Welcome to the ezine produced by SGI Buddhists that prompts the positive, kindles the constructive, highlights the hopeful and leaves you feeling - well, up!
Published on Thursday, 23 April 2009 18:00 | 
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'I live in a country of 30 million impoverished people, people who can't read or write, people who live in cardboard shacks in the shantytowns, under bridges, on the streets. I know their stories because I have lived it myself.'
Benedita di Silva, the first Afro-Brazilian woman to be elected to Brazil's senate, is an extraordinary woman whose life reflects the struggles and the hopes of the people she represents. Bené, as she is affectionately known, was born in 1943 in one of Rio de Janeiro's notorious favelas. One of fourteen children, she led a life of excruciating poverty and hardship. Two of her four children died of curable diseases, she herself risked death after a back-street abortion went wrong, and she endured years of exploitationas a live-in maid. writes Vida Adamoli
Published on Saturday, 25 April 2009 01:32 | | |
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'Pure
Evil' is a great headline that sells newspapers but it doesn't help
us, as a society, to move forwards, argues David Hare
It reinforces a misguided and dualistic view of the world, generated mainly by the red-tops, that simplistically divides people into 'villains and victims' or 'goodies and baddies'. Reality is not so black and white.
Published on Sunday, 19 April 2009 18:00 | | |
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Norbert Rosing took these photographs when a wild polar bear came across his tethered sled dogs in the wilds of Canada's Hudson Bay. He thought the end had come for all of them...
Published on Saturday, 18 April 2009 18:00 | | |
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With iconic 70’s BBC series, The Good Life (pictured) as my inspiration, I am progressing slowly but surely with my ambitious plans to become the first carbon-neutral dwelling in
The wood-burning stove is eating up the neighbourhood's left-over wood (skips are full of the stuff), the solar panels are producing about 30% of our energy needs on cloudy days and a stonking 80% on sunny days. The walls are now super-insulated with a warm fleecy substance made from recycled plastic bottles. So. Now it’s time to think about installing a couple of chickens on the roof and growing some fruit and veg - perhaps even making our own honey. But is this trend towards self-sufficiency more trouble than it’s worth, or will the satisfaction and savings make it worth the effort?
Published on Wednesday, 15 April 2009 18:00 | | |
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Taking a day off eating once a week or month can have substantial health benefits, and can even add years to your life.
Studies have found that intermittent fasting can reduce the risk of heart disease, and also strengthens the way the body deals with stress, helping to fight major illnesses. Experts think that intermittent fasting for one day per month or fortnight is achievable, when you know that you can go back to normal eating only a few hours later.
Published on Friday, 17 April 2009 18:00 | |
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Is the stress-fuelled modern work ethic of striving and
competing threatening to wreck our children’s lives? Tom Hodgkinson of The
Idler reckons that we are too much in our children’s faces and welcomes us to
the school of inactive parenting.
Published on Thursday, 16 April 2009 18:00 | | |
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On 8
December 1995,
Jean-Dominique Bauby, talented journalist and the former editor of French Elle, suffered a massive stroke and slipped into a
coma. When he regained consciousness three weeks later, the only muscle left
functioning was in his left eyelid.
Although his mind remained as active and alert as it had ever been, he was paralysed and unable to speak, a rare condition known as locked-in syndrome.
As
the charming former editor-in-chief of a glamorous fashion magazine, Bauby
already had a book deal and he decided to go ahead, dictating his memoir ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’ by
blinking his eyelid to depict the letters of words - one by one.