Funtwo - Canon Rock

I play the acoustic - classical (Hirade) and steel string (Martin). But this makes me want to pick up the electric, too.

If only I had that much talent!

Ubuntu is your friendly operating system

Click here to visit the Ubuntu site

Ubuntu is like a cool glass of clean, pure water on a hot summer's day.

It is a Linux-based operating system for your PC.

It would even make the Mac-guy in those Apple commercials envious.

Version 8.04 (Hardy Heron) was released this week. As always, the system is free of charge.

I've got it loaded on a PC that I've put together. I think that you can have a dual-boot machine (with Windows), but what would be the point?

Frans Lanting Photography

Click here for the Frans Lanting site.

This is a companion article to my previous post, regarding biodiversity.

Mr. Lanting shows us in beautiful style and with great skill and dedication why our responsibility to our neighbors is so important. We all share the same planet, but only we have the ability to destroy or preserve it.

Be warned, if you visit Mr. Lanting's site, allow a few hours to be amazed and awed -- and perhaps humbled by our responsibility.

Biodiversity loss could hurt medical research

Click here for the E.O. Wilson site

The world risks losing new medical treatments for osteoporosis, cancer and other human ailments if it does not act quickly to conserve the planet's biodiversity, a senior United Nations environmental official said Wednesday.

Earth's organisms offer a variety of naturally made chemical compounds with which scientists could develop new medicines, but are under threat of extinction.

We must understand how much we already depend on diversity of life to run our economies, our lives, but more importantly, what are we losing in terms of future potential.

The the work of more than 100 experts, its key authors based at Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment, and it underscores what may be lost to human health when species go extinct.

April 22 - Happy Earth Day !

Visit the Dhammakaya Foundation Site

Each year, the April 22 Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. Among other things, 1970 in the United States brought with it the Kent State shootings, the advent of fiber optics, "Bridge over Troubled Water," Apollo 13, the Beatles' last album, the death of Jimi Hendrix, and the meltdown of fuel rods in the Savannah River nuclear plant near Aiken, South Carolina -- an incident not acknowledged for 18 years. At the time, Americans were slurping leaded gas through massive V8 sedans. Industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of legal consequences or bad press. Air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. Environment was a word that appeared more often in spelling bees than on the evening news. But Earth Day 1970 turned that all around. On April 22, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment.

Fields of Gold - Sungha Jung

This is an amazing and relaxed talent.

The Buddha on Teaching

The Buddha said to Ananda: "Truly, Ananda, it's not easy to teach the way of freedom to others. In teaching freedom to others, the best way is to first establish five things and then teach. What are the five? When you teach others, you must think:
'I will teach in a gradual and sensitive way.
I will speak with the goal in mind.
I will speak with gentleness.
I will not speak in order to gain anything.
I will not speak with a view to harming anyone.'

"If you establish these five things, your teaching will be well received."

-Anguttara Nikaya

Joseph Campbell on Meaning

People are saying that what we are seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that is what we're really seeking. I think that what we are seeking is an experience of being alive; so that the life experiences that we have on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our inner most being and reality. So that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about.