Please Don't Ask Me for More Detail!

SHOCK headline this week: six out of 10 of us don't understand carbon trading. Well, let me be the first to admit it: most of us don't know anything. We are children wandering around in an adult world. Really, you'd be shocked by what your fellow citizens don't know.

I'll go first. Then it can be your turn. I don't understand carbon trading. I'm fuzzy on the history of the conflict in the Middle East. And I have no ready explanation for the success of the band Coldplay.

I am also unable to pronounce the name of the new Russian president, am uncertain how to convert metres into feet.....some things, perhaps, are just beyond human comprehension.

Antigua - you might be interested - is a country in Africa, or quite possibly an island in the Mediterranean. The Battle of Pozieres was a very important battle during World War I or maybe World War II......(If you are having a dinner party at home play for time, try to distract them, say you are going to the loo and then look it up on Wikipedia.)

What's interesting is we are all staggered by each other's ignorance.

I love the way we're all so confident of our knowledge - right up until someone asks for a little detail.

I think back to my years of schooling and try to list all the facts of which I remain certain. It all comes down to this: Hitler was a vegetarian, an oxbow lake is something to do with a river. I'm also pretty sure that the way it gets colder as you go up a mountain is called the adiabatic lapse rate. I learnt this is year 9 and have been waiting for the chance to drop it into a conversation ever since.

Some knowledge seems to stick in my mind. Elvis Presley's stillborn twin brother was called Jesse. And Pete Best was the original drummer of the Beatles. These things - once learnt - can never be forgotten.

Yet other knowledge seems to visit briefly and then leave. For several weeks now I've been listening to a series of CD's by Bruce Lipton on the Biology of Belief - how our beliefs shape our health and destiny. I understand completely what the author is on about. I am with him sentence by sentence, right up until the moment I turn off the CD. I then find - one second later! - that I can remember nothing at all. Asked to repeat a single insight from the CD, I would babble like a baby.

And so I make an effort - reading The Herald, watching the news, listening to the PM program on the radio - and still the questions crowd in. So what exactly was the nature of the Palestinian nation before the formation of Israel? Why were negotiations with the IRA suddenly successful?

Should we feel embarrassment about these gaps in our knowledge? I take comfort from the way the experts themselves seem to know nothing. Consider the sharemarket and how all the commentators are so skilled at explaining, with absolute certainty, the inevitability of every move - but only after it has happened. In terms of prediction, their record is worse than that achieved by a deranged man with a sharemarket table and a pin.

So there you have it, is this phenomenon happening to anyone else out there!

Here is a photo I took in Kenya in 2006......they say elephants never forget!

P.O.V.E.R.T.Y.

I was astounded to read that half the world's population suffers from poverty.

Where does one begin to write about a subject that has already had millions of words written, spoken, sung about it. I know in order for change to happen discussion, planning etc have to be entered into BUT we have 'talked the talk', NOW we need to 'walk the walk'. My philosophy is "Actions Speak Louder Than Words"......so you will be happy to know you will not be subjected to another monologue about poverty on this blog.

The facts are we know POVERTY exists and we ALL can help make a difference.............How You Ask???

An organisation called KIVA , a non-profit, was formed 3 years ago and is one of the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending websites. Ordinary people like ourselves can help those less fortunate by lending as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world.

You choose who to lend to - whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq - and as they repay their loan, you get your money back. It’s a powerful and sustainable way to empower someone right now to lift themselves out of poverty.

I travelled to Rwanda in 2006 with a friend and wrote about it in my blog just recently. What I didn't relate in that story was that we observed the work first hand of KIVA in that country, producing self sufficient people who otherwise would have been begging on the street.

One final word on this important 'Blog Action Day 2008 - Poverty' is I have made up an acronym for POVERTY. I'd be interested to see what other acronyms other bloggers can come up with.

Please join me in supporting KIVA which in turn helps 'makes poverty history'!

Please
Open
Vital
Effective
Remedies
Together
Yeah

I would like to thank AVT Coach who gave me the 'heads up' about Blog Action Day (October 15th). I love how the blog community shares information, and now realise blogging can play a huge part in exercising change for many causes. I feel very proud to be connected with this day and if only one person makes a $25 loan to help someone who is struggling with poverty then this post was well worth it.

I took this photo in Nyanza, Rwanda in November 2006, it shows how your money can be used to help set up a business and in turn feed and clothe several families.

What Does the Future Hold

WE STAND at the petrol bowser, slumped but attentive, watching the screen count upwards. The number is awesome, in the sense of inspiring awe. Shock and awe. How can it be that high? How can they make counting machines that move that fast?

You expect people to shout out, to curse, yet there's a strange quiet on the petrol station forecourt. We're like penitents in some strange religious service. We pay up and limp off like beaten dogs.

People say the car will soon disappear - priced out of the reach of all but the rich. Yet it's tough work imagining life without the car. Around here, it's a part of life; a strange tumour wrapped around our essential organs.

For the past five decades, the car has been the ultimate symbol of escape - the tool that unshackled us from our parents. It has been the ticket to freedom. The badge of adulthood.

There are so many things we'll lose, once the car disappears. Like the peculiar smell of stale milk and squashed lollies that built up around a child's car seat.
Or the best route from Sydney to Brisbane. Or - in the dying days of petrol - how to get an extra kilometre to the litre by coasting down the hills, or removing your roof racks, or filling up on cold mornings when the petrol was less likely to vapourise before it went into the tank.

"Oh yeah, mate, I'd save 5, maybe 6, cents a week, just by filling up at the right time, in terms of the diurnal temperature range."

The family holiday will be the most obvious casualty of life without the car. A whole culture will be wiped out - the long trips up the coast, the Boxing Day traffic jams, the way all the parents were driven insane somewhere around Macksville by the 44th repeat of the Wiggles CD.

Perhaps people will keep the old traditions alive, much like enthusiasts recreate medieval battles. Unable to leave home due to high fuel costs, families will just re-enact the traditional holiday - the kids forced to sit on the lounge-room couch for six hours at a stretch, chanting "Are we there yet?" while the father threatens to "Stop this car this bloody minute unless everyone shuts up and lets me drive."

Dad will be saying this, of course, sitting on a kitchen chair, placed just in front of the couch, his hands on an imaginary steering wheel. The mother will sit next to him, pointing out the speed limit. Occasionally they'll throw a packet of chips into the back, keeping the kids quiet for another stretch of pretend highway.

Once the car is consigned to the dustbin of history, there will be a wave of nostalgia. Maybe Old Sydney Town can reopen as the Petroleum Museum and Display Village. Just need to work out how people will get there.

It will be a great place, all the same. We'll have a fake drive-in, people squeezed together in stationary cars and the sound coming through those little speakers hung from the window. The cars would be immoveable - long ago emptied of petrol - so you'd miss the pleasure of driving off with the speaker still attached.

And then there'll be the pop music hall of fame, with the Ted Mulry Gang singing Jump In My Car, and Aretha Franklin belting out Freeway Of Love.

People will nod, tap their feet in time and remember the good old days. Sure, what happened was inevitable; in the end the private car had to go. But then they'd shake their heads and lament the new generation of singers, no longer able to sing about that glorious and destructive beast, the private automobile.

Somehow that new track, Jump On My Bus, isn't nearly as funky.

This is me in 1974 in my Sprite at the family home in Chatswood, Sydney.

Acronyms - WHAT THE!!!!

Acronyms are everywhere and have us scratching our heads and running to google.

A brief history of acronyms courtesy of Wikipedia:

'In the English language, the widespread use of acronyms and initialisms is a relatively new linguistic phenomenon, becoming increasingly evident since the mid-20th century. As literacy rates rose, and as advances in science and technology brought with them more complicated terms and concepts, the practice of abbreviating terms became increasingly convenient. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records the first printed use of the word initialism as occurring in 1899, but it did not come into general use until 1965, well after acronym had become common'.

There is no escape from them - newspapers, blogs, businesses - and most of them have several meanings.

Let me give you a sample list (these all have more than 4 meanings but I had to stop somewhere) and you will see what I mean.

RAK could mean:
Random Act of Kindness.
Right Above Knee (amputation)
Raising Arizona Kids (magazine)
Remote Access Key

DNF could mean:
Data Not Found
Did Not Finish (racing)
Do Not Forget
Do Not Forward

BTW could mean:
By The Way
Between The Words
Born To Win
Before The War

SWAK could mean:
Sealed With A Kiss
Sewer Workers Are King (Honeymooners TV Show)
Spinners & Weavers Association of Korea
Shallow Water Active Kit

BMV could mean:
Be My Valentine
Below Market Value
Bedside Medication Verification
Bele Minden Vackot (Hungarian punk band)

SMS could mean:
Stupid Man Syndrome
Slow Moving Software
Simple Message Service
Special Mint Set (numismatics/coin collecting)

LOL could mean:
Laugh(ing) Out Loud
Lord Oh Lord
Log On Later
Lots Of Love

PTO could mean:
Please Turn Over
Ping Time Out
Poetry Today Online
Prison Talk Online

FBI could mean:
Federal Bureau of Investigation (US government)
Full Blooded Indian
Firm Believer in Islam
Famous But Incompetent (common slang used by militia groups)

SOS could mean:
Some One Special (chat)
Shoot on Site
Save Our Souls
Strawberry on Shortcake

OMG could mean:
Overly Managed Garden
Oh My God (chat)
Online Music Group
One Man Gang

PMS could mean:
Pardon My Stupidity
Practically My Sister
Pack My Suitcase
Power Money Sex

FFT could mean:
Food For Thought
Full Functional Test
For Further Transfer
File Format Table

Finally AVT could mean:
Adult Vocational Training
Automatic Video Tracker
Applied Vehicle Technology
Architecture Verification Test

The list is endless......so now you see why I haven't a clue sometimes what people are taking about!

I have put the acronym finder in favourites so I can keep up with the conversation, although with so many different meanings who knows whether I will be any wiser!

PS - (PostScript, Porn Star, Please Sir, Please Stay)
This post came about when Annemarie wrote RAK in one of her posts and I didn't have a clue what she was talking about.
Also I realised I did not know the meaning of AVT Coach who I follow every day, so I had to go and look that up as well.

Have some fun with the Tarot Cards

While I am working on another blog post (have to do a bit of research) I thought I would post this fun one about Tarot Cards.

It has been doing the rounds of the blogging community and I found this over at Caroline - The Zen in You about What Tarot Card are you?

This is me, let me know what you are!

You are The High Priestess

Science, Wisdom, Knowledge, Education.

The High Priestess is the card of knowledge, instinctual, supernatural, secret knowledge. She holds scrolls of arcane information that she might, or might not reveal to you. The moon crown on her head as well as the crescent by her foot indicates her willingness to illuminate what you otherwise might not see, reveal the secrets you need to know. The High Priestess is also associated with the moon however and can also indicate change or fluxuation, particularily when it comes to your moods.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.