people that I admire.... and wish more people knew about

When I Grow Up I want to be.......; Finding a Way to Change the World One Day At A Time.

Stories of Ordinary People Who’ve Accomplished Extraordinary Things

• Ben Durskin: When he was battling cancer, the Make A Wish Foundation offered to make one of his wishes come true. Instead of asking for a free trip to Disneyland, he asked for help to developing a video game which would help children deal with the stress and pain of cancer."Ben's Game" was launched on the Make-A-Wish Web site in May 2004. .As of January, 2006, this free game has been downloaded an amazing 181,920 times.

• Greg Mortenson; American ski bum/mountain climber who went from living in his car to establishing an organisation which has built over 100 schools for girls in remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Central Asia Institute)
• Jodi Williams: former American ESL teacher who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work with the International Campaign To Ban Landmines. She continues to work to encourage countries around the world to remove land mines and also get funding to help those injured by land mines.
• Nader Khalili (1936-2008), a Persian architect, developed a way to build ceramic houses that are a) dirt-cheap; b) environmentally friendly; c) earthquake resistant; d) flood- resistant; e) fireproof; and f) hurricane resistant. Used dirt and wire to create create a building material called SuperAdobe. Houses can be built without expensive equipment by unskilled laborers. First used to house refugees of the Persian Gulf War. Help establish an American based organization called CalEarth which continues to work on providing emergency housing around the world.
• Mohammad Yumos: businessman who decided that poverty could be eliminated by making loans to poor women who want to start small businesses. Won Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Originally limited to Bangladesh, his ideas have inspired use of these MicroBanks around the world, including the United States.
• Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation: rich people who give back! Have committed over $$$$ in funding programs all over the world. Their foundation is dedicated to supporting projects developed by local organizations rather than just contributing money to large organizations. They decided that rather than giving their fortune to their children, their estate would be used to fund the foundation after their deaths.

Anybody want to add some ot? Actually, I wish someone would write a book about these (and other people like them). It's not like I don't like reading about the more famous "heroes"; on the other hand, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, Mother Teresa have enough press already I think. Also, I think these people are cool because most (well, not Gates) fell into their charities/causes and then went with it. You never know what is going to be around the next corner.,campaign to ban landmines,

more on first amendment

My friend Archy commented on my blog and I thought you'd like to see it as well. In part, he said

Indeed it might well be hardwired human nature to distort the truth or omit information in the pursuit of what one might claim as a "greater good" or something "noble", or just something "innocent" and well intentioned.

I think we are all guilty of this to some degree or another.

Thus, I wonder if the question we should ask ourselves might be whether in seeking our most sacred goals a Machiavellian approach, that is "the ends justify the means", is completely moral, absolutely immoral, or the line of right and wrong is out there in the gray somewhere.

In regard to free speech and our rights under the constitution, we could start by positing that honesty is not synonymous with truth, and that reason is often treated like a naive superstition.

End.

How true! How often do we use "fact" and "research" as a means of supporting our point of view, rather than using that information to increase our understanding of the issue, or challenge our own assumptions.

more on deregulation

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/25/AR2010082505965.html?wpisrc=nl_pmopinions

here's the article from the Washington Post I mentioned in previous blog.

When will the next oil rig explode?

Why doesn’t the Congress pass laws that effectively regulate the food/energy/banking industry?

The last two years provided ample proof that de-regulation does not work. The American people were not protected from fraud in the banking industry; if fact the congress/fed gave investment bankers the tools that allowed them to bankrupt investors while earning billions. The oil industry was granted drilling rights and regulatory agencies did not have the power to enforce adherence to safety regulations that were in place. In the last week, we’ve seen that the egg/chicken industry has also been allowed to ignore basic safety procedures. The agriculture department and the FDA did not have the power to shut any faciility down or force recalls of contaminated food .... it could only “recommend” . Big oil companies were allowed to drill without proving that they had adequate emergency plans in case of disastrous leaks. Drilling rigs were allowed to continue operations despite safety violations.

Why? The simple answer is that Congress seems to believe that private industry can be trusted to regulate themselves.

Polls indicate a majority of Americans think that private industry is “over” regulated. Concurrently, most Americans believe that current regulations adequately protect them. They don't. Most Americans were shocked to find out that the MMA trusted the major oil companies to have an effective plan to deal with any oil spill! Most Americans are shocked when they find out that major oil and gas companies are exempted from following many environmental regulations, or are simply not required to conduct environmental impact studies. When they are faced with these facts, most Americans support increased enforcement of safety regulations.

Yet, once the crisis has passed, most Americans resist the same regulations on big business that could prevent a future crisis because they are told it would cost too much.... increase unemployment.... lower profits. etc. etc. Congress neglects to protect us from future disasters, either through self interest (campaign contributions) or lack of interest.

What is the true cost of continuing this trend towards de-regulation? People are right to be concerned about the ballooning deficit and its’ effect on future generations; they should be equally concerned that our grandchildren will not have clean water to swim in, or safe fish to eat or safe bridges, levees, airplanes and buildings unless we invest in science and education and new infrastructure as well as enforcing compliance to basic safety standards, despite the immediate cost.


Note; check out this opinion piece from the Washington Post on this subject.

protect the first amendment

Here's my message to the Democrats, Republicans, Tea Party, Sarah Palin, Pelosi, McCain, Boehner, Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, NBC and Fox News..etc. etc. etc...............................not everyone who you disagree with is a demon, a Nazi, a bigot, or un American.

I don't mean that there are no monsters among us. McVee is a monster. Those who use their religion as an excuse to fly into the World Trade Center or blow up innocent people in Bagdad and Afghanistan are monsters. Hitler was a monster. Stalin too.

However, I think these people are monsters because of what they did..... not because of their beliefs!

I admire people who devote their lives to something they believe in .... this includes those who picket outside abortion clinics. However, I condemn the person who takes a gun into a church and murders a doctor! I was against our involvement in Vietnam and supported student activism.... but those who bombed buildings and killed innocent people are simply killers who should be punished by our legal system and not hide behind the First Amendment.These days, as in the past, there have been people who want to demonize the opposition. That is not the America that I want to live in.

Anyway, I wish that we all could stop the name calling. Why don't we try to tell the truth and condemn all those who lie and distort the truth?

Is Palin saying oil companies are not responsible for this disaster??

Just saw Palin's newest rants about the Gulf Coast disaster on Fox News..... she says environmentalists are somehow to blame since they are asking for stricter regulations on shallow drilling of oil; consequently allowing deep water drilling by foreign oil companies.

Does this make sense to anyone????

It seems that she has a very short memory since she has a long record of recommending ALL drilling (inc. deep water drilling) as well as insisting that private industry can be trusted to ensure the safety of these drilling projects.

It is apparent that oil companies (in this case BP) can not be trusted to take adequate safety precautions; in fact, there is mounting evidence that BP consistently ignored the law and failed to correct even those safety violations for which they had been fined (over 700 in the last year).

If there is to be any lesson to be learned it is that we have to give the EPA and other regulatory agencies more effective tools to enforce the laws that we have on the books.

BP said that it had technologies and plans in place to quickly and effectively deal with any oil spill (deluge is a better word); maybe they have the "plan" or the "research" but they certainly did not spend the money to put these emergency measures in place.

If the federal government is to faulted, it is that they allowed the oil rig to go online before these safety precautions were in place.

If this is not an issue to address in a non-partisan way, what is? As the ex-governer of Alaska and staunch advocate of the expansion of oil drilling, shouldn't Palin be more concerned about the safety of oil rigs already on line in her state?

Not to mention the governor of Louisiana, who is still advocating the expansion of oil drilling in the Gulf for the sake of the economy???

Is this Obama's Katrina?

It's bad enough that Sarah Palin is saying stuff like this. It really pisses me off when this is a headline on the first page of the Los Angeles Times!

Katrina was not a man made disaster. The hurricane did not last for 5 weeks with no end in sight. There were very low tech solutions to rectifying the damage to the city and the delta area. The government's response department, FEMA, knew what it needed to do and simply did not have the expertise to actually implement the disaster relief plans that had worked many times before.

So.. is Obama somehow responsible for this disaster? Is Obama to be held responsible for not figuring out a way to deal with this environmental nightmare fast enough?

That would assume that he , and the current administration, know the solution to this problem and actually have the capability, the equipment & the engineering skills to somehow stop the leak!!!

Actually, we are more to blame than either Bush or Obama; we allowed the legislature to water down all the safety regulations already in place. It's more than safety inspectors accepting tickets to the Super Bowl Game. Even those inspectors who tried to get bp to correct safety violations were ignored. They apparently didn't even have the power to force bp to pay a fine, much less force bp to fix the problems!! /why? Because ultimately, we trust big business to protect our interests. Because ultimately, we believe that big business is equally concerned with both safety and profit margin. Because ultimately, every American citizen has voted to support federal, state and city who put short term job creation and getting elected ahead of long term safety issues. We have the science to go to the Moon because we allowed NASA to use science as their guide and followed their lead in crafting regulations, instead of allowing Martin Marietta or other aerospace companies to write their operational manual.

Let's hope that in the future, we will not allow private industry to put our economy and environment at risk. Maybe we need to continue drilling for oil..... but shouldn't we make sure that we hold the oil companies to the strictest standard before allowing the wells to go online!

Our Congress does not have a stellar record of responding to environmental disasters with effective legislation ; after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, the Congress approved regulations which gave the oil industry until the year 2015 to replace their single hulled tankers with double hulled tankers. Not even one (except the Valdez of course) single hulled tanker was pulled from the fleet.

What do you think?

why are we building firetrucks on the way to the fire?

so... bp tried to stop the oil leak once again... and failed. So, now they say that the only reasonably sure way of stopping the leak is to drill 2 relief wells that will meet up with the current well below the leak and then siphon off the oil going into the damaged leak. That way, they'll be able to cap the old well (because there won't be the upward pressure of the oil blowing the cap off. )

I hope that this will work; too bad that bp estimates that these wells won't be completed until August!!

That's alot of oil!

I would like to know why BP was not required to drill these wells BEFORE the federal govt. allowed this drilling operation to go online?

bp assured the regulatory agencies that they had effective safeguards against any oil leak and should those safeguards not work, they had IN PLACE systems that would stop the leak and fix the pipe. Obviously, they lied.

It cannot be blamed on the lack of technological expertise; they knew that these relief wells would be a way to address the problem. So why not?

So now, all of Louisiana (and the rest of the Gulf Coast) is on fire (figuratively) and bp is building the firetrucks and researching ways connect the firehoses to the fire hydrant!!

money talks

I'm ready to scream about the recent Supreme Court decision which grants corporations the same right to donate to political candidates as a individual.

First of all, there's no chance in hell that I'll ever have as much influence over energy policy as Exxon Mobil! So much for equal status between individuals and corporations.

So now the Senate is going to start confirmation hearings on a potential Supreme Court justice. that's pretty important! But what is the media and the congressional committee going to debate.... something that the potential jurist said 20 years ago when they were a college student! Or how about the fact that they went to the University of Chicago law school (Obama did too) 15 years before he was there!

Justice should be blind.... but that doesn't mean that a judge can't have a point of view. It is unrealistic to believe that anybody can be neutral concerning key issues of the day; separation of church and state, abortion rights, the right to bear arms, states' rights etc. We have to believe that judges will put aside their personal opinions when they enter the courtroom and base their decisions on the law and the constitution.

The history of the Supreme Court shows that it is possible for judges of very different political backgrounds to reach the same judicial conclusion.

those were the days! Now all the decisions are straight down party lines.... that's not right. Or a less emotional reaction might be that it is illogical to believe that the present justices could ever be confirmed today if they all had to prove they had no personal beliefs about key issues, or prove that their decisions would not be influenced to a certain degree by their background.

Potential justices should be grilled about their beliefs, experiences and life and they should be free to tell the whole story without fear of being stereotyped. All we can hope for from a judge is that he/she is intelligent, hard working and has a history of being able to work with a wide variety of people and issues. If our justice system works at all... and I think it does for the majority of cases.... than we have to believe that our judges do manage to put aside their personal beliefs when they decide cases.

It really bothers me that recent confirmation hearings do not allow us to get those opinions

sarah palin doesn't have a lock on it

okay, okay... this is old news but I can still remember my annoyance when Palin implied that all soccer moms wear lipstick! Or more significantly, implied that all soccer moms share her values and political philosophy. First of all, how can anybody really draw those conclusions about a person based on their ability to 1) have children who are active in sports and 2)have the time to attend games on a regular basis. I'm very active in my son's life AND I'm a "liberal". Does that mean I'm not a soccer mom????

Let's get to the genesis of my blog's title..... I am a "soccer" mom (To be honest, my son is now 16
years old. He now plays basketball, not soccer. But I still bring cases of water to the game and share in driving to the away games whenever I can. ) However, not all soccer moms are created equal. Not all caring mothers have the same political beliefs. Not all have the same religion, or educational background. Not all have the same parenting skills or philosophy.

I'll give Sarah Palin the benefit of believing she uses the phrase "soccer mom" as a metaphor for a parent who loves their child enough to support them and help them become a productive and happy participant in the United States.

But does this kind of vague and odd "joke" have any place in a presidential campaign speech? (besides being a catchy sound bite.) I'm pretty tired of political discourse being reduced to exaggerations and labels. I told my six year old son to have an open mind. I told him not to call names.

If only I could convince everyone to feel the same way!