Kelowna, BC John Nichols writes in Tha Nation about Hunter S. Thompson’s political legacy, the one that came from his stab at municipal politics in Colorado in the 1970s. It’s a good piece that expands Thompson’s influence beyond the bat-filled skies of the Nevada desert and the dwindling expense accounts of Saigon towards a politics in which political outsiders seize control of the power structure by the radical act of voting. Although Thompson never won the race for sheriff of Pitkin County, he set a standard and a way forward that was mimicked elsewhere in the United States resulting in …
George Nemeth, Jack Ricchiuto and I got into a Skype chat earlier this evening about holding space. George later linked to this list of the precepts of a Buddhist warrior. It’s amazing. Here’s a sample: Have compassion for all beings, causing them no unnecessary hurt, nor needless harm. Refrain from needless competitiveness, from contriving for self-advantage, and from subjugating others. When accepting authority over others, know also that you accept responsibility for their well being. Value true friendship, and fulfill your obligations, rather than striving with egotistical motive. Seek liberation from the negative passions of hatred, envy, greed and rage, …
My dad is a smart guy (although he doesn’t blog enough!). His has been retired for a few years now, having paid his dues in middle management in the insurance business with a short stint in the provincial public service. As a retiree he has been more than active in his community in Ontario, building bridges on the Bruce Trail, chairing his local library board and generally being an active citizen in his village. He has picked up a fair amount of wisdom over the years, and among his favourite observations is that every human endeavour, whether for profit or …
Help! I love Firefox. But today as I was surfing, I closed it down and it crashed. When I went to restart it, it refused to start up and instead offered to tell Micrsoift about the problem. So after trying that a few times, I thought I might take this chance to upgrade to 1.0. Downloaded that and did it, all set up, but get the same launch problem. It just won’t open. Decide to do an uninstall. Get rid of all the versions (except that 0.9 now can’t find an uninstall directory) and I scrubbed the registry even of …
Eighteen months ago, my friend Avner Haramati and his family came to visit Bowen Island. Avner is a remarkable facilitator of dialogue working in Israel and elsewhere. He travels a lot around the world, but his daughters were in North America for the first or second time in 2003. For his 18 year old daughter Michal, being in North America was a surprise. She had no idea that so many people had an opinion on Israel. One evening while we were eating she flat out asked me why North Americans should care about Israel. I have to admit I was …