Ethic Soup

Cherry Blossom Meditation

     

"... Along the river, over the hills, in the ground, in the sky, spring work is going on with joyful

 enthusiasm, new life, new beauty, unfolding, unrolling in glorious exuberant extravagance --

new birds in their nests, new winged creatures in the air, and new leaves, new flowers,

spreading, shining, rejoicing everywhere."

 

--John Muir   (American naturalist and co-founder of the Sierra Club)

 

The cherry trees have just started to bloom in Washington, DC .

It's the time of the National Cherry Blossom Festival in our nation's capitol.

The festival kicked off March 28 and runs through April 12, with more than a million visitors expected to walk among the 3,700 cherry trees that circle Washington's Tidal Basin -- the partially man-made inlet along the Potomac River, between the Jefferson Memorial and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. This stretch will be popping with a pink puff canopy, along with some fans in the crowd who annually dress head-to-toe in pink to match the cherry blossoms.

  The famous trees were a gift from the people of Tokyo Japan in 1912. That first cherry tree planting featured First Lady Helen Herron Taft and Viscountess Chinda, the wife of the Japanese ambassador to the U.S. Each planted one of the trees that still bloom.

A PRAYER IN SPRING 

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;

And give us not to think so far away

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

All simply in the springing of the year.

 

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,

Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;

And make us happy in the happy bees,

The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

 

And make us happy in the darting bird

That suddenly above the bees is heard,            

The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,

And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

 

For this is love and nothing else is love,

The which it is reserved for God above

To sanctify to what far ends He will,

But which it only needs that we fulfil.

--Robert Frost

 

TO READ ABOUT SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT "NATURE RESTORES THE MIND: JUST A WALK IN THE PARK, CLICK HERE.

  By Sharon McEachern 

 

Hey, Hey, FDA, Whaddaya Say: Are E-Cigarettes Safe, Okay?

   

(Top Photo) Smoke in lungs: dangerous to your health   

(Bottom) No smoke: battery-powered, electronic cigarette 

What the hell is an e-cigarette?

Is it dangerous or safe?  

Is marketing the fake cigarette ethical?

And, where is the Food and Drug Administration on this?   Even though the FDA has been missing-in-inaction for a long time on a whole range of products and issues, it sounds as if they just might respond to this one.

WHAT IS AN E-CIGARETTE?

The e-cigarette, or "electronic cigarette," looks like a real cigarette, glows at its tip like a cigarette and contains nicotine like a cigarette. But it's not a cigarette -- it's a stainless-steel tube.

"When someone puffs on an e-cigarette, a computer-aided sensor activates a heating element that vaporizes a solution -- usually containing nicotine -- in the mouthpiece," reports San Jose Mercury News. "The resulting mist -- which comes in flavors such as chocolate and cherry -- can be inhaled. A light-emitting diode on the tip of the e-cigarette simulates the glow of burning tobacco. The device is powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery."

The e-cigarette was invented in China several years ago. "The Chinese consumed 2 trillion cigarettes in 2007," writes Dr. David Moore, a psychologist and chemical dependency professional, who writes for the New York Daily News. "In the first 11 months of last year, their tobacco sales were up 18 percent! The result was a health system overloaded with fatalities and weakened cardiopulmonary systems. Is it any wonder that China started and still leads the world in e-cigarette marketing?"

Grassley Tells AIG Execs: 'Resign or Commit Suicide'

Senator Charles Grassley offers Hara-Kiri sword  to AIG Execs -- Composite Copyright by Sharon McEachern

 

"Tell us what you really think Senator Grassley," was the Reuters' headline.

Thank God at least one politician said how he felt. We've waited for so long, since Harry Truman was alive. Of course, now that his words have been heard around the world and he's received the publicity he wanted, Chuck Grassley is falling all over himself to take those words back. Harry never did that. It had to do with honor and personal integrity.

A former Iowa farmer, Sen. Chuck Grassley -- known for being colorful and blunt --wants bailed-out insurer American International Group (AIG) executives who are getting hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to act-with-honor. (First it was $168 million in bonuses at the bail-out corporations and now we're told it was actually more like $400 million -- Oops!)

TITS AND HARA-KIRI

With all of America outraged, Republican Grassley went with the political flow and expressed his own outrage to the media, suggesting that : "From my standpoint, it's irresponsible for corporations to give bonuses, at this time, when they are so sucking the tit of the taxpayer," as reported by  Reuters.  That is certainly what most taxpayers are thinking. Of course, they think the same about Congress giving themselves raises, sucking the same old sore tit. Grassley was a farmer. Maybe next time he'll bring with him a can of "Tit Balm."  Or, did he hold out and refuse his raise?

Ethics of St. Patrick's Day: Is Green Dye Dangerously Toxic or Eco-Friendly ?

 It's St. Patrick's Day and everything's turned green -- from beer and green eggs 'n ham to the clothes we're wearing and the Chicago river.  And for the first time in history, following first lady Michell Obama's suggestion, the fountains at the White House are spraying green water today. 

OBAMA'S IRISH ANCESTRY

After all, President Obama is from Irish ancestry. You can't believe it? Yes you can! Besides receiving a big bowl of shamrocks from Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen, a White House tradition on St. Patrick's Day, the President will also get baptismal documentation of his Irish ancestry today. The president's great-great-great grandfather (named Fulmouth Kearney) on his mother's side grew up in Ireland, reports the Belfast Telegraph.  

The White House will also celebrate St. Paddy's Day with Irish music. Shannon Rovers, the official pipe band of the Chicago St. Patrick's Day festival, will perform tonight along with Maggie McCarthy, a traditional Irish performer from Cork who plays the Irish fiddle and step dances at the same time, reports The Caucus blog of The New York Times. Celtic Thunder, an all-male singing ensemble, will also appear. And Paul Muldoon, the Pulitzer-Prize winning poet from Northern Ireland, will recite his poetry.

Happy Pi Day Mr. Einstein!

   

Today is Pi day! Let's P-a-r-t-e-e-e !

 Huh?

Okay, you're not a math nerd. You haven't been waiting all year to spend March 14 playing pie-in-the-face with other math nerds. 

But, you should at least be aware.

Today is March 14, or 3.14, which is Pi. Get it? Mathematicians gather to party, celebrating science's most famous strange number -- Pi. And as fate would have it, it's also Albert Einstein's birthday. The party just got exciting.Time to get irrational.

NO FRACTIONS ABOUT IT, IT'S IRRATIONAL

Pi begins with 3.1415926535 ...ad infinitum without repeating. It is the figure obtained when the circumference of a circle is divided by its diameter, and it cannot be expressed as a fraction -- making it an irrational number. Computers have calculated it to more than one trillion digits past the decimal point.

It's fundamental throughout the field of mathematics. You can find it in the measurements of the Great Pyramid. Mathematicians have worked hard trying to find patterns in its infinite string of digits, convinced there is a message in the math.

Abortion Saves Raped 9-Year-Old Girl's Life: Vatican Excommunicates, Furor Among Brazil's Catholics

 

Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio

 

Hang on to your veil and don't drop your rosary. This story is beyond belief!

A little 9-year-old girl in Brazil has been raped repeatedly by her stepfather ever since she was six.The girl was found last week to be four months pregnant after being taken to the hospital for stomach pains, reports The New York Times.  The girl was pregnant with twins. Doctors told her distraught mother that the 80-pound child was too small to carry the twins to full-term. Labor would be dangerous and probably kill her.

EXCEPTIONS TO ABORTION LAW

 Although abortion is illegal in Brazil -- the nation with the largest percentage of Catholics in the world -- there are two exceptions to this law. Abortions are allowed in cases of rape or when the mother's life is in danger. Both of these exceptions apply to this case. An emergency abortion was performed.                                                   

TOO BAD, SO SAD

Here's the shocker. The Catholic Church does not care that the girl became pregnant due to rape. Too bad. The fact that she would probably die if she gave birth to two babies? Too bad, so sad. Her mother should be willing to sacrifice her child's life.

Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, from Brazil's coastal city Recife, has announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the mother of the local girl -- along with the doctors who performed the procedure. By the way, the accused stepfather, the rapist, is not being excommunicated. The archbishop said that the rapist would not be thrown out of the Church, because although he had allegedly committed "a heinous crime," the Church took the view that "the abortion, the elimination of an innocent life, was more serious," reports the Belfast (UK) Telegraph. 

Daylight Saving Time: More Heart Attacks, Fewer Accidents

 

It's time again to "spring forward" and get another hour of sunlight in the evening. Most people, however, don't know about the health and public safety effects of Daylight Saving Time (DST).

You don't have to worry about it if you live in Arizona or Hawaii. These two states do not observe DST and neither do the three U.S. territories -- American Samoa, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. They all get lots of sunlight anyway.

By the way, drop the final "s" on "saving." The official phrase is "daylight saving time," which is not pluralized. Interestingly, a whole lot more folks Google the wrong phrase compared to the correct one, according to U.S. News & World Report. 

There are some interesting facts about daylight saving time:

THERE MUST BE A LAW

                               Although most people  believe there is a federal rule mandating that states or territories observe daylight saving time, there is none.

There was a 1918 law which legislated for the observance of DST nationwide, but that section of the law was repealed the next year. After that, DST became an issue left up to local jurisdictions. It was actually the Germans and their WWI allies that began using it first.  Daylight saving time was observed nationally again during World War II, but after the war's end was not uniformly practiced.

It wasn't until 1966 that Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which standardized the start and end dates for DST, yet permitted individual states to stay on standard time if their legislatures allowed it, according to National Geographic News.

Daylight Saving Time seems to both end and save lives.

America's Mayors Keep Getting Arrested: Hartford, Baltimore, Racine

Gulfport, Mississippi Mayor Brent Warr and wife Laura arrested -- a composite photograph

 

America's mayors keep getting arrested. Some bring their spouses along.

Wanna get lots of money and be a criminal? Just get elected mayor in America and you're almost there. Okay that's a slight exaggeration. There are some honest mayors. And probably quite a few that just haven't been arrested yet.

Ethic Soup first wrote about arrested mayors back in December, "Birmingham Mayor Arrested: Langford Joins Jailed Mayors Club."  It was a round-up article and included Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Fairbanks Mayor James C. Hayes and 9 other mayors. We planned on writing an annual post on the subject -- if warranted. Surprise! It's warranted now -- just three months later. Yep, there's a whole new batch of mayors singing  'Jail House Rock.'

Gulfport, Mississippi:

Mayor Brent Warr and his wife, Laura, were arrested in January charged in a 16-count indictment. They are accused of lying to get federal grant money for a storm-damaged beachfront home they owned, but didn't live in. The charges make Mayor Warr (pictured right with President Bush) the highest ranking official to be accused of fraud related to 2005 Hurricane Katrina. Prosecutors say Warr and his wife applied for FEMA money, lied by claiming the beachfront property was their primary residence and schemed to defraud Lexington Insurance Co. and the government of $222,798.10.

Hartford, Connecticut:

Mayor Eddie Perez went from being a one-time gang leader to become Hartford's first Hispanic mayor and historically one of the city's most powerful mayors -- until his arrest for bribery, by having a city contractor do $40,000 in renovations to his home and not paying for it until confronted by investigators. The contractor was previously awarded a $5 million city streetscape contract. With the bribery charge, the Perez name was added to a long list of crooked politicians which has given the state the "Corrupticut" nickname.

Doodling Helps Memory and Attention

"Doodling" Copyright by Sharon McEachern

"Pay Attention!"

The boss, the teacher, the spouse -- all should take heed. When you're talking and your employee, student or significant other is doodling don't assume that they aren't paying attention. Science says they are. In fact, those who doodle instead of looking into your baby blues will actually remember your words better. That's the good news.

The bad news is that when your "audience" is doodling it may indicate that your presentation is B-O-R-I-N-G and they are desperately attempting to listen to your message, even though it may appear otherwise. 

DOODLE GOOD FOR NOODLE

We all know that doodling is frowned upon in meetings and classrooms, but why does it help you remember details in a really boring presentation? As Live Science writes "the back-of-the-envelope" speculation is that doodlers don't daydream as much.