Hardcore

 

At 8pm last night I watched Survivor at Alex. Maybe familiarity is contempt, but the South Africans always seem so unsophisticated (does that mean they're grounded or just simpletons) in comparison to the US survivors. That said, I am comparing the way people present themselves. I'm not saying anyone should aspire to the patented American showbizzy pretentiousness.

One American whom I admire immensely is Lance Armstrong. I quickly browsed through a book (about Lance's psychology) and was just very positively inspired. Lance is a helluva positive guy.

He has a CLEAR idea of what he wants.
He has a SINGLEMINDEDNESS in achieving it.
He has UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD for the world with himself in it.

That means if it's raining, you just put on a rain jacket, and go out. Weather has zero impact on decisions.
So this morning at 4:30am I woke up and thought:
- if you feel sleepy drink coffee
- if you're cold dress warmly
- if it's dark take a torch

So just before 5am the unthinkable happened. I emerged under my small glowing window floating in a dark city sky. And in the morning quiet, my mining lamp light illuminating the dark road in front of my wheel, I began to move forward around the house and over the speedbumps, into the cold dip and then up the long steep climb to Alex's place. Incredibly I spotted another rider, a black guy on a rickety bicycle, also out trying to get somewhere at this ungodly hour.

Reached Alex just before 5 and then we headed out quite quick to Illovo. We were bang on time, because as we turned the corner they were just coming up the road. It was a small group of about 8 riders, all warmly dressed, red lights flashing in the dark, blue-white torchlight spooling weakly into the road in front of them.

We felt like a squadrom in Battlestar Galactica. Lots of ruby diamonds burning warm holes into the darkness. As if cycling isn't dangerous enough, here we were cruising through sleeping suburbia, feeling our way through pock marked roads.

Some of the riding - for me - was teeth gritting maximal effort climbs. The climbs here are frequent, and long, and they conventionally go on 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 times longer than the little steps you find in the Free State.

Distance: 33.3km
Time: 1:23
Calories: 1372

Got to work at 7am and received some training from Eldridge on loading content.

I had a thought while riding though: when you work all day, facing computer screens, emailing, sms-ing you really start to lose your grip on what life is really about - or what it ought to be about for human beings. You reconnect to yourself when you're out in nature for any length of time. But when you break your routine, and especially when you exercise at a high intensity, you come to a much closer and invigorating understanding of reality. Because you're experiencing reality. You're propelling yourself through it. It's real because you feel it, see it, smell it, and it's impacting on your muscles, your heart, your lungs, your blood.

It's a good feeling.

Dean: At Ground Level

From MSNBC.com

Although Dean swept over Yucatan as a rare Category 5 hurricane, which is capable of causing catastrophic damage, the storm’s top winds were relatively narrow and appeared to hit just one town: the cruise ship port of Majahual.

The few people who had not evacuated Majahual narrowly escaped with their lives. Dean demolished hundreds of houses, crumpled steel girders, splintered wooden structures and washed away parts of concrete dock that transformed what once was a sleepy fishing village into a top cruise ship destination.

The storm surge covered almost the entire town in waist-deep sea water, said fishermen Jorge Gonzalez, who struggled to keep his dog Camilo above water after taking refuge in a flooded store. “There came a moment when I thought this was the end,” he said.

Officescape

 

Great Minds

 
 
 
Remember I wrote a story: Is Bourne the New Bond? This story made the top 5 'Most Popular' on Ohmynews, and was published/conceived before this edition of the Sunday Times.

Btw the story above was originally published by the Sunday Times (in London).

Jozi: The Good

Since moving to Johannesburg, these are some of the benefits:
1) Automatic garage door (remote controlled)
2) Indoor/secure parking at work
3) Work located adjacent to 2 major shopping malls with cinemas, restaurants, banks, coffee shops etc.
4) 2 free tickets every month to NuMetro theatres (work perk)
5) Free daily access to most newspapers - including The Star and Sunday Times
6) More overall facilities (in terms of shops)
7) Big screen TV's scattered about workplace
8) This one is subtle: a more accessible culture. Bloemfontein as a fairly exclusive (as in excluding) Afrikaans culture. Here the culture is different, diverse and also more vibey. It is also more inclusive, including racially inclusive.
9) And then, just from a personal perspective, work is an almost perfect fit, and it's hard to put a value on that.
10) The weather here is more amenable than Bloem - not as cold or as hot.


More good news is I found my driver's license card hiding in a pair of beige O'Neil trousers.
I don't remember ever putting them on, but somehow I think they did disappear in the washing for a few days, card and all. Anyway glad that is resolved.

The Politics of God

By MARK LILLA
Published: August 19, 2007
I. “The Will of God Will Prevail”

The twilight of the idols has been postponed. For more than two centuries, from the American and French Revolutions to the collapse of Soviet Communism, world politics revolved around eminently political problems. War and revolution, class and social justice, race and national identity — these were the questions that divided us.

Today, we have progressed to the point where our problems again resemble those of the 16th century, as we find ourselves entangled in conflicts over competing revelations, dogmatic purity and divine duty. We in the West are disturbed and confused. Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin. We had assumed this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that fanaticism was dead. We were wrong.

An example: In May of last year, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran sent an open letter to President George W. Bush that was translated and published in newspapers around the world. Its theme was contemporary politics and its language that of divine revelation. After rehearsing a litany of grievances against American foreign policies, real and imagined, Ahmadinejad wrote,

“If Prophet Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ishmael, Joseph or Jesus Christ (peace be upon him) were with us today, how would they have judged such behavior?” This was not a rhetorical question. “I have been told that Your Excellency follows the teachings of Jesus (peace be upon him) and believes in the divine promise of the rule of the righteous on Earth,” Ahmadinejad continued, reminding his fellow believer that “according to divine verses, we have all been called upon to worship one God and follow the teachings of divine Prophets.”

There follows a kind of altar call, in which the American president is invited to bring his actions into line with these verses. And then comes a threatening prophecy:

“Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today, these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems. . . . Whether we like it or not, the world is gravitating towards faith in the Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things.”

This is the language of political theology, and for millennia it was the only tongue human beings had for expressing their thoughts about political life. It is primordial, but also contemporary: countless millions still pursue the age-old quest to bring the whole of human life under God’s authority, and they have their reasons. To understand them we need only interpret the language of political theology — yet that is what we find hardest to do. Reading a letter like Ahmadinejad’s, we fall mute, like explorers coming upon an ancient inscription written in hieroglyphics.

The problem is ours, not his. A little more than two centuries ago we began to believe that the West was on a one-way track toward modern secular democracy and that other societies, once placed on that track, would inevitably follow. Though this has not happened, we still maintain our implicit faith in a modernizing process and blame delays on extenuating circumstances like poverty or colonialism. This assumption shapes the way we see political theology, especially in its Islamic form — as an atavism requiring psychological or sociological analysis but not serious intellectual engagement. Islamists, even if they are learned professionals, appear to us primarily as frustrated, irrational representatives of frustrated, irrational societies, nothing more.

We live, so to speak, on the other shore. When we observe those on the opposite bank, we are puzzled, since we have only a distant memory of what it was like to think as they do. We all face the same questions of political existence, yet their way of answering them has become alien to us. On one shore, political institutions are conceived in terms of divine authority and spiritual redemption; on the other they are not. And that, as Robert Frost might have put it, makes all the difference.

For the complete article click on the title.

Mark Lilla is professor of the humanities at Columbia University. This essay is adapted from his book “The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West,” which will be published next month.

Thomas Struth

Dean Vs Cantarell Map

The above map shows the hurricane path (see green line) and location (circle at right) with the Cantarell oil field facility (one of the world's largest) at left.

Dean

Dean became the third most intense Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in recorded history when it plowed into the Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday.
Dean reached a low pressure of 909 mb (Katrina was 920 mb and Camille 909 mb).

Alert: Hurricane Targetting Cantarell Field

Dean weakens, eyes oil facilities, nuke plant
Hurricane predicted to strengthen, make landfall again Wednesday

MAJAHUAL, Mexico - Hurricane Dean swept across the Yucatan peninsula Tuesday, toppling trees, power lines and houses as it bore down on the heart of Mexico’s oil industry. Glitzy resorts on the Mayan Riviera were spared, but vulnerable Mayan villages were exposed to the full fury of one of history’s most intense storms.

President Felipe Calderon said no deaths were immediately reported in Mexico after Dean killed 13 people in the Caribbean. But driving rain, poor communications and impassable roads made it difficult to determine how isolated Mayan communities fared in the sparsely populated jungle where Dean made landfall as a ferocious Category 5 hurricane.
“It wasn’t minutes of terror. It was hours,” said Catharine Morales, 30, a native of Montreal, Canada, who has lived in Majahual for a year. “The walls felt like they were going to explode.”

One of a handful people to ignore military orders to evacuate, Morales weathered the storm in her new brick-walled house with her husband and 7-month-old baby. Winds of 165 mph — with gusts of 200 mph, faster than the takeoff speed of many passenger jets — blew out windows and pulled pieces from their roof.

Hundreds of homes were collapsed in Majahual when Dean’s eye passed almost directly overhead, crumpling steel girders, splintering wooden structures and washing away about half of the immense concrete dock that transformed the sleepy fishing village into one of Mexico’s busiest cruise ship destination. The storm surge covered almost the entire town in waist-deep sea water.

Dean weakened over land but was expected to strengthen as its eye moved over the Bay of Campeche, home to more than 100 oil platforms and three major oil exporting ports.

The sprawling, westward storm was projected to slam into the mainland Wednesday afternoon with renewed force near Laguna Verde, Mexico’s only nuclear power plant. Plant officials said late Tuesday that they were suspending electricity production and sending many workers home.

Plant manager Rafael Fernandez said the storm didn’t pose a threat but would prevent normal operations: “We can’t produce energy if we don’t have the lines to distribute the energy.”
At 11 p.m. ET, Dean had winds of 80 mph and was centered about 215 miles east-northeast of Veracruz. It was moving west-northwest at 18 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.
“We often see that when a storm weakens, people let down their guard completely. You shouldn’t do that,” said Jamie Rhome at the U.S. National Hurricane Center. “This storm probably won’t become a Category 5 again, but it will still be powerful.”

While 50,000 tourists were safely evacuated from resorts on the Yucatan peninsula, many poor Indians closer to the storm’s direct path refused military orders to leave their homes, according to Gen. Alfonso Garcia, who was running shelters in Felipe Carrillo Puerto, 60 miles northwest of Majahual.

Troops evacuated more than 250 small communities, and 8,000 people took refuge in 500 shelters, said Jorge Acevedo, a Quintana Roo state spokesman. Others turned away soldiers with machetes and refused to leave, but some of them changed their minds when the winds and rain intensified, he said.
Unknown how Mayan communities fared.

Little was known about the thousands who rode out the storm in low-lying communities of stick huts.
“I’m really worried the hurricane passed over the Mayan communities, which are the poorest on the Yucatan peninsula,” Calderon said before leaving Canada on a flight to Chetumal to assess the damage.

Mexican officials said they were making slow progress down nearly impassable unpaved roads to reach these places. In less isolated towns, people emerged to survey toppled trees and downed power lines crisscrossing flooded streets.
“If only the government would lend us a hand,” said Georgina Hernandez, 59, whose three children all lost their homes in the town of Los Limones.

Dean’s path takes it directly through the Cantarell oil field, Mexico’s most productive. The entire field’s operations were shut down just ahead of the storm, reducing daily production by 2.7 million barrels of oil and 2.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

Housing Bubble Bursting

Eric Miller / Reuters
Brenda Hoepner peers over the creek that ate into her parents' garage in Minnesota City, Minn. She was surveying flood damage on Monday.

The Most Beautiful Woman in the World

Prelude to an Attack on Iran

By ROBERT BAER
Reports that the Bush Administration will put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list can be read in one of two ways: it's either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months. And they think that as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran's nuclear facilities. An awe and shock campaign, lite, if you will. But frankly they're guessing; after Iraq the White House trusts no one, especially the bureaucracy.

For the full story click on the title of this post.

Study: Why Girls Like Pink

By COCO MASTERS Article ToolsPrintEmailReprintsSphereAddThisRSS When shopping for baby gifts, everyone knows that blue is for boys and pink is for girls. But now there's evidence that those colors may be more than just marketing gimmicks. According to a new study in the Aug. 21 issue of Current Biology, women may be biologically programmed to prefer the color pink — or, at least, redder shades of blue — more than men.

Anya Hurlbert and Yazhu Ling, neuroscientists at Newcastle University conducted a color-selection experiment with 208 volunteers between the ages of 20 and 26. Participants were asked to move a mouse cursor as quickly as possible to their preferred color from a series of paired, colored rectangles, controlled for hue, saturation and lightness. Each person completed three separate tests, then was retested two weeks later.

On average, the study found, all people generally prefer blue, something researchers have long known. The study also found that while both men and women liked blue, women tended to pick redder shades of blue — reddish-purple hues — while men preferred blue-green. To assess whether the color preferences could have been due to culture, the researchers tested 37 Han Chinese volunteers from mainland China, along with the 171 British Caucasian participants, and found the same male-female differences. Though the Chinese participants showed a greater overall preference for red than their British counterparts (red is considered an auspicious color in China), Chinese women and men diverged in color preference predictably along the red-green axis.

“This is the first study to pinpoint a robust sex difference in the red-green axis of human color vision,” says Yazhu Ling, co-author of the study. “And this preference has an evolutionary advantage behind it.”

Ling speculates that the color preference and women's ability to better discriminate red from green could have evolved due to sex-specific divisions of labor: while men hunted, women gatherered, and they had to be able to spot ripe berries and fruits. Another theory suggests that women, as caregivers who need to be particularly sensitive to, say, a child flushed with fever, have developed a sensitivity to reddish changes in skin color, a skill that enhances their abilities as the “emphathizer.”

Ling says that she and her colleagues plan to expand their research in future studies to other cultures — not only British and Chinese — and age groups, including infants, to further test the nature-versus-nurture concept.

The Most Beautiful Woman In The World

Cheapskate

After picking up .5 of the Sunday Times on Saturday night (I turned down a night at a disco to - yay - check emails...what was I whingeing about earlier...).

Thus when Sunday proper came I had to make do with .5 of the Sunday Times. I've finally secured the whole Sunday Times, and nothing but the Sunday Times, so help me Johncom. Actually, that's not quite true, I also took a copy of Business Times.

Some people are chocaholics. I tend(ed) to buy newspapers on a daily basis. Even in Korea. So it makes sense to work for a company where I am at the source, so to speak, of such chronic deforestation (AKA newspaper making).

It's a relief to live in a city where I am not forced to read one Afrikaans paper: My Daaglikse Brood. The local alternative ranges from The Times, to The Star and Sowetan. What's quite interesting is with online versions of all these papers (in fact most newspapers out there) it's not always necessary to buy the paper.

But something can be said for a bedside read, or an after dinner mint sucked while browsing through a large paged newspaper. A time may come where we do this (only) while sitting beside our notebooks, but they have suggested the end to books and paper.

The thing is, computers will always represent a virtual world. Including the world of thoughts and subliminals. There is something reassuring about a paperback, or a book, or magazine. You can feel it. You can tell how far through it you are. You can feel from its weight something about what went into it. Online is faster and more clinical. If it's sheer info you're after, go online. If you're after more of an atmosphere, paper can be good. Of course the 'video' and 'podcasting' nature of the internet is giving it more of an 'ethos'.

Unable to forget The Most Beautiful Woman in the World

Please Refer to the Actual Human Being

My commute today took longer than usual. Think I would have had a meltdown by now if I was living at Witkoppen and having to jump on the N1 as part of my daily bread.

Funnily enough, my last post yesterday (see below) got some reaction (though sadly from none of the individuals it was directed to).

Unfortunately, the gist of GIRLS GONE MAD was essentially this:
I hate sending SMS!
I hate sending emails!
I want to see a human being face to face (or at least talk to them and hear them speak, hear how your days is via your tone of voice.
I want to experience at least one of the other five senses (beyond seeing) with a real live human being.

See, my eyes are starting to adapt to perpetual exposure to LCD screens. Phone and computer and in my car... That means my eyeballs are configured to defocus (mist up) in response to the cotton-ping ponging pixels that I am constantly staring at.

It would be awesome, for a change, to look at a real live human being, in the real world.

When I went cycling with Alex on Sunday I felt a remarkable sense of REconnection. I said, you know today is the first time I've felt a strong sense of the ETHOS of Johannesburg? You don't feel a city or a place driving through it. You get some of it by jogging, but you probably won't cover that much territory. But to cycle through you see every stone and bump and hole in the road, you feel the wind, you smell the barbecues, you hear people shouting and dogs barking.

In the same way we really rob ourseles of a richer human experience by placing a computer and a cellphone as a medium between human beings. We need a trend where people say, Sorry, when you hear the signal the threshold of digital interference will be reached. Please refer to the actual human being for further details.

Girls Gone Mad

I think there are 3 girls now who have, in a short space of time, basically demonstrated a similar - nay identical - modus operandi.

What happens is for whatever reason contact is made, but then instead of subsequent voice to voice communication, there's an attempt to go sms, or Facebook. For example immediately after they send an sms, if you call, they don't respond (unless by sms or email or some other non voice delaying tactic medium)

Two of these individuals I've met, and both are, let's say in the A income group when it comes to looks. (Unfortunately it's also true that they make the F income group when it comes to brains). A third I have never met, and was given her number by an auntie who thought I might like to make friends in a faraway city.

Now I assume that in terms of a Go/No Go frame of mind (in terms of being open to the opposite sex), these 3 Queens of Mental are definitely NO GO. In two cases neither of these girls had boyfriends (the third I just have no way of knowing) - in fact one claimed to have been involuntarily single for 2 years - which makes one wonder, what scheme is actually in play here.

Obviously - despite a number of suggestions to the contrary - I am not Mr Cassanova. The point is just that the female of the species ought to remember that a certain course of action, instead of discouraging certain behaviour might actually, gasp, encourage it. So, for example, if you don't want a guy to contact you, and you don't respond to his calls, except through staggered sms/emails etc, what you're indirectly doing is encouraging a longish message to be sent in small, broken, barely decipherably morse-code like signals.

So if a guy calls, and you don't want to talk to him, a very quick way to communicate this message is to answer in a friendly tone (try not to incur spiteful, unfriendly, or reproachful responses), and say: "Look I am not going through a very good time. It would help me if you and a lot of other men didn't contact me for a while. Believe me."

Most men I think will get the message: UNSTABLE PSYCHO ALERT!

Of course by not communicating this dodgy message the male then does what he is genetically predisposed to do. He knocks (for it has been foretold, the door will be opened).

Except, for young Romeo it becomes a lesson in futility, and a test of his IQ. Just how dumb is our young Romeo? Sometimes the lower the IQ of an object of affection, the higher the IQ of the pursuer who continues to pursue (because he just cannot understand what is happening, and his last thought must be that the object of his affection is incredibly stupid).
On the other hand, perhaps the longer the Romeo is engaged in this lesson in futility, the more powerful the female of the species sees herself to be (IQ's aside). Perhaps this is the point of the exercise from the word go.

The Most Beautiful Woman in the World

Think H5N1 has disappeared?

Housemaid latest avian flu fatality (1 hour ago)
Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang

The Health Ministry's laboratory has confirmed a Tangerang domestic helper died from the bird flu virus Friday, bringing the country's death toll to 83.

The victim died at Tangerang's Sari Asih Hospital on Tuesday after two days of treatment for a high fever and acute pneumonia, a release made available for The Jakarta Post confirmed Saturday.

The maid's employers, Wahyu Proyato and Winda Amalia, who are residents of Perumnas II in Tangerang regency, said they had no idea how their maid contracted the virus because there were no fowl at their home or in the neighborhood.

Wahyu said his maid was treated at a clinic for a high fever and cough earlier this month. He said her condition improved after taking medication.

"Her condition improved after she took the medicine and she was able to babysit my child," he said.

Wahyu said his family and the housemaid did not have direct contact with live poultry and birds near the house.

"The only contact (with chickens) we had was on July 27 when my maid went with me to the market, just 200 meters from my home, to buy chicken meat," he said.

He said he had never purchased live chicken from the market.

The maid's body has been claimed by her family to be buried in Cilacap, Central Java.

Yuliah Iskandar, the regency health agency's head of communicable disease prevention, said a team had been assigned to investigate the source of the H5N1 virus in the neighborhood.

"There are no indications that bird flu has spread in the neighborhood, but we have taken blood samples from residents to be tested in a laboratory," she told the Post on Saturday.

Following the deaths of Iwan Siswara, an official at the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK), and his two young daughters early in July 2005, the central government declared Tangerang a bird flu red zone. Since then, the agency has recorded less than ten deaths in the regency, Yuliah said.

Meanwhile, Banten has recorded 14 human cases of bird flu, 12 of which were fatal.

On Jan. 19, Banten Governor Ratu Atut Chosiah issued a bylaw on poultry restrictions, which included a ban on keeping backyard fowl. The ordinance, however, has not yet taken effect due to prolonged protests from the Banten Council.

A similar ordinance was issued by the Jakarta administration following new outbreaks in the capital in January.

Initially a disease that affected poultry and birds, the H5N1 virus is now able to infect humans, but so far there is no evidence to suggest the disease can be transferred from human to human.

Can only God make life?

Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years
By SETH BORENSTEIN,
AP Science Writer
Mon Aug 20, 1:49 AM ET

WASHINGTON - Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they're getting closer.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life."

"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways — in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."

That first cell of synthetic life — made from the basic chemicals in DNA — may not seem like much to non-scientists. For one thing, you'll have to look in a microscope to see it.

"Creating protocells has the potential to shed new light on our place in the universe," Bedau said. "This will remove one of the few fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our role."

And several scientists believe man-made life forms will one day offer the potential for solving a variety of problems, from fighting diseases to locking up greenhouse gases to eating toxic waste.

Bedau figures there are three major hurdles to creating synthetic life:

• A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply.

• A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes.

• A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy.

One of the leaders in the field, Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School, predicts that within the next six months, scientists will report evidence that the first step — creating a cell membrane — is "not a big problem." Scientists are using fatty acids in that effort.

Szostak is also optimistic about the next step — getting nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, to form a working genetic system.

His idea is that once the container is made, if scientists add nucleotides in the right proportions, then Darwinian evolution could simply take over.

"We aren't smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened," Szostak said.

In Gainesville, Fla., Steve Benner, a biological chemist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution is attacking that problem by going outside of natural genetics. Normal DNA consists of four bases — adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine (known as A,C,G,T) — molecules that spell out the genetic code in pairs. Benner is trying to add eight new bases to the genetic alphabet.

Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could "run amok," but there are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before that is a problem.

"When these things are created, they're going to be so weak, it'll be a huge achievement if you can keep them alive for an hour in the lab," he said. "But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen."

Serious About Marriage?

Here are five questions you must ask yourself if you're serious about finding and keeping a life partner.

QUESTION 1: Do we share a common life purpose?

Why is this so important? Let me put it this way: If you're married for 20 or 30 years, that's a long time to live with someone. What do you plan to do with each other all that time? Travel, eat and jog together? You Need to share something deeper and more meaningful. You need a common life purpose.

Two things can happen in a marriage:

(1) You can grow together, or
(2) You can grow apart.

50% of the people out there are growing apart. To make a marriage work, you need to know what you want out of life! Bottom line; and marry someone who wants the same thing.

QUESTION 2: Do I feel safe expressing my feelings and thoughts with this person?

This question goes to the core of the quality of your relationship. Feeling safe means you can communicate openly with this person. The basis of having good communication is trust - i.e. trust that I won't get "punished" ; or hurt for expressing my honest thoughts and feelings. A colleague of mine defines an abusive person as someone with whom you feel afraid to express your thoughts and feelings. Be honest with yourself on this one. Make sure you feel emotionally safe with the person you plan to marry.

QUESTION 3: Is he/she a mensch?

A mensch is someone who is a refined and sensitive person. How can you test? Here are some suggestions.

Do they work on personal growth on a regular basis?
Are they serious about improving themselves?
A teacher of mine defines a good person as "someone who is always striving to be good and do the right ".So ask your significant other what do they do with their time? Is this person materialistic?
Usually a materialistic person is not someone whose top priority is character refinement.

There are essentially two types of people in the world:

(1) People who are dedicated to personal growth, and
(2) People who are dedicated to seeking comfort.

Someone whose goal in life is to be comfortable will put personal comfort ahead of doing the right thing.You need to know that before walking down the aisle.

QUESTION 4: How does he/she treat other people?

The one most important thing that makes any relationship work is the ability to give. By giving, we mean the ability to give another person pleasure.

Ask: Is this someone who enjoys giving pleasure to others or are they wrapped up in themselves and self-absorbed? To measure this, think about the following:

How do they treat people whom they do not have to be nice to, such as waiters, bus boys, taxi drivers, etc.

How do they treat their parents and siblings?

Do they have gratitude and appreciation? If they don't have gratitude for the people who have given them everything;

Can you do nearly as much for them? You can be sure that someone who treats others poorly, will eventually treat you poorly as well.

QUESTION 5: Is there anything I'm hoping to change about this person after
we're married?

Too many people make the mistake of marrying someone with the intention of trying to "improve" them after they're married. As a colleague of mine puts it, "You can probably expect someone to change after marriage for the worse". If you cannot fully accept this person the way they are now, then you are not ready to marry them.

In conclusion, dating doesn't have to be difficult and treacherous. The key is to try leading a little more with your head and less with your heart.

It pays to be as objective as possible when you are dating; so be sure to ask questions that will help you get to the key issues. Falling in love is a great feeling, but when you wake up with a ring on your finger, you don't want to find yourself in trouble because you didn't do your homework.

Another perspective....

There are some people in your life that need to be loved from a distance....

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you let go of or at least minimize your time with draining, negative, incompatible, not-going anywhere relationships. Observe the relationships around you.

Pay attention....
Which ones lift and which ones lean? Which ones encourage and which ones discourage? Which ones are on a path of growth uphill and which ones are going downhill? When you leave certain people do you feel Better or feel worse? Which ones always have drama or don't really understand, know, or appreciate you?

The more you seek quality, respect, growth, peace of mind, love and truth around you...the easier it will become for you to decide who gets to sit in the front row and who should be moved to the balcony of your life.

The Road

The President vs The People

The President's Us vs Them mentality is no different from an attitude of fighting everyone around us, including ourselves

South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki made a cardinal error when he fired his Deputy-Minister of Health, Madlala-Routledge. In itself, he might have thought he was entirely justified. On Saturday night’s SABC news he was interviewed saying, quite reasonably, that any person who works in government commits themselves to serve, including, serving within government. Any person who does not do that, must leave. Well said, Mr. President, but how utterly ironic.

A colleague recently echoed Mbeki’s sentiments, saying that any person who slanders the company they work for should be fired, as they ought to be. True. But in this case, the Deputy was unhappy about a government that wasn’t doing its job, and so in a sense, she was speaking ‘for the people’, especially since what she said happened to be true.

What my colleague doesn’t see is the fact that Mbeki’s actions here, while in the microcosm of the actual process they make sense, in the wider context of government efficacy he has been exposed (at least in the eyes of the populace) as a hypocrite.

The irony couldn’t be more acute. At the same time that the Deputy-Minister of Health, Madlala-Routledge was fired, the Health Minister (charged with solving an AIDS epidemic that has infected more South Africans than any other country on Earth) was undergoing surgery to replace an alcohol induced cirrhotic liver.

Reports that the Minister (dubbed Dr. Beetroot for her unconventional advice on AIDS treatments)
was abusive to staff in the Clinic where she was treated didn’t help her case. Neither did allegations that she had been drinking alcohol whilst in hospital.

Serious doubt has been cast not only on Health Minister Tshabalala-Msimang, but on a President who has firmly supported her (despite obvious failings) thus far. Meanwhile, the president has dismissed Deputy-Minister of Health, Madlala-Routledge despite wide ranging reports that she was committed and involved and doing solid service to the community, particularly in the area of AIDS. Her work has been so effective in fact, that AIDS activists were outraged at her dismissal, saying they now felt 'vulernable' and intended to sue the government.

The President’s response has been to point out legalistic details and brand Madlala-Routledge a liar on his website, meanwhile Health Minister Tshabalala-Msimang is taking to court the newspaper that published her escapades in hospital.

Recently the Sunday Times published an article indicating Tshabalala-Msimang, while working at a hospital in Botswana in the 70’s, had stolen personal items from patients (including a watch, shoes, linen etc).

Opposition Party leader (and mayor of Cape Town) Helen Zille has said: "In any properly functioning democracy... Dr Tshabalala-Msimang would have been removed from her position a long time ago. That she has not been, says more about our President than about the health minister."*

The cardinal error the President has made is in underestimating the public’s resentment to almost perpetual government intransigence on a host of issues in South Africa, from AIDS to Zimbabwe. At the recent SADC conference, the leaders who gathered there decided the best course of action on Zimbabwe was ‘to do nothing’ and to ‘wait for the election’ to allow the problem to sort itself out.

The question must then be asked: what is a government actually for? The answer is usually something like this: to serve the people. What happens is citizens elect leaders, and then leaders effectively isolate themselves from the voters, and attempt to fortify or defend their positions. To actually answer to the electorate is so far beneath our leaders to be laughable. This is obvious across the board, from Mugabe to Bush.

The result of this arrogant and narcissistic attitude towards the nation of voters, is a schism between citizens and those ostensibly in place to govern them. The average citizen knows that officials riding around in expensive cars, living on inflated salaries (taxpayers money) etc. couldn’t care less about sorting out important civil problems, for example in less affluent suburbs (or rural areas) because effectively, this is a world away from where they live their lives in hardhearted comfort.

Our president's Us vs Them mentality is evidenced elsewhere in the world. The dangerous result is a slow growth of subversion in communities. At first it is harmless. A mass of people who simply doesn’t trust its own government, but tolerates it because it feels it is ‘stuck’ with it.

Populaces everywhere are free to enter the streets and as a form of popular protest, vote their feelings. We don’t do this probably because we have better things to do, and anyway, how does a President influence us anyway? We’re not necessarily any better or worse off whatever we do.

But there are those who are less inclined to roll over. We call them terrorists. Terrorists are also people who feel strongly about not wanting to be ruled by people who ruthlessly impose their rule, despite having lost the popular mandate to do so. So an attitude of disconnectedness from government can inculcate a similar attitude from the most destitute, from the most extreme segments of a community.

In that sense our leaders have a far greater responsibility towards us than they imagine.


*Quote from ‘Give evidence about Manto: Presidency’, an article compiled by Sapa

1 H 20

So I got some exercise this weekend. The highlight was definitely Sunday's cycle through suburban Jozi with Alex. I was feeling a bit blue, probably for a combination of reasons, but boiling down to these 2:

1) I'm down to my 'end-of-the-month' salty cracks snack (no topping)
2) My computer has died, which means I've had to find other means to make myself (apparently) useful

Had a few social dates lined up...and virtually none of them materialised, both due to my own intransigence, but also general apathy from friends. Look I wasn't going to go to a nightclub and pay a R90 cover charge, and cycling clashed with a movie date, and so on and so forth. I'm not really the sort of person that has a social diary. Everyone else seems to be though.

But was good to get in a run and a cycle. That aspect of my life needs a lot of attention, and that's what I gave it over the past 2 days.

Me Tube: 3.9km Swim

3.9km Swim - The funniest videos are a click away

Me Tube: The Orient in 5 Minutes

The Orient - In 5 Minutes (more Or Less) - Click here for more blooper videos

Security in the Suburbs

 

Too Chicken For Church

 

Hurricane Dean

Survivor Cook Islands

Will racially segregating the contestants have long term social implications?

There's a scene in one of the Pet Detective movies where Jim Carrey emerges, soaked, from a bathroom and proclaims loudly: "Do NOT go in there."

I say the same for the Survivor website (http://www.cbs.com/primetime/survivor13/) If you do you will immediately see who the winner is.

But others may be inclined to want to give the whole show a miss. After seeing the first episode this week, I'm inclined to think it's going to be just as addictive and exciting as previous Survivors.

In the first episode we saw 20 survivors jumping off an old wooden Jan Van Riebeeck type sailboat. They then paddled on color coded (appropriately enough) rafts to their respective islands.

Interestingly, there are 4 racial groups represented here: Asians, Hispanics, Caucasians and African Americans. More intriguing is that the 'white' and 'black' teams each have fewer men, just 2, to 3 women. The reverse is true of the other two teams. This could suggest (brief eye roll) an initial superiority could develop in those teams with more men (when sheer strength and athleticism is an important factor).

In the first episode there was already some abrasiveness. One of the Caucasian tribe members, Jonathan (a writer, producer and in fact an actor) 'inadvertantly' took one of the chickens that had been earmarked for the African American tribe. This might have been incidental in the scheme of things, as someone let both chickens fly the coop and disappear - uneaten - into the forest, except the African American tribe came last in the first challenge.

Coming last meant tribal council, but it also entitled the losing tribe to select an individual who would be banished, forthwith, to Exile Island. Thus the two black men quickly decided to send Jonathan to Exile Ssland. Shortly after, the 3 women in the African American tribe voted off Sekou, one of only two men on their tribe.

In an interesting aside, the Asian tribe (who also comfortably won the first challenge)demonstrated an interesting headache cure. Vietnamese hippi Cao Boi performed a bizarre face pinching ritual, which left a strange red blotch on his protege's face. His westernised cohorts thought it a bizarre treatment, but Brad (I think) did say that the headache had disappeared. Having been to Korea, I've seen similar strange cures being applied (needles under fingernails to cure stomachaches) with similar success.

So it is interesting to notice the cultural variations and cultural personalities, and how these differ from tribe to tribe. Will audiences take these to heart and will stereotypes be engendered? Unlikely. At worst people will merely be conscious of their own predispositions, and notice how these 'survive' in the context of the show. Even the host, Jeff Probst says he was 'uncomfortable' promoting a racially segregated cast. He has defended the idea though, saying that after 13 seasons the idea is to try different ideas to make things more interesting. Most reasonable people will probably see and appreciate the entertainment value in that, without focussing on anything else.

Beyond the antics on the islands, the show, and its contestants, has gained controversy from the word go. The majority of the cast are real actors who were recruited (they did not volunteer or turn up as in previous seasons). Another member of the cast, 30 year old JP Calderon, after being offered a modelling contract at a gay magazine called Instinct (after the show had ended), decided to come out of the closet. And Mexican Ozzy Lusth was filmed having sex with two women on a Playboy TV show called Foursome, before his appearance on Survivor. There's more but let's not go there.

Suffice it to say, a controversial show tends to interesting, but this is not always the case. General Motors, the sponsor, didn't feel this would be the case and pulled out. We shall have to see for ourselves, won't we?

It's Happening Again

The storm has strengthened into a Category 4 storm and is expected to reach Category 5 status later Saturday. Winds hit 150 mph as it headed on a collision course with Jamaica and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, where it is forecast to become a Category 5 storm. (AP Photo/NOAA)

Lost & Broken

Lost:

driver's license
2 Nu Metro movie tickets
Blue Billabong hooded top
Serial numbers for 3 computer games (making them useless)

Broken:

Cracked Sharp V-cam Z video camera - dew sensor flashes almost constantly, automatically shutting it down makign it virtually impossible to use
Computer speakers
Computer hard drive (possibly broken due to power surge)
Zipp Wheel (riding over a large stone) - has since been repaired at a cost of R200
Oakley glasses (worth around R1000)

Soon to be broken:

Car? Will be serviced on the 27th

A Streetcar Named Necessity

A pair of traders wait at a post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for a stock to open. (Richard Drew/AP)

SABC Contact

Hi Nick…

Am almost done reading Holiday. Enjoying it very much.
Once I’m done, I’ll let you know my thoughts on possible adaptation for the screen.

Hope you are well.

Ryan

Fast Week

It has been an incredibly fast week, and full of variety. Yes it's been very busy with various faces, places and activities.

Have survived so far with my car and will hopefully make it until this time next week. There may have been an error somewhere, as the mechanics said the timing belt could be replaced as late as 192 000km. Quite a big discrepancy from the log book then: 168 000km.

What's new in my life is that I am healthy again, went for a decent half hour run yesterday with Janet, and am gonna get on my trainer and try to cycle for at least an hour (indoors). See how that goes. I'm also cutting out sodas completely, just drinking water during lunch, and going for smaller portions.

Have a meeting with Soul City this afternoon and then a few social engagements over the weekend. Must try to either fix my Sharp video camera or buy a new one. Am starting to enjoy the video thing.

Me Tube

Playing Chicken On A Tandem - The best home videos are here

Asian markets continue slide; Tokyo down sharply

The Associated Press
Published: August 17, 2007

TOKYO: Asian shares tumbled again Friday, with the Tokyo benchmark nose-diving 5.4 percent, as the region showed little sign of staging a recovery amid a global sell-off over U.S. credit fears. European stocks, meanwhile, were mixed in early trade.

The dollar's decline that worsened earnings prospects for Japanese companies added to the battering Tokyo's benchmark has been taking in recent sessions, sending the Nikkei 225 index crashing 874.81 points, or 5.4 percent, to close at 15,273.68, its lowest close in a year.

Hong Kong's blue chip Hang Seng Index fell 1.4 percent , and the Korea Composite Stock Price Index lost 3.2 percent after dropping 6.9 percent the previous session.

In early European trade, Britain's FTSE is up 0.66 percent, France's CAC 40 index is up 0.39 percent and Germany's DAX is down 0.05 percent.

Some Asian markets tried to buck the regional trend with early bargain-hunting but quickly began falling as Tokyo's slide deepened throughout the day. Japanese shares, already weakened by the spreading U.S. loan crisis, were hit hard again by a strengthening yen.

Asian markets continue slide despite Wall Street rallyPaulson brings laissez-faire approach on financial crisisFloyd Norris: Why is the credit panic being played out in slow motion?

"The fear factor has overtaken people," said Song Sen Wun, regional economist at CIMB-GK Research Pte. Ltd., adding that people could realize that the fears are overblown as quickly as Monday.

Me Tube

Honeymoon In Thailand - The funniest videos are a click away

A Day of Wild Market Swings and Global Anxiety

Patrick Andrade for The New York Times

By JEREMY W. PETERS and LOUIS UCHITELLE
Published: August 17, 2007

What looked as if it would be one of the worst days since Wall Street began its midsummer swoon ended yesterday with a whimper, not a bang.

Volatility ruled as investors tried to sort through a cacophony of market chatter: rumors of an emergency meeting by the Federal Reserve, fears that the nation’s largest mortgage issuer might fail, comments from the Treasury secretary and a steep sell-off in markets overseas.

At one point during the trading session, major stock indexes were down more than 10 percent from their peak last month — the threshold for the market’s fall to be considered a “correction.”

Me Tube

South Africa's Ambassador To South Korea - video powered by Metacafe

Honeymoon in Thailand

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/769697/honeymoon_in_thailand/

Director

Although I enjoy writing, and I feel like I have something to say, I think I am evern more of a round peg in a round hole when it comes to Directing. That means, being behind the camera.

Today I went on a shoot to Parkview Golf course and was basically a fifth wheel observing an interview etc. I found myself getting very agitated because the cameramen just didn't seem to be aware of a wider context - the background etc. That said to me a lot about me; that I have a passionate 'gut feel' about how I want to render reality.

I think that comes through quite strongly in my photography too, and also in my writing, which has a strong 'visual style'.

I'd like to begin to move more into a direction where I will be able to generate documentary/film content. So I'm going to make that a broad goal and see to what extent I can pursue that while I necessarily have to pursue other things (to put bread on the table).

I seem to have found a place nearby that can replace my engine timing belt. My first quote was R7000, the second R6100 and the third R5700. Pays to shop around.

I'm going running with Janet at 16:30. Head is a bit scratchy, but it's been almost 2 weeks since I last ran, and I am really tired of being sedentary. I also feel like it is a health risk to allow so much time to go by and one is just sitting on one's butt stewing in toxins.

Also called up someone who Nora (from Q) referred me to. Have been invited to some get-together on Saturday night. Should be good.

South Africa's Amabsaddor to South Korea

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/769625/south_africas_ambassador_to_south...

This is quite funny...

Dumb Mutt

Long Lines Into Petrol Stations (the real reason)

 

Bicycling Article

Elephants Never Forget

In 1986, Mikele Mebembe was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University.
On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Mikele approached it very carefully.

He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Mikele worked the wood out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Mikele stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Mikele never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later, Mikele was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Mikele and his son Tapu were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Mikele, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Mikele couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant. Mikele summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Mikele's legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly. Probably wasn't the same elephant.

Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy

Citizen Journalism to the Rescue: AP Buys Citizen Journalist's Photos

by jordan
12 wks ago 91 views

I just got off the phone with NowPublic's very own TheArgus, who brought us some incredible eyewitness photos of the forest fires in New Jersey. While on the way to work, this gentleman found himself in the middle of a world exclusive: he was one of the first people on the scene, and was called upon to direct traffic; someone's gotta do it. He was then brought to the nearby township to help evacuate neighboring towns. During the course of this all-day all-night work, TheArgus was able to bring us this amazing coverage.

The Associated Press, which maintains a relationship with NowPublic, got wind of the pictures attached to the article and wanted to use them as part of global news distribution. Via one if NowPublic's managing editors, AP purchased from TheArgus the high-res versions of the photos that they wanted to use, and TheArgus stepped into citizen-journalism history. With his modest point-and-shoot digicam, our citizen reporter was able to do what no DSLR-equipped photojournalist could have done under the circumstances, simply as a function of his daily routine and of doing his civic duty. Something newsworthy was taking place and one person was there with a camera and an inquisitive mind, bringing us, and the world, some breathtaking photos and superb first-person coverage.

Ultimately, this is what NowPublic is all about: you, the contributors sharing with the rest of us your experiences when you witness or take part in newsworthy events.

As illustrated above, NowPublic contributors can actually get paid for their work with us: if you bring in an image or story or article that AP needs, they will indeed pay you for it. Just promise that you'll remember us when you're an Internet news superstar.

By the way, during the course of the telephone interview TheArgus provided me
with an update: meteorologists predict 50mh winds ahead of a storm
front heading towards the site of the fire. This guy never rests.

What’s Happening in Citizen Journalism?

You can earn as much as R1400 per month on reporter.co.za

Every citizen can be a reporter. So if you see it, report it! And if you don’t like the news you’re reading, write your own news.

"Will more participation and better information make us happier and more fulfilled?" This question was posed by the mastermind behind the world’s most successful citizen mediated news site, Korean based Ohmynews.com. Ohmynews now has almost 60 000 members, but other copycats and upgrades to the idea are springing up everywhere. NowPublic.com in Canada is a good example. The answer to the question is YES! But only if our participation is influential, if it presents meaningful solutions to problems.

Youtube is growing at a phenomenal rate, but of course it is not strictly a news site as it is a video page. Similar sites like Metacafe reward contributors - $5 for every 1000 views. One contributor ‘Reel Stunts’ is Metacafe’s top earner at just under $25 000.

Daytipper is another site that rewards consumers at $3 per published tip (which can cover anything from technology to cooking). FavoriteThingz involves the endorsement of anything from bands, teams or movies – displayed as sideshows on numerous blogs – with badge creators earning a commission of 1-4% based on clickrates on these sideshows.

The latest statistics also demonstrate that people are spending a lot more time online searching for content in proportion to mere communication. There has been a 37% increase in time spent viewing content online since 2003, The possible reasons underlying this trend include a host of quality sites, including blogs, that have been added to the world wide web, as well as broadband speeds allowing for greater speed and access, thus enabling more time to communicate and browse.

Moreover, citizen mediated coverage is growing. We have seen video footage of 911, the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the London train bombings, coverage of U.S. Senator George Allen's political suicide, and recently the Virginia Tech massacre.

In South Africa, on Reporter.co.za citizens have the opportunity to get involved and have their say in the upcoming presidential elections. Citizen reporting really means that every citizen can be a reporter. In South Africa we need to know what is happening in our communities, what people are feeling and saying, and how to respond to these situations. Crime is one area citizens can play a vital role. Find out who was a victim of crime in your area. Interview them. How was the crime perpetrated? Have the police identified similar crimes (is there a pattern). Is this a crime category that the police are winning, or could they do with community support?

Corruption, AIDS, Unemployment, extreme weather, how the Zimbabwe-crisis is effecting South Africans, poverty and other personal issues – all these can be exposed and represented by citizens that live these experiences on a daily basis.

Has the latest Harry potter book been reviewed? Or the latest PC/Xbox/Playstations Games? Has anyone reviewed the movie: Becoming Jane? Even if you don’t personally own or haven’t personally experienced any of these products you can interview someone who has. At reporter.co.za you’re free to review everything – your city, the local mall, your university or your school. Just do so honestly and fairly, and balance your opinion as far as possible.

At Reporter.co.za I once earned R1400 in a single month. To achieve this you have to be consistent. You’ll work very hard. You’ve also got to submit stories in a constant stream, preferably the evening before the day you’re anticipating publication. It helps if one is not only sending stories, but also photographs. Photographs are theoretically a much easier source of income; especially if you start your own image library (keeping it updated though), and then submitting images regularly to Reporter.co.za.

Keep your stories relevant to what is happening around you. Editors like to use the most top-of-mind stories, and Reporter.co.za has an insatiable appetite for NEWS stories. They love facts, interviews, statistics, and articles backed up by research. So far, and I am implicated here too, almost all reporting on reporter.co.za is opinion pieces. If you want a job as a real journalist at a major publication, start cutting your teeth on real news. Go out and interview people, get interested in your community. Write about what matters to you, and it ought to matter to others too. If the editors at reporter.co.za like it, and other editors notice it, you could be hand plucked for plum jobs elsewhere.

The difference citizen journalists make can make all the difference. The world needs citizens everywhere to get involved in their communities, for us to record and write purposefully and meaningfully what we’re seeing in our world. We can change our world into a better world, and a world worth having, and by writing the wrongs citizen mediation can achieve great things. Get cracking!

Developments

Facebook has been banned over here, along with YouTube, and MySpace.

Went to a Alpha Course yesterday. Interesting discussion on miracles.

The argument has been made often that 'something is missing' in our lives. We say that we are lacking meaning and purpose in our lives, and that God is the only one who can put it there. I think that's a lazy approach. If you are missing meaning or purpose in your life, get up, and go and find meaning and purpose. The fact that you feel there is a deficiency means you must answer that call.

Going to church or giving God the resposibility to fulfill all your inner needs for meaning or purpose turns into a hollow but self fulfilling solution which doesn't necessarily achieve anything.

Meaning and purpose comes from connecting ourselves to others, and to the world at large. To the extent that we do this, we'll find meaning, and the degree to which we choose to do this, is our self defined and determined purpose.

Kiss Me If You Can

They say polars bears will be extinct in the next 50 years...