What a great movie. I would encourage everyone, of any age to go along to see it.

I must say that after seeing the documentary, I was disappointed with the previews that were released. I think that would turn many people off. You would be forgiven for thinking Bruce Willis would be dropping in to save the planet, again.

With that said, the doco is terrifying, captivating and motivating. With Al Gore being a big thinker, it is no wonder this doco neglects to focus on the individual contribution and solution to the problem. Taking that leap and determining what your next action will be, is left up to the people watching. I attended with a group of people from work and other friends so we had a discussion about it afterwards. This made taking that step into practical reality much easier. I would encourage others to do something similar.

Towards the begining of his presentation, he showed a beautiful picture of the earth. One of the earliest pictures of our planet from space, taken by the astronauts on Apollo 8. The lecture goes on to explore some of the global issues facing us and makes some stark (but not over-sensationalised) predictions for our future.

After being taken through this journey, you get a real sense for how huge this problem is. How much effort it is going to take to reverse our damage and how committed we must all be to solving this crisis.

Now, this is where things really changed for me…

So far, I was looking at this from the inside out. Little ol’ me, inside this huge world, making a tiny contribution and hoping others join in to do the same. The issue was so much larger than me. Would my own contribution really help?

Al Gore showed a picture of the earth from the outer edge of our solar system. This was taken by one of the early probes now moving our of our solar system. What struck me was how small the earth was from this vantage point. It was a tiny group of pixels amongst this huge vast space.

I began looking at this from the outside in. With our planet looking so small, it suddenly all felt feasible. My own individual impact can make a difference. This was the turning point in the documentary for me.

So, whilst not the sensationalised documentary I have ever seen, and with it’s own manipulative faults, this movie is a definite must see for all families.

What would you answer if posed with the following question?

Which of the following two items do you think is the most important to you:
Delivering the benefits of new TV and video choice so consumers will see increased competition and lower prices for cable TV

OR

Enhancing Internet neutrality by barring high speed internet providers from offering specialized services like faster speed and increased security for a fee

Well, in a political survey of Pennsylvania residents, 66% opted for the first. This was without any mention that increased competition and lower prices would definitely be a result of dismissing the Net Neutrality bill. Obviously, only 7% of those surveyed had actually heard of Net Neutrality before. As a Valleywag author said,

It never mentioned whether these benefits were real; instead of suggesting “lower prices” and “higher quality programming,” the poll may as well have named “magical unicorn festivals” and “everyone gets to be on the Daily Show.”

One of the beauties of the current Internet is that the smaller content providers can speak at the same volume as those with all the bucks. As soon as a Telstra is able to degrade the transmission quality of other content providers in competition to their own, the equality of the voices become obscured. This really hits home hard when we look at the emergence of VoIP.

As this fairytale illustrates, if you opted to use a 3rd party VoIP provider, your telco could shunt you off to an inferior line and bundle up your voice traffic alongside internet porn. Whilst you probably won’t begin hearing heavy breathing down the line, you will be more likely to hear a series of clicks, empty space and then … a disconnection tone. At the same time, those of you manipulated into using Telstra’s VoIP solution (at possibly a higher cost), would hear the crystal clear tones of your loved ones down the line.

So does this scenario truly offer us with more choice? Perhaps it won’t immediatley diminish the choice but I believe it will certainly degrade the choices we can make when selecting providers.

With over 50% of Australian internet usage directed to the US, the Net Neutrality bill will be certainly felt over our sunburnt land. That is of course if you can get reception outside of the capital cities.

Chris at Murtworld has an interesting post on balancing the various aspects of your life.

I’ve identified certain recurring sets of mood, desire, energy levels, etc. that I sort of naturally cycle through, and each one is ideal for a certain type of action, thought or focus. It’s usually pretty obvious which one I’m in, and I’m now trying to play to the strengths of each mode while I’m in it. It’s very similar to the rather obvious advice of “eat when you are hungry and sleep when you are tired.”

Now, I think this sounds like a very natural way to progress through life. Your body tells you when you’re ready to do some creative thinking, so you exploit that time and make the most of it. Reading through Chris’ post, I realised that my body is naturally tuned to what he calls the “pragmatic mode” during my normal work day (9 – 5). I wonder however whether this is because I have trained my body to be pragmatic during the traditional work period?

Covey talks of balancing your life between the spiritual, physical, mental and social aspects. This approach helps introduce an element of discipline to your decision making process. It is a way of forcing yourself to allocate time to each of the areas that are important to your own personal growth and happiness.

Both methods have their own benefits. Chris’ allows you to maximise on what your body is attuned to at any given moment. Covey ensures you don’t miss out on aspects you recognise as important to your life. The issue I have with Chris’ “modes” is that you simply can’t live your life as a protracted whim. With Covey, you aren’t always able to exploit the mood you are feeling at that particular moment.

So, the questions becomes, how do we combine these two approaches effectively? How do we ensure we do not miss out on aspects of our life which we deem important but do not feel like doing (such as exercise!), yet maximise on how we are feeling at a particular moment?

I’m looking forward to hearing how Chris progresses with this way of organising life.

From Boing-Boing …

Many months ago I started a debate with a technical guy at the Westpac Bank. They were changing their already cumbersome internet banking interface to one which required you to use an online keyboard to log in with.

The online keyboard is incredibly difficult to use. Beside the fact that it isn’t in QWERTY format, it simply encourages poor strength passwords.

Since my argument discussion with the Westpac tech-head, I have since moved banks (yes, because of this one issue.) Thinking about all their propoganda on how this change is to protect our security, I am now happy to tell them – “I told ya so.”

Where I currently work, we’re investigating ways to reduce our carbon emissions (more in this specific project later.) What I found interesting what that as soon as this thought had settled in my mind, ideas and options suddenly presented themselves. It is quite amazing how setting an objective like this makes your mind work towards that goal.

So, what about some of these ideas? There are heaps and it’s becoming a bit of a competition which is nice. Here are a few:

• Turn all the kitchen waste into a compost to be used on the gardens and for the local school / community
• Ban printing on a specific day each week
• Computers and non-critical equipment to be automatically turned off after 6pm each night
• Changing light fittings to more economical models
• Provide recycling boxes in all offices and work areas

That’s just a few really simple things. I’ve already started by making every effort possible to not print anything and recycle any paper products and waste I can.

I’ll keep reporting on how these changes become part of our daily lives here and on any more ideas we have.

[5 minutes later ...]
ARGGHHH! This is going to be harder than I thought. Why is it that health funds and the like still insist on people printing and posting in forms? What gets to me even more is when they say “Join on-line by completing our on-line application form.” People, a downloadable PDF file is not an online application!

I’ve been getting on the environmental bandwagon lately, especially after seeing David Suzuki speak in Melbourne last week. Will definitely be writing more about this topic in the near future. To start though, how about taking a look at Carbon Neutral. Do the CO2 test and see how you go … my results coming soon.

As for reference, the Carbon Neutral site was found through this post on Joshua Gan’s blog, Core Economics.