feeding change

The Guardian Online reports that more pre-teens are getting mobile phones.

“In 2001, 13% of primary school children had a phone but that number had increased to 25% by the start of this year.” – Guardian Online

The phones are being hailed as a great safety device for parents who always want to be in touch with their kids. Tracking your child via your cell phone is an idea that is gaining a lot of acceptance among worried parents, so these statistics shouldn’t be surprising. As our paranoia and tech developments continue meld together, getting that tracking chip embedded under your child’s skin at birth should be an easy sell in about 5 years. That way our kids can be radiation receptors all the time, not just when they’re making a call or chewing on the cell phone antenna (tasty but dangerous!)

The World Health Organization has something to say about the electromagnetic fields all our gadgets are emitting. They’re even planning a big forum to address this subject in June.

This is just the beginning of a larger debate between the health and safety of kids. At least worried parents can feel secure in always knowing the location of their child. If not from their kid’s tracking device, then from the eerie green glow the kid is sure to give off by the time they hit puberty.

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It was with mild surprise that I realized that today is Earth Day. If you know it’s Earth Day today, then you’re probably already environmentally aware and doing what you can to keep us on this planet.

I never liked the term Earth Day. While we are doing a bang-up job of destroying the earth, nature has a way of always reclaiming the land. We’re not really destroying the planet so much as we are making it inhospitable to human beings (and any other oxygen breathing life forms who don’t like their skin to burn.) So, the day should be called “Save the Current Lifeforms on Earth Day”. Or maybe not. Regardless of what it’s called, here’s a few interesting enviro-links that will go well with your composting and recycling:

WireTap hits the road in a veggie car:

Greasecar Fuel Systems – “Greasecar vegetable Fuel Systems allow mechanically injected diesel vehicles to run on straight, filtered vegetable oil. Vegetable oil as fuel is a cleaner, safer and less expensive alternative to petroleum based fuel. It can be locally produced, even grown in your own back yard!”



David Suzuki gives us hope to get our waste together:

Sustainability Within a Generation – “Over-consumption of natural resources and energy are the root causes of Canada?s environmental woes. But reducing consumption does not mean reducing our quality of life. To shift to a sustainable economy, we need to focus on generating genuine wealth rather than continuing to measure progress exclusively in financial terms.”

Phtographer Edward Burtynski reminds us of why we need Earth Day:

Manufactured Landscapes – “These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire – a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction.”

And in 1996, CNN gives some useless advice to kids with waterbeds:

Earth Day for Kids -

“Make your bed!. . .and do the dishes: Everyday chores can help save energy. Leaving a heated waterbed unmade in the fall or winter can double its energy use by letting the heat dissipate into the air.”

I’m off to make my waterbed. Happy Earth Day everybody.

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This world is not set up for freelancers. Banks laugh at you when you tell them that you work for yourself at home. Potential landlords wince when you mention that you’ll be paying their mortgage by creating your own work each month. Even the utilities companies, like the phone and hydro all pause for a second too long when you state that you are your own employer. So, it’s always with a great deal of anxiety that I try and secure leases, loans and phone connections. In the past few weeks, I attempted to do two out of the three (I don’t need anymore loans.) And I am happy to report that I was successful on both counts. The reason? Confidence and an absence of the f-word.

“Just don’t say you’re freelance,” my partner warns each time we open the door to our hopefully soon-to-be new apartment. Lucky for her to say. She just landed an in-house job after only a year of doing the f-word (sorry, do I sound bitter?)

Contracting-out has spread through the job market faster than a BC wildfire. More and more people are working from home and for themselves. But freelancing is still a dreaded word to those working inside the 9-5/M-F bubble. It all boils down to insecurity. Those damn morning-trainers want to know where your next paycheque is coming from as much as you do.

There is a particularly life-focusing reaction that freelancers get when they submit their latest invoice and see no immediate work waiting in their inbox. It’s called panic. 9-5ers may have to make horendous commutes, suffer bad coffee, and put up with co-workers whose favourite topic of conversation is who will get voted off the island next, but they are guaranteed a convenient deposit into their bank accounts every other Friday. Staring into the abyss of no future projects will make any freelancer search Monster for a “real job.”

And that’s what landlords, bank managers, and that polite person at the call centre are looking for when they ask, ever so innocently: “And what do you do, Mr. O’Donnell?”

“Well, I work freelance. I, um . . . I, I write.” (You idiot! Everybody friggin’ writes! Tell them what you write.) “I write for kids.” As if that makes it better.

And with an egg timer, you can clock the seconds before the first Harry Potter joke makes an appearence. As tiring as the Potter humour gets, it can sometimes work in my favour. Before old JK became the richest woman in England, landlords took ear-candling as more reliable occupation for their tenants.

But this time around I had no trouble getting a lease and a phone. I spoke with confidence, told them what I did and didn’t say the f-word once. They winced, they paused and just before they suggested the name of a good job agency, I pulled out my secret freelancer’s weapon: my partner.

She gave our landlord her business card, passed along her office number and reassured them that everything would be okay.

The world is not set up for freelancers. That’s why ex-freelancers with in-house jobs are the absolute best.

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Some good stuff on Alternet this week:

The message boards over at Fox have been burning up over the networks latest reality ratings grab: The Swan. The show takes 16 women and transforms them into “swans” via a team of trainers, nutritionists, dentists and plastic surgeons. The messages on the boards range from outright disgust to this particularly scary plea:

“These women who were chosen are blessed. I hope that one day, I too will be blessed in such a way. My husband says that we can’t afford any surgeries, so I’m just going to trust the Lord, and pray that one day I too will be given the opportunity to be a swan.”

Go on, read the whole terrifying article.

For anyone keeping score, here’s a great rundown of the facts, omissions and evasions made by Condoleezza Rice yesterday at the 9/11 hearings. Interesting, expected, un-reported.

Read more at www.alternet.org.

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