Elise Boulding, PhD has been an important peace activist since World War II. Author of eleven books and contributor to many more, she built the Peace Studies program at Dartmouth College, and both she and her husband, Dr. Kenneth Boulding, were active all their lives in conflict-resolution studies and in the more important groups that have been working for world peace. Although she has been retired for some time, and was widowed in 1993, Elise Boulding spent the mid-nineties writing Cultures of Peace: The Hidden Side of History. And she still makes her peaceful presence felt in the corridors of power. … The course of Dr. Boulding’s adult life grew out of a childhood perception. “I was born in Norway in 1920,” she said, “and we came to this country when I was three. My early memories were of war movies, and Mom being homesick for Norway.” As a little girl, Elise was frightened by the images of war, so she decided on a plan. If war broke out again, she would return to Norway. The peaceful homeland for which her mother longed. Where she knew she would be safe. “Then came World War II,” she said, “and the invasion of Norway. And that was when I realized that there was no safe place on earth. And I knew that I had found my life’s mission.” Like all of the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of peace-people who are truly making a difference, Dr. Boulding has primarily focused on what’s right with the world, not on what’s wrong with it. Rather than opposing war, she has studied what can be done to prevent it – how to resolve conflicts without fighting. … The great, untold story of the peace movement is how many people and organizations are involved in it. Not only people, but newsletters, conferences, councils, committees, elderly groups, youth groups, celebrities, art, music, websites. The untold story is the sheer weight of the numbers of those who have the vision of a world without war. What we need, Elise Boulding insists, is more awareness of what’s going on. Identify the players. Realize the expenditures of energy. Give them energy, she urges. Pray for them. Know that they exist. And if it’s yours to do – become one of them. … (12/11/04)
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Davidson Loehr, Ph.D. writes: The most famous definition of fundamentalism is H. L. Mencken’s: a terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun. There’s something to this. Fundamentalism is too fearful, too restrictive, too lacking in faith to provide a home for the human spirit to soar or for human societies to blossom. But there are far more fundamental things to understand about fundamentalism, especially in this age of terrorism. An adequate understanding also includes some inescapable and uncomfortable critiques of America’s cultural liberalism of the last four decades. The attacks on September 11, 2001, provided us a rare revelation about fundamentalism that arrived in two installments. First, we became vividly aware of the things some Muslim fundamentalists hate about our culture: (1) They hate liberated women and all that symbolizes them. They hate it when women compete with men in the workplace, when they decide when or whether they will bear children, when they show the independence of getting abortions. They hate changes in laws that previously gave men more power over women. (2) They hate the wide range of sexual orientations and lifestyles that have always characterized human societies. They hate homosexuality. (3) They hate individual freedoms that allow people to stray from the rigid sort of truth they want to constrain all people. They hate individual rights that let others slough off their simple certainties. Not much was really new in this installment of the revelation. We had seen all this before, when Khomeini’s Muslim fundamentalists wreaked such havoc in Iran starting in 1979. We have long known that Muslim fundamentalism is a mortal enemy of freedom and democracy. … The surprise second installment came just a few days after 9 / 11 in that remarkably unguarded interview on The 700 Club when the Rev. Jerry Falwell told Pat Robertson, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’” These men are so media-savvy it’s amazing they would say such things on the air. But it’s also remarkable because in their list of “causes” of the 9 / 11 attacks, we heard almost exactly the same hate list: (1) They hate liberated women who don’t follow orders, who get abortions when they want them, who threaten or laugh at some men’s arrogant pretensions to rule them. (2) They hate the wide range of sexual orientations that have always characterized human societies. They would force the country to conform to a fantasy image of two married heterosexual parents where the husband works and the wife stays home with the children—even when that describes fewer than 25 percent of current American families. (3) They hate individual freedoms that let people stray from the one simple set of truths they want imposed on all in our country. Robertson has been on record for a long time saying that democracy isn’t a fit form of government unless it is run by his kind of fundamentalist Christians. Together, the two installments make vivid the fact that “our” Christian fundamentalists have the same hate list as “their” Muslim fundamentalists. (12/11/04)
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BBC Health – Alcohol consumed in moderation is thought to be beneficial in reducing the risk of coronary heart disease. Indeed, alcohol consumption in conjunction with high intakes of fruit and vegetables, may well explain the so-called ‘French paradox’. The French diet is considered to be very high in fat, especially saturated fat, yet the death rate from coronary heart disease remains relatively low. It is thought this is at least partly due to people’s consumption of red wine. The key word, though, is moderation. In 1997, the World Health Organisation concluded that the reduced risk from coronary heart disease was found at the level of one drink consumed every second day. Alcohol has been linked to a wide range of illnesses, such as the increased risk of mouth, pharyngeal and oesophageal cancers (this risk being greatly increased if combined with smoking). Furthermore, alcohol probably increases the risk of colorectal and breast cancer. And the list doesn’t stop there: high blood pressure, gastrointestinal complications, such as gastritis, ulcers, and liver disease, and the depletion of certain vitamins and minerals can all be caused by alcohol consumption. Excessive alcohol consumption can also have detrimental social and psychological consequences. … Often these problems arise when intake is considered to be really quite high. Moderation and balance is the key. British recommendations are two to three units of alcohol per day for women and three to four units for men and it’s a good idea to have 2-3 alcohol free days each week. One unit is considered to be 8g of alcohol. Often units are quoted as being one small glass of wine, half a pint of beer or one pub measure of spirits. However, the alcohol content of different products does vary. Some stronger beers and lagers may contain as many as 2.5 units of alcohol per half pint. The size of some drinks may also vary; home measures of spirits are usually more generous than pub measures, and many bars now serve large glasses of wine as standard. Cans of beer and lager often contain about three-quarters of a pint, rather than half, and so will contain 1.5 units - more if the product is high strength.  (12/11/04)
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BBC Enviroment – China and Brazil have presented details of their greenhouse gas emissions to an international summit on climate change. Both countries also explained how they plan to contribute to the fight against global warming. The presentation aroused a good deal of interest amid discussions about whether such rapidly developing countries should be expected to reduce emissions. Greenhouse gases do not just come out of the smokestacks of factories or the exhaust pipes of cars, they said. In Brazil it seems a staggering 75% of the country’s carbon dioxide is produced by the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, with carbon dioxide being given off as trees are burned or allowed to rot. The Chinese presentation revealed a more conventional programme with its power industry by far the largest contributor to greenhouse emissions. But it also included a discreet reference to what it called “animal enteric fermentation” - a reminder that some greenhouse gases like methane are produced by pigs and cows and that these agricultural omissions can be quite significant in developing countries. But although Brazil and China are very different, both are keen participants in the movement to arrest climate change and both can boast real achievements. Brazil has pioneered the use of ethanol made from renewable sources such as sugar cane to replace petrol for cars and lorries. China has cleaned up some of its older, coal-fired power plants and has succeeded in growing economically with a relatively modest rise in greenhouse gas emissions. (12/11/04)
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BBC Technology – The Delta 4-Heavy rocket, the massive new launcher from Boeing, is set to make its maiden flight this weekend. The 70m-tall (230ft) behemoth has the capability to push 13 tonnes of payload on a path towards geostationary orbit. The rocket currently has no commercial satellite orders, and some commentators speculate its uses may become more obvious after the shuttle retires. The lift-off window at Cape Canaveral, in Florida, runs from 1431 to 1727 local time on Saturday (1931-2227 GMT). Although there is little more than dead weight - a 6.5-tonne dummy satellite - sitting atop this rocket, the stakes for the mission could not be higher. The triple-body rocket - which has the punch to haul shuttle-class payloads into orbit - is a muscled up version of the company’s Delta Medium line, which debuted two years ago with the launch of a European communications satellite. Since then, Delta rockets have successfully flown two other missions. Despite the heritage, Boeing was unable to secure a payload for the debut flight of Delta 4-Heavy. The United States Air Force, which is depending on the rockets to deliver critical national security payloads, stepped in to pay $141m for a demonstration flight. (12/11/04)
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