The Influence of Urban Life

Living in the big city means career, rushing everywhere, stressing for anything and caring about you and only you. When you live in a big city, you can't avoid this, nor escape it. It takes over you without even realizing it. I was rushing from work when all of a sudden i told myself "Stop!" ...breathe, stop running.
So i stopped midway and sat on a bench and watched people leaving their work or going places. Everyone was rushing and no one was making any contact with the people around them. They looked so disconnected and empty.

 All of a sudden, i saw a girl asking people for signatures to stop the cruel and unethical mass breeding of puppies in shelters. I was still on that bench trying to slow down and watching life unfold in front of me. She came to me and asked for my signature. I did and gave a small donation. I felt good for doing my part.
But then i saw the wave of people getting into the subway and no one stopped to sign. Everyone tried to ignore her or refused or they were simply too much in a hurry. Everyone took it as an annoyance to their very important and busy lives. I thought to myself - "How self-centered everyone is! it's just a signature, how can they not care?" But in reality... i do it too. I don't stop. I don't look at them. I say "i have no time", etc...

I learned right there what civilized society did to me and what it does to everyone else...we become uncivilized and disconnected. Even if you think differently and you care about important issues and are a good human being - the influence of the fast paced life is too strong and you start to change without noticing.
I don't want to be this way and i won't let society make me this person. The kind of person who's too in a hurry to sign a petition or is not willing to give 1$ for a cause. Now i will always remind myself to slow down and stop. There is no reason to hurry up.

I will fight to be the person i want to be regardless of what society has to say about it. I won't become a empty shell. Life is so much more than our petty meaningless everyday worries.

We all have to fight for who we want to be.

Life is beautiful....

5 Tips for Dog Owners

Do you have a dog or thinking of adopting a dog ? ...(Notice i said "adopt" and not "buy"!)

As a pet owner myself, i found myself puzzled by how i don't understand my lovely companion who can sometimes drive me crazy. I don't know what he is thinking, i don't know why he's still barking, how to make him listen to me, why he's so mean to others, why he's laying there and not moving.
I don't know him...

So here are some tips on how to raise your pet and best friend (or soon to be):

1 - Find the right Vet.

Try to visit the clinics in your area beforehand. Things to look for?  ...is the waiting area clean? is the staff  helpful and knowledgeable? Look for the veterinarian’s diploma to see when they graduated. Veterinarians that graduated a long time ago may have a lot of experience but may not be as up to date on medical knowledge and technology as recent graduates while recent graduates have a lot of the latest information but may not have a lot of hands-on experience. So in-between is ideal. Find out if the office hours will fit your schedule and if they handle emergencies after hours, some clinics don't. It is better to choose one vet instead of many,  he/she will know your pet well.

2 - Vaccinations.

For people as careless as me, it's easy to forget to keep up-to date with your pet's vaccinations and what they need.
If you have (or will have) newborn puppies. You need to know they do not have innate immunity at birth; they get antibodies from their mother, which helps protect them from disease. Vaccines can be core or non-core. Core vaccines are those that have been recommended by the AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) and can be given to all dogs. Core vaccines are for diseases such as: distemper, adenovirus-2, canine parvovirus-2 and rabies. Non-core vaccines are for diseases such as: leptospirosis, Lyme disease and Bordetella and are only recommended for dogs in specific geographic locations or have lifestyle factors that will increase their risk of exposure to those diseases. Ask your vet for more info these diseases and the risks.

2 - Safety.

This is specially for puppies since they're so tiny but it does apply to all dogs. Consider keeping toxic materials such as plants and cleaning supplies and keep them out of reach. Use baby gates to block off access to stairs to prevent falls. Small objects such as change, jewelry, hair ties should also be kept out of reach as well, they can swallow them. Take garbage out regularly and screen off the fireplace if you have one.

3 - The Challenges of Bathing your dog.

Dogs can smell everything! even your fears and concerns! If you feel badly about the fact your dog hates baths, then he will.
Make peace in your own head with the concept of a bath. Relax! if you're doing anything with your dog, always keep a peaceful attitude! Regular bathing and brushing keeps shedding to a minimum as well. Bathing your dog also gives you the opportunity to feel any unnatural bumps on his skin that might need to be seen by your veterinarian.
Without saying a word, go and get your dog. Don’t call him to you. Put a slip leash on your dog and lead him to the bathtub. Start easy by wetting him down with a gentle stream of water first. Once he’s used to the water pressure, you can increase the intensity of the water. Begin at his neck and shoulders and work your way down his body, leaving his face for last. Make sure to rinse him thoroughly so no irritating shampoo is left behind.

4 - Hyper dogs that don't stop.

Some dogs go on and on and jump around non-stop all day long. You kind of wonder how come they have so much energy! If you have this problem, when you take your dog for a walk try to find the most active and exhausting activity possible.
For example: walking him on your bike or roller-skates, play with him on the beach/lake and always throw the toy in the water (swimming is very exhausting) But Beware! - Running on cement (especially hot cement) can cause sloughing of the foot pads, so try to have breaks on softer surfaces or at least work your dog up to the harder surfaces to give them a chance to adapt gently. Also make sure he/she doesn't get too hot and remember to give him/her water.

5 - The Walk.

 Always keep in mind to stay calm and relaxed when walking your dog. Make sure you let him/her know you are the master! Keep your head up and your shoulders back. Think positive thoughts and envision the dog walk going well. It's all about your attitude and not his, I cannot repeat that enough. If there is noise or negative activity around you, don't stress and stay calm - your dog will feel your tension and therefore get nervous and freak out.
Keep the leash short but not tight. Long leashes make it harder for you to communicate with your dog.
Corrections - But if you make a correction following a problem behavior, it should be quick, and then the dog leash should be returned to the relaxed state.
Giving food is a form of affection, and giving affection reinforces the behavior preceding it. So be careful when you give food to a dog. Make sure is to reward a positive action.

Enjoy!

The Laws Not Followed

There is an extremely high demand of meat and dairy in our world of over 7 billion people. Most people rationalize slaughterhouses by believing there are laws in place to make the whole process humane and painless for the thousands of animals killed everyday to be packed, shipped, and displayed in supermarkets like a box of cereals. But the truth is, there is so much production to keep up with the demand that these laws simply cannot be followed.

What's the result?

The Humane Slaughter Act (HSA) requires that animals be rendered unconscious with one swift application of a stunning device before slaughter. In today's slaughterhouse this requirement is often not followed. For poultry birds (not legally recognized as "animals"), it is never followed. In the case of large mammals, the HSA, for all intents and purposes, is not enforced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), so the law serves in no other way than to make people think that food animals are protected from cruelty. Conveyor lines are pushed to breakneck speeds, frequently causing cattle, pigs, horses and sheep to be shackled and throat-slit without first being stunned. Animals often are skinned, boiled and butchered alive.

Why do we let this happen??????

Why do we consume it????

 In any factory-farm operation today, a percentage of the animals will be sick or crippled. The industry calls them "downers." Federal law does not protect them in any way. Veterinary care is not wasted on them. If unable to walk, a downer will often be dragged by chain or pushed with a tractor or forklift to slaughter. These animals may be left to starve or freeze to death. The downer phenomenon would be drastically reduced if stockyards refused to receive them.

An employee concealed a camera on his body and was able to record what really goes on inside a slaughterhouse (The tape aired in CBS-TV's 48 Hours). The tape showed how a plant with over 300 employees that processes an average of 50 cows per hour with only four USDA inspectors "keeps the line moving." It showed workers taking dangerous shortcuts in cleaning up fluid that had broken out of an abscess from a piece of chuck beef, a severe violation of USDA rules, which require an extended clean-up procedure. A USDA veterinarian commented, "I can say from my experience of nine years and in talking to other food inspectors around the country, this probably goes on on a daily basis."

The Reagan and Bush administrations were lax in enforcing antitrust laws. Consequently, between 1984 and 1994 a third of U.S. packinghouses went out of business. A more powerful industry was able to get faster kill speeds approved even while the number of line employees was being reduced. Meat and poultry safety has been suffering ever since. Early in 1998, it was found that 138,593 "critical" citations were made by USDA regulators against the country's 6,400 processing plants in 1996 alone. Each infraction cited had the potential to sicken consumers if the food had been distributed. Due to loopholes in the law, plants were almost always allowed to continue operating.

Where did our ethics go?

 After years of selective breeding and with the help of modern milking practices, a cow today is robbed of many times the milk her calf would take. The strain on her body is equivalent to what a human would experience jogging six hours per day. Before, a cow might have lived 20 years. Today, once her milk-producing abilities diminish, after about four years, she will be slaughtered and ground to hamburger. In February 1994, the Monsanto company inflicted yet another horror on our friend: a genetically engineered bovine hormone that boosts her milk production by as much as 40 percent. The dairy industry, which was already awash in excess milk (thanks to government handouts), is now begging for price supports.

This is what we have today. Power and money hungry businesses that will easily endanger our health and our lives for profit while government supports it for the same reason...money.
The worst part - no one does anything to challenge their practices and make production, at the very least, safer for consumers.

Inside our "real" humanity

The Secrets of the Universe

The Meaning of Life

Who We Are as a Species

We've always tried to figure out these universal questions ever since life began and we will spend the rest of our lives looking for an answer. The search for the meaning of life gives our own lives meaning and purpose and it makes us grow and evolve. But i do ask myself now with a different angle "What is the "real" purpose of life?"

Why are we here and why are we always trying to be better than what we are. Whether is the superficial like our hair and body, or our intelligence (or lack there of) by educating ourselves, or our spiritual and moral side by trying to make the world a better place. Why can't we accept who we are as we are?
We are inferior beings in every sense of the term: primitive, violent, ignorant and without a sense of purpose. People can try to believe they have a life, are smart, have a career, family and a sense of purpose and direction (maybe called "ambition"). People can also believe they're better because they helped at an orphanage or the elderly but the truth is we are all primitive with no clue where we are going and who we really ...really are. Most people do things with strong belief in them without actually knowing why it is so important to either them or our society. We do things to better ourselves but we don't know why we do them and why we feel the need to better ourselves. Why do we need to better ourselves? why do we need to evolve? how is that better for humanity or the world? are we taking the proper course towards it? If we want to evolve, are we taking the right road?

Are you doing the "right thing"?

Who told you that was the "right thing"?

How do we define the "right thing"?

Who, when and where decided what was right and wrong?

This is not going to change no matter how much technology we develop or how much money we have or how many children we save. These issues will still be there tomorrow.
If we look at our history you'll see humanity, and other species, is and has always been the same way since the appearance of life.We may have laptops now but our essence hasn't changed.

I'm not saying we should stop helping others or we should stop studying to better ourselves and open our horizons. But we should stop for a moment to really think about why we want the things we want.

What is the purpose of that? 

How is that going to make me happy? 

How is that going to help my community?

Why is this important in the grand scheme of things?

The first step towards evolution is by stopping to breathe and... ask questions.

Livestock Generates Global Warming

 

                 
With all the mass production from cattle-rearing, slaughterhouses and the killing of so many thousands of animals we think this is already a very serious problem. It gets worst!!
Cattle-rearing generates more global warming greenhouse gases, than transportation or any other form of emission.
Here is a report "Livestock's Long Shadow-Environmental Issues and Options", written by Mr. Steinfeld which explains this in more detail:

 “Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems,” says senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) official Henning Steinfeld.
With higher demand and population growth, people are consuming more meat and dairy products every year, than ever people in our history. Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes.

 
The global livestock sector is growing faster than any other agricultural sub-sector. It provides livelihoods to about 1.3 billion people and contributes about 40 per cent to global agricultural output. For many poor farmers in developing countries livestock are also a source of renewable energy for draft and an essential source of organic fertilizer for their crops.
Livestock now use 30 per cent of the earth’s entire land surface, also including 33 per cent of the global arable land used to produce food for livestock. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 per cent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.
At the same time herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about 20 per cent of pastures considered degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the dry-lands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management contribute to advancing desertification.
The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth’s increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other things to water pollution from animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops.

Cattle-rearing is also a major source of land and water degradation. The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level.
When emissions from land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 per cent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 per cent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.
And it accounts for respectively 37 per cent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 per cent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.