Earth hour, which takes place on March 29th at 8:00 P.M. your local time, is an event sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund to raise awareness of the dire1 threat of climate change.
What do you have to do? Nothing much, just turn your lights off for an hour when 8pm rolls around. I’m planning on hitting my circuit-breaker for a total blackout, but you don’t have to go that far. Want to participate? Head over to the Earth Hour website for more information.
Now this is one of those “make a lot of publicity but not have much of a real effect” events, so not even the organizers would argue that this would save the world, so don’t worry about that part of it.
Notes:
- Hyperbole much? Yes and no. My view of climate change is: if we want to kill ourselves slowly, let’s go ahead and do it. [↩]
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
This Pullman trilogy is technically for children, but as recent books such as Harry Potter have shown us, the children’s section doesn’t mean it is childish writing. While anyone can appreciate the story in these books, I think only an adult can truly appreciate what is happening on so many levels and the subtle nudges towards our own world that Pullman litters throughout the book.
The story itself is about a young girl growing up privileged in a world where each person has their own daemon (literally their soul), these daemon take the from of animals and are a persons constant companion their entire lives until eventually they both die. As with all stories something changes and the heroine is thrust into a “save the world” role which she was previously unprepared for. As a result we the reader are able to follow her through her trials and tribulations meeting creatures not of this world, but without taking the typical fantasy route and giving the reader elves and dwarfs.
