have always perceived me to be a tad lazy, but I’ve always been quick to correct them. I’m not doing nothing, I’m trying to build a better mouse-trap. When it looks as though I’m waiting until the last minute to do anything, I’ll often be what I call “back-burnering” a task, problem, or idea until I have an “A-HA!” moment or I have time to formulate the best way to do something. Perceptions at my job are easily corrected since I always complete things on time, often better than everyone expected, and to the satisfaction of all parties involved.
Turns out someone has identified this same trait and gave it a much better name. I’m an Incubator. The difference is this:
Procrastinators put things off until the last minute and turn in shoddy, incomplete, or just incorrect work.
Incubators understand a task, spend the time to mull it over in their minds, and at the last minute throw themselves at a task and turn it in with superior quality.
People like me thrive on deadlines and challenge.
I’ve definitely noticed this since I started up school again. If I have six months to complete four classes, I’ll put off studying anything until the six months is up and then test out of them right at the last minute. Since recognizing this, I’ve set shorter deadlines for myself. From the point of signing up for a class, I’ll purposely schedule the exam for a month from the start in order to give myself a hard deadline that I always make. Sometimes I’ll schedule two exams for the same day for a challenge.
Like tomorrow. I have two certification exams back to back tomorrow morning. I should get studying.
A Polish artist who died just shy of a year ago (23 February 2009), Franciszek specialized in posters, drawing, painting, stage designing, and illustration. He is the first Polish artist to have a one-man show at the MoMA in New York in 1986. Linked here is a collection of his surreal artwork, mostly for stage productions and movies.
