New Slow City: Is this the future of Big Apple living? | GreenBiz

New Slow City: Is this the future of Big Apple living? | GreenBiz: This is an excerpt from the book New Slow City.

Burned-out after years of doing development and conservation work around the world, William Powers decided to see if the increasingly popular "slowliving" approach was possible in one of the most frantic, most overworked, most expensive cities in the world: New York City.

Just one year after spending a season seeking a sustainable lifestyle in a tiny 12-foot-by-12-foot cabin off the grid in North Carolina, Powers and his wife chucked 80 percent of their stuff, left their spacious Queens townhouse and moved into a 350-square-foot “micro apartment” in Greenwich Village. Committing to a 20-hour workweek, Powers explored the viability of Slow Food and Slow Money, technology fasts and urban sanctuaries. Along the way, he met New Yorkers also attempting to resist the culture of "Total Work."

On a routine impromptu afternoon, I dip into a sustainable cities panel at Columbia University. Architects and landscape planners imagine aloud a New York that combines the texture of the past with green technology and “permaculture” (a contraction of both permanent agriculture and permanent culture), so that Manhattan’s concrete boundaries are replaced by wetlands and beaches for bird watching, riverside strolls, and sunbathing.

Thank You Jesus Christ for Creating The Way of Your Word!

What

I I Love You Dearest Loving Lord Jesus Christ.

YEAY!!! Suit in Los Angeles County

Monshit sued in Los Angeles County Examiner.com:

Today a class action lawsuit (Case No: BC 578 942) was filed in Los Angeles County, California against the Monsanto corporation. The suit alleges that Monsanto is guilty of false advertising by claiming that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, targets an enzyme only found in plants and not in humans or animals.

Monsanto makes this claim to support the contention that glyphosate is harmless to humans.

Ruthless Power and Deleterious Politics: From DDT to Roundup

Ruthless Power and Deleterious Politics: From DDT to Roundup: Humans need a pesticides-free future. We need to appeal to all politicians all over the world to ban permanently and without exception all pesticides. Glyphosate represents all pesticides. Our message and policies should be telling agribusiness companies enough is enough: no more death rain!



Pesticides are chemical weapons. They were brought to market under
the cover of questionable and often fraudulent science and regulation.
They are maintained in farming under the false pretense of feeding the
world. They are danger itself; they are biocides. They are simply the
money lubricants of giant agriculture. They serve no public purpose. We
don’t need them.


Benachour et al. (2007) Time-and dose-dependent effects of roundup on human embryonic and placental cells. Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 53, 126–133.

Biskind, MS (1953) “Public Health Aspects of the New Insecticides,” American Journal of Digestive Diseases 20: 331-341.

Douwe van der Ploeg, J “Peasant-driven agricultural growth and food sovereignty,” The Journal of Peasant Studies 41: 999-1030.

Herman SG and Bulger JB (1979), “Effects of a Forest Application of DDT on Nontarget Organisms,” Wildlife Monographs, No 69: 49.

Hobbelink, H “Hungry for Land” Grain, May 2014.

Huber, DM “The effects of glyphosate (Roundup) on soils, crops and
consumers” (Presentation to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on
Agroecology, House of Commons, UK, 1 November 2011).

Paganelli A. et al. (2010) Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Produce Teratogenic Effects on Vertebrates by Impairing Retinoic Acid Signaling. Chem. Res. Toxicol. 23: 1586-1595.

Richard S, Moslemi S, Sipahutar H, Benachour N and Seralini G-E (2005) Differential Effects of Glyphosate and Roundup on Human Placental Cells and Aromatase. Environmental Health Perspectives 113: 716-720.

Shepard, P “Ecology and Man – a Viewpoint” in The Subversive Science,
ed. Paul Shepard and Daniel McKinley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969) 9.

United States v. Goodman 486 F. 2d at 855 (7th Cir. 1973).


Evaggelos Vallianatos, Ph.D., is a former EPA analyst. He is the
author of hundreds of articles and several books, including “Poison
Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA” (with McKay
Jenkins, Bloomsbury Press, 2014).

The Top 100 Documentaries We Can Use To Change The World | The Mind Unleashed

The Top 100 Documentaries We Can Use To Change The World | The Mind Unleashed: The Economics of Happiness (2011) ($5)
65 min · Economic globalization has led to a massive expansion in the scale and power of big business and banking. It has also worsened nearly every problem we face: fundamentalism and…
Money & Life (2013)

Money & Life (2013)
86 min · Money & Life is a passionate and inspirational essay-style documentary that asks a provocative question: can we see the economic crisis not as a disaster, but as a tremendous…

Originally featured on Films For Action

Documentaries have an incredible power to
raise awareness and create transformative changes in consciousness both
at the personal and global levels.

Over the last 8 years, we’ve watched hundreds of social change documentaries and cataloged the best of them on the site. There’s now so many that
we realized we needed to filter this down even further. So what follows
is our list of the very best 100 – hand-picked for their quality,
insight and potential to inspire positive change.

All of the films have been selected because
they are either free to watch online, or can be rented online. There are
several films we would have loved to add to this list, but they
currently don’t have an accessible way to view them. As that changes,
we’ll be updating this list over time. Enjoy!

11 Mindful Tips: How to do Summer fully even if you’re Busy. | elephant journal

11 Mindful Tips: How to do Summer fully even if you’re Busy. | elephant journal: 11 Tips: How to do Summer Right.

Remember when we were children? Summer was endless, fun, full of possibility? Is it now just hot, busy, full of work with occasional parties or trips, and it all goes by too fast? Then this is for you.

When I was a boy, summer was all about…sun. The pool. Friends. Parties. Bicycling. Comic books. Counting change to buy a pack of baseball cards or play video games. No, I didn’t grow up in the 1950s. I grew up as a child, unrushed into adulthood.



Now, my summer starts in June and ends, seemingly, a week later. It’s
busy, hot, fast, indoors is freezing with AC, there’s some fun parties
and a few swims, and then suddenly the chill of Autumn hits and the
college kids are back and it’s over and I have to wait another year for
another summer and the chance that I’ll do it right.




So, this summer, I’ll take 40 years of tips and share those with you, if
only to remind myself to Carpe Diem the hell out of this summer.


1. Don’t drive.
If you have to drive, drive less. Get on a bus, bike to work (you can
put your bike on a bus, usually), walk if you can—try to move yourself
when you move. Take the stairs, instead of the elevator. Park a block or
two away from wherever you’re going. Do anything you can to get
yourself outside, with nothing over your head (no car roof) but the sky
and trees and sunshine.

7 Ways To Make Life Simpler (Even If Your Life's a Little Crazy)

7 Ways To Make Life Simpler (Even If Your Life's a Little Crazy):

Announcement: Tired of feeling stuck? Let go of the past and create a life you love with the Tiny Buddha course!

7 Simple Ways To Make Life Simpler (Even If Your Life Is a Little Crazy)

By Cate Scolnik

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex,
and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to
move in the opposite direction.” ~E.F. Schumacher


I used to live the most complicated life you could imagine.


I tried to be perfect at everything. All the time.


I was constantly proving myself. Trying to climb the corporate ladder
while juggling work and family life. I would step into my boss’ shoes
whenever she went on leave, no matter how little notice she gave.


I’d extend my hours to ensure I had her work covered, along with my own. That’s right, I’d happily do two jobs at once.


Was I insane?


Looking back, it certainly seemed that way. Whenever anyone would ask
how I was, I would answer, “I’m crazy-busy. I can’t stop and talk right
now.”


I kept thinking that I just had to work smarter and put in more effort to get over the “hump.” But I never got over the hump.


For a while, I was too busy and overwhelmed to determine how to get
out of that mess. I even thought I was having a nervous breakdown, so I
went to see my doctor, and she put me on stress leave.


That’s when it hit me—my job was costing my sanity, and my life was too precious for me to be stuck in that vortex.


I had to make some serious changes to make my life simpler, easier, and more enjoyable. Here’s what I figured out.

1. Don’t hide what’s inside.

You might invest a lot of time and energy trying to be the way you
“should” be and conforming to all those things that you think people
expect of you. If so, you don’t even do it consciously.


But in adhering to what you think other people expect of you, you’re
adding a layer of complexity that you don’t need. It’s like you’re
trying to be someone else.


Start getting to know who you are and what you value so you can shed the extra layers and live on your own terms.


Life is simpler when you satisfy yourself and meet your own expectations rather than try to satisfy everyone else.

2. Reframe bad situations.

We all have crappy stuff that happens to us. But when you find yourself thinking negative thoughts, stop and reframe.


I don’t mean paste a smile on your face and try to convince yourself everything is rosy. That doesn’t work.


But looking for the silver lining, or finding the opportunities behind the challenges, really improves your outlook.


My workplace became a nightmare, and my doctor put me on stress leave
because I was a mess. But that’s what gave me the necessary push to rebuild my life.


Even when I was in the middle of the mess and feeling like my life
was falling apart, I kept thinking maybe this is an opportunity; maybe
this is just what I need to make a change.

3. Use your understandascope.

One of the biggest complexities in life can come from misunderstanding someone else. It can lead to anger, frustration, and damaged relationships.

This Simple Writing Exercise Can Help You Achieve Your Goals - mindbodygreen.com

This Simple Writing Exercise Can Help You Achieve Your Goals - mindbodygreen.com:

The bridge between having dreams and actually realizing them, according to one researcher, is just a little bit of writing.

University
of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson recorded what happened when 700
students did a short writing exercise over the course of two years, reports Anya Kamenetz over at NPR.
Students were asked to think about important moments from their past
and then, with those memories in mind, write out a plan for achieving
their goals and strategies for overcoming obstacles.

What he
found was shocking: "ethnic and gender-group differences in performance
among the students had all but disappeared" after two years.

But
how could such a simple exercise have such a profound effect on academic
performance? Kamenetz offers a possible explanation:

Peterson
believes that formal goal-setting can especially help minority students
overcome what's often called "stereotype threat," or, in other words,
to reject the damaging belief that generalizations about ethnic-group
academic performance will apply to them personally.

It's
powerful to be able to learn from the past, identify obstacles, and set
goals — to really know what you want. But don't underestimate the "act
of writing," Peterson tells NPR, as it is "more powerful than people think.