Sayan’s BlogWorld

The Sustainability Institute’s Donna Meadow’s Voice of a Global Citizen Archive has an article about the well-known (but not practiced) Seven Blunders’ talisman by Mahatma Gandhi :

A few weeks before he was assassinated, Gandhi the Mahatma had a conversation with his grandson Arun. He handed Arun a talisman upon which were engraved “Seven Blunders,” out of which, said Gandhi, grows the violence that plagues the world. The blunders were:

Wealth without work.

Pleasure without conscience.

Knowledge without character.

Commerce without morality.

Science without humanity.

Worship without sacrifice.

Politics without principles.

Gandhi called these disbalances “passive violence,” which fuels the active violence of crime, rebellion, and war. He said, “We could work ’til doomsday to achieve peace and would get nowhere as long as we ignore passive violence in our world.”

To his grandfather’s list of seven blunders Arun later added an eighth: Rights without responsibilities.

This is an unbelievably eye-opening story on the ancients doing terraforming-type activities on a massive scale. Maybe I am going a little over the top. But read this to find out more about this ‘carbon-negative’ agricultural practice … I think this has a tremendous potential for addressing some really critical global issues.

Here is a small extract from the post at WorldChanging:

Amazonian Dark Earth, or terra preta do indio, has mystified science for the last hundred years. Three times richer in nitrogen and phosphorous, and twenty times the carbon of normal soils, terra preta is the legacy of ancient Amazonians who predate Western civilization. Scientists who long debated the capacity of ’savages’ to transform the virgin rainforest now agree that indigenous people transformed large regions of the Amazon into amazingly fertile black earth.

This post is for today being Blog Action Day. The theme is ‘Environment’ and here are some quick and easy things we can all do to preserve the environment and probably even save some money in the bargain. I can’t think of a better bargain !

Link #1: Items you Never Thought to Recycle

Link #2: Life Remix

Link #3: Small Changes In Your Bathroom, Big Benefits For the Environment

Link #4: 5 Ways Save the World, While Getting Fitter, Saving Money, Simplifying, and Becoming Happier

….and at least do it for Santa

before I sign off for the day… have you thought about a living breathing planet… maybe after watching this video you will

I spent some time watching the talk Dr. Bussard gave at Google sometime ago- it was very interesting both from a scientific point of view and a political point of view. It seems all that is required to solve most of the world’s problems is political will and stepping away from narrow egotistical views.

Here is what Slashdot says in a post: Dr Bussard, the man behind the Bussard Collector and inventor of the Polywell fusion device, passed away last Sunday in the morning. He leaves behind him a legacy of EM fusion devices, and a team determined to continue his efforts. The news of funding extension for the construction of his WB-7 fusion devices made it to slashdot months ago (as well as his talk at google). They may be a serious candidate in the run to bring commercial fusion, and may work at lower scales than other projects. Let’s hope the project continues in good shape despite his departure.

Here is a short animation of the basic working of a Polywell design IEC (Inertial Electrostatic Confinement) fusion device studied by Dr. Bussard’s team:

Interesting conversation from the 2007 O’Reilly Open Source Convention between Phillip Torrone (Senior Editor, Make magazine) and Limor Fried (Owner, Adafruit Industries)