How to find out the truth...

Baloney Detection from Richard Dawkins, writer of The God Delusion.



Its so difficult to know what piece of information is true or false. I find myself instilling so much faith in to the ideas of my friends and family because I trust them, but its always important to remember that not everyone finds the "truth" through science and we all know what happens when you play Chinese whispers.

I like this idea, I don't apply this massively to some of my ideas, admittedly, sometimes I feel driven by instinct. But I think that's a fundamental characteristic of human beings and I like learning from my own experience too.

The new short film by Blu

I love this.
The new short film by Blu; an ambiguous animation painted on public walls.

Made in Buenos Aires and in Baden (fantoche)
www.blublu.org

Music by Andrea Martignoni
Produced by Mercurio Film
Assistant: Sibe

Swine Flu - What about the poor?

The first question I asked when Swine Flu came on to the agenda was: I wonder what support the developing world is going to get? This was my status on Facebook for a short while but no one had any answers. Not that I expected them.

I mean if its killing people; unhealthy and healthy people, then who are going to be in the most vulnerable position one wonders? Well those without access to medication obviously aren't in a good place, what about people who are malnourished, who are born with diseases such as tuberculosis or HIV and suffer from malaria and pneumonia? And those in densely populated areas, especially slums, where disease could spread quickly? Yup. Not looking great for those in developing countries right now. Especially those in the Southern Hemisphere.

According to the latest totals by the WHO; over 4oo people have died of swine flu and over 100,000 have been infected. Experts fear this figure is higher, the U.S believe many flu victims have gone unaccounted for due to mild symptoms.

Poor motherland (UK) has been flu ridden big time. To be honest, London is a hive for viruses, I was sick constantly when I lived there and seriously couldn't understand why there weren't dry soup dispensers at every tube station.

(Status 1 July) Image source: http://blogs.nature.com
For a better interactive map of the spread go to BBC website

Anyway it was announced earlier this week that The United Nations will need more than $1 billion this year to help poor countries fight the global swine flu epidemic, according to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (earlier on Monday).

"The funding has not been flowing as we have been expecting," Ban told reporters. "We are now mobilizing all resources possible."

Apparently countries within the developing world have enough vaccine to cover the whole population, yet WHO have a small stockpile of Tamiflu donated by Roche (the company who create the anti-vaccine) for developing countries.

Is it me? Or does it seem once again these poor countries are desperate for our help, and although our governments are happy to take their oil, for them to make our clothes, consume their natural resources; they're less willing to donate a medicine that if not received the consequences are fatal? I guess the irony being that the disease is being spread by the movement of people in developed countries. As Indian health secretary Naresh Dayal explained last month "We have so far 30 cases which have been laboratory confirmed. Out of these, 28 are those who came from infected countries in the West. I would like to say that the developed countries would do a great service to the developing countries if they could contain and check the spread of infection in their own countries. I would, therefore, urge them to take action to stop the spread of the infection."
In May, the U.N. asked vaccine producers to reserve a portion of their pandemic vaccine production for poor countries. Some companies have agreed to help. GlaxoSmithKline PLC offered to donate 50 million doses of pandemic vaccine to WHO for distribution to developing countries.

"We hope to mobilize some funds to procure commodities, including antibiotics, antivirals and vaccines to countries," WHO chief Margaret Chan said at a donor's conference in Geneva earlier this week.

"Many developing countries actually go into this pandemic what I call empty- handed," Chan said "They don't have antivirals. They don't have vaccines. They don't have antibiotics."

As much as I like to have faith in the W.H.O, when I went to see Dr Beat Richner (right) who is the founder of KANTHA BOPHA Children's Hospital in Cambodia (an absolute legend for the record) he explained that W.H.O apply the levels of standards in the context of the country: “The belief that poor medicine is good enough for poor people in poor countries is still alive and kicking, “ says Dr Richner.

Lets hope this isn't the case this time round.

By the way, I promise to lighten up soon. Two consecutive non-entertaining posts is always a worry. I think its because I have a bad cold - lets hope its not the flu.

Please forgive (and wash your hands after reading this)

Food for thought...

Every now and then I need to remind myself that my hunger, isn’t really hunger. In fact I’m starting to think that eating food in the western world is more a form of addiction.

It still amazes me the contrast between the developing and non-developing world when it comes to food. Here we are spoilt for choice, yet we waste and consume a huge amount annually; surely something’s not right? The UK throws away an estimated 6.7 million tonnes of food away annually and Australians are throwing out three million tonnes of food every year. Most of the food could have been eaten. Not only does throwing away food waste resource, contributes to greenhouse gas emissions but the food waste equates to annual cost of £10.2 billion in UK / $6 billion in Australia. Imagine what could be done with that money?

So we accept there’s a problem here. I mean, even if we’re talking exclusively about developed countries – this is not right. Further to this, look at the problems we face with obesity and diabetes. The World Health Organization predicts there will be 2.3 billion overweight adults in the world by 2015 and more than 700 million of them will be obese. So not only do we have a problem with wasting food, we are also overindulging, eating the wrong foods and I’m sure this is something preventable with an educated mindset.

Now forgive me for pointing out the obvious. But how is it we are all being so spoilt for choice, that we waste over 10% of food we PAY for; burdening precious resources, increasing demand, bad health and furthermore wasting money, yet there are people in the world who are literally starving? Where clean water is a commodity and where people don’t know where their next meal will come from. There are a billion people who live with chronic hunger everyday. This is well beyond a mere lunch craving after skipping breakfast. Furthermore, a new rapid response assessment report released by UNEP warns that up to 25% of the world’s food production may become lost due to environmental breakdown by 2050 unless action is taken and it won’t be you or me who suffers the brunt of this. "Land degradation, urban expansion and conversion of crops and cropland for non-food production, such as biofuels, may reduce the required cropland by 8–20% by 2050, if not compensated for in other ways" and we haven't even talked about the impact of climate change yet (watch this space)!

Arguably the G8 needs to recognise the impact rising prices and a growing population has on hunger. For example higher oil prices bring more crops like corn into biofuel production, putting fuel in cars rather than food in tummy's. These are governments making these decisions and seemingly treating their people as collateral damage. Lets see what the G8 concludes tomorrow at the summit, when the G8 will talk about food security, the premise that every person in the world should have access to affordable food (there is enough food in the world for everyone to be fed), there should be support for farmers and trade could be built from the ground up.

I still feel that there is a massive gap in terms of grassroots education though. There are things we, mere people, can do to help. I’m sure if we were aware of the facts, understood what it meant to go hungry and were taught meaningful nutrition facts about food – there would be a different attitude towards it. Revoking this silo attitude of “us” and “them” so we can perhaps make a tiny life adjustment that reflects a huge one for somebody else in the world. I remember when I was a child my mother would say "You're not going to eat that? Think about the children starving in Ethiopia" - now seriously, why don't we?

I suppose the next question is – what are we going to do about it?

For more stats see Leila's post: Open Your Eyes

This is great

I don't know about you but this little girl just made my day. Trust me, it gets better. A very innovative way to make music with true visuals. Nice work. It reminds me a bit of Aphex Twins' work.

Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment

An interesting and strangely addictive read…

Deepak Chopra has done a marvelous job at portraying the life of Buddha in his latest book.
Its an interesting, educating and actually quite easy read which reminds me much of The Alchemist in its descriptions, use of symbolism and confrontations with morality and humility throughout. There’s also the element of mystique about it that really sucked me in.

Did you know that Buddha was actually a mortal? A prince no less. I don't know about you, but to me, Buddha represented a fat laughing man in the lotus position so this book has certainly opened up my very narrow interpretations of the man.

Whether you believe in Buddhism or not, I would recommend the book as a great read. Having found myself in a few too many faux-pas discussions about religion and being that there are and have been plenty of wars founded upon the subject, I have decided to learn more about the teachings of various religions.

Next up, The Koran. Urm… wish me luck.

Oh and if you wish to know more, forgive me if this is a bit too "deep" but here is Deepak Chopra's take on Buddhism.