An Untrampled High Place

Thoughts on work vs unemployment and feeling on top of the world

nobody@vox.com(Russ) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:23:32 +0200

When I'm unemployed I eat well, exercise daily, sleep well, and generally feel good and healthy. I couldn't stay in my flat. I kept getting up to go somewhere, anywhere, strolling outside for fresh air and sun.

I felt great, full of energy.

When I work, I don't. It's a matter of time and energy at the end of the day - I don't have any, and when I wake up to go to work, I have even less.

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Mugabe's African Pals

nobody@vox.com(Russ) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:16:13 +0200

The world rarely looks to summit meetings of the African Union for statesmanship, and this week's meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheik met those expectations.

The Wall Street Journal writes:

At least not all of Africa's leaders are buying into this charade. From Nairobi, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga called for suspending Zimbabwe from the African Union and sending peacekeepers to ensure a free election. Mr. Odinga knows whereof he speaks: Like Mr. Tsvangirai, he led the opposition in December's tainted Kenyan polls.
Also notable were comments from Senegal's foreign minister, Cheikh Tidiane Gadio. Africans insist that the West should "leave us alone and [that] we be left to decide our own destinies," he said, but at the moment of crisis "we don't want to talk about it. That doesn't make any sense." Senegal is one of Africa's more democratic countries. The tragedy is that there aren't more African leaders willing to stand up against a tyrant who is bringing such shame to their continent.

And South Africa... well, South Africa was silent. Viva the Revolution! Viiii-vaaaa!

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Make your own Sanctuary

nobody@vox.com(Russ) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 06:46:15 +0200

This is a spiritual post; nothing to do with "Survivalism". Some things are beyond earthly concerns.

From Be Within Stay Above By Tzvi Freeman of Chabad*

... He desires that this body and its earthly impulses will obscure and negate the G-dly light breathed into it. And that nevertheless, somehow, in the midst of all this struggle, that spark of G-d within will manage to make its mark, filtering away some of the ugliness and refining some of the preciousness of the body, of the animal driving it, and even of its share of this world.
This is the sanctuary that each person makes in his life, a place where an animal is raised up in a G-dly fire. It is here that G-d is found in all Primal Essence, dwelling in an ordinary world.
And for this all things were made.

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North pole ice cap to dissapear by September

nobody@vox.com(Russ) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:12:22 +0200

Ice at the North Pole may disappear completely within the next few months for the first time in 20,000 years.

"There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole - not water," said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in Colorado.
"As far as we can tell this has not happened for at least 20,000 years. The real shock is that it has happened so quickly with ice formed in the winter melting by the summer.
"These are the big changes that have been predicted happening before our eyes. This is perhaps the first sign of what we are in for."

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Vox Hunt: I'd Rather Be...

nobody@vox.com(Russ) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:09:37 +0200

Show us what you wish you were doing right now.

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Nine Ways to Go Green in the City

nobody@vox.com(Russ) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:52:50 +0200

In honour of Earth Day and inspired by Raina Kelley's Freegan Experiment

1. I will limit my buying. So no, I won't be splurging on a new headphone amp or headphones for that matter. I just don't need 'em.

2. I’m about to change my diet in a major way for health reasons. Forced to, actually. Will know in a couple of weeks how it's going to be.

3. Buy organic and local, and in so doing, reduce my carbon footprint (less time spent trucking food to the store for me to by).

4. I will begin to scrupulously recycle and reuse. I plan to look at composting as well because it ties in with the buying local / organic model - Kelley writes that if we limit buying, and buy local instead of canned, we produce a lot less garbage.

5. And I will not throw away what I already have to buy "green". Gotta remember to recycle and reuse - doesn't matter if the products I own aren't environmentally-friendly why create more garbage? So that means I have to take the darn TV set in for repairs instead of splurging $1200 on a flat-panel.

6. I’m focusing more on energy conservation which is an extremely easy thing to do considering summer is here (dry washing on the line; use gas instead of electricity for cooking). We haven't used air conditioning for 5 years thanks to the cool breeze wafting through the apartment and so that's a huge saving!

7. Eco-Friendly Transportation is just the thing for me! I bus to work and I can cycle as well.

8. Save the money I used to spend on a carbon-intensive lifestyle. I plan to open up a Green Savings Account (My term). Between meals out, taxis, supermarket, wine tasting ;-) and assorted retail therapy purchases, I spend way too much and have nothing to show for it. So, I should save, take lunch to work, buy 2nd-hand CDs and stay away from Amazon.com.

9. Kelly writes that being mindful of our impact on the Earth can be the most valuable thing we can do. The more we know about where our food, clothing, entertainment and shelter comes from, the easier it is to make buying decisions in line with your conscience and in turn, save the planet. That's the Freegan way

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Look to Africa to see the future

nobody@vox.com(Russ) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:32:45 +0200

A United Nations summit on the world’s food crisis has identified 22 countries which are on the verge of catastrophe.

As terrible as this all is I am particularly disturbed to see that the vast majority of these countries are in Africa and that three of them - Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana - are on South Africa's borders. It won't be long before this causes an even bigger xenophobic crisis.

This time South Africa will not be able to contain the situation as thousands and thousands of people break through what remains of it's feeble borders in search of food and a better life.

The cost of basic foodstuffs has rocketed in the past three years, with wheat prices rising by 130 per cent in the first three months of this year alone.
The rises have come as farmers in the third world relocate to cities or turn to growing crops for biofuel. Severe weather conditions have also crippled many countries.
The 22:
Eritrea,
Burundi,
Comoros,
Tajikistan,
Sierra Leone,
Liberia,
Zimbabwe,
Ethiopia,
Haiti,
Zambia,
Central African Republic,
Mozambique,
Tanzania,
Guinea-Bissau,
Madagascar,
Malawi,
Cambodia,
North Korea
Rwanda,
Botswana,
Niger,
Kenya.

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Feng Shui Ghosts

nobody@vox.com(Russ) — Sat, 31 May 2008 07:21:12 +0200

An interesting post on Feng Shui made me think about the issues of the flow of energy and bad spirits in one’s home and I’d like to share the following tale:

My first live-in girlfriend and I shared a cottage in the suburbs. One night as we entered the drive I stopped the car and we both turned to look at one another. We were both overcome by a wave of cold air and we couldn’t bring ourselves to get out of the car an enter our cottage. We then spent the night at my parents house.

In the coming months I took to sleepwalking. My girl later found me in the bathroom surrounded by 3D geometric shapes (she claimed) which, when she tried to awaken me, sank into the floor without a trace.

I accepted what she said but didn’t take it too seriously until one night while visiting my parents. We’d just stood up to leave and say goodbye to my folks when we were both rocked by a hot rush of air. My girlfriend turned to look at me and said, “you felt it, didn’t you? it’s been happening to me every day now for weeks.”

And indeed I had. It was similar to the rush of air you might feel if you stand too close to a railway track when a high-speed train is going by. Most odd.

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Neighbours

nobody@vox.com(Russ) — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:03:28 +0200

Was at the landlord’s lawyer this morning and tried (in vain) to get them to keep the rent the same. Will pay just over $1k a month from June. Also managed to clarify the ongoing saga of my mad downstairs neighbor, Miri. You’ve no idea – Miri the Mad rants and raves ‘til early in the AM about people making a noise – even though there is no noise at all. She harasses everyone – banging on doors and walls and shouting, nay, screaming, at the top of her lungs at some poor bastard over the phone about some imaginary slight.

The lawyer (goes by the name of Advocate Fuehrer) showed me a long letter detailing her complaints about me (wakes up at 6h30 in the morning and walks around his flat).

"Wow - why do you want to stay there then?", you ask. "Cannot believe you awake and walk around - what is wrong with you?! Have you no sense??? Where were you raised - in a barn?"

Well, besides Miri the Mad, the Gay Karaoke Duo, The Transsexual Prostitute, the Alchoholic Ambulance Driver and the Newlywed Drug Dealers, it’s all good.

So I renewed the lease for another year.

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South Africa, at Rainbow's End

nobody@vox.com(Russ) — Sun, 25 May 2008 06:58:00 +0200

A former South African I was interested to read how just before the race riots stemming from unemployment; poverty; a high cost of living; and an unbelievably high crime rate ravaged the country; that the price of fertiliser in South Africa have gone up 100% to 150%, those of feed went up 80% and fuel prices had risen 60%, whereas food prices had "only" risen 40% over the same period.

As a result, farmers are fighting shrinking profit margins, and many had given up farming. This, according to Etienne Terre'Blanche, MD of the Milk Producers Organisation.

"If any country would totally rely on food imports, it would be in deep, deep trouble," he said. "Import prices of maize to feed cows and of fuel would keep going up. Something would go wrong, somewhere down the line."

Indeed it has:

To date 43 people have been murdered and tens of thousands forced from their homes in a dozen Johannesburg suburbs and satellite townships. With it has come looting and rape.
Thousands of immigrants are fleeing the county.
Others packed Johannesburg's bus and train stations, police compounds, churches and community halls.
Now the violence is spreading across the country to Cape Town, Durban and the Free State.

The attacks mostly come at night. Sometimes the mobs know where the foreigners live but if they are in doubt they ask a simple question in Zulu, the lingua franca of the townships. Lack of comprehension is dangerous.

This fuels concerns that the violence is not just a result of poverty and unemployment; it is also tribal, indeed, political in nature.

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