You should follow @DrWayneWDyer because he is a generous tweeter, whom is constantly sharing beautiful pieces of wisdom. Like this set of tweets he just sent out this afternoon:

Wisdom like the four cardinal virtues of of Lao-tzu is just as taste of the good, source-fuelled tweets you will get when you follow @DrWayneWDyer.

While you are at it, how about you follow me too (@marilynburges)!

Eve Ensler is best known for writing the play The Vagina Monologues and has for being a long time anti-violence activist. In November of 2009 she gave this talk about embracing our inner girl at TED India. Be sure to watch to the end to see powerful piece from her new book, I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, as it is well worth watching.

Eve Ensler states that within each of us, men and women alike, is an inner girl. This inner girl essence is where our compassion, empathy, vulnerability, openness, and  intuition reside. She reminds us that:

Compassion informs wisdom and that
Vulnerability is our greatest strength and that
Emotions have inherent logic that lead to radical appropriate saving action.

But, our patriarchal society has systematically annihilated this inner girl, perhaps more harshly in men than in women, denying each of us the willingness to embrace our compassion and empathy. While we’ve been busy embracing our inner men, our competitive, empire building natures, we have allowed great cruelties to happen. Horrific atrocities against girls, against people, in the form of wars, genocides, rapes, beatings and female mutilations continue to happen each and day, despite the fact that there is a little voice in each of us, trying to yell at the top of her lungs, that this pain must stop. If we embrace our inner girls, and listen to their empathetic cries, would these atrocities continue?

I’ll be honest here, I have long been an anti-feminist. It is not that I don’t believe in equality for women. I most certainly do believe in equality. I believe that each person has inherent value that should never be denied, irrespective of sex, race or any other defining characteristic. I have a distaste for the way the feminist movement was executed, and the results that came out of it. Mainly the doubling of the work force, that essentially cut the value of labour in half, and made it so I will most likely not be able to afford to stay home to raise my children.

Ensler’s sort of feminism is quite different from the variety that I find myself resenting. Watching this moving talk made me realize that I have been throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water. I have been a very lucky person, my parents supported me, and encouraged my endeavours as ferociously as they would if I had been their son. I never felt the effects of sexism growing up. For this I am grateful. Ensler reminded me that not all girls are as lucky as me. Girls across the globe still need to be stood up for, as do our inner girls! Our compassion and empathy must be valued in order to put a stop to violence against against girls, against people.

Comment Zen*

I would love to hear about your views of feminism, both of feminism of the 1960s whose consequences we live with today, and of modern feminism. How does today’s women, and men, best embrace our inner girls to allow the inner girls of tomorrow to thrive?

* The term “Comment Zen” is lovingly stolen from Havi Brooks.

I made the decision to migrate from urpisdream.com to marilynburgess.com, and completely abandon the Urpi brand. I have been grappling with my personal brand for quite some time.  I came up with the brand Urpi’s Dream in early 2009, after a trip to Peru, where I earned the nickname Urpi. I adored the name, and was eager to embrace it as a part of my online identity.

Fast forward a few months and you have me juggling 3-4 separate brands, and not being able to devote myself to any. Today my focus has next to deserted my Urpi’s Dream blog, and it’s brand. When I look at the old Urpi’s Dream blog, I don’t even get that guilty feeling that I’m neglecting something important to me. The content I intend to write on my personal blog is very dear to me. It is the personal brand, or identity that I no longer feel close to.

In the name of simplicity, I am embracing my name and my home as my personal brand. Marilyn Burgess from Vancouver, BC.

Well, I believe I am due a rather large piece of humble pie. I made a huge oversight in the last verion of the Kiva Wordpress Widget. It was actually a bit of an oversight, mixed with a mistake, and a little bit of forgetfulness. That’s neither here nor there though, so lets get to the point.

Version 2.8 doesn’t delete its own cache files. This causes the cache directory to grown indefinately, which is really quite a problem! Not to worry though, the new version not only deletes the last cache file as 2.8 should have in the first place, upgrading the plugin will delete all the unessesary files the plugin has created. This is so important that I decided it should get the version number 3.0!

I’m quite sorry if this mistake caused anyone any trouble on their servers! I strongly encourage every one to upgrade as soon as possible. Either upgrade via the handy Wordpress plugins center on your blog, or manually upgrade.

If  you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

It’s Blog Action Day! The day when bloggers all over the world join their voices to speak on one particular topic. This year we’re talking about climate change. Personally, I think climate change is a rather nebulous term that fails to incite emotion and does nothing to call people to action. Rather than rant on about that, I’ve decided to focus my efforts on Blog Action Day in a positive direction! Lets explore the concept of carbon credits to determine if they may help stabilize our climate.

Green House Gases

We have all heard of green house gases. They are the fumes given off by both human and environmental processes that go up into our atmosphere and get caught up there, trapping the suns energy in our atmosphere; causing the overall temperature of the planet to rise, quite like a greenhouse. The following graph from Environment Canada describes the sources of these harmful gases:

Environment Canada (2004)

The largest culprit is clearly Industry, being responsible for over half of the gaseous emissions on the planet. Regular folks, like you and me, are responsible for our fair share as well within the categories of Transportation, Products, and Heating. I expect that we also have a part in that Industry piece, as Industry is busy making stuff for us to consume.

Everyone knows there is a major problem here. We have to cut back on these gases to reduce our negative influence on our planet, if we wish to continue to call it home sweet home. Turning this big ship around is not an easy task. It involves breaking well-ingrained habits of individuals and business, as well as counteracting the incentives that exist to continue to pollute our air. Lets face it: there is money to be made by emitting greenhouse gases, otherwise people wouldn’t be doing it. Historically there has been no money behind protecting the air, and there was no money to be made in making the right choices for the planet. Enter:  carbon credits.

Carbon credits are a concept that came out of the Kyoto Protocol, which is the legally binding agreement to reduce the collective greenhouse emissions of the industrialized nations to 5.2% below 1990 levels, which 184 industrialized countries have ratified (the US is not one of them). Carbon Credits bring money into the saving the environment equation with a cap and trade system. Each country is allowed to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases that they can allot to the gas emitting businesses within their borders. Carbon credits can be bought and sold between both companies and countries. If a company has left over carbon credits, it can sell them to another company that wants to pollute more than its original allotment of carbon credits allow.

Carbon credits can also be created as carbon offsets.  Companies can create carbon offsets by doing environment friendly activities such as reforestation, and creating clean forms of energy such as wind and solar power. These offsets can then be sold to companies who want to pollute more than they have the credits for, or to individuals who can voluntarily purchase offsets to compensate for their personal carbon footprint.

A whole new industry is popping up around this concept of selling carbon offsets. Plant some trees, sell the carbon offsets. The David Suzuki Foundation states that purchasing carbon offsets can help in the battle against climate change, but warns the consumer that not all carbon offsets are create equal. While carbon credits is far from a a perfect system, it does introduce money into the equation, and puts the power of the free market behind doing what is right for the environment. As sad as it might be, it has come down to harnessing our dark inclinations, such as greed and selfishness, to enforce business to do their part for the environment.

What do you think about carbon credits? Will they have the intending effect of stabilizing climate change, or might the system be perverted by greed? Are you considering voluntarily purchasing carbon offsets to compensate for you and your family’s carbon footprint?