TEMPERATURE EFFECTS ON COMFORT AND HEALTH

24C - top range of comfort

21C - recommended living room temperature

Less than 20C - death risk begins

18C - recommended bedroom temperature

16C - resistance to respiratory diseases weakened

12C - more than two hours at this temperature raises blood pressure and increases heart attack and stroke risk

5C - Significant risk of hypothermia

Source: West Midlands Public Health Observatory

Found this while looking up info for post about Marshall Islands. Interesting stuff the BBC has.

Thing I'm distracted from

Reading the news today, I got angry and defensive when Haiti was referred to as the poorest country in the americas. Then I looked it up, and sometime in the last year Haiti has indeed been reclassed in the human development index lower than any other american country.

But, underneath the status of "low development", there are a whole bunch of "unclassed" countries, which I imagined would be places like Vatican City and San Marino. They're there, but so are Afghanistan, Somalia and Serbia, and some others.

One of the others is the Marshall Islands, who I couldn't even generally point to on the globe. (North Pacific)

They are classed 195th in GDP per capita. (Haiti is 149, and Burkina Faso is 164th) I can't tell you who 195 is near because it doesn't even show up on the Wikipedia list, which stops at 181. To give you an idea of what those countries are doing, here are the ten preceding the cut:

171	Madagascar	908
172	Sierra Leone	903
173	Niger	872
174	Eritrea	858
175	Ethiopia	823
176	Democratic Republic of the Congo	774
177	Yemen	751
178	Burundi	739
179	Guinea-Bissau	736
180	Tanzania	723
181	Malawi	596

I also learned that:

Not being among the 179 member countries of the International Labour Organisation, Marshall Islands is among the handful of countries not obliged to abide by the core labour standards (elimination of forced labour, child labour and discrimination, and respect for freedom of association and right to collective bargaining) as required of ILO members.

The Marshall Islands also host an american testing ground for missiles, and its government is suing the US for increased compensation for its radiation-poisoning victims, according to the BBC Country Profile

Haiti defeats Bermuda in under 20 soccer!

http://www.theroyalgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/
article?AID=/20061025/SPORT/110250178

That is a link to the Bermuda news article regarding their defeat 11-1 by Haiti's under 20 soccer team.

11 to 1 !!!

Haiti did surprisingly well in Carribean Women's Volleyball tournament this summer too, why do we never hear about this in the mainstream news?

I am indeed, starting to feel like we are being distracted from other things by despair about Haiti.

Haiti is poor, don't get me wrong, but there are moments of hope, things to rejoice.

Ordinarily I would say that sports don't do much for the masses, and am annoyed at how much my govt is spending on the 2010 Olympics. HOWEVER, Haiti really does care about football. When there is a game on, even a small game, it is as big a deal as the Stanley Cup playoffs in Edmonton. I can't imagine what it would have been like during the world cup games this summer.

Donc, If arguments are made about sports bringing pride, and that being good for the solidarity of a nation, if it were going to be true anywhere, it would be true in Haiti, where the people really do need a current reason to be proud of being Haitian.

And so, an eleven to one victory against Bermuda, a country of much wealth, seems to me to be worth rejoicing. Although, I admit that there is much dodginess in how it was achieved, and would rather have had a smaller victory more obviously fairly.

(The match was moved from Port au Prince to St Marc, and earlier in the day, instead of in the evening, the day before it was played. I wonder if this was actually an attempt to put the other team of balance, or if the Port stadium was having troubles and St Marc was closest. The noon start time really does seem dodgy though- Unless it was because, given that they had to get from St Marc back to their hotel, the game needed to finish earlier. I wouldn't want to be a rich foreign team travelling at night and have the whole country know it! )

the US political scene: Red, White and Green?

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006
/10/05/gate/index.html?source=weekly

That is a link to articles about evangelical environmentalists.

Not, mind you, environmentalists who are christians, (there are many of those, it isn't news) but christians who are coming to be environmentalists.

I will try not to let my pride get to big about being on the right side of right:)

Besides, given my history, if too many people start to agree with this global warming thing, I might join Dr Dobson and call it hooey.

The most wonderful picture of the day

This picture is curtesy of livejournal Haitian community (featured in links to right).

You will notice there are also quite a lot of other Haitian links, and not much else.

I am not unignorant of Haitian affairs, but I certainly am more ignorant of everything else, and I am concerned about this.

1-Am I distracted from more urgent problems, such as Darfur, Burma, even Afghanistan?
2-Am I actually in love with Haiti, or simply an addict?
3-Can I do anything to make it better there, or am I so ignorant & prideful that the first rule, the "Do No Harm" rule, would be better translated as "VT GO HOME"?

All of this is, I am sure, a part of reverse-culture shock, but I feel like I need more knowledge of that too. Shouldn't I be getting better yet? I have been back as long as I was away.

My roommate, who went through all of this already, gets frustrated with me often, because I hold my ideas too closely, they are the only babies I have here to hold, and so I am angered when she tries to take them and hold them to the light of reason. I try to tell her to give me time to be angry, that I am also listening and will tomorrow agree with her, but this doesn't make it any easier to deal with me when I'm bichy NOW, I'm sure.

Especially when sometimes, eg literacy and what language it should be in, I don't come round to her way of seeing things the next day. I am not ready to condemn Creole to an oral language only. I should do research and see that her opinion is the wise one, but I don't. I don't know why not, although partly I don't really know where to start, and I am tired and distracted by all the other things I feel I should know.

So instead I sleep, and Wormwood's successor drinks happily.

Do those of you in education, or wherever, have suggestions on what I should study to better understand education and literacy?

This is my God-son-of-my-heart. He goes to school and he can talk on phones and he likes the same picture books I did. (Although no mention of munsch, I may have to send him some)

Certainly, I will send him and his mom both letters. Just as soon as I write my grandpa and aunties and mentors and children in Haiti. I think I will need to start drinking more coffee!

It snowed today

And I talked to my best friends and my Dad, and had tea with a friend, and listened to Stuart McLean. I am very rich* and life is good.

Tomorrow, I may even buy a pillow and some shoes. Definitely a teapot. Not that I am an adult and ready to be responsible for my own teapot, but my roommate/friend can be.

*edit: I reread that and feel like maybe it comes across as ostentatious. To be clear, I meant rich in the sense of having friends and family, not two mercedes and a spa membership. I am also material-ly wealthy, in the sense that I HAVE A MATTRESS AGAIN, NO MORE COUCHES FOR AT LEAST THREE MONTHS, WOOHOO!

However, I'd like to think that I'm not the sort of person who would derive self-worth from wealth. Although I will admit to being much happier sleeping on a bed than in the dirt, that is backpain and chills, not self worth talking.

Forgiveness

I was talking yesterday and realized that I forgive my mom not giving me the contact numbers, not because she was trying to do what was best (though I'm sure she was) but because if I'd been able to deal with my friend, if I hadn't myself been messed up and terrified of phones, that "fiddlehead" wouldn't have had to phone mom with a new number, she would have had mine.

This is important, because I KNOW I'm supposed to forgive. But a week ago, I really didn't want to, and now I have, and that is good.

That's the end of today's learning, please rise for the doxology. (which actually, my mom doesn't like, but hopefully she'll forgive me this once.)

BE IT NOTED

That I love Mom even when I am angry at her, and I love Dad when I am angry at him, and that they have done a wonderful job of convincing me that I am loved by them too. I have never feared that they don't love me, only that they might not like me particularly much. Which they can't be blamed for, as I have done some remarkably unlikeable things, and I don't even always like myself.

But I do like cheese.

My best friend's back

My other Best Friend. I have three friends from highschool who were officially my best friends, and two of them I miss all the time. Not often enough that I can be proud of, but often enough that I know I haven't forgotten them, that our lives would be better were we in contact.

The other one, I live with. I'm driving her crazy, actually, and I would worry that we might not stay best friends long. Except that she is the most fantastic person in the world, and when she is sick of me, she says "I'm sick of you" and I go outside and take a walk until she misses me. (OR, that's the plan anyway. Sometimes I'm too engrossed in my book to go outside, so I'd better learn to put my book down, which is something a grown-up should know how to do anyway)

I haven't always lived with her, in fact, it's been less than three weeks. There was a short time after highschool when I didn't talk to her very much, but somehow we got over that and have been getting to know each other again ever since.

The other two, I also stopped talking to during that time, but instead of getting over that, there contacts info changed and I wasn't au courant so I just lost them, and I have never gotten over it.

A Chief Anger I hold against my mother is that she didn't give me one friend's number three years ago. It may have been longer. If you are reading this, my fiddling friend, I miss you, I want you back, and it's not my fault I didn't call. I think about you every time I go to Nanaimo, every time I see a show where boys go into a closet with girls, and sometimes when I rake a lawn. And those are obscure things we only did once, but they are things I only did with you. (Except go to Nanaimo, you did that alone, and therein is the problem)

My third friend, my trucking friend, called me tonight. She has been missing me too, and I am thrilled. Because with her, it is my fault that we lost touch. In college, I had her number, and called her once, but never called her back. It was too hard, the conversation didn't flow. The past three weeks I've been thinking about her more than usual, and yesterday I wrote an email and made a call to destinations I knew were disconnected, praying that they weren't, praying I could get in contact with her again. And tonight, completely independently, she called me, or rather my Dad. He called me and I screamed so loud it made my roommate-best friend crazier. But it was worth it. I called my trucker and she has a beautiful voice, even more Canadian than I remember it being, and we talked for 45 minutes and her son- my god-son in my head even if he doesn't know it-is five and started school and it is good.

I worry that maybe I'm putting too much pressure on this, that she will read this and be totally freaked out, or that we will lose contact again and I will be devestated, and that I should try to keep my cool. But I've no interest in that, at all. This is an answer to prayer, and even if I do lose contact again, at least I will have found out a little about what she is up to, and how to think of her.

Now all I need is to find that third friend.

Oh, and to decide how to deal with a God who answers prayers like "I miss my friend" but not "Protect the people in Darfur from slaughter".