Life's too fast to play it safe.

don't want to polute when you fly?

thank you for the link, Emil.

http://www.terrapass.com/

new york and..

Before it is again taking too long for me to explain..here you go.
It is my final year at the KaosPilots in denmark. June 2007, yesyes, and I already got something very amazing coming up, so, no worries on the workplace. Not for much profit, but much spirit, I can promise you.

I had planned some very long time back to go to Zimbabwe for my world internship period this autumn. But my mother fell very sick, and so there the only way to go was not to. (http://www.kufunda.org)

Having met amazing people in June/Borl/Slovenia, I contacted Werner, working with Caritas/Austria, as we were talking back then about 'Rhythm is it' [http://www.rhythmisit.com] in one way or the other in Vienna. And, yes! He was really working on making this amazing dream happening, and I thought, how amazing, I can join in for my internship, vienna, my second home, and the project an amazing opportunity.

During a conversation in Vienna, it turned out, that it might be more helpful for the project, if I could join in when it started, that being february 2007.
Wuwuwuwuwuw, no internship.

How could my having these two months be of use for the initiative of integrating underserved schoolchildren through dance?

Lululululu, I looked for those that were doing amazing things within the field, and many of them were on the east coast/U.S. So I called some very different organisations, with the same goal, to create value through dance, so I got in, so I am here. New York it is. Alvin Ailey, the number one on the list, those that I did not dare calling until the last moment, my inspiration.

I had no idea, what would be expecting me, I had not been dancing/class in ages, I had no appartement fixed when the plane landed, and I was having heartvibrations (herzflimmern, you know) all through my body.

The present story now without further drama: I am working and learning from Nasha Thomas-Schmitt, Director for Arts in Education and Community Development.

I am amazed to be here. I am at awe when seeing the dancers every day around the office, I am grateful.

And I have the privilege to choose life, and feel I truly am.

Excuses for Inaction.

I will be going to a lecture in Berkeley tomorrow - the Rwanda conflict and its history. Some comments of others, while preparing for it, if that is even possible..
___________

After my experiences with Darfur, I suddenly became an expert at hearing all of the excuses why one should not do anything about it. I made a list of seven reasons I was told when I came to London, Paris, Washington, and many places I went to when I was the U.N. Coordinator in Sudan.

The first reaction people had was, 'The situation is not as bad as you make it out to be, surely it cant be that bad.' The second excuse was 'You are being too impatient. Give them a chance to sort it out, the best thing is let them find their own solution to their own problems.' The third excuse was 'It is very difficult, Sudan is not a tiny country. If we were to intervene, it would only make matters worse.' Fourth, 'Why should we do it? Let the someone else do it, then we'll join in and we'll all do it together.' Another excuse was 'We've got other problems to solve. Let's solve the other problems first, then we'll deal with Sudan.' Another reason was, 'We've already brought this problem to the attention of high-level officials, and it's been discussed at the very high level.' Another excuse, which someone gave me yesterday, was, 'We can't intervene because we have to get a proper framework for intervention, then discussions must take place, and then we have to do this and that.'

The truth of the matter is, it is not just a question of instruments, and it is not just a technical matter; it's not just a debate about whether we need 6,000 troops in Darfur, or whether we need 12,000 troops; or whether we need to find a different financing mechanism; or whether it needs to be the U.N. or the African Union. These are reductionist and technical arguments, and these are not the arguments which the leaders of the world should be arguing about when serious evils are being committed. Serious evils require serious actions.

unique.

mail from our principle today..
______________________________________________

Hi folks - I just got this very importent information from my good friend Bapu (old indian guy living in Washington D.C.)

On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be:

01:02:03 04/05/06

That won't ever happen again.

Uffe

worldfigures.

Maybe in contradiction to the previous post on measurement, I decided to start sharing one of my favourite readings every month: the "world in figures" column in BrandEins (http://www.brandeins.de).

Let's you put things into perspective..
(all figures have been found in int'l news)

Estimated worlwide turnover on drugs p.a. in billion dollars: 322
Amount, that the U.S. annually invest to fight drug sales in billion dollars: 20
Amount, that Germany invests annually to fight drug sales in million Euro: 150

Streetprice for one gramm cocaine in 2003 in Comlumbia, in dollars: 2
Streetprice for one gramm cocaine 2003 in Austria, in dollars: 90
Streetprice for one gramm cocaine 2003 in Japan, in dollars: 394
Amount of portions, concerning one gramm cocaine: 20

Year, in which the first Coca-Wine, "Vino Mariani" was invented by a chemist: 1863
Year, in which Coca-Cola was sold in a pharmacy in Atlanta for the first time: 1886
Amount of cocaine, the first recipe of Coca-Cola contained per litre, in milligram: 250
Year, in which cocaine was replaced by coffeine as a result of an anti-drug law: 1906
Amount of Coca leafs, that Coca-Cola nowadays imports annually from Peru and Bolivia as means of flavour, in tons: 500

Gregory Bateson:

"The myth of power, is of course, a very powerful myth; and probably most people in this world more or less believe in it... But it is still epistemological lunacy and leads inevitably to all sorts of disaster... If we continue to operate in terms of a Cartesian dualism of mind versus matter, we shall probably also come to see the world in terms of God versus man; élite versus people; chosen race versus others; nation versus nation and man versus environment. It is doubtful whether a species having both an advanced technology and this strange way of looking at the world can endure...

The whole of our thinking about what we are and what other people are has got to be restructured. This is not funny, and I do not know how long we have to do it in. If we continue to operate on the premises that were fashionable during the Pre-Cybernetic era, and which were especially underlined during the Industrial Revolution, which seemed to validate the Darwinian unit of survival, we may have twenty or thirty years before the logical reductio ad absurdum of our old positions destroys us. Nobody knows how long we have, under the present system, before some disaster strikes us, more serious than the destruction of any group of nations. The most important task today is, perhaps, to learn to think in the new way."

the World Cafe!

"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom." (Isaac Asimov)
__________________

Tonight Paer, one of my groupmates and me had the chance to be part of a rather extraordinary meeting with the two founders, or rather finders of the World Cafe and some of their closest friends as well as a public artist from San Francisco, that had been actively initiating and striving for positive dialogue in the past two years, and beyond.

read more about Mike Garibaldi-Frick under: http://www.scultura.com

It was authentic communication because we gathered around a subject we all felt passionate about and were eager to learn together. Dialogue. One of the year long friends of Juanita and David, Ann, is 83 years old, she reads many books parallely, was part of the british AirForce in WW2 and learned were she belonged in a long journey.

It was multigenerational. And it gave credit to the work we currently are doing as a group in the field of dialogue. It affirmed us, that every action we can see around, and everything we do is the result of conversation.

Conversation is the core-process of social and large scale systems change. To bridge that gap between where we are today, and where we wish to be going the world needs more social process activists. An activism that is life affirming, positive, inclusive and focusing attention. Some call it revolutionary, others co-evolutionary. ;)

Besides the fact how warmly we were welcomed and how respectfully our thoughts, doubts and unknowing was treated, the core was that good things will happen if ordinary people continue to gather around topics that matter to them - re-create the public space, that now is taken over by...or not available anymore to the public.

lonely planet add.

Do something great for your country:

LEAVE.

Podcasts worth an ear.

Also this year Loic le Meur and his collegues blogged from the World Economic Forum. Only that this time we are able to witness some of the intriguing dialogues they had.

Listen to George Soros on the economic decline of the U.S., Frederick Kempe from the Wall Street Journal, Bill Gates or Richard Branson or...

//Setlist 03. August 2005 //

01// Vertigo
02// I will Follow
03// The Electric Co. / Singin' In The Rain (Snippet)
       / Here Comes The Sun (Snippet).
04// Elevation
05// New Year´s Day
06// Beautiful Day
07// I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
08// City Of Blinding Lights
09// Miracle Drug
10// Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own
11// Love And Peace Or Else
12// Sunday Bloody Sunday
13// Bullet The Blue Sky
14// Miss Sarajevo
15// Pride (In The Name Of Love)
16// Where The Streets Have No Name
17// One
18// Zoo Station
19// The Fly
21// With Or Without You
22// All Because Of You
23// Party Girl
24// Vertigo