More Kitten Cuteness

It’s been a while since I posted pictures of Bernstein & Petzl. We don’t have them for much longer, so get your dose of kitten cuteness while you can!

Comfort

“In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all costs, we may be left without intimacy or compassion. In rejecting risk, we often cheat ourselves of the quest. In denying our suffering, we may never know our strength or our greatness.”

- Perry Redina, Ironman triathelete

In Support of Kerry

There’s not much I can do to influence the outcome of a national election. I’m frustrated enough with the direction our current President has taken us, though, so I’m going to try. I figure the best way to do it is to start by educating myself on issues that are really important to me and spreading the word as much as possible. So, here goes:

Foreign Policy

I frequently travel around the world to visit family or climb in remote areas. As a result, I?m often in a position to directly witness the impact of US policy abroad. What I?ve found in the past few years is that the welcome extended to me as a US citizen is increasingly strained.

Bush?s unilateral actions have antagonized not just the citizens of the nations impacted by Bush?s policies, but many, many more countries. War, political instability, and negative sentiments have threatened my freedom to travel.

I want a leader who will mend our relations with our friends and foster peace. I want a leader who will engage the US as a player in international efforts.

John Kerry?s position on foreign policy: http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/foreignpolicy/.

Jobs & Economy

Bush inherited record surpluses, a balanced budget and steady job growth. Under his leadership, the budget deficit has ballooned, job growth is non-existent and the stock market is faltering. I could be disgusted with all of it, but it?s jobs I?m most concerned about.

My intelligent, hard-working superstar of a husband was laid off over a year ago and has struggled to find permanent work ever since. I?ve watched countless friends struggle in bad jobs because they lacked the opportunities for other employment. And lest you think I hang with a slacker crowd, every time my company has an opening, we receive over a hundred applications, most of which come from completely over qualified applicants.

Despite the jobs crisis, President Bush has chosen time and time again to put job creation absolutely last, and a single-minded strategy of long-term tax cuts for the well-off first. Numerous independent analyses confirm that the President’s tax policies offered little bang-for-the-buck in jumpstarting job growth in our economy. And the numbers prove it:

• Number of jobs lost in the private sector since Bush took office: 2,931,000


• Average number of jobs created monthly under every President since Truman: 135,000


• Average number of jobs created monthly under Bush: -79,189


• Number of people who have become unemployed since Bush took office: 2,447,000


• Increase in the unemployment rate since Bush took office: 37 percent


• Total number of unemployed Americans: 8,170,000


• Number of Americans experiencing long-term unemployment (27 weeks or more) when Bush took office in January 2001: 675,000


• Number of Americans suffering long-term unemployment in March 2004: 1,871,000


• Increase in long-term unemployment under Bush: 177 percent


• Number of workers who have lost their unemployment insurance since December 2002: 760,000

John Kerry?s has a much different approach to creating jobs and improving our economy, one that might have a better chance to http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/economy/.

Environment

During the week, I work. On weekends, I climb, hike, and ride bikes. My love of sports and the outdoors make environmental concerns paramount for me.

It’d be hard to do worse than Bush on conservation, funding for research on alternative energy, pollution guidelines, etc.

I am troubled by Bush slashing funding for our national parks and monuments. Some of our most treasured parks, including Rainier, Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Rocky Mountain, Denali, and Grand Teton, face critical budget shortfalls. These parks are also threatened by Bush weakening the Clean Air Act, haze regulations, and opening parks to snowmobiles and ATV?s.

I am troubled by Bush increasing logging in our national forests and giving away our wilderness-quality lands in Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, Colorado, and Alaska to damaging industrial development including mining, oil, and gas leasing.

I am troubled by the fact that Bush has:

• Ignored the threat of global warning; 


• Failed to raise fuel economy and energy efficiency standards; 


• Increased the sale of oil and gas leases in fragile areas; 


• Weakened regulation of the nuclear industry; 


• Cut funding for renewable energy research;


• Reneged on his promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions; 


• Increased allowable mercury, arsenic, and dioxin levels; 


• Stopped EPA prosecution of polluters; 


• Gutted the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act; 


• Cut protection for endangered species like salmon and grizzly bears; 


• Opened sensitive waters to polluting personal watercraft; 


• Cut protection for wetlands; and 


• Invited lobbyists from companies like Enron to write their own wish list into his energy plan that focuses on producing more coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power instead of emphasizing energy efficiency and cleaner alternatives.

I want a president who will emphasize conserving public land, not exploiting it. I want a president who will support renewable energy, higher fuel economy standards, and reduction in air pollution levels.

We owe it to ourselves, our families, future generations, and to our planet to vote for Kerry who will unapologetically pursue our environmental values.

John Kerry?s position on the environment: http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/energy/.

Photoshop Filters

I’m finally leaving the digital image dark age and learning a bit about Photoshop. I bought a tutorial and have started slowly with Elements instead of the full blown program.

The above image is was a picture of tea at Swinton Place in England with a “cutout” filter applied.

Incomplete Manifesto

A coworker sent me to an interesting site today: Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth. It’s a collection of 43 ideas for inspiring creativity and growing as a person.

I think we’d benefit from rigorous study of them all, but here are a couple of my favorites:

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic?simulated environment.