Last week April 15th not only marked the day for our collective Taxes to be mailed but it was also the day where teabagging rallies/protests and tea-parties were happening across the country.   This post is not politically motivated, so I’m not going to talk about the virtues/vices of these events or whether either of the two political parties in the US are right or wrong in their position on the Obama stimulus package.  If you’ve read any of my posts on the economy you’d know where I stand on the way the government spends money.  Read the rest of this entry »

The efforts of “Playing for change” was brought to my attention today and so I decided to share it with you all.  Musicians playing together from around the world to bring about peace.. Something new to warm your heart!

I held off making a comment about the $50Billion Ponzi scammer’s name Bernard Madoff (when I found out his name was actually pronounced “Made-off” vs “Madd-Off”..I though how perfect that someone by that name “made off” with $50B of innocent people’s money.. poetic, universal humor, but after learning that the US Secretary of Education’s name is Margaret Spelling, I felt like writing a quick blurb about how our names are just another element in how the universe works in magical and mysterious ways. These are just two that come to my mind today, but if you look deep and hard enough I’m certain that you’ll find many more that follow the same pasterns. I don’t know about you all, but I see them all the time.  Enjoy!

I have found coincidences to be communications from a realm I feel I have very little connection to in my daily mortal life.  Coincidences, at least the ones that I experience these days, remind me of the perfectness of the universe in putting together all that needs to happen, much like a jigsaw puzzle.  Sometimes coincidents are there just to provide a glimpse into something greater and occasionally to provide a moral lesson.  In the world of coincidences, last week would have to be all about plastic.  In case you missed some of these stories below,  I wanted to stitch them all together in a way that perhaps tells a story, a tragic story of how plastics may be killing us(or not?).  The beauty of coincidences is that they may have a different message for every person who experiences them.  The stories below are about plastic in the oceans, and people protesting packaging and oh yes death. Read on to see what I’m talking about. Read the rest of this entry »

I saw this image today of an ad campaign by VISA.  I couldn’t help but be saddened by the image of all of the electronic stuff that is being depicted by VISA as having something to do with “Life” or the stuff of life. It made me wonder about the thinking behind this campaign.  Do the folks at VISA and their Ad agency really believe this notion to their individual cores and do they think that people (i.e. consumers) will resonate with it? Is this line of marketing similar to the slogan now written on the entrance to every Best Buy store: “You Happier”.  As if Life is all about buying stuff, stuff that requires VISA.  When will we learn our lessons that “stuff” does not equal to life or happiness, and when will corporations stop feeding people the myth.  I guess these days its Life as usual when you live in a country which can’t keep up with its own national debt, its banking system is on the verge of collapse due to bad loans, and where the value of the currency is plunging so low that the price of everything is rising to the point where most people have no choice but to buy “stuff” with their VISA cards.

The tragic irony of the image in this particular campaign is that it looks a bit like the Manhattan sky line, and ominously reminds me of the aftermath of 911 when President Bush told the nation to go out and spend in order to help America.  What a double-edged sword credit is.  It is an instrument that can both heal and harm at the same time, especially depending on whose hand it is in.  It is part of the fabric of most societies but like some of society’s other features, it is largely misunderstood, abused, and seen as natural and necessary.  Sounds like another institution/instrument that is greatly in need of a conscious revision.

I myself am deep in the process of re-evaluating and re-defining how I use all my credit cards, how I take on false labels like “home-owner” based on debt financing, and revisiting various forms of debt that on the surface seem benevolent like micro-finance(a major topic worthy of its own post in a later time).

Not much more to say other than Monsanto wants out of the bovine growth hormone business… That leaves them with their lucrative GMO seed business… I guess unlike dairies who routinely place labels on their dairy products stating “no growth hormone used, etc.”, which by definition meant that they were not using Monsanto’s hormones, there are no organic food products today that say “not using monsanto’s GMO soy, or corn, or other crops”.  Image is everything in the game of consumer cat and mouse game.

For more info, follow the following link:

http://www.thedeal.com/corporatedealmaker/2008/08/monsanto.php