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 Saturday, 10 May 2008 10:30 | | 
| 
|
Is it time for Lady Penelope to give up her gas guzzler?
By Louis Reynolds
There is a silent, ongoing, global war between motor cars and people. It is silent because, though it kills many times more people than armed conflicts and terrorist acts combined, it seldom hits the headlines in the way they do. It is ongoing because it rages and will continue to rage around us day and night. And it is global because, though it started in the rich world just over a century ago, it has spread throughout the world and is now spreading like wildfire through poor countries.
I have called this war Carmageddon, from Armageddon (n), a dramatic and catastrophic conflict, especially one seen as likely to destroy the world or the human race. This article describes Carmageddon and its four theatres of war.
Published on Tuesday, 29 April 2008 19:00 | | |
|
'What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.' Er - really? A Buddhist view of obstacles and how to use them.
By Malaika Kusumi
We all know that life comes with its ups and downs. Then why is it that we let life's downs get us so down - or knock us completely sideways? We talk about karma, cause and effect and the Divine Will or Plan, yet we still have great difficulty in accepting and dealing with troubles that are viewed as barricades or obstacles to our happiness.
Published on Monday, 05 May 2008 19:00 | | |
|
The Holy Grail of physics is the attempt to reconcile quantum mechanics and relativity. Are we getting there?
It seems like the most obvious physical fact: the universe has four dimensions - three spanning space and one ticking away time. But the ultimate theory of gravity should explain why the universe is four-dimensional and how those dimensions arose, say researchers trying to unify the theories of quantum mechanics and relativity.
Published on Tuesday, 06 May 2008 19:00 | | |
|
Dr Karl Mackie, head of the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution
(CEDR) in the UK, considers how the lessons learnt in mediating commercial and civil justice disputes might be applied to political and diplomatic conflicts .
I'd like to give you a short overview as to how mediation has developed in the last ten to fifteen years, and some thoughts as to the transferability to the political environment. Really what I want to talk about, or summarise, are three what I call remarkable strands to the commercial mediation story.
Published on Sunday, 04 May 2008 19:00 | |
|
A Message from John Cleese to the citizens of the United States of America
In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately (you should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary).
Published on Saturday, 16 February 2008 20:12 | |
|
The following was a question asked in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen : 'Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer.'
One student replied: 'You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building.'
This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. He appealed on the grounds that his
answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an
independent arbiter to decide the case.
Published on Saturday, 03 May 2008 19:00 | | |
|
Global warming is not just a theory to us - what happens in Britain affects us in the north.
By Aqqaluk Lynge, leader of Greenland’s Inuit population
You may say that the expansion of London Stansted airport will play only a small part in increasing climate change, but everyone can say that about almost everything they do. It is an excuse for doing nothing. The result of that attitude would be catastrophic.