Some of you may not be too thrilled to hear that money doesn’t grow in trees. In these difficult times, environment and social issues would be the hardest hit and for such a good reason, money does a lot of talking! Inefficiency on spending are beginning to surface everywhere in different parts of the governments. There are primary reasons I could list: unacknowledged staffing, understaffed, stressful staffs, lack of strong leadership, low staff morale, or communication issues. If these issues are at your workplace, you are not going to have a very good time no matter how hard you work.
Before cuts or the source of funding disappears, we shall look at efficiency and the people that surrounds it. We would not want the people that needs the money the most suffers. We would like to understand where the mistakes occur, where the staffing skills needs to upgrade to handle ie: customer service or the knowledge of the product(s). In terms of leadership, we can’t really train a leader, a good leader should be able to execute the tasks to the employees. He/she is hopefully a fair and a balanced listener, an open-mind when needed. Don’t forget the basic: communication. It sounds easy, but doing it takes loads of effort and time!

I really keep an update and read a bit on H1N1 flu and heard a lot about the myths and the hype about the flu. I think common sense would only be the best weapon to fight the flu as always. Until I heard about the first cat got H1N1, I thought common sense would be fine. Thus far, I have a few friends having their H1N1 flu shots and they are fine. When you have to think of others reside at your residence, you always have in mind that you want to do the best thing for the young and the vulnerable. Right or not, only in time, the results will be shown later on. I wish the flu shot would not become the political debate that it has been right now, but it has. At the end, I wonder does the order of who gets the flu shots first matter?

This is no easy task to write about the changes in the media: print, Internet, mobile, Twitter and more. I can only say that it has evolved since I grew up in the last decade. I do know that we watch TV less, read newspaper less, watch our mobile TV more, read Tweets more, watch YouTube, read free minute dailies or read other people’s blogs. Our world changed since the golden time of newspapers, where investigative journalism are the main focal point. Now news needs to be instant, quick, not the most accurate, and fresh. No wonder our trust to the traditional news sources are lost. Meanwhile, the new news media did not sufficient job to fulfill the need to do the research, due to lack of human power, money, resources and perhaps the will. Also instant-tanly and what smells fresh to the faces of the news media will sell! The fact that people like me or you can be videotaping or be a citizen-journalist is a concern. I do see some hope now that there are a little bit of regulations from FCC to regulate bloggers. I also believe that voluntary regulations should be implemented so that ordinary people would be protected from so called: false reporting or paparazzi.
Lets see: Now Mr. Murdoch Plans To Hide His Sites From Google? I don’t know what he’s thinking? I don’t know what is the media themselves are thinking? Two different worlds are not exactly linking with one another, yet they each want to continue to breakthrough new technology? Any takers?

clipped from www.wired.com The Smart List: 12 Shocking Ideas That Could Change the World Warning: The ideas expressed here may be dangerous. For this year’s list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble. We wanted radicals, heretics, agitators—big thinkers with controversial, game-changing propositions. We found a prison reformer who wants to empty jails, an economist who thinks foreign aid hurts more than it helps, and a military theorist who believes the US should launch preemptive cyberattacks, right now. Then there’s secretary of defense robert gates, who wants to win wars, not just prep for them. Risky? Sure. But this is no time to play it safe.

Ideas that shocked the world are not really shocking @ all. I think what we should note: end aid to Africa is not a new idea at all. Ending long term aid would be a goal,but far from ideal for some countries now.
I don’t know the idea of autistics would be appealing to most people. Personally, I think some merit must be placed on their ability to choose what they would like to pursue instead. IT fields usually called as ideal for autistics, but I cannot conclude all are created the same. Lets those folks decide for themselves.
Human cloning: I would like to say, I am not too keen on human cloning, I am more into the idea of: Cryonics.
In terms of taking risks, it all depends on your own personality and your situations or your disposition! Are there ever such a term as: smart risk? I wish!

The US budget deficit more than tripled to a record $1.4 trillion (£877bn) in the year to 30 September, according to US Congress estimates.
It was revised from 1.6$trillion from their end of the fiscal year. Yikes its still quite a lot of trillion!
The last deficit was recorded $459billion, meaning billion, from 2008! Yikes!
We would like to know what we could buy or go though wards, someone would know the gritty stuff soon, I hope! Certainly, it would buy some social programs, and we do know the cost of war(Iraq) do cost trillions!
What do you think the amount of debt proportional to the US population?
via BBC News

School changed since I went a decade or so ago.

The following video, there are children singing praises of President Obama.

Note: Although it was not mentioned very much on the mainstream media besides in the conservative media, the questions would be: what do school teach children?  Is school a place of feeding ideas of one’s agendas?  Is school a place of educating different philosophies?  Is school a place to discuss about current politics?

Source: Conservative Issues via Fox

Picture via Encyclopedia of Earth

Nine boundaries were identified including climate change, stratospheric ozone, land use change, freshwater use, biological diversity, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to the biosphere and oceans, aerosol loading and chemical pollution.
I do not know typical people would understand the mixed results that scientists come out with.
Global Warming Could Cool N. America in a Few Decades? http://ow.ly/qMbw (via National Geographic)
Earth is a complex planet that constantly are changing, true are our environment are in need to be cleaned up, but without the whole world’s cooperation, or understanding the fact that it would harm our overall health, our food supplies, until then, our Earth would remain questionable.
For the whole article read: http://www.stockholmresilience.org/planetary-boundaries

The Queen Mother: The Official Bio by William Shawcross is as official as it may come.  It may come as ironic to another royal film right now that is now touring at the film festival circuit in Toronto on Saturday, Sept 19, The Young Victoria.

Now lets see about the Queen Mother’s book: it was exclusively accessible to the author on letters, correspondences, tapes, interviews and diaries.  The England folks thus far gave blunt reviews.  I don’t know how I can before I read this 1,  book.  I did find a bit surprising that the royals would allow the access of the Queen Mom’s private thoughts.

In our society, we do increasingly forget about our past historical figures, sometimes, these people do serve very important point of the history and cultural purposes, at times, even people’s hopes and dreams.

I wonder how would Queen Mum be remember in a 100 years from now?

ref: AFP