“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

Yann Arthus-Bertrand is releasing a free to download movie on June 5th (Friday). I will be making a point of downloading it the moment it’s released and am REALLY looking forward to seeing it.

Yann is a passionate talker who’s very much interested in the caring and conservation of the Planet we all live on.

“We don’t want to believe what we know is true” is one of the quotes from a recent TED talk about his photojournalism that really struck me. It’s very sobering to hear that statement. I’m hearing more spokespeople for the environment regardless of their chosen profession making more stark, real and simple warnings about the ignorance of the efforts of the conservation organisations and climate change professionals.

I’ll post a review of the movie Saturday morning after I’ve watched “Home” and I hope it’s going to be a positive write up. I’m sure the movie will be beautiful if not somewhat depressing. Seems to be part of the bag these days though, noone’s taking any serious bloody notice, people are really struggling to find anything positive to spin about the events and predictions of the future climate.

I’m reading Lovelock’s new book “The vanishing face of Gaia – A final Warning” at the moment and will post my thoughts on that too after the weekend.

Peace and Out.

UPDATE  – I forgot to post the link to Yann’s site.. Go here

I’ve booked myself and my housemate up on a 3 day Survival Course in late July with Trueways Survival School. I had originally intended to do the 5 dayer in Cumbria, but sense came back to me and I realised that 3 days and in the New Forest would be a good enough taster for trying out the Schools teachings and it’s a 45 minute drive rather than the half a days worth of driving it would have taken me to get to the Cumbria course!

Still, really looking forward to learning some crafts and stuff.. not so sure about eating ze worm and that, but it’s all about Survival innit!

Being as it’s Sunday and the traditional day for wandering into your chosen place of worship, I can’t help but place some well worded quotes here which I found from a thread contributor to an intriguing blog yesterday.

I don’t intend to offend anyone in particular – though these quotes likely will depending on your chosen persuasion – If you do choose to take to heart any of these comments I suggest you read the blog linked above and see the VERY long discussion it’s created, naturally, about religion. My point of view falls fairly and squarely in the Agnostic and/or Atheist camp, probably Atheist as the following quote sums it up nicely for me :-
“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.”
-Isaac Asimov

I seriously doubt I will be the first person in the modern world to find tangiable evidence that I can take to some other person and say “look, here’s God”. So I’m with Isaac on this one.
Below are the rest of the quotes I thought were well written.

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
-Stephen Roberts

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
-Epicurus

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
-Seneca the Younger 4 b.c.- 65 a.d.

“Don’t pray in my school, and I won’t think in your church.”

“We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.”
-H. L. Mencken

“The pioneers and missionaries of religion have been the real cause of more trouble and war than all other classes of mankind.”
-Edgar Allan Poe

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of….Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and of my own part, I disbelieve them all.”
-Thomas Paine

“The idea of God was not a lie but a device of the unconscious which needed to be decoded by psychology. A personal god was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and for life to go on forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshipped by human beings out of an abiding sense of helplessness. Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity. It had promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity had come of age, however, it should be left behind.”
-Sigmund Freud

Arteriosclerosis

Here’s to those of you nailing 10’s or even 100’s of pounds/dollars on Sports Nutrition out there.. Have a read of this.

• 3g’s or more per kilo of body weight a day of protein is really quite BAD for you (Arteriosclerosis & Kidney Problems).
• Generous and continuous Protein Supplementation leaves your body assuming that that much protein is always available in the diet, subsequently when you stop supplementation, muscle loss ocurrs due to the body not accounting for the fact it has to work again to extract protein efficently from food in it’s naturally ocurring amounts. (Nice way of you continuing to buy vendors products for fear of muscle loss eh!?)
• It seems accepted that 1.6/1.7g’s per kilo of body weight a day is all enthusiastic gym goers and general atheletes need to ensure you are fuelling hypertrophy to it’s fullest extent.
• When increasing calorific intake, the proportion of those Calories made up of Protein increases in a linear fashion. So anyone ‘eating well’ using  a wholefood/non refined food lifestyle can see that if you add up the protein intake from a 4000kcal a day intake will more than easily fulfil the daily requirements of Protein.
• Protein Supplements seem useful in THREE very specific siuations.
  1. Timing, ensuring you get the Protein to the muscle in a timely manner, before and/or immediately after exercise.
  2. Convenenience, Not many people carry round snacks containing a rapidly absorbed protein compound they can get in them within 30 mins for finishing exercise.
  3. Elite Atheletes being trained by people very much more experienced and clever than me. I’m talking Pro Atheletes here, the sort of people that are putting in the amount of training hours a day equivalent to the hours I pilot my desk a day (lucky bastards).
• As a result of knowing you’re receiving the correct amount of Protein from a good lifestyle, THE most IMPORTANT thing in attempting to support Hypertrophy is total Calorific intake. Getting in around 20% more than you estimate you need to support your weight on a maintenance basis is where you should start and you should expect to see gains of  0.5 – 1kg of lean weight a month. Much more or less than this and you should adjust your intake accordingly.

I hope this condensed snippet of information is useful to some of you washed up meatheads out there!

Hey folks,

Huge amounts of things have changed for me recently which explains the quiet period on here.

I’m leaving one employer for another and subsequently am moving house to a new part of the shire which is thankfully familiar to me so it’s not too big an upheaval. I’m quietly leaving Morgan Stanley’s “You’re my bitch” department and will be a member of debt free society which I truly intend to enjoy to the absolute fullest for the next couple of years. At which point I hope to find a path which will help define my identity which I feel like I’ve lost over the past few years.

I hope that my rantings keep you amused whilst this pleasant little life transformation takes place for me ..

Be back soon!

Ciao x

In the last 100 years, 90% of UK vegetable varieties have been lost from our soils. That means that of the vegetable varieties you’re used to seeing at the Greengrocer of SuperMarket and more to the point buying from trusty Mr Fothergills or Sutton Seeds, there are actually another 9 times again as many vegetables that you are being denied the choice of purchasing let alone seeing. And get this, and this is serious shit. It’s ILLEGAL, yes ILLEGAL for the seeds for these varieties to be sold commercially thanks to European Seed Law. What we’re saying here is Vegetable, yes Vegetable seed trading for 90% of the indigenous Vegetables of the United Kingdom, not Sex Trafficking or Ammunitions Trading… is ILLEGAL.

I’ve seen and read some things recently and frankly this is infuriating.

In fact on a slight alternate whinge, I find the fact that Cannabis as a plant is illegal to be a injustice to the legal system which is based upon ‘Gods Law’ which I’m sure would make Cannabis one of Gods plants would it not, bewilderingly stupid to be frank. And while I’m at it Poppy’s too. There’s a difference between growing a few Opium Poppy’s or Cannabis plants for your own enjoyment and farming either, on a commercial scale. It’s easy to see which is which and a few plants is understandable. Farming fields of the stuff which has commercial purposes and obviously isn’t powering a unquenched personal habit, as you would be too smashed up to be able to get up to farm and tend to your crop if you were than bang on either of them anyhow.

What’s amazing here is this incredible detachment from Nature in every form being demonstrated here. Nature is here to be profited from, Nature is evil, Nature must be prohibited, yet we ARE Nature and a VERY insignificant part at that.
We don’t play an important part in any of the ecosystems. If Humanity were to be wiped out tomorrow, the rest of the living inhabitants on this planet would thrive and not miss us in the slightest. I’m sure a few cats might meow for a day or too and I’d certainly miss my dog if I had one.. But seriously, In stark contrast to the Bees for example. Think if all the plants were no longer pollinated by the little flying beasties of this world. What effects would that have. Go on. Stop reading, think what would happen if everything that relied on pollination were suddenly unable to be pollinated.

You starting to realise yet?

We are Consumers. Consumers of the highest order who have been contributing less and less back into the intricate world around us since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The Irony that I’m actually whining on the backbone of the greatest communication collaboration tool that we’ve created yet since said revolution is kinda funny. But If I were to write a letter to you all, well you get the idea.

So after much typing. Here’s some things to do.
Find yourself and hour and a half and watch this The World According to Monsanto and perhaps ‘find’ it on the internet if you’re resourceful. This isn’t the kinda documentary you’ll get in Blockbuster or WHSmith.
Visit these guys, Heritage Seed Library and even better, if you have your own Land/Garden become a member and start contributing towards the cause.

I hope you find this post useful.

P x

I’ve been jacking in my seat to this for the past week, and it’s almost 2 years old as it is but MY GOD! How good is this album!?

Fedde Le Grand put his vinyl where his deck is and spins some absolutely incredible tunes for this Ministry of Sound release which I can say I’ve enjoyed more than any house compilation that’s been released in the past 6 months to a year.

The opening track on CD 1 requires you dedicate all your mains power to your subwoofer and start bouncing about the house like you’re some kind of afflicted fool! Damn! I’m trawling the Ministry’s Club listings for something that’ll quench my appettite for phat beats right now! Argh! I need some Ministry Basslines!

I’ve been having a bit of scour, whilst waiting for bits to happen on my servers at work, for some bulk protein suppliers. Firstly I’ve been trying to find a supplier which sells Maximuscle Promax on the cheap, as even though Fitness First stock the products regularly now, they really are charging top dollar for them and I can’t be paying their prices for a new tub every 14 days.
Thing is I kinda trust Maximuscle so I’d like to stay with the brand.
The only solution to this nasty pricing is make sure you team up with a sufficiently loony exercise mad mate and order all your stuff together so you get the buy 4 and get one free deals and stock up for the month. Also subscribing to the MuscleBullitin.com newsletters helps as they knock out good exclusive deals once in a while which helps you get your Maximuscle products cheaper.

Bring on the Beefcake!!

So the next time your standing in a bar talking to someone with tales of uncountable foreign lands which they visited in the space of months, marvelling at the iPhone photos of the indigenous folk of some low lying land in the South Pacific and the curious creatures of a tropical outland, are you going to coo and admire said authentic waffle and photographic jamboree or are you going to poise to ask the poignant question of whether they realised that the flights they took to said exotic places are cumulatively destroying those exact paradises by continuing their unsustainable travelling behaviour even in the face of stark and widely available fact??