Alternative source of energy are clearly required and there’s a short mention of this in the following video.

This extremely important issue was mentioned here before. Please do all that you can to pass on that information.

America Ships Electronic Waste Overseas

[...]

While there are no precise figures, activists estimate that 50 to 80 percent of the 300,000 to 400,000 tons of electronics collected for recycling in the U.S. each year ends up overseas. Workers in countries such as China, India and Nigeria then use hammers, gas burners and their bare hands to extract metals, glass and other recyclables, exposing themselves and the environment to a cocktail of toxic chemicals.

Obsolescence and forced upgrade cycles are among the things to blame here. Surely there is a better, more responsible way. Put this hazard right next to global warming, which most people turn a blind eye to. The planet is still being ruined by apathy and greed.

How precious.

People giving birth to lots more people even though the planet is overly congested. This leads to global warning and hostility among overcrowded or hungry populations. But… when it comes to animals, well… some have decided that you might as well just assassinate them just to make more space and clear up some room for people. Utterly appalling.

Adopt this dog or we’ll kill it

[...]

Those among you who remember when it was all fields round here may also recall the famous January 1973 cover of National Lampoon which carried a pic of someone holding a gun to the head of a rather worried looking mutt and the headline “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog”.

[...]

The fund’s Alex Aliksanyan told Reuters: “This is happening … in our country, in our back yard. It’s been kept underneath a blanket of niceness and sweetness. So we said, ‘Lets put the truth in front of the consumer – either do something about it, or at least realize you’re a partner.’”

How about birth control? How about going back to fostering nature? Our existence is not a race for expansion of human population size. The planet cannot contain this.

Help human rights. Help Earth.

KAY, the title is just sort of humorous and it’s designed to draw your attention. I once foresaw myself as someone who would work in industry making a decent living. That was when I learned. Later I envisioned myself exploring and researching. That was when I worked on my Ph.D. which I could probably finish when I was 24. But then came the stage when I worked. But I enjoyed it. I was drawn to a newly-found passion of mine. I scratched an itch which was identified when I discovered hostility and propaganda directed at the very same thing that I used and loved — Free software.

Things have changed a lot, but it was not an overnight transformation.

At present, I’m a forever-procrastinating Ph.D. candidate who has been virtually sitting on a ready thesis for over a year but not just in order to stay in campus life, which is convenient and liberating (I’ll be forced to just submit it at the end of this month). I’ve been advocating Free software vigorously for about 2 years and I began helping with Groklaw News Picks a year and a half ago. I consider myself to be one who is intimately familiar with many of Microsoft’s misconducts (recent past, but particularly present) and I recently started to share my findings in more visible places. I find it utterly appalling — knowing what I know — that Microsoft is practically above international laws.

What’s next? Who the heck knows…

All I know is that I’ve become part of a force that brings change. The world will continue to change and I wish to be part it, not a residue or a side effect.

If you don’t stand up for what you believe it, you’ll live according to someone else’s desires. Other people’s personal goals sometimes lead to harm. Our rights are taken away, our home (or planet) is gradually destroyed, and people at the top strive to keep everyone else ignorant enough to not realise this.

I had my childhood and I’ve had what people call a “normal” life. Maybe it’s time to ensure that tomorrow children can have a normal life too because the world is becoming worse and worse as the days go by.

Me, when I was happy to know nothing about
the way our world really operates

Picture from the BBC (2004).

Will we be seeing more natural disasters in years to come? It sure looks like it, but when will people decide to take action and apply some change?

..”Sea ice in the Arctic helps keep those regions cool by reflecting sunlight that might be absorbed by darker land or ocean surfaces. Exposed to direct sun, for example, instead of reflecting 80 percent of the sunlight, as ice does, the ocean absorbs 90 percent of sunlight. That causes the ocean to heat up and raises Arctic temperatures further.”

Several times in the past I protested against people desire to make long journeys just for the sake of it (including status and social norms). There are other reasons, however, why traveling is not desirable.

Your trip from San Francisco to London and back will cover 17236 Km and produce 1.9 tonnes of CO2

Articles like this can really make you sad (or angry). The world continues its mad upgrade cycle and dumps its trash onto less fortunate people, whose health is in turn compromised. This deserves wider coverage in the mainstream media, which ought to feel very guilty.

Do you know what happens to your used computer equipment after it has been discarded? The answer may surprise you. Even if you have tried to recycle it, your old hardware often gets shipped to a developing nation in direct violation of international law. Useful components are then extracted — without safety precautions — by locals earning pennies a day and who are exposed to a range of hazardous toxins that include lead, beryllium, mercury, cadmium, and brominated flame retardants.

Though slated to be banned over a decade ago, the practice continues and seems to be growing. North America, Japan, and South Korea are among the worst offenders. Solutions exist, and free software is a small part of them, but implementing them remains a painfully slow process.

Except for small groups like the Seattle-based Basel Action Network, almost no organization is investigating the situation, nor are governments and recyclers eager to advertise what amounts to an illegal trade. Given the minimal coverage from mainstream media, few people are aware that the problem even exists.