Veronika Wild

Clown Doctors at Work As usual I missed a couple of things this week. The first was the National Day against Bullying on March 16 th and the second was World Water Day on March 22, both important issues, but I have had a bit of difficulty getting on the Web lately (Was it something I said?) and I feel like something a bit lighter myself today, so I thought I might get in early for once and talk about something cheerful. April 1 appropriately, is Smile Day, a fundraising day for the Clown Doctors who have been bringing laughter and joy to children and the elderly in our hospitals.  Anyone who has ever been confronted by a hospital procedure as a child will appreciate what they do. It has also been found to have physical and psychological benefits. In Australia there are 55 Clown Doctors working with around 100,000 people in major hospitals. Their motto is: Smiling is highly infectious. Help spread it around. Easy ways to help are to have a fund raising morning tea, ...

A small window of opportunity still exists to protect access to information, freedom of speech and the democratic processes of the World Wide Web. Congratulations to Google, Facebook and others for refusing to co -operate with authoritarian regimes and not participating in the installation of massive surveillance technology being installed in countries like Syria and Pakistan which aid in pinpointing the location of dissidents, leading to their arrest and sometimes torture and death. Thanks also to Facebook for vowing to take legal action against employers who demand employee 's passwords thus helping to preserve the right to individual privacy. So far too, ACTA, SOPA and PIPA legislation in various countries which were ostensibly about making Internet providers liable for copyright violations but instead lead to continual tracking of all users and content, have been defeated, but don't break out the Champagne just yet. In the first instance, more unscrupulous companies ...

One of the things I missed while I was busy, was International Women's Day on March 8. It seems that a lot of other people missed it too. In fact there is a petition by a man, yes, a man, saying we should commemorate it more. Usually the event is celebrated here with a breakfast or luncheon and a rosy picture in the morning paper of the handful of women who have made it in business or public life. When I think back to the days when I was the first female 'counterboy' in the insurance company I worked for, when married women could not sign cheques or obtain a loan, or how my mother was a temporary public servant for twenty three years with no raise in pay or status, because married women could not advance, I think for a moment that we have come a long way, yet by lunchtime there will be a discussion about closing childcare facilities or why having paid maternity leave as other OECD countries do, will lead to even more women becoming part of the underpaid, unprotected cas...

(Graffiti in the Rivulet) I am supposed to be fixing up the bad formatting in some of last week's posts, but there have been a couple of distractions. In the first instance, while trying to contact a human at Discovery News.com to request permission to use the lovely cartoon which was featured in Mad Magazine in 1974 , I typed Contact in the search box and all I got was news about Alien Invasions and a bit about Contact Lenses. It looked rather like this: _________________________________________________________________________________________ SETI 2060, Do We Make Contact By Then? : Discovery News Will SETI observations be successful 50 years from now? We imagine possible scenarios. Do Aliens Exist? If So, Will They Kill Us? : Discovery News In a new Discovery Channel documentary "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking", the world-famous physicist goes on the record about his concern for Spooky Eye Contacts Can Damage Eyes: Discovery News Those spooky lens...

A couple of lighter stories so that it's not all Gloom and Doom (Thanks for this one T!) No it’s not spring. It just feels like it, so I have been out inspecting the “garden.” I was so inspired by my son’s magnificent strawberry patch, that I planted some myself.  I am pleased to report that the sole survivor is at last getting new leaves. The orphan tomato seedlings are also doing well as are the companion weeds. Despite the fact that I use tons of rosemary on things like rosemary potatoes and Portuguese chicken, the rosemary plant also continues to thrive. Anyway, I took some to a garden swap last week and one of the ladies gave me an excellent tip. Use it instead of skewers when making shashlik or satay beef and the flavour will go right through it.  Haven’t tried that yet, but I’m sure it will be delicious.  Not my Strawberry Patch I love the garden swap, not that I ever have much to bring except rosemary, but you always find interesting things you ...

It was a grey rainy day yesterday and as I looked through the bleak square of window I thought about people in prison. For them it must look like that too with not even the hope that the view will be better tomorrow, so I started off writing a message of support to a man awaiting trial in Florida for taking photos inside the Marine Mammal Conservancy.  Florida  is one of those places that wants to have an "Ag Gag Bill" which would make it illegal for anyone to take photos on factory farms - the only way we have known about the cruel conditions under which much of our food is produced, so I thought it was pretty important to do that. At the same time, I got to thinking it would be even better to help to get someone released, so I started looking through some of the many petitions, especially about people who were arrested for trying to stand up for others or righting a wrong. There were many, far too many. Just a few are listed below. A big thank you too to all those...

One of the main reasons for the survival of these Southern Right Whales and their young is that their breeding grounds are protected. It also helps that they are a long way from human habitation and that they do not rely on echolocation to find mates or food.   For some places and species it is already too late. There has been no recovery of Canada's gigantic  Newfoundland cod fishery, even though fishing has been banned there since 1992 and, despite ever lower catch quotas, the northern cod fishery continues to plummet too. Likewise the catch of bluefin tuna. The yellow fin appears to be fished out. Yes, we can and we must continue to sign petitions. We  should continue to ask national governments to set up reserves, stop destructive practices and prosecute offenders effectively if they disobey the rules, but it is all too apparent that our efforts are fragmentary and that we are putting out spot fires, rather than dealing with the ongoing problems of ocean degrad...

Another endangered species? So far we have mostly looked at the direct effects on fish and the fishing industry. Even in remote places such as the west coast of Western Australia or the most southerly fishery in Australia, I hear the same complaint: that the fishing industry is no longer viable for small fishing enterprises like these. Despite this, there are still 35 million people in 20 million boats ploughing the oceans in search of fish. But its not just the fish or the fishing industry. Every day there are new groups or individuals raising the alarm about this maritime creature or that  -from seahorses in Malaysia to sea lions in Chile , from sea turtles   in Indonesia to the Gulf of Mexico and Cap Verde in Africa, to polar bears and seals in Alaska. Those which are not dying directly as a result of destructive fishing practices, or because they are competing for diminishing supplies of food, are dying because of enormous changes in their habitat. Apart from tho...