gym teacher secretly hates nerds

Ever felt like you were being singled out for punishment or difficult tasks in gym? Because you weren't as athletic as others? Seems you weren't imagining things. Here is an article that proves it wasn't just paranoia (though people may all be out to get you anyway). The Onion provides the definitive article on the subject.

metta connection: steiner and buddhism

As soon as I started reading Steiner's How to Know Higher Worlds, I saw the connection. I don't know whether Steiner studied Buddhism or not, but if not, the similarities would be almost miraculous. This essay explains the links - http://southerncrossreview.org/16/kirchoff.htm

More on this later...

Who killed the electric car?

Engineers modify hybrid cars to get up to 250 mpg

Politicians and automakers say a car that can both reduce greenhouse gases and free America from its reliance on foreign oil is years or even decades away.

Ron Gremban says such a car is parked in his garage.

Read the article from SFGate

Plus, there is a documentary out now called "Who Killed the Electric Car?" playing in the better theaters around the country. Here is a review

Why are Indian cotton farmers committing suicide? And what can be done to help them?

Burning GMO Cotton in India

On January 10 of this year, Jamuna Ramdas Ade decided she’d had enough. The cotton farmer from the Indian state of Maharashtra was so deep in debt that she swallowed a mouthful of monocrotophos, an insecticide so poisonous it is banned in Europe and the United States.

Read the rest of the article and find out how to help.

Also on the cotton squeeze, see the article about Seydou Coulibaly, a cotton farmer from Mali who was recently in Louisville to meet with local farmers and students. By Rasa Zimliki (Oxfam) and Andrew Kang Bartlett. Download the two-pager here.

post-captivity metta

Problem: How to help prisoners create changes in their behavior that are sustainable upon release, promote a positive lifestyle, and decrease the likelihood of recidivism?

The Upaya Zen Prison Project teaches meditation as a means of ending the cycle of addiction, violence and incarceration for men, women and youth. Through meditation prisoners learn how to examine and eventually transform the unhealthy habits that have governed their lives up to this point. This is a place where Buddhist rubber hits the road.

The Buddhist Peace Fellowship, which I've been a member of for many years, has an excellent program on prisons. You can also get all your Socially Engaged Buddhist News on their home page.

mercury for dinner

Yes, every body of water in my whole state has a mercury advisory. In fact, Kentucky leads the nation in per capita deaths due to power plant pollution. The following letter to the EPA by Ramish Blatt gives an excellent overview.

And the problem is not just Kentucky. The EPA itself has found that as many as 630,000 children are born each year in the US with unhealthy levels of mercury in their blood.

Administrator Mike Leavitt
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave
Washington, DC 20460

Dear Administrator Leavitt:

I am writing on behalf of 4600 Kentuckians who are members of the Cumberland (Kentucky) Chapter of the Sierra Club. We are dismayed that the EPA has proposed an extraordinarily industry-friendly and ineffective mercury rule. These weak regulations will not only perpetuate the negative impacts of the toxic chemical across the nation, but will also exacerbate the existing serious pollution problems in our state. We urge you to rescind this rule and come up with more stringent regulations that will protect Kentuckians and their environment.

Read the rest of this letter

Clear the air puts out excellent fact sheets on air pollution. Clicking here will pull up a PDF of the Kentucky one.

Feel free to visit an earlier post -- "Carving the Flesh of the Earth"

no burritos?

Demonstrator Lubian Piedras holds up a sign while wearing a sombrero at a planned protest in San Diego, California May 1, 2006. In what organizers called 'A Day Without Immigrants,' rallies across the country closed hundreds of restaurants, shops and factories. Construction projects were disrupted, day labor jobs went begging, children stayed home from school and waves of humanity poured through city streets.

REUTERS/Fred Greaves

FBI reviews 1946 public lynching case

Nearly 60 years after a white mob lynched two black couples on a summer afternoon and got away with it, the FBI is taking another look at the case.

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Read the complete story on the Newsvine -- 1946 lynching case