Two-bit Guru - Friday Link List 34: Rainwater Outlaw, Meditation - In this week's link list - GM sugar beets, rainwater collection crime, major energy company meditates, meditation at the Olympics, & more. - Photo of cabbage in the garden - green, leafy, gardening

If you want to believe in something, believe in change because it will always be there for you. ~Two-bit Guru~

  • It seems to me we’d be better off protecting individual freedom and curtailing the evil deeds of renegade corporations but our society has done exactly the opposite, possibly because we are under the influence of crazy people. Here’s an instance where you, the individual, will be eating genetically modified sugar beets whether you like it or not because the USDA has decided to deregulate them.
  • What can we do about this sort of abuse? I suggest listening to this 11 year-old boy. In 5 1/2 minutes he covers the whole issue, to the roaring applause of his audience.
  • It’s bad if the lunatics are running the asylum but when they are running everything it’s a lot worse. Here’s an Oregon scofflaw who has the audacity to collect rainwater and snow runoff in “illegal reservoirs” (read “ponds”) on his property. Any lunatic would know you’re supposed to have a permit. Even though he isn’t a lunatic, the violator did have a permit, but the govt. revoked it.
  • Not everyone is a lunatic. 50 years ago a marine biologist, Rachel Carson, published a book warning of the dangers of chemicals in our environment. We’ve come a long way since then, but I fear we’ve been going the wrong way.
  • I’ve slammed enough giant corporations for one day. How about a huge energy company that uses a staff-run meditation program to promote innovation. A video and a partial transcript tell the story. Let’s hope that the innovation has to do with not destroying the planet for profit.
  • An Indian Olympic hockey team sounds about as crazy as a Jamaican bobsled team, but it makes more sense when you know they’re talking field hockey, not ice. It seems hardly necessary to point out that they meditate to improve performance, but we’re doing it here.
  • The monk at the Buddhist shrine inside Olympic Village offers guidance not only to the 500 Buddhists in the Village but to others as well. The monk is happy to be there and I suppose being a Buddhist he’s not giving anybody unfair powers to win.