Day: 03/01/2008

Kenya’s Troubles thru a Photojourno’s Eyes [pix]

Stephen Africa

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Kyle Douglas is a young professional bike racer in Europe while his friend Mike Berube, a photojournalist, is currently in Nairobi, Kenya documenting the unrest there.

Here’s Kyle’s take:

“Most nights I come home and I fix my bikes, work on writing up my race reports for the family and friends back home. Mike meanwhile has to go out in to a country that is polluted with violence and risk his life so that we can read about it as we drink our morning coffee! ”

Kyle, who is the son of two good friends of mine, asks Mike ten questions about his life. One of them:

What Kind of story will you tell your grand kids?

racer-kyle-in-europe.jpgI would tell them to be aware of the world and events and to show compassion and help those in need of a voice, shoulder, friend or someone to listen too… And to speak out against wrong in the world. Protest peacefully either by painting, writing, photography… whatever it takes… and in that protest… to help and show others [how] to protest so that people may live safe and happy like them.

Two amazing young men.

Climate Refuge in Polar Cities?

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, News, Science/Tech

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By Stephen Leahy

Jan 2 (IPS) – Dan Bloom thinks it’s time to figure out how to build self-sustaining cities in the polar regions because climate change will eventually make most of Earth uninhabitable.

These polar cities may be “humankind’s only chance for survival if global warming really turns into a worldwide catastrophe in the far distant future,” Bloom told IPS.

Bloom isn’t a scientist or any other kind of expert. A U.S. citizen in his late fifties living in Taiwan teaching English, he’s lived all over the world as a reporter-editor, teacher-translator and author. And now Bloom wants to shake people out their everyday indifference to the great emergency of our age: climate change.

“Life goes on as usual here in Taiwan. No one is doing anything and they don’t want to talk about it,” he says. Continue reading →

Smoking Rewires Teenagers’ Brains

Stephen Health

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Not my usual beat but two important health finding. From New Scientist magazine – 5 Jan/08

“PARENTS may now have another reason to worry about their children smoking. Nicotine may cause the teenage brain to develop abnormally, resulting in changes to the structure of white matter – the neural tissue through which signals are relayed.

Leslie Jacobsen of Yale University School of Medicine has found that teenagers who smoke, or whose mothers smoked during pregnancy, are also more likely to suffer from auditory attention deficits, meaning they find it harder to concentrate on what is being said when other things are happening at the same time. Continue reading →

Welcome to Global Warming Year 2008

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, News

I’m guessing 2008 will be the year of learning two new things about climate change:

1. How difficult it is to reduce carbon emissions.

This not a technical issue nor even an economic one. It is institutional. Those who long denied climate change still have enormous influence.

2. Adapting to climate change means difficult moral choices.

Are we going to focus our efforts in the developed world to buffer ourselves from the impacts and build walls to keep climate refugees out?

Or are we going to focus on helping those who will be most affected by a world-changing problem that the developed world caused?

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Wisdom before action. Compassion before fear.

— Stephen