“It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species,” Hawking said. “Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.”

The latest from Professor Stephen Hawking.

I find it strange that he doesn’t seem to make the connection between the things that he listed as possible civilization-ending events and the “accomplishments” of humankind. Rather, we’ve destroyed this planet, let’s move on to the next?

Global Warming? Hawking admits human involvement. (CNN interview)

Nuclear war? Human scientists invented weapons to help bring about the end of the world.

Genetic engineering? Manipulation of the genes of living organisms, by humans, for humans!

Dangers we have not yet thought of? Does he mean, not yet thought up? Or have not considered or have not invented?

This position of certain scientists, that we have done so much damage to the planet we are already on that we somehow need (or deserve) another planet, is unbearable to me. Without mentioning the need to correct and repair our mistakes, we “must” go to another place. Without mentioning the elitism and arrogance of the whole idea. Do the scientists think that everyone on Earth, regardless of wealth would be allowed to go to the new, clean planet? Surely, wouldn’t some of the less-desirable elements in society be left behind on the Earth we made? And what happens after that “next” planet is destoyed? Do we just keep moving around, draining the planet’s resources and then leaving?

What does this say about our civilization?

I’m getting the hang of things on the Mac, I think. Here it is, featuring my own photo as wallpaper…

One would think that my new camera had waited its whole life to meet my ring. Thanks hubby! (Celebrating our one-year wedding anniversary.)

http://ask.yahoo.com/20060111.html

Dear Yahoo!:

How many people in the world live in extreme poverty?

Kelly
London, England

Dear Kelly:

According to NetAid, over a billion people, or roughly one in six, live in extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is defined as living on less than US$1 a day.

The World Bank goes on to define moderate poverty as basic subsistence living, on $1 to $2 a day. All told, nearly half the world’s population lives in poverty — that’s 2.8 billion people living on less than two dollars a day.

Some other facts to keep in mind:

• Each year over 8 million people die because they are simply too poor to stay alive.
• More than 800 million people go hungry every day.
• The gross domestic product of the poorest 48 nations is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people.
• Thirty-thousand children die every day due to hunger and treatable illnesses.
• 6 million children die every year before their fifth birthday, as a result of malnutrition.

You can find detailed poverty assessments of specific geographical regions on the World Bank’s PovertyNet. And if you’re interested in learning how the World Bank comes up with its poverty statistics, take a look at PovcalNet.

The goal of the Millennium Campaign is to reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day by 2015. And the aim of the One Campaign is to direct an additional 1 percent of the United States budget towards eradicating global poverty.

Happy New Year +one second!

I’ve been gone a while. Not an unheardof thing for this blog, but yeah. Since hubz had a long weekend, we stayed up late, ate donuts, got drunk on caffeine-free diet Coke, went to the city and generally wasted time having fun. Lailee had her first walk in downtown Philly… She’s a country girl, but she did wonderfully. Hubz says he wants to live in the city… That will be interesting.

It’s 2:00 in the morning and we still may go out… Man, I love long weekends. I took some pics recently that I haven’t uploaded and I have to upgrade my Wordpress installation. But later!

Just thought you should know that. ;-) I just finally enabled another keyboard layout on this computer… Yippee. Now I can type instead of copying and pasting from Character Map.

You can do it, too! http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HP030…

Tomorrow, I’m off to spend a long weekend with the family… and continually munch on Chex mix! Comments will all be moderated (slowly) by me.

Just some funny and/or amusing things:

Recently, I moved in a way that I had previously mocked for being unrealistic. If any of you has ever played a video game (first person, usually) you may have heard about a move called a “strafe” — basically a quick side-step. I thought there was never a person in the world who really ever “strafed”… but I did.

I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth and I stepped out the door to tell hubby something and when I was finished, instead of walking back into the bathroom normally, I “strafed” in… At that moment I realized what I had done and had to blog about it. Because there is really nothing more important in the world than this!

I also heard this line on television: “He’s as busy as a cat with tape on his tail.” Hilarious.

And finally, hubby and I were sharing memories of childhood stories, his Urdu and mine English. We told each other the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Hubby mentioned to me that he always found it strange that the bears had left their porridge sitting out on the table and left the house. And that’s true, WHY DID THEY DO THAT?! Now that I think about it, didn’t they all sleep in the same room, too? This is worse than the lullaby where the baby falls out of the tree.

I’m back from nearly 4 days of time with family. It was great and little sad to leave. :-( My parents took us to see Walk the Line, a kind of a necessity for us Cash-and-Carter-lovin’ country-folk. I enjoyed it very much.

If you’re not signed up for NYTimes.com (and why not?!) then you probably won’t be able to see this, but you should.

Islam in Russia - Audio Slideshow | Article.

Another interesting news story I found recently, a WHO study on domestic violence. The entire WHO website is worth reading. :-)

I’m going back to Virginia for Thanksgiving. I’m extremely excited about it for a number of reasons. ;-)

The new National Geographic came the other day. It contains some articles about these prehistoric sea creatures which are really horrifying. Take a look at the scary monsters.

I’ve been admin-ing a chatroom on Paltalk for the past few days and I’ve encountered some of the most ill-mannered Muslims you can imagine. Surprisingly (or not?) some of the ones who consider themselves the most religious and “correct” are often the first ones to burst into the room and shout out any of the following scripted lines:

“kaafirs!!”
“you must be sufis!”
“you must be shi’as!”
“you have the wrong ‘aqeedah”
“haraam!”
“you are all going to hell”
“silly, ignorant people”
“hypocrites!”

You get the point. Bravo to all those who continue to uphold the stereotype of the “backward, intolerant” Muslim!

Hubby bought me some (electronic!) drums yesterday. I had a desire to start playing drums, since I am a percussionist by nature. So now I can quietly (to outsiders) drum away and avoid the real world… :-)

Those are his hands playing them, however.

I added Flickr badge, Ayah of the Day code and RSS feed to this page.