 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Home |
Credits |
Cast |
1 |
2 |
3 |
Reviews |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Home |
Credits |
Cast |
1 |
2 |
3 |
Reviews |
|
|
|
. . . ENLIGHTENMENT see: "KNOWLEDGE" for related links I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers. --Kahlil Gibran (1883—1931) Lebanese poet. _Sand and Foam_ [1926] It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. --Eugène Ionesco (1909—1994) Romanian-born French dramatist. _Decouvertes_ [1969] People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. --Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712—1778) French philosopher and novelist. _Emile; or, Treatise on Education_ [1762] - One day it was announced by Master Joshu that the young monk Kyogen had reached an enlightened state. Much impressed by this news, several of his peers went to speak to him. "We have heard that you are enlightened. Is this true?" his fellow students inquired. "It is," Kyogen answered. "Tell us," said a friend, "how do you feel?" "As miserable as ever," replied the enlightened Kyogen. --Zen quote Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. --Zen Proverb  . . see: "ENTERTAINMENT, HOBBIES, & LEISURE ACTIVITIES" for related links Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. --Bible "Hebrews" 13:2 Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda water the day after. --Lord Byron [George Gordon Byron] (1788—1824) English Romantic poet and satirist. _Don Juan_, canto II, st. 178 [1819] - Harris asked me if I’d ever been in the maze at Hampton Court. He said he went in once to show somebody else the way. He had studied it up in a map, and it was so simple that it seemed foolish – hardly worth the twopence charged for admission. Harris said he thought that map must have been got up as a practical joke, because it wasn’t a bit like the real thing, and only misleading. It was a country cousin that Harris took in. He said: “We’ll just go in here, so that you can say you’ve been, but it’s very simple. It’s absurd to call it a maze. You keep on taking the first turning to the right. We’ll just walk round for ten minutes, and then go and get some lunch.” They met some people soon after they had got inside, who said they had been there for three-quarters of an hour, and had had about enough of it. Harris told them they could follow him, if they liked; he was just going in, and then should turn round and come out again. They said it was very kind of him, and fell behind, and followed. They picked up various other people who wanted to get it over, as they went along, until they had absorbed all the persons in the maze. People who had given up all hopes of ever getting either in or out, or of ever seeing their home and friends again, plucked up courage at the sight of Harris and his party, and joined the procession, blessing him. Harris said he should judge there must have been twenty people, following him, in all; and one woman with a baby, who had been there all the morning, insisted on taking his arm, for fear of losing him. Harris kept on turning to the right, but it seemed a long way, and his cousin said he supposed it was a very big maze. “Oh, one of the largest in Europe,” said Harris. “Yes, it must be,” replied the cousin, “because we’ve walked a good two miles already.” Harris began to think it rather strange himself, but he held on until, at last, they passed the half of a penny bun on the ground that Harris’s cousin swore he had noticed there seven minutes ago. Harris said: “Oh, impossible!” but the woman with the baby said, “Not at all,” as she herself had taken it from the child, and thrown it down there, just before she met Harris. She also added that she wished she never had met Harris, and expressed an opinion that he was an impostor. That made Harris mad, and he produced his map, and explained his theory. “The map may be all right enough,” said one of the party, “if you know whereabouts in it we are now.” Harris didn’t know, and suggested that the best thing to do would be to go back to the entrance, and begin again. For the beginning again part of it there was not much enthusiasm; but with regard to the advisability of going back to the entrance there was complete unanimity, and so they turned, and trailed after Harris again, in the opposite direction. About ten minutes more passed, and then they found themselves in the centre. Harris thought at first of pretending that that was what he had been aiming at; but the crowd looked dangerous, and he decided to treat it as an accident. Anyhow, they had got something to start from then. They did know where they were, and the map was once more consulted, and the thing seemed simpler than ever, and off they started for the third time. And three minutes later they were back in the centre again. After that, they simply couldn’t get anywhere else. Whatever way they turned brought them back to the middle. It became so regular at length, that some of the people stopped there, and waited for the others to take a walk round, and come back to them. Harris drew out his map again, after a while, but the sight of it only infuriated the mob, and they told him to go and curl his hair with it. Harris said that he couldn’t help feeling that, to a certain extent, he had become unpopular. They all got crazy at last, and sang out for the keeper, and the man came and climbed up the ladder outside, and shouted out directions to them. But all their heads were, by this time, in such a confused whirl that they were incapable of grasping anything, and so the man told them to stop where they were, and he would come to them. They huddled together, and waited; and he climbed down, and came in. He was a young keeper, as luck would have it, and new to the business; and when he got in, he couldn’t find them, and he wandered about, trying to get to them, and then he got lost. They caught sight of him, every now and then, rushing about the other side of the hedge, and he would see them, and rush to get to them, and they would wait there for about five minutes, and then he would reappear again in exactly the same spot, and ask them where they had been. They had to wait till one of the old keepers came back from his dinner before they got out. --Jerome K. Jerome (1859—1927) English novelist and playwright. _Three Men in a Boat_, ch. 6 [1889] - I enjoy vast delight in the folly of mankind; and, God be praised, that is an inexhaustible source of entertainment. --Lady Mary Wortley Montagu [née Pierrepont] (1689—1762) English writer. Letter to the Countess of Mar. The real character of a man is found out by his amusements. --Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723—1792) English painter. Attributed in Samuel Arthur Bent _Short Sayings of Great Men_ [1882]. ----- busker [BUS-kur], noun: A person who entertains (as by playing music) in public places. raconteur (noun): One who excels in telling stories and anecdotes. regale (transitive verb): 1. To entertain with something that delights. 2. To entertain sumptuously with fine food and drink. intransitive verb: To feast. noun: 1. A sumptuous feast. 2. A choice food; a delicacy. 3. Refreshment. . . see: "CHEERFULNESS" see: "ZEAL" see: "EMOTIONS & FEELINGS" for other related links see: "SUCCESS" for other related links Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm; it moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it. --Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803—1873) British novelist and politician. Attributed in Louis Klopsch _Many Thoughts of Many Minds_, p. 81 [1896]. Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is a quality that most frequently makes for success --attributed to Dale Carnegie (1888—1955) American writer and lecturer. Age may wrinkle the face, but lack of enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. --Danish proverb Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved. --attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882) American philosopher and poet. He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. --John Foster (1770—1843) English clergyman and essayist. "On Decision of Character" I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom. --attributed to Anatole France [Jacques Anatole Thibault] (1844—1924) French novelist and man of letters. Enthusiasm is the key not only to the achievement of great things but to the accomplishment of anything that is worthwhile. --Samuel Goldwyn (1882—1974) American film producer. Quoted in "Norfolk and Western Magazine" [1968]. The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!" --Jack Kerouac (1922—1969) American author and member of the "Beat Generation." _On The Road_, pt. 1, ch. 1 [1957] We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about. --Charles Kingsley (1819—1875) English writer and clergyman. Attributed in _Journal of the Canadian Dental Association_, vol. 5 [1939]. Enthusiasm is the intoxication of earnestness. --Alphonse de Lamartine (1790—1869) French poet and politician. Attributed in Maturin M. Ballou _Edge-Tools of Speech_, p. 131 [1886]. One can get as much exultation in losing oneself in a little thing as a big thing. It is nice to think how one can be recklessly lost in a daisy! --Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906—2001) American writer and wife of Charles Lindbergh. _Bring Me a Unicorn_ [1971] A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm. --Charles Schwab (1862—1939) American industrialist. Attributed in Dale Carnegie _How to Stop Worrying and Start Living_ [1948]. Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgment. --William Howard Taft (1857—1930) 27th President of the United States [1909—1913] and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court [1921—1930]. Attributed in Jacob M. Braude _New Treasury Of Stories For Every Speaking and Writing Occasion_ [1959]. None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm. --Henry David Thoreau (1817—1862) American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher. Attributed in Kate Sanborn _A Year of Sunshine; Cheerful Extracts for Every Day in the Year_ [1886 ed.]. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. --Samuel Ullman (1840—1924) American businessman and poet. "Youth" ----- brio [BREE-oh], noun: Enthusiastic vigor; vivacity; liveliness; spirit. desultory (adj.) ['de-zêl-to-ree] Moving disconnectedly without focus; lacking enthusiams, sluggish. dithyrambic [dith-uh-RAM-bik], adjective: 1. Wildly enthusiastic. 2. Wildly irregular in form. ebullient (adj.) [i-'bul-yênt] Bubbling over with enthusiasm; also, roiling or agitated. fervid [FUR-vid], adjective: 1. Heated or vehement in spirit, enthusiasm, etc. 2. Burning; glowing; intensely hot. zealous [ZEL-uhs], adjective: Full of zeal; actively enthusiastic. ;void(0)) ENVIRONMENT / ENVIRONMENTALISTS . . see: "NATURE" for related links I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty. --attributed to George Burns [Nathan Birnbaum] (1896—1996) American comedian. The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind. --Nigel Calder (b. 1931) British science writer and environmentalist. Speech, Earth Day [1969]. Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day. --Anton Chekhov (1860—1904) Russian dramatist and short-story wrriter. _Uncle Vanya_ [1897] ^^ "Banning DDT." "... arguably the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century. DDT was the best agent against mosquitoes, and despite the rhetoric there was nothing anywhere near as good or as safe. Since the ban, two million people a year have died unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children. All together, the ban has caused more than fifty million needless deaths. Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler, Ted. And the environmental movement pushed hard for it." "But DDT was a carcinogen." "No, it wasn't. And everybody knew it at the time of the ban." "It was unsafe." "Actually, it was so safe you could eat it. People did just that for two years, in one experiment. After the ban, it was replaced by parathion, which is really unsafe. More than a hundred farm workers died in the months after the DDT ban, because they were unaccustomed to handling really toxic pesticides." "We disagree about all this." "Only because you lack the relevant facts, or are unwilling to face up to the consequences of the actions of organizations you support. Banning DDT will someday be seen as a scandalous blunder." "DDT was never banned." "You're right. Countries were just told that if they used it, they wouldn't get foreign aid." Kenner shook his head. "But the unarguable point, based on UN statistics, is that before the DDT ban, malaria had become almost a minor illness. Fifty thousand deaths a year worldwide. A few years later, it was once again a global scourge. Fifty million people have died since the ban, Ted." --dialogue in Michael Crichton (1942—2008) American author. _State Of Fear_ [2004] ^^ ^^ Yellowstone Park, he explained, was the first wilderness to be set aside as a natural preserve anywhere in the world. The region around the Yellowstone River in Wyoming had long been recognized for its wondrous scenic beauty. Lewis and Clark sang its praises. Artists like Bierstadt and Moran painted it. And the new Northern Pacific Railroad wanted a scenic attraction to draw tourists west. So in 1872, in part because of railroad pressure, President Ulysses Grant set aside two million acres and created Yellowstone National Park. There was only one problem, unacknowledged then and later. No one had any experience trying to preserve wilderness. There had never been any need to do it before. And it was assumed to be much easier than it proved to be. When Theodore Roosevelt visited the park in 1903, he saw a landscape teeming with game. There were thousands of elk, buffalo, black bear, deer, mountain lions, grizzlies, coyotes, wolves, and bighorn sheep. By that time there were rules in place to keep things as they were. Soon after that, the Park Service was formed, a new bureaucracy whose sole job was to maintain the park in its original condition. Yet within ten years, the teeming landscape that Roosevelt saw was gone forever. And the reason for this was the park managers - charged with keeping the park in pristine condition - had taken a series of steps that they thought were in the best interest of preserving the park and its animals. But they were wrong. "Well," Bradley said, "our knowledge has increased with time ... " "No, it hasn't," Kenner said. "That's my point. It's a perpetual claim that we know more today, and it's not borne out by what actually happened." Which was this: the early park managers mistakenly believed that elk were about to become extinct. So they tried to increase the elk herds within the park by eliminating predators. To that end, they shot and poisoned all the wolves in the park. And they prohibited Indians from hunting in the park, though Yellowstone was a traditional hunting ground. Protected, the elk herds exploded, and ate so much of certain trees and grasses that the ecology of the area began to change. The elk ate the trees that the beavers used to make dams, so the beavers vanished. That was when the managers discovered beavers were vital to the overall water management of the region. When the beavers disappeared, the meadows dried up; the trout and otter vanished; soil erosion increased; and the park ecology changed even further. By the 1920s it had become abundantly clear there were too many elk, so the rangers began to shoot them by the thousands. But the change in plant ecology seemed to be permanent; the old mix of trees and grasses did not return. It also became increasingly clear that the Indian hunters of old had exerted a valuable ecological influence on the park lands by keeping down the numbers of elk, moose, and bison. This belated recognition came as part of a more general understanding that native Americans had strongly shaped the "untouched wilderness" that the first white men saw - or thought they were seeing - when they first arrived in the New World. The "untouched wilderness" was nothing of the sort. Human beings on the North American continent had exerted a huge influence on the environment for thousands of years - burning plains grasses, modifying forests, thinning specific animal populations, and hunting others to extinction. In retrospect, the rule forbidding Indians from hunting was seen as a mistake. But it was just one of many mistakes that continued to be made in an unbroken stream by park managers. Grizzlies were protected, then killed off. Wolves were killed off, then brought back. Animal research involving field study and radio collars was halted, then resumed after certain species were declared endangered. A policy of fire prevention was instituted, with no understanding of the regenerative effects of fire. When the policy was finally reversed, thousands of acres burned so hotly that the ground was sterilized, and the forests did not growback without reseeding. Rainbow trout were introduced in the 1970s, soon killing off the native cutthroat species. And on and on. And on. "So what you have," Kenner said, "is a history of ignorant, incompetent, and disastrously intrusive intervention, followed by attempts to repair the intervention, followed by attempts to repair the damage caused by the repairs, as dramatic as any oil spill or toxic dump. Except in this case there is no evil corporation or fossil fuel economy to blame. This disaster was caused by environmentalists charged with protecting the wilderness, who made one dreadful mistake after another - and, along the way, proved how little they understood the environment they intended to protect." --dialogue in Michael Crichton (1942—2008) American author, _State Of Fear_ [2004] ^^ - Radical greens are masters at devising exaggerated, imaginary and bogus eco-catastrophes - then imposing policies that give them unprecedented power, deprive other people of their freedoms and opportunities, impoverish entire nations, and cause not just impoverishment, but incalculable misery, disease and death. Of course, they claim their actions are motivated by concern for people, animals and the planet. However, the ecological benefits are often minimal to non-existent, the human toll is profound, and the absence of real compassion, ethics or social responsibility is glaring. Two billion people still don’t have electricity. In Uganda and many other countries, less than 3 percent of the population has regular access to electricity. Abundant, reliable, affordable electricity is a precondition for health, economic and environmental progress. Without it, people cannot have light and refrigeration in their homes; modern hospitals, schools, factories or water purification plants for their communities; economic opportunity or hope for the future. And yet, radical environmentalists adamantly oppose fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric power projects - and insist on inadequate wind turbines, or little solar panels on huts, instead. This means millions of mothers and girls must continue spending hours each day cutting down forests for firewood, or gathering, drying and storing cow dung to burn. Then they are forced to spend more hours carrying water from lakes and rivers that are often tainted with bacteria - and still more hours breathing acrid, polluted smoke from their cooking and heating fires. The results are easily foreseeable. Wildlife habitats are destroyed. Vast areas are blanketed with dense air pollution. And over 4 million infants, children and mothers die every year from lung infections we never even hear about anymore in the USA - millions more from dysentery and other diseases caused by unsafe water and spoiled food. --Paul Driessen (b. 1948) American lawyer and author. _"Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death" [2003] - - The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines . . . hundreds of millions of people (including Americans) are going to starve to death. --Paul R. Ehrlich (b. 1932) American entomologist and author. Prologue _The Population Bomb_ [1968]. In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. --Paul R. Ehrlich (b. 1932) American entomologist and author. On Earth Day [1970]. I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000. --Paul R. Ehrlich (b. 1932) American entomologist and author. [1969 comment.] - I am I plus my surroundings and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself. --José Ortega y Gasset (1883—1955) Spanish philosopher. _Meditaciones del Quijote_ (Meditations on Quixote) "Lector" [1914] For cutting the shoots of trees in city parks that bear flowers or fruit or yield shade the fine shall be six pannas [copper or silver coins], for cutting small branches twelve pannas, for cutting stout branches twenty-four pannas, for destroying trunks the lowest fine for violence, for uprooting the tree the middle fine. --Kautilya [also called Canakya, or Visnugupta], (c. 350—c. 275 B.C.) Hindu statesman and philosopher. _Arthasastra_ (Book of Statecraft), bk 3, ch. 19 - When the Christian Science Monitor recently declared Al Gore "the Rachel Carson of global warming," the former vice president must have bubbled over with pride. There is, it seems, no higher compliment one can bestow on an environmentalist. Next month marks what would have been Carson's 100th birthday, and festivities abound. The author of "Silent Spring" — the 1962 book that birthed modern environmentalism and made "DDT" a dirty word — Carson is the subject of an exhibit at the National Archives and the star of its Environmental Film Festival this year. Considered a secular saint by some, she was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Important People of the Century and is the posthumous recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A book due out on Earth Day (when else?), called "Courage for the Earth," is composed entirely of glowing tributes. Front and center is an essay by Mr. Gore, actually a reprint of the introduction he wrote to the 30th-anniversary edition of "Silent Spring." In it he admits that he is a Carson fanboy — he says that he has a portrait of her hanging in his office and that, "in spirit, Rachel Carson sits in on all the important environmental meetings of [the Clinton] administration." With all the birthday hullabaloo, now seems as good a time as any for a re-examination of Carson's legacy. The display at the National Archives focuses on Carson's time as a civil servant at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries — a sort of archival "Before They Were Stars" for green groupies. It presents early evidence, as the exhibit has it, of her "gift for turning dry scientific writing into prose easily understood by lay readers." Carson, a marine biologist by training, retired from government service after a trio of books on the sea brought her a decent income and modest literary stardom. Her next project, "Silent Spring," did rather more — it changed the world. In it, she wrote: "As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life," causing, among other horrors, "spring...unheralded by the return of birds." The book decried insecticides like DDT as destroyers of ecosystems and threats to human health. The following year, CBS aired the hour-long special that brought her anti-pesticide manifesto to a wider audience, "The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson." CBS received more than 1,000 letters of protest and lost at least two major sponsors — chemical companies feared the public's panicked response to Carson's claims. Until last month, the television program was moldering in the National Archives' vaults. At the time of the controversy, DDT was used widely as an insecticide on U.S. farms. Since World War II, it had also proved remarkably effective at controlling insect-borne diseases, but Carson essentially ignored that fact; so have her successors. Some of Carson's star anecdotes about DDT's carcinogenic qualities turned out to be flawed: Her tale of "a housewife who abhorred spiders" spraying her basement in August and winding up dead of "acute leukemia" by October seems absurd to the modern reader, as does the man who winds up hemorrhaging in the hospital due to a "severe depression of the bone marrow" just "a short time" after spraying for roaches. Neither cancer could have been caused by DDT in so short a time. Partly as a result of Carson's work, the U.S. banned DDT in 1972, around the same time as most of the developed world. In 2001, the Stockholm Convention, a global treaty, banned DDT as part of a "dirty dozen" of agricultural chemicals. The convention contains a tightly circumscribed exception for continued public health use, but even that exception almost didn't make it into the final document. Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and more than 300 other environmental groups fought tooth and nail against it. In recent years, many such groups tried to get a complete ban on all DDT uses by 2007 — in time for Carson's birthday. To what effect? The World Health Organization now estimates that there are between 300 and 500 million cases of malaria annually, causing approximately one million deaths. About 80% of those are young children, millions of whom could have been saved over the years with the regular application of DDT to their environments. Carson cannot be blamed directly for these deaths. She didn't urge total bans in "Silent Spring." Instead, on the single page obliquely acknowledging DDT as an anti-malarial agent, she writes, "Practical advice should be 'Spray as little as you possibly can' rather than 'Spray to the limit of your capacity.'" In the National Archives exhibit, Carson is described as "a passionate voice for protecting the environment and human health." Her concerns about the effects of insect death on bird populations were well-founded. But threats to human health were central to her argument, and Carson was wrong about those. Despite massive exposure in many populations over several decades, there is no decisive evidence that DDT causes cancer in people, and it is unforgivable that she overlooked the enormous boon of DDT for malaria control in her own time. In the years before it lost the public's support in the mid-1960s, the Global Malaria Eradication Programme wiped out malaria in the American South, several Latin American countries, Taiwan, the Balkans, much of the Caribbean, sections of northern Africa and much of Australia and the South Pacific. Exposés like Carson's made the global campaign's methods increasingly unpopular and eventually brought to a halt the effort to end malaria on a global scale. The disease has since bounced back in many developing countries. In the mid-'90s, the only South American country that continued to use DDT, Ecuador, was also the only country to experience a significant decline in malaria. Many countries, like Uganda, remain hesitant to use DDT because European nations have threatened to refuse their agricultural exports if they do. "It's a paradox that right now we are using pesticides at a greater rate than when 'Silent Spring' was published," Diana Post, executive director of an environmental nonprofit called the Rachel Carson Council, told the Washington Post. Paradoxically, widespread use of DDT for malaria control would likely result in fewer pounds of insecticide being released, not more, since countries struggling with malaria are now using much larger quantities of less potent alternatives. Spraying houses in the whole country of Guyana required the same amount of DDT once used on a single cotton field in a single growing season. Carson didn't have the benefit of more than 40 years of additional data, but her successors do. DDT remains the cheapest and most powerful tool for stopping malaria. When sprayed on interior walls, it has virtually zero interaction with wild ecosystems. Yet when the topic of relaxing restrictions in order to save millions of lives comes up, someone inevitably brandishes a copy of "Silent Spring" and opposition is silenced so completely that you could hear a mosquito buzzing in the next room. --Katherine Mangu-Ward "Suffering in Silence" _The Wall Street Journal_ [20 April 2007] {Ms. Mangu-Ward is associate editor at Reason magazine.} & note: KAMPALA, Uganda -- Though Africa's sad experience with colonialism ended in the 1960s, a lethal vestige remains: malaria. It is the biggest killer of Ugandan and all African children. [ . . . ] The U.S. banned DDT in 1972, spurred on by environmentalist Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring." Many countries in Europe and around the world followed suit. But after decades of exhaustive scientific review, DDT has been shown to not only be safe for humans and the environment, but also the single most effective anti-malarial agent ever invented. [ . . . ] Although Uganda's National Environmental Management Authority has approved DDT for malaria control, Western environmentalists continue to undermine our efforts and discourage G-8 governments from supporting us. The EU has acknowledged our right to use DDT, but some consumer and agricultural groups repeat myths and lies about the chemical. They should instead help us use it strictly to control malaria. Environmental leaders must join the 21st century, acknowledge the mistakes Carson made, and balance the hypothetical risks of DDT with the real and devastating consequences of malaria. Uganda has demonstrated that, with the proper support, we can conduct model indoor spraying programs and ensure that money is spent wisely, chemicals are handled properly, our program responds promptly to changing conditions, and malaria is brought under control. Africa is determined to rise above the contemporary colonialism that keeps us impoverished. We expect strong leadership in G-8 countries to stop paying lip service to African self-determination and start supporting solutions that are already working. --Sam Zaramba "Give Us DDT" _The Wall Street Journal_ [12 June 2007] {Dr. Zaramba is director general of health services for the Republic of Uganda.} - [Of the delegates at the 2002 Earth Summit:] They are mainly political activists with not very much actual science background who are using the rhetoric of environmentalism to push agendas that are more political than they are ecological. --former Greenpeace founding member Patrick Moore I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Indeed, unless the billboards fall I'll never see a tree at all. --Ogden Nash (1902—1971) American writer of humorous poetry. "Song of the Open Road", _Happy Days_, [1933] The two greatest environmental presidents in American history were Teddy Roosevelt, who created our national park system, and Richard Nixon, whose administration gave us the Clean Air Act and Environmental Protection Agency. --Glenn Prickett Conservation International, quoted in Thomas Friedman "Despite flaws, energy bill is a must" pub. in _Las Vegas Sun_ [2 July 2009]. - To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed. --Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919) American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909]. Message to Congress [3 December 1907]. Birds should be saved because of utilitarian reasons; and, moreover, they should be saved because of reasons unconnected with any return in dollars and cents. A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great and beautiful cathedral. The extermination of the passenger pigeon meant that mankind was just so much poorer; exactly as in the case of the destruction of the cathedral at Rheims. --Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919) American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909]. "Bird Reserves at the Mouth of the Mississippi." _A Book Lover's Holiday in the Open_ [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916] - Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth. --Albert Schweitzer (1875—1965) Franco-German theologian, philosopher, and mission doctor. In the Introduction to _Silent Spring_ [1962] by Rachel Carson. [After a tour of the Far East:] I have seen the future of much of the Pacific Rim, and I am scared out of my mind. One quarter of the population of the planet, certainly about 1.2 billion Chinese, are about to transform their standard of living, and in the process, wreck a large proportion of the globe. --John Sergeant _Newsweek_ [9 May 1994] Many land animals and birds are disappearing before the advance of civilization. Draining, cultivation, cutting down of forests, and even the introduction of new plants and animals, destroy some of the old and alter the relations between those that remain. The inaccessible cliffs of the Himalayas and Andes will afford a refuge to the eagle and condor, but the time will come when the mighty forests of Bhutan, of the Amazon and Orinoco, will disappear with the myriads of their joyous inhabitants. --Mary Somerville (1780—1872) Scottish mathematician and astronomer. _Physical Geography_ [1848; 1877 edn.) p.504 American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash — all of them — surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered with rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if in no other way, we can see the wild and reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index. Driving along I thought how in France or Italy every item of these throw-out things would have been saved and used for something. This is not said in criticism of one system or the other but I do wonder whether there will come a time when we can no longer afford our wastefulness — chemical wastes in the rivers, metal wastes everywhere, and atomic wastes buried deep in the earth or sunk in the sea. When an Indian village became too deep in its own filth, the inhabitants moved. And we have no place to which to move. --John Ernst Steinbeck (1902—1968) American novelist. _Travels With Charley_ [1962] If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down! --Henry David Thoreau (1817—1862) American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher. _Life Without Principle_ [1863] - We do not inherit the Earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children. --anon. Sign, sign, everywhere a sign Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign? --The Five Man Electrical Band _Signs_ [1971] (song) (Lyrics by Les Emmerson) ----- dendrochronology (noun) [den-drê-krê-'nah-lê-gee] The study of the history of climatic and environmental changes of a geographical region based on the interpretation of the annual growth rings in the trunks of trees. feng shui (noun) Study of environmental balance: the Chinese system that studies people’s relationships to the environment in which they live, especially their dwelling or workspace, in order to achieve maximum harmony with the spiritual forces believed to influence all places. milieu [meel-YUH; meel-YOO], noun; plural milieus or milieux -(z): Environment; setting. . . see: "JEALOUSY" see: "EMOTIONS & FEELINGS" for other related links He who is malicious is also envious, since if the envious man is pained at another's possession or acquisition of good fortune, he is bound to rejoice at the destruction or non-acquisition of the same. --Aristotle (384—322 B.C.) Greek philosopher. "The Art of Rhetoric" [Written 350 B.C] A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others—for men's minds will either feed upon their own good or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one will prey upon the other. --Francis Bacon (1561—1626) English philosopher and essayist. _Essays_ [1625] "Of Envy" By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy. --George Bancroft (1800—1891) American historian and public official. _The Last Moments of Eminent Men_, essay in "North American Review" [January 1834]. The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to bad end. --Sir Max Beerbohm (1872—1956) English satirist and caricaturist. _Zuleika Dobson_, ch. IV [1911] Pain, n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another. --Ambrose Bierce (1842—1914) American newspaperman, wit, and satirist. _The Devil's Dictionary_ [1911] Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope. --Josh Billings [Henry Wheeler Shaw] (1818—1885) American humorist. _The Complete Works of Josh Billings_ [pub. M.A. Donohue, 1919] When we envy another, we make their virtue our vice. --Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636—1711) French critic and poet. Attributed in Maturin M. Ballou _Edge-Tools of Speech_, p. 132 [1886]. The torment of envy is like a grain of sand in the eye. --Chinese Proverb It is because we have but a small portion of enjoyment ourselves that we feel so little pleasure in the good fortune of others. Is it possible for the happy to be envious? --William Benton Clulow (1802—1882) English clergyman. _Aphorisms and Reflections_, XXIX [1843] The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them— they censure. --C.C. Colton (1780—1832) English clergyman and writer. _Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words_, DLXXIII [1824 ed.] The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this the uncivilized have not forgiven them. --Cyril Connolly (1903—1974) English writer. _The Unquiet Grave_ [1944] Never try to keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper that way. --Quentin Crisp [Denis Pratt] (1908—1999) English writer. _The Times_ [22 November 1999] The hen of our neighbor appears to us a goose, says the Oriental proverb. --Madame Dorothée Deluzy (1747—1830) French actress. Attributed in Maturin M. Ballou _Treasury of Thought_, p. 148 [1872]. Nothing ages your car as much as the sight of your neighbor's new one. --Evan Esar (1899—1995) American humorist. Evan Esar _20,000 Quips & Quotes_, p. 113 [1995] Hatred is active, and envy passive, disgust; there is but one step from envy to hate. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832) German poet, novelist, and playwright. Quoted in Maturin M. Ballou _Treasury of Thought_, p. 228 [15th ed. 1894]. I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt. --Ben Hecht (1893—1964) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. _A Child of the Century_ [1954] In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy. --Ivan Illich (1926—2002) Austrian philosopher. _Tools for Conviviality_, ch. 3 [1973] The urge to distribute wealth equally, and still more the belief that it can be brought about by political action, is the most dangerous of all popular emotions. It is the legitimation of envy, of all the deadly sins the one which a stable society based on consensus should fear the most. The monster state is a source of many evils; but it is, above all, an engine of envy. --Paul Johnson (b. 1928) British historian. _The Recovery of Freedom _ [1980] All envy is proportionate to desire. --Samuel Johnson (1709—1784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. _The Rambler_ [15 May 1750] - Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy. --François de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680) French classical author. _Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims_ [1678] The praise we give to new comers into the world arises from the envy we bear to those who are established. --François de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680) French classical author. _Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims_ [1678] - Do we want laurels for ourselves most, Or most that no one else shall have any? --Amy Lowell (1874—1925) American poet. Posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1926. "La Ronde du Diable" [1925] I am Envy. I cannot read and therefore wish all books burned. --Christopher Marlowe (1564—1593) English dramatist and poet. _Doctor Faustus_ [1594] Other passions have objects to flatter them, and seem to content and satisfy them for a while; there is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation. --Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533—1592) French moralist and essayist. Attributed in Watson Adams _The Rule of Life: Or a Collection of Select Moral Sentences_, p. 42 [1834]. If something is pleasant to you, don't forget to tell it to your friends, to make them feel bad. --Casimir, Comte de Montrond (1768—1843) French diplomat. Attributed, in Comte J. d'Estourmel _Derniers Souvenirs_ [1860]. A slowness to applaud betrays a cold temper or an envious spirit. --Hannah More (1745—1833) English religious writer. Quoted in William Roberts _Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More_ [1834]. Envy assails the noblest: the winds howl around the highest peaks. --Ovid [Publius Ovidius Naso] (43 B.C.—18 A.D.) Roman poet. J. K. Hoyt & Anna L. Ward (eds.) _The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations_, p. 520 [4th ed., 1882]. We ought to be guarded against every appearance of envy, as a passion that always implies inferiority wherever it resides. --Pliny the Elder [Gaius Plinius Secundus] (23—79) Roman statesman and scholar. Attributed in _Mental Recreation Or, Select Maxims_, p. 78 [Longman & Rees, London, 1831]. When malice is joined to envy, there is given forth poisonous and feculent matter, as ink from the cuttle-fish. --Plutarch (A.D. 46?—119?) Greek philosopher and biographer. Attributed in Maturin M. Ballou _Treasury of Thought_, p. 321 [10th ed. 1884]. - Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean-favored and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, "Good Morning!" and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich, yes, richer than a king, And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine -- we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked and waited for the light, And went without the meat and cursed the bread, And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet in his head. --Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869—1935) American poet. "Richard Cory" [1897] - Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own nature. --Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919) American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909]. In a speech in Providence, Rhode Island [23 August 1902]. - But it is Schadenfreude, a mischievous delight in the misfortunes of others, which remains the worst trait in human nature. It is a feeling which is closely akin to cruelty, and differs from it, to say the truth, only as theory from practice. In general, it may be said that it takes the place which pity ought to take — pity which is its opposite, and the true source of all real justice and charity [....] Envy, although it is a reprehensible feeling, still admits of some excuse, and is, in general, a very human quality; whereas the delight in mischief [Schadenfreude] is diabolical, and its taunts are the laughter of hell. --Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860) German philosopher. "On Human Nature" in _Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer_, tr. T. Bailey Saunders [1889] - It is the practice of the multitude to bark at eminent men, as little dogs do at strangers. --Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C.— 65 A.D.) Roman philosopher and poet. _Of a Happy Life_, ch. XIX Sloth views the towers of fame with envious eyes, Desirous still, still impotent to rise. --William Shenstone (1714—1763) English poet. _The Judgement of Hercules_ l. 436 To an envious man, nothing is more delightful than another's misfortune, and nothing more painful than another's success. --Benedict de Spinoza (1632—1677) Dutch-Jewish philosopher, the foremost exponent of 17th century Rationalism. _Ethics_ [1677], "Man's Loves And Hates" - Base Envy withers at another's joy, And hates that excellence it cannot reach. --James Thomson (1834—1882) Scottish poet and essayist. _The Seasons_ "Spring" That which makes people dissatisfied with their condition is the chimerical idea they form of the happiness of others. --James Thomson (1700—1748) Scottish poet. Attributed in _The Phrenological Journal and Life Illustrated_ [January 1873]. - When a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies. --Gore Vidal (b. 1925) American writer. Quoted in "Sunday Times Magazine" [16 September 1973]. ----- invidious [in-VID-ee-uhs], adjective: 1. Tending to provoke envy, resentment, or ill will. 2. Containing or implying a slight. 3. Envious. end page | EARS - ECONOMY (THE) | EDUCATION | EFFORT - ELEPHANTS | ELOQUENCE - EMOTION | EMOTIONS & FEELINGS | EMPIRE - ENERGY | ENGLAND - ENGLISH (THE) | ENGLISH (LANGUAGE) | ENLIGHTENMENT - ENVY | ENTERTAINMENT, HOBBIES, & LEISURE ACTIVITIES | EPITAPHS - EQUAL RIGHTS | ERROR - EVIDENCE | EVIL - EXECUTIONS | EXERCISE - EYES | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
||