Individual and Community

Another source publicly saying what has been said before.

Vegetarian Diet Better for Environment, Says UK Climate Change Leader
Damian Robin
EpochTimes Staff Oct 28, 2009
LONDON—One of the UK’s most prominent climate change experts, Lord Stern, has said a vegetarian diet is better for the environment.

Author of the 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, and former chief economist of the World Bank. Lord Stern believes that the Climate change conference in Copenhagen in December should call for prices of meat and other foods that contribute to climate change to increase.

“Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases,” he said in an interview with The Times on Tuesday 27th October. “It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources.”

“I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating.”

Nearly one fifth of the world’s current greenhouse gas emissions are produced by livestock – about 50 per cent higher than the level produced by all the vehicles in the world.

Lord Stern’s comments were welcomed by some environmental and farming groups, but dismissed as over-simplistic and irresponsible by the the farmer’s union in the UK.

“Cutting down on meat is a win-win for healthier people and a healthier planet”, said Friends of the Earth’s senior food campaigner, Clare Oxborrow, “but we also need the Government to make big changes to the way it’s produced.”

National Union of Farmers President Peter Kendall commented: “Livestock production is based on grasland which stores more carbon than other land use in England. Focusing on a single issue as a way of saving the planet is extremely iressponsible and likely to be counterproductive.”

Compassion in World Farming said: “Reducing meat consumption in affluent nations will release land for growing food for people rather than feed for factory farmed animals or fuel crops to power our vehicles and it will reduce the emissions of some of the most noxious greenhouse gases.”

“By reducing meat consumption and supporting higher welfare farming, we can help to revive the planet, restore dignity to farmers’ livelihoods and enable the animals themselves to lead lives of quality,” said a statement on their website.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in 2006 concluded that worldwide livestock farming, including the destruction of forest land for cattle ranching and the production of animal feeds, generates 18 per cent of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions. By comparison, it said, all the world’s cars, trains, planes and boats accounted for a combined 13 per cent.

source: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/24455/

Istanbul – Aftermath.

• Hotel Turkuaz – a great bed and breakfast type hotel in Istanbul. View of ocean and the blue mosque. The staff and hostess are very friendly and courteous. Morning breakfast is a veritable feast. Address: Kadirga, Cinci Meydani No: 36 Eminonu – Istanbul 528 63 42
• We bought a small rug from a very nice private carpet store called Punto of Istanbul . Ryan called his friend Pamira who got us an appointment with a nice firm that deals in rugs. They were very professional and friendly – we sat in the viewing room, served us drinks, and were very polite and made conversation despite the knowledge we only wanted 1 small rug. Our rug is supposed to have been hand woven by members of a eastern Turkish tribe.
• Freudian Slip of the Trip:
  “I want control”, says Erin while on a long hike; Erin sick with fever, and Ryan had the map, and we had been walking for a couple of hours in downtown Istanbul. She meant “I want the map”, via the slip “I want the control”. Funny, funny.

pictures coming soon.

Currency Rates

www.xe.com/ucc

http://www.xe.com/ucc/full/

Live rates at 2009.10.19 11:19:58 UTC
1.00 USD = 0.669793 EUR
United States Dollars Euro
1 USD = 0.669793 EUR 1 EUR = 1.49300 USD

Live rates at 2009.10.19 11:16:58 UTC
1.00 USD = 178.704 HUF
United States Dollars Hungary Forint
1 USD = 178.704 HUF 1 HUF = 0.00559584 USD

Live rates at 2009.10.19 11:14:58 UTC
1.00 USD = 1.30996 BGN
United States Dollars Bulgaria Leva
1 USD = 1.30996 BGN 1 BGN = 0.763384 USD

Live rates at 2009.10.19 11:20:58 UTC
1.00 USD = 1.45845 TRY
United States Dollars Turkey Lira
1 USD = 1.45845 TRY 1 TRY = 0.685661 USD

“Surreal” Vegetarian Spider Found — A First
Matt Kaplan
for National Geographic News
October 12, 2009

A new discovery has taken the bite out of spiders’ status as meat-eaters.

A tropical jumping spider that eats mostly plant buds has been identified, a new study says—making it the only known vegetarian out of some 40,000 spider species.

In the late 1800s, naturalists named the spider Bagheera kiplingi after a panther in British author Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 children’s book The Jungle Book.

“At that time in history, all the [naturalists] had was a tattered dead specimen,” said study leader Christopher Meehan, a biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

“They had no idea what it ate. But perhaps they knew that jumping spiders were cat-like in their movements, and [they] decided to name the spider after the agile panther Bagheera in Kipling’s book.”

“Utterly Surreal”

Between 2001 and 2008, Meehan and colleagues studied the spider in its tropical habitat in southeastern Mexico and northwestern Costa Rica. (Get spider facts.)

They observed that the spiders ate nutrient-rich buds that grow on acacia plants.

Vegeaterian Spider Found

The acacias are also home to a species of ant that live in the plants’ hollow thorns. In a classic example of mutualism, the ants protect the plant in return for shelter and food, said Meehan, who conducted the research while at Villanova University in Villanova, Pennsylvania.

Yet the fast, stealthy Bagheera has figured out how to leap from thorn to thorn to collect its meal—while avoiding the highly aggressive ants.

Though the spider does occasionally snack on ant larvae, the bulk of their diet is plants, Meehan said.

“It is utterly surreal,” he said, “to see a spider use such effective hunting strategies to hunt a plant.”

Study published October 12 in the journal Current Biology.

© 1996-2008 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.

source:http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091012-vegetarian-spider.html

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fun stuff

Istanbul, Turkey
October 12 2009

erin writes:
We’ve made it to Istanbul and while the other cities were interesting and often beautiful, Istanbul is wonderful. Full of windy streets filled with children playing, merchants selling fruit and nuts, clothes, rugs,and everything imaginable, and/or mosques or historical relics. And it also a city of sounds. The prayer call is broadcast on loudspeakers 5 times a day. We have mostly just been wandering the streets. Yesterday, we were at a cafe under Galatia bridge. The bridge is constructed with the road over the top and then restaurants and cafes underneath. You can sit and look out over the water and back at the mosques and the palaces on land –so you have a mix of tourist, but also locals, many on dates. In addition there are tons of fishing lines hanging from the top portion of the bridge that fall past the bottom section and you can see the lines and the buckets being hauled up and down. During our time there we only saw one fish actually being caught and we watched the fish being hauled in. All of a sudden, when it was almost at the top of the bridge, it fell off the hook. This Turkish man, walking in a nice suit, with his date, got hit on the shoulder with the fish. There was a mad scramble for the fish. The waiters caught the fish and then gave it to the man—I guess if it hits you, it’s yours.

In the next couple of days, we’ll probably head over the the Asia side of Istanbul and spend some more time at the Grand Bazaar.

With the exception of the windy streets making it easy to get turned around, Istanbul has been fairly easy to negotiate. However, we have been lucky to have my brother with us at points. For example the street signs in Belgrade (and train announcements, etc) are written in Cyrillic script while the map was in roman lettering—not so helpful.

And, we are of course all fighting off or succumbing to various illnesses, but still managing to get out and explore.