 

Powering Thru Vinyl Cafe — Unplugged

May 30, 2011

Vinyl Cafe books are great fun 😀

VINYL CAFE unplugged” has story “Odd Jobs” where Dave “fixes” the kitchen along with his buddies and all their “manly” power tools.

This is “laugh out loud” reading at it’s finest. Great humour.

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Volunteering Your Way to Happiness

May 12, 2011

Stephen G. Post’sThe Hidden Gifts of Helping” is a book that everyone should “Just Read”. The fundamental premise is that “It is good to be good”. Period.

Post’s role is to drive and collect “hard” research on how volunteering and selfless action result in a better life. I attended his talk last week and the numbers he presented are fascinating. So much so that I had to buy the book to see more. It was definitely worth it.

If you volunteer a lot and are feeling volunteer fatigue. This may help you out.

In loose terms this book is the “science” and “numbers” behind compassionate action described in something like Tuesday’s With Morrie.


Travel the World With 39 Clues

May 11, 2011

The 39 Clues series is pure pleasure reading 😎 It’s an adventure series targeted at pre-teens so it’s really easy and goofy. What I like is that the kids travel all over the world ( Boston, Paris, Vienna, Venice, Korea, Egypt, Russia, Australia, and more) and they deal with important historical figures ( Ben Franklin, Mozart, Romanovs, Pharoahs, etc )

I’d never heard of The Motherland Calls statue in Volgograd before. Wow! This is in book 5.


Important Reads – Here on Earth by Tim Flannery – Words of Hope

May 6, 2011

“Words of Hope from a Prophet of Doom” is the title of the Guardian’s Book Review by Martin Woollacott.

I couldn’t agree more. This book gave me hope wrt/ the Climate Change horror story. I tried to read Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” a few years back. I couldn’t do it. It was too gloomy and there didn’t seem to be any “olive branches” to grab onto. How could I , or you, make a difference? Weather Makers made me want to crawl under a rock. Back then I remember attending a talk where the speakers view of action was to help build a mural showing the water level of Vancouver in 2050. That was a great “fear motivator”, but what if we believed? What were we to do? This guy hadn’t the foggiest, he just wanted to “scream horror” as loud as he could. I’m an Engineer, I want to fix stuff. I do not want to scream and hope someone else can save me.

I liked “Here On Earth” because Flannery proposes actions that people can take to make a difference. You may not like them. But we can get out from under the rock, discuss, learn, and take action. He definitely fills many pages with the Eco-Horrors that have been performed on Earth to motivate action. But it is the “solution” oriented view of the book that makes me recommend that you read it.

The final sentence of the book provides a glimpse of how much work we have to do. It’s the whole package — MetaPhysics, People, and Technology.

“But I am certain of one thing – if we do not strive to love one another, and to love our planet as much as we love ourselves, then no further human progress is possible here on Earth.”

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