If you’re reading this post, like me you probably spend too much time on the internet, much of it contributing to online communities of shared interest. As exciting as it sometimes is to find people with similar views and interests online I’m not always confident that my virtual networks are going to amount to much.

Social Innovation Camp (www.sicamp.org) is interested in addressing exactly that issue: how the online world can be used to create better solutions to social problems in the real world.   Read more...

There's a thin line between action figure and father figure. And when it comes to kicking fatherly ass, Steven Seagal is your daddy. Off-screen he is an actual Aikido sensei, the first Gajin to open a dojo in Japan. He tests his students with the famous three man attack.

If we follow Seagal we learn that for young men anger and sometimes aggression are perfectly natural things. But they have been pushed to the edges of what we call civilization. It's great to want to be civilized, but what about the impulse? Violence dominates the media and we seem to have projected all our darkest urges onto 'the bad guy'. Only there are no protectors, no heroes, no rolemodels. Some critics complain that young men have lost their manhood. Have we no anger? Are we not men? What is a man? This lack of definition seems to be at the core of our current existential crisis. Let me answer that question, bluntly and honestly, the way real men do.   Read more...

I went to visit some friends this weekend. I live with my girlfriend in Campinas, Brasil, it’s an 1.5 hour drive to our friend’s house in Sao Paulo. There are three of them living together, two girls and a gay guy, right in the middle of this enormous city. It’s always great to go there, the atmosphere is really relaxed. When I visit I always get a specific feeling that I also got in the Netherlands when visiting another gay friend there.   Read more...

Rev. Jesse Jennings, writing in Science of Mind magazine, says, “The world is seeking to sow peace, not just as the ending of open hostilities, but as a durable, perpetual field of play in which mutual respect and understanding are the norm.”

I liked his idea particularly since it gives the world a soul. “The world itself is seeking to sow peace . . . .” Delicious.   Read more...

Another touching story that shows my father

Writing in Science of Mind, April 2008, Rev. Jane Beach, minister of the Conscious Living Center in Mt. View, California, says, “The presence of peace is in all things, awaiting our attention.”

Rev. Beach’s words made me think about how I make the choices in my own life. I determined many years ago that Peace was my number one value. The thing, idea, energy that is the most important to me. Other people use other values: love, joy, wisdom. Always intangibles.   Read more...

It�s a sunny day despite all the previous week�s rain. We pull up onto the rutted, muddy roadside and park. If it weren�t for the rough dirt roads, the neighbourhood could pass for a middle-class neighbourhood in western Europe. A driveway pattern of black and maroon bricks leads up to an impressive house.

This is where Cecilia lives. I�ve been invited to a celebration for her youngest daughter, whose initiation into womanhood concludes today. Cecilia and her family are Ndebele, the ethnic group whose brightly coloured geometric painting and beadwork has come to represent South African art around the globe.   Read more...

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, visionary, science fiction writer, inventor and a good human being passed away on 19th March 2008 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, his adopted home. In many ways, Arthur was responsible for us to stay in Sri Lanka and establish a solar power business in the late 1980s. He was always there to encourage and help us even when we would get discouraged by the various obstacles that were in the way. He was a good friend and we will miss him and so will the world.

It was the summer of 1977 and I was on holiday in Sri Lanka from Canada with my cousin Viren. We had just stumbled into the table tennis room of the Otters Sports Club in Colombo and saw this European playing a hard game of TT banishing his young opponents away. As we stood there, he challenged us for a game and sent us away in no time too. After the game when we asked him whether he was on holiday here, he said - �Oh no, I live here, write a few books and do a bit of diving� only to realize he was Arthur C Clarke, the science fiction writer made real famous recently by �2001, A Space Odyssey�.   Read more...

As I write this, it is Easter Sunday in the Christian calendar. I was intrigued to read the ideas of Marshall Breger, professor of law at the Catholic University of America, reprinted in Utne Reader from Moment, an independent magazine of Jewish politics, culture, and religion, on statecraft, diplomacy and religion.

First I must cop to my own religious status. I would call myself an omnireligionist despite being an ordained minister with a doctorate in divinity. Translation: I don’t really care what you believe, I care that you believe. I believe that belief is a deeply personal matter and that it’s up to each soul to discover what works for her or him.   Read more...

I've just had the privilege of visiting refugee camps in Dadaab, Kenya, as part of my work with Book Aid International (www.bookaid.org).

Home to over 170,000 people the camps have provided a safe haven for refugees fleeing conflict for over 15 years, starting with the flight of people from neighbouring Somalia in 1991. The majority of people living in the camps are still Somali, though there are also refugees from Sudan, Uganda, the Congo and other countries in conflict. Many have lived in Dadaab for over a decade, unable to return to homes still embroiled in chaos.   Read more...