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20

Mar

Life Planning: Gather These Twenty-Five Documents You Need Before You Die(via @Lifehacker)

This is a great idea.

Do your loved ones a favor and organize these important documents so in case something happens to you they can easily make financial decisions and act on your behalf.

21

Feb

Carl Sagan. 

Carl Sagan. 

15

Dec

Isn’t it supposed to be really warm today, like 0C or something!? (32F)
8 yr old son is a true Canadian (via kellyoxford)

05

Dec

Ski the Town

This is just great.  Every small town, Northern kid in the world wants to be JP.

02

Dec

mywildefamily:

I don’t know what it is about me, but I have this empathetic quality that requires me to feel everything.  Well, coinciding with the 80/20 rule – 80 percent of everything.  I watch a documentary on Congo gorilla war – I can’t sleep for weeks.  I see a World Vision commercial?  I look into international adoption.  I get into a disagreement with anyone (be it a proprietor or my sister), I’ll get depressed for days.  I’ll be hugging my kid and something she does will make me laugh so hard that I start making that silent laugh where all you hear is the bubbling of saliva as air exits you lungs.  Then I’ll think of the sound my dad kept making as the fluid in his lungs bubbled up before he died, and my laughter will instantly turn into tearful sobbing, which I shamefully hide from my daughter.  I am emotional.  Well, actually I hope it’s emotion and not insanity (it’s a constant fear of mine that I’m actually insane and everyone knows it except me).  Is that wrong? 

I hear a lot about right from wrong when I go to my husband’s church on Sundays.  It’s Christian, so of course gay marriage is “wrong”.  To be honest, I just don’t get it.  I mean, I’ve known all of two gay men personally in my 33 years of life (that I know of) but it seems downright unnatural to me that I deem it as wrong.  I mean, how can I deem someone else’s choice as WRONG?  Am I God?  No.  Then I have no right to dictate the terms and conditions on life of Group X or Y or A through Z.  It isn’t like I don’t judge – I do – because I’m far from perfect.  But I reserve judgment for those that diminish others.  I can’t stand that.

Ultimately, let’s face it – isn’t it “wrong” to discriminate against people that just want to live; People that are just trying to be?  That thing that we’re ALL pursuing, that evasive thing called happiness?  They aren’t killing or raping or devastating – they’re just trying to live.  Isn’t it the worst form of blasphemy to the “Creator” to hate or discriminate-against at all?  Why don’t people get this?  THEY are US.  Last I heard, sexual orientation doesn’t expel you from the human race.

OMG, it just came to me.  Our civilization just won’t get it until we communicate with alien life.  Then, there can be someone else – US and THEM – someone to call “wrong” or “unnatural” or weird.  And maybe then we’ll all stick together like one kind – the human kind. 

Get with the program people.  Or just watch some Star Trek TNG so we can skip the century (or millennium) it’ll take to find someone else in this vast, dark expanse called a universe.  We are not alone.  We have each other.

Zach Wahls Speaks About Family (by divulgate)

A beautiful mind, Dagmara.  I consider Empathy as one of the least appreciated gifts that evolution has given us.  Humans have used it for centuries to guide our morals.  Abandon scripture, and allow your evolved empathy to guide you.  If it feels wrong, it is.

30

Nov

So many Mysteries...

The Sagan Series takes all of the awesomeness of Carl Sagan and adds some pretty pictures to his voice.  I could listen to him all day.  Watch all 7.  There are 8 videos, but the last one is Apollo and we clearly never landed on the moon, so no need to watch that one.

Free Thinkers

These three guys have positively changed my life.  They help you to see the absolute beauty of the universe that we live in.  So much more beautiful than I had ever imagined.  There are no better role models in this world than these 1 living, 2 gone poets.  In all things, they require proof, truth and free thought.  I implore anyone reading this to listen to these men.  They’ll change your life, and let you see just what a wonderful place the universe is.  

Richard Dawkins

Carl Sagan

Richard Feynman

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.
Richard Feynman
It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World