DarkWitch

You are more powerful than witches of the Four Material Elements, and everyone knows it. Your powers stem from darkness and the night. Many have shunned you, and called you evil, even though you may not be. Most of the time, you try not to pick sides, only maintain the balance of nature. You love people, but refuse to show it, afraid that people will use it as a weapon against you, even if you could kill them with a thought. But you wouldn't do something like that....would you?Common Powers: Telekinesis- the ability to move objects with ones mindAstral Projection- the ability to project a copy of one's soul to another location, retaining all the sensesTelepathy- the ability to read thoughts, and plant themNight Vision-the ability to see in pitch blackness perfectly.Dark Weaving- the ability to conjure and control shadow creatures, objects, and spells that nothing can destroy or kill but the user.

 
 http://www.quizilla.com/users/ChildofChaosAndDarkness/quizzes/What%20kind%20of%20witch%20are%20you%3F/

Plan to walk towards concious autotransformation

Weekly plan!!!

Observe the all and try to see what your thoughs are about. Important! do not judge! 

First day:  Corporal expresion.  What postures do we adopt when talking, walking, eating, sleeping; special attention to the back.

Second day: Verbal expresion. The way you speak, modulation, entonation, yokes, critics, etc.

Third day: Emotional expresion. Love, joy, sadness, compasion, heat, fear, madness...
 
Fourth day: Intelectual expresion. Think about ideas, reasoning, analysis, beliefs, ideas, toughts. 

Fifth day: Expresion of the will. Desicions, strenghts, determination, willness.

Sixth and seventh day is about making a list of plus and cons of all the above aspects and prioritizing those we want to change.

Oración

    Permíteme orar, no para obtener protección contra los peligros, sino para afrontarlos sin temor.

    Permíteme pedir, no alivio a mi dolor, sino el valor de superarlo.

    Permíteme buscar en el campo de batalla de la vida, no aliados, sino propia fortaleza.

    Permíteme no suplicar, temeroso, por mi salvación, pero sí tener paciencia para conseguir mi libertad.

    Concédeme que no sea un cobarde, sentir tu misericordia en mi triunfo, solamente; pero deja que, en mi fracaso, encuentre el apretón de tu mano.

Rabindranath Tagore

School of Sciences

Concordia Univerity,
Canada 2002.

One sunny and warm afternoon -in the middle of January?. I was sitting in front of a beautiful Lake in Montreal, next to me there was a family fishing. After almost three hours without catching any fish, the family decided to go over the food they had brought with them -just in case they did not catch any fish-. After a few minutes, the younger member of the family asked his father "Why are there any fish in the lake?" his father answered him, "Well, the fact that we did not catch any fish does not mean there are no fish in the lake".

Without catching any fish, they started to eat the food they had prepared (not much, just sandwiches, salad, bread and wine). Soon after, the dog started to bark because a man was coming over with lots of fish and, as soon as the little guy saw him he couldn't wait to ask: How did he catch all those fish?

The only thing the man responded to the young boy was -Up the lake is my favorite place for fishing but, today the lake has a different color and the fish were swimming slowly; something strange is happening, they don't look healthy-. Then, our young inquisitive guy asked his father- how do we know if we are healthy? Or, how do we know if a fish is healthy?, the father couldn't give him any answer.

With these ideas in my mind, I came home and I couldn't take any rest thinking which would be the best answer to give this little boy; knowing that they are our future and that anything we tell does really have an impact in their minds.

As humans, we are built upon our needs, i.e. food, dress and home. Who cares where the food we are having does come from?, Just eat it! ... Isn't it like that? The only thing we know is that if we eat nutritious food, chances are, we are not going to get sick that easily, which means that we will be a healthy individual. But have you thought on the existence of healthy ecosystems?

What relation does this has this to do with the food you eat everyday?

Our lives, run surrounded by millions of products that we have got used to, but, we don't know (in many cases) where does the food we are having comes from (an Organic Farm, GMO (Genetically Modified Organism)'s, massive agriculture, regular farm, etc ) we don't have a conscious mind for knowing what happens when we use our cars, or the refrigerator, the toilet, sprays, etc.

We don't even know what happens with the trash we discard everyday!

But there is also another fact... Do we really want to know? .... if so,

How good will it be to know"?

These questions can be answered if we think in terms of time:

How does this lake will look like in ten years? 

Will we be able to manage to keep diversity as it is now? And, at the same time keep on building big factories next to lakes?

What do we have left for the future generations?

Sometimes, we think that the only duty we undergo is to leave enough money at your favorite's Bank Account and that it will secure the future for your Kids and that by doing so, they will grow healthy and happy.

But is there any future for Health without a healthy ecosystem?

So let us think about it. I'm not talking here about the regular visit we pay the doctor every time we feel in bad condition or sick; I'm talking about something that wanted or not, comes due to   gross population that living in this Planet; I'm talking about the Environment and How do we ‘use it'.

Here are diverse answers related to the work we are involved in and the City we live in.

For some people, the Ecosystem is just something that we have for us to use, no matter how, where or when. Sometimes, it can happen to find just one family fishing in the lake; but sometimes we find large ships fishing trawling on bottoms or big factories destroying hundreds or thousands of forest to build a hotel. Thus, as we can see it all depends upon needs, sometimes we need the small fish but there are others who need the forest to be deforested.

People have different thoughts, feelings, and needs and therefore require different resources.

Sometimes no matter if we have the resource we may not be able to use it due to governmental and political reasons. Here, the old saying ‘Use it or loose it' does not necessarily takes place. Some of us live in the City, others in the Woods, others at the Coast and so on. Lifestyle and resources depend upon where we live. Large cities usually cultivate the need of more resources, which is one of the reason's why people want to move to the City (work, more commodities centralism, not in all countries, thou)!.

But why do many people want to move to the most polluted, devastated, and exploited ecosystems as the city?

The fact is that we don't see the pollution it does not mean it is not- Remember?

One of the most important issues is that people who decide to move to the city ignores is land degradation. And if they do know (as many of us do) we don't want to change anything to make it a better place to live, because probably that will represent expenses for us; and here I will need to be clear because someone of you may think: What is better? ... Better for whom?

Ok let me get things clear,

If we have a plant at home, we see how the more space it has, the nutritive the soil is and the more water it receives, the healthy the plant becomes. So, if it is healthy then is better, it has improved as an organism. Humans are as plants, vulnerable to the environment and the quality of food we have.

The way scientist looks for indicators of ecosystem health condition (as a doctor will do on you) has to deal with aspects as the capacity of resilence: how long does the ecosystem take to recover after a perturbation. As well as the capacity of resistance: How easily is for the ecosystem to maintain itself the way it is after a perturbation. Generally we have to look for maintenance of organization and also if it allows for fulfillment of reasonable human needs.

These indicators are just concepts that sometimes can help us to understand for instance what is happening with the tropical forest right after deforestation (perturbance). The problem is that even by knowing this fact; we can not tell what it is going to be for future of that ecosystem after another perturbation. We cannot make risky asseverations such as "This forest is resistant and resilient enough to support another big deforestation or to build another big hotel!"

Why not to predict?

We are dealing with Nature, which as we all know it changes in an unpredictable way -this is probably our lack of knowledge-. It is like having an immense experiment in which you can't control what is going to happen, it's an open space in which many things are happening at different levels: atmosphere, lithosphere (soil), and underground level (which is the most important for nutrients and energy recycling), all these systems are all interconnected!

As we can see, the problem resides in how to know and communicate what is going to happen if a company decides to build a big hotel in front of the beach -this is just one example-.

These large companies have different ‘needs' which often do not act in accordance with those of the general community. The ecology scientific sector, with a little more of knowledge, may look for a way to make people understand that it is not a good idea to build a hotel in a place in which we do not know -we can make a environmental impact survey-. But, unfortunately we are dealing with Mr. Improbability whereas they (the big companies) have lots of money and most of the time the political agreements are made against those that lack power, money and position for combating those things.

And, What about the people who live in the place in which the company is thinking to build the hotel? they do not have a choice but to grab the money and leave their home.

Here it comes the need of an integrative thinking, a way in which everybody can work together and where decisions are based on previous agreement for the involved sectors (scientist, politics, and the community), the need to join interests, needs and values and minimize the conflicts between sectors. The need of understanding Ecosystem's Health.

What does Ecosystem Health means?

To me it means "A new set of values, changing my values, changing my actions and changing others' values and actions."

Ecosystem health is characterized by important principles with which we work and that take care of:

-   O, R, V 

Organization: Species composition and interactions.

Resilence: The capacity to ‘bounce back' after disturbance.

Vigor (or productivity): Production of biomass characteristic of that particular Ecosystem.

- Ecosystem health is trans-disciplinary and considers:

Bio-physical dimensions

Socio-economic dimension

Cultural dimension

Human health dimensions

And how do we measure damage to the Ecosystem by humans?

That can be issued as: Anthropogenic stress and includes, among other issues, the physical restructuring of ecosystems, the waste of residuals, over-harvesting of goods, the introduction of exotic species, and different processes that lead to climate change.

As Dr. David Rapport said:

"Anthropogenic stress...For how many situations is there agreement on the major indicators of ecosystem condition, and based on that, for how many cases are there reliable temporal and spatial data on these conditions? It is not only on the ecological dimensions of ecosystems, but also of the socio-economic, and human health dimensions which are equally important."

- Ecosystem Distress Syndrome

Confirms loss of Ecosystem Health, some biophysical manifestations are, so far: low species richness, loss of native biota, increment of disease prevalence, abnormal levels of primary of secondary production, low efficiency of nutrient cycles, accumulation of contaminants in biota, high dominance by exotics, small life forms, rapidly reproducing species. There are many dimensions in which we affect ecosystem health: economic, cultural, social.

- Ecosystem Health determines Human Health:

Vector-borne diseases, asthma, food security are recognized as human health burdens.

There is a decisive gap between what we know and what we do. There is a trade-off between what we understand as development and what we expect from the environment. The human behavior is, in most cases, destructive to the environment and this behavior rises from the societal value and the economic initiatives.

A final word:

Ecosystem Health is more than an analogy: it is a property of all living ecosystems, it is more than a concept with rules to follow and many ways to live. It is, somehow, the need of cooperation from everyone, no matter the age, the economic position, expertise, etc.

It is an invitation for everyone who desires to change their quality of life and the quality of life for the future generations.

An Ecosystem Health program is currently running at the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry of the University of Western Ontario, year by year is pleased to welcome people from every country, you will be surprised of how much you learn and how this experience can change your life!

By

Suzzette Tamez Cruz

I'm just manifesting that I do not agree the idea tha IFE (Instituto Federal Electoral) has performed a  "clean" roll in Mexico's 2006 election process.

I feel deceived by mexican government

And is all I'll say, for now.

... many different actions will arise from these election process,

How do people feel?,

What do people want?

And if wouldn't govern the right block (PAN), will rather, the left block (PRD) be as Chaves in Venezuela? -this idea came from a Venezolan friend-

Ufff !!!!

I'm not "in politics" that much but,,

 is just that now (as I perceive) it requires more attention from us, Mexicans, Democracy?!´

......0''%&(%&----   Yes, just wanting to share the feeling..

Thanks!

Hasta pronto \\\\\\\\