Humanize the Earth!

Statement about Nepal

Received by email today:

HUMANIST MOVEMENT, NEPAL

Today Nepal, a beautiful and peaceful country in the world is burning in the destructive conflagration of disturbance, violence, anarchy and the terror of disharmony. Humanity is overwhelmed by agitation. Violence and counter-violence are prevailing everywhere. The country of the Buddha who spread the message of peace and non-violence is itself in the whirlwind of restlessness and violence. The natural right of the human to make discriminating self-decisions is stifling and struggling in the fumes of guns and gun power. Democracy is almost dead. The values and recognitions of independent livelihood have been suppressed by a series of assassinations, violence and intrigues. The gratification of individual arrogance and obduracy has been given top priority. We the humanist associates involved in the Humanist Movement in 119 countries, want rise, not downfall of humanity and integration, not disintegration; flow, not suppression of genius. We believe that nothing else is grater than a human being and that no human is below the other. The human must be the nucleus on matters of the values and recognitions of life. It is in fact what is true humanism; it is in its true sense people’s rule. The positive politics that represents the public will and is above the politics of autocracy and intrigue and meant for good of the entire humanity only can raise the people onto the prosperity. It is democracy only that provides human welfare, development and freedom to make reasonable self-decision. It is an extreme insult of humanity to treat people as tenants, bonded labors and slaves in the 21st century, and such a behavior is on no account pardonable. With the insistence to place humans into the nuclei of any activities we the humanist movement associates, do make public our belief and unanimity and association with the democratic movement being waged in this nation. We would also like to request all the humanist companions all over the world to provide support to the movement.

PEACE, FORCE AND JOY!

Satya Narayan Shah
Coordinator
HUMANIST MOVEMENT
National Coordination Committee
Ramanand Chowk, Janakpurdham – 9
Dhanusha, Nepal

Prosper loan bookmarklet

I’ve been exploring peer-to-peer lending at Prosper.com. Here’s a little bookmarklet I wrote to make it easier to go directly to a particular listing, rather than having to hack the URL or click to the Prosper search screen to put in the loan number. To use, click on the link below, then in Firefox, drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar. I’m not sure exactly how to put in in your favorites with Internet Explorer. If you know, put something in the comments and I’ll change these instructions. In IE, either rightclick to favorite it, or go to view/toolbars/links to make sure they’re open, and drag it as in mozilla. When you click the bookmarklet, you’ll be prompted to enter the loan number. Hope you like it! Prosper loan bookmarklet

impeachment heating up?

I rarely, if ever, touch on politics on this site. I have so much work to do internally (personal work) and with those closest to me, that it seems folly to spend a lot of energy on elections or political wrangling, actions that I have found do not lead me to more peace inside myself and better relationships.

That said, I live in Illinois and have just found out, via Wealth Bondage, that a bill in the Illinois House that would initiate impeachment proceedings against GWBush was yesterday referred to the Rules Committee and had 13 co-sponsors sign on (in addition to the 3 initial co-sponors). I understand a similar bill has been introduced in California as well.

A todo list for our community

Interesting beginning of a list here from FootprintsintheWind.com

• Ecological clean-up and sustainability implementation.
• Climate change mitigation.
• Urban restoration.
• Improving literacy levels globally.
• Feeding, clothing, sheltering, education, and inspiring billions of humans.
• Ensuring decent care for the growing percentage (sic) of elderly in our societies.
• Providing learning and creative opportunities for all.

Doug goes on with his own list. I’m thinking of doing the same. Am more likely to do it if I publish this starter, rather than leave it in my drafts folder forever.

voice forum

This is totally cool!  Voice forums: http://www.vaestro.com

library, not just books anymore - tools too!

This is such a great idea.  A tool lending library.

What happened on September 11th, 2001?

Many of the explanations I’ve heard from the government for what happened on 9/11 don’t make sense to me. I find the questions interesting and don’t have any answers myself. Here’s an hour and twenty minute documentary that asks some of the questions: Loose Change. I do not find their conclusions compelling. They simply don’t have enough information to draw the kind of wide-ranging conspiricy theories that they do. What I do find compelling, however, is the idea that many, many questions have been swept under the rug, and we may never know the truth about what happened on Spetember 11th.

BARcamp Chicago 2006

http://barcampchicago.com/  They’re looking for a venue now, something for free for the whole weekend, space for 100 during the day and 50 overnight.  BARcamp is for tech people of all stripes, plus anyone else that wants to hang with techies.  http://recentchangescamp.org was in part inspired by the BARcamps happening arround the country.  They’re shooting for May or June, as soon as a venue can be secured.

70 Years Ago Today

This post from Michael J.’s Notiohas been in my drafts folder since January. Seems it’s time for it to come out. :-)  Cool stuff about co-ops.

Terry Appleby, General Manager of the Hanover Co-op, of which I am proud to be the current board president, wrote:

On January 6th, 1936, in the middle of the Great Depression, 17 families from Hanover, New Hampshire and Norwich, Vermont gathered to discuss the creation of a society of cooperation to meet their common needs. According to founding member Charles Bagley, “at the close of the meeting they signed the register, paid the initial fee of one dollar and became charter members.” They thus formed the buying club that later in the year would be incorporated into the Hanover Consumer Cooperative Society, and joined with consumers in Berkeley, and Hyde Park in Chicago and many other places who were also inspired by the idea of the transforming power of cooperation.

One of the first purchases by the club was for fresh citrus fruit from Florida, scarce in Northern New England at the time. Hanover Co-op still celebrates that purchase with an annual citrus sale in January. Here’s hoping you’ll join in a symbolic toast (of orange juice!) to the visionaries at each of our co-ops who have kept alive this dream.

Cooperatives present an alternative model of providing goods and services. They are member-owned, and organize around serving member needs. Sometimes members are workers, sometimes the members are customers – sometimes they are both, thereby tying together the combined self-interests of producers and consumers. In an era of so-called “customer-focused organizations” with un-navigable voicemail menu systems, cooperatives provide an honest alternative to greed.

If you’re interested in learning more, or even starting a new Co-op, there are some good resources listed in the “Cooperatives” topic on this weblog, particularly around July 2003.

professional communication

My housing co-op needs a zoning variance (or variation, depending on who you ask) in order to replace a flat roof with a gable roof that will allow the inside space to be of legal living space height to put in a bathroom.

We hired a zoning attorney, Mark Kupiec, back in February.  Actually, we met with him at our place on Feb 8th and then officially agreed to hire him at a meeting on the 11th.  The plan was that he would get us a denial first (required) and then apply for a hearing before the Zoning Board of Appeals.  There was some requirement of a public notice 30 days before the hearing so the earliest to get a hearing date was to be April.

Two weeks ago today, we finally were told by the attorney that we were not on the schedule for April.  Dan then talked with him 3 days in a row where Mark promised to send an email explaining the situation so we all could have the same information rather than play the telephone game where our questions don’t get answered.  No email.

Then I left messages 5 business days in a row.  And I sent one email.  No response.  Yesterday we had a bicycling attorney friend give Mark a call.  He left a message.  No response.  He recommended we drop by Mark’s office.  I did that today.

Mark wasn’t in.  I spoke with Agnes (I think).  She said they were waiting for Peter to get new drawings to them, as required by Mr. Garcia at the City.  Mr. Garcia is the one that has to officially deny our request so we can file the request for appeal.  Agnes hopes to get the denial tomorrow.  She didn’t know if we’d already missed our window for the May hearing date (they only meet once/month).  She also couldn’t give me any better advice about how to get Mark to communicate with us.  She took my name, phone number and email again.  We’ll see.

Update 5:24p same day: Mark phoned me just now to give me the whole scoop.  He wasn’t calling back because he was hoping to give us news of the official denial last week and then every day they’ve been visiting the City.  Still no dice.

He had to visit the examiner (Gerald Garcia, the most senior person there) 6 times so far on our case because there are no City records showing 6 units in this building.  Everything shows 4 so they had to search Board of Elections, Water Department from the 50s, permit applications, etc as well as photos we submitted.  Since we’re 6 units, we also were not given a City certification of number of dwelling units at closing because that’s only done for 5 or fewer units.  We also had to submit a section drawing from our architect because the front part of the building has 2 floors and the back part has 3 floors which made the examiner question how the building fits together and when the back building was added.

We have missed the May hearing deadline.  We should get a denial soon (tomorrow, he hopes) and then will move forward with the June 16th hearing.  We’ll know the answer that day, more or less and then can follow-up by phone the following Monday, and will have to wait a few weeks for the in-writing confirmation.  That’s when we can apply for our permits.