Setalah mengupgrade ke helena atau karmic dan ingin menggunakan pppoe dialer dari network manager mengalami masalah, ini cara pemecahannya :

pertama-tama harus terkoneksi ke internet dulu karena harus mengupdate paket network manager ke versi yang baru, jika koneksi internet hanya bisa lewat pppoe gunakan cara ini :

masuk ke terminal dan ketikan :

sudo pppoeconf

ikuti instruksinya, jika tidak yakin gunakan default nya saja, jangan lupa username dan password dimasukkan. Setelah itu :

sudo pon dsl-provider

sesuaikan dsl-provider.
Setelah terkoneks, buka synaptic :

Settings-Repositories-Other-Software tab, pilih Add lalu masukkan :

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/network-manager/trunk/ubuntu karmic main

lagi,

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/network-manager/trunk/ubuntu karmic main

save, close. update & upgrade.

pppoe sudah bisa berfungsi dengan lancar.

Pusing kenapa waktu di tiap2 komputer tidak sama ? dan bingung cara mengkonfigurasinya ? sudah ngoprek2 program bawaan dari distribusi tidak kunjung sama juga waktu nya ?

coba cara ini :

install paket openntpd

1.sudo apt-get openntpd.

2.sudo nano /etc/openntpd/openntpd.conf

<isikan ip server ntp, misalnya jika sudah mempunyai server ntp di lokal area>

server 192.168.120.2

192.168.120.2 adalah ntpserver di mikrotik server, jika tidak ada boleh di isi dengan ntpserver dari luar misalnya :

server id.pool.ntp.org
server 0.asia.pool.ntp.org
server 1.asia.pool.ntp.org

<subnet lan yang akan di broadcast dan dibatasi ke subnet itu saja>

restrict 192.168.0.0 mask 255.255.255.0

#broadcast 192.168.0.255
untuk menyebarkan informasi waktu ke komputer2 yang lain, jika tidak berfungsi sebagai time server disable saja.

3. save & reload

4.sudo ntpdate 192.168.120.2

kdebugx86@linuxbox /etc/openntpd $ sudo ntpdate 192.168.120.2
30 Nov 10:59:46 ntpdate[20953]: adjust time server 192.168.120.2 offset 0.164284 sec

Selesai, waktu di pc sudah otomatis tersinkronisasi.

Herb salt is one of the easiest things you can make and adds tons of flavor with very little effort. It can be stored for up to 6 months in an airtight lidded jar. The herbs must be fresh, but can be altered to suit your own tastes. The important thing to remember is to keep a one to one ratio of herbs to salt. Kosher and coarse grain sea salt work best in this recipe. You can add this to steamed vegetables, hot cooked pasta and rice, or use it as a dip for raw vegetables such as radishes, cucumber spears, or tomato wedges.  It is also a great housewarming, hostess, or holiday gift idea for the cook/chef on your shopping list.

Herb Salt Recipe:

1/2 cup Kosher or coarse grain sea salt
1/4 cup fresh oregano leaves, minced
1/4 cup fresh Italian flat leaf parsley, minced
zest of 1 lemon

Combine all ingredients in a glass jar with tight fitting lid. Seal jar and shake until well combined. Set for 24 hours in a cool, dry place to allow flavors to meld. Makes about 3/4 cup

A Few Suggestions/Variations to get you started:

• Lemon Thyme, Lemon Zest, Italian flat leaf parsley
  
• Basil, Orange Zest, Italian flat leaf parsley
• Basil, Oregano, Rosemary, Italian flat leaf parsley
• Tarragon, Lemon Zest
• Rosemary, Lemon Zest, Orange Zest
• Mint, Lemon Zest, Italian flat leaf parsley
• Oregano, Orange Zest, Italian flat leaf parsely
• Cilantro, Lime Zest, Italian flat leaf parsley
• Tarragon, Chives, Chervil, Italian flat leaf parsley
• Thyme, Rosemary, Oregano, Italian flat leaf parsley

Ayer se publicó Linux Mint 8 “Helena”, la distribución basada en Ubuntu más conocida y usada. Y, ¿a qué se debe su gran comunidad de usuarios? Pues por su facilidad de uso, ya que a diferencia de Ubuntu, Linux Mint viene con los codecs, flash, java y otros paquetes no libres instalados. Puede que esto no guste a los auténticos usuarios de Software libre (los que usan gNewSense, por ejemplo), pero a los usuarios más comunes que vienen de Windows les encantará tener un sistema operativo completo sin tener que instalar o configurar nada. Su apariencia, claro que esto es muy subjetivo, también me gusta mucho más que la que trae Ubuntu por defecto. Resumiendo, LinuxMint está diseñado para ir un paso más allá que Ubuntu en cuanto a la facilidad de uso.

Descarga | Linux Mint 8 “Helena”

Releases Notes | Guía de usuario (inglés)

So, why did Raju Narisetti suddenly leave Mint, the business Berliner launched by the Hindustan Times group, in December 2008, less than two years after the newspaper’s launch, and return to the United States?

***

# Was it because he was opposed to staff and salary cuts as proposed by the management, as insiders claimed?

# Was it because he had carried out his mandate of launching a credible newspaper and was ready to move on, as the management claimed?

# Was it because he had a tempting offer as one of the managing editors of The Washington Post?

# Was it because his wife was finding living in India more and more difficult?

# Or was it because an pesudonymous open letter to the prime minister by a serving IAS officer published by Mint had not gone down well with the HT management (whose vice-chairman Shobhana Bharatiya is a Rajya Sabha member nominated by the Congress), as the market speculation was (which Narisetti denied)?

There has never been a clear picture, but an indication that Narisetti and HT had parted reasonably amicably came recently when his name resurfaced on the paper’s tombstone as “Founder-Editor”.

Now, Narisetti has revealed a bit more of the circumstances surrounding his exit in a New York Times story by Heather Timmons on people of Indian origin who find it difficult to work in the country of their birth and then return home to the United States:

“Some very simple practices that you often take for granted, such as being ethical in day to day situations, or believing in the rule of law in everyday behavior, are surprisingly absent in many situations,” said Narisetti, who was born in Hyderabad and returned to India in 2006 to found Mint….

“He said he left earlier than he expected because of a “troubling nexus” of business, politics and publishing that he called “draining on body and soul.”

Also read: Pseudonymous author spelt finis to Mint editor?

Shashi Tharoor isn’t the only Tweetiya in town

‘Good journalists, poor journalism, zero standards’

Seit etwa einer Woche nutze ich auf meinen Netbook Linux Mint. Muss sagen bin bis jetzt sehr begeistert. Heute ist nun auf der Homepage bekannt gegeben worden, dass Linux Mint in der Version 8 auch “Helena” genannt erschienen ist. Werde in der nächsten Woche mal das Upgrade wagen und dann mehr berichten.

We’ll actually I’m reseting my whole life…my laptop’s life…no my life. I’ve decided my iTunes is full of extra shite I don’t listen to, many albums on it and only 1 song im listening to. Decided I need a revamp and the best way to do this is delete all my music, reset my Last.FM and start again with bands and songs I love.
Ladyhawke, Hadouken, The Killers, MGMT, the Saturday, Brontosaurus Chorus, Arcade Fire, Lykke Li, The BTE4 list and AWWBLOT will be banging out of my speakers and I’ll work the recommended music back to a full media library.

This may seem weird but with the release of Linux Mint 8 ‘Helena’ and Windows 7 i’m going to dual boot my life away. Using Linux as my primary OS as i prefer it. So much better and more secure, and Windows 7 for iTunes and my iPhone (when i get it again). Splitting my HDD to about 80-80 each way and using my shiny new 250GB Portable Hard Drive as a media storage device.

Win Win situation, better for coding, less distractions on Linux and an ever increasing program list and windows. Happy Happy. x

DAY 2: These cookies are Big A’s favorite cookie to make. She almost always chooses to make these when she has to bring a treat somewhere. The cookie recipe is extremely simple, starting with a cake mix. The only time consuming part is putting the frosting between the two cookies (which really is not much to complain about). You can easily make these as plain oreos (instead of mint) by omitting the peppermint extract and green food coloring. Refrigerate these after making, as the filling contains cream cheese.

Mint Oreo Cookies

COOKIES:
2 chocolate cake mixes
4 eggs
2/3 cup oil

FILLING:
4 oz. cream cheese
2 Tbs. butter
1 tsp. vanilla
¼ tsp peppermint extract
10 drops green food coloring
2 cups powdered sugar

COOKIES: Beat all cookie ingredients until well mixed. Roll into small balls and place on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake at 375°F for 8 minutes. Drop cookie sheet on counter to flatten cookies slightly. Cool cookies on rack.

Spread one cookie with filling. Top with a second cookie. Store in refrigerator.

FILLING: Beat cream cheese and butter with a mixer. Add vanilla, peppermint extract and food coloring. Beat in powdered sugar.

.

.

TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS COOKIES RECAP:
DAY 1: Swedish Peppar KaKar

_

For more wonderful Christmas cookie ideas, visit Food Blogga’s Eat Christmas Cookies Event. For submitting your own cookies to the event, visit Food Blogga.

For south Indians, tamarind is a must for making sambar. Locallly called puli (L as in lion, if L is pronounced lightly as in love, it means tiger!), it is extensively used in pulisatham, rice mixed with tamarind, in travels, as it remains fresh for two or three days.

Some chemical in tamarind dissolves excess fluoride in the bones and allows it to pass through urine, according to today’s Indian Express!

Salt obtained from the sea (containing iodine, calcium, potassium etc. in traces), turmeric, asafoetida, curry leaves, green dhanya leaves, green chillis, mint leaves, lemon, curd etc., routinely used by Indians, are all healthy food ingredients.

Some useful tip for our Western brothers.

I’m planning to start an Ubuntu blog seeing as I’ll have a bit of free time over the holiday season. Finally I’ll be able to do something productive with my time, because we all know school is just a waste of that same, precious time.
First thing that came to mind was a list of my favorite applications OF ALL TIME!!!…for Debian based linux, of course.

10. I’m gonna tie two into this spot because they are both tied for this spot in my eyes. These programs are none other than VLC & Vuse.

Vuse is a very nice and polished-up torrent manager that gives you a more welcome feel than allot of the other torrent managers out there. It has a sort of itunes-esq interface, in that you can connect to something they have set up called the Vuse “HD Network” where you can browse, view, and download media in the form of torrents. This is a very innovative feature which I would have liked in many other programs of it’s kind and is great to kill time.

VLC, well, its just amazing. VLC packs a lot of power in it’s lightweight interface, plays all the formats that I have ever needed playing, and is extremely easy to use. I would recommend this application to anyone who likes to download media content instead of watching it online, so they can have it on the go. Just whip out VLC and you can watch it all, and mix up your style with all of it’s intuitive and very useful features.

9. Gimp is a program that allows you to touch up photos like a pro. Is it easy to use? No. Is it beginner friendly? Nah. But if you spend some time on it and get the basics, it can be extremely useful and you’ll be proud of whatever masterpiece comes out of your sweat, blood and tears.

8. Compiz Fusion is a mix between the Beryl and Compiz projects that made all windows/mac users shouting “Damn! Why can’t my desktop be that cool!?”. I, personally preffered beryl back in the day, but this combination of the two projects has proved to be nothing but awesome taking the image of a beautifully tricked-out desktop to the next level. It doesn’t require much more than a decent graphics card and the Compiz/Beryl desktop can be yours.

7. Kdenlive is a video editor that has often been compared to the wonderful Sony Vegas line of movie editing software. Once you have this baby figured out, configured up, and running smoothly you’ll be making movies like a pro and stun your friends with your awesome movie making skills. It’s well worth the ‘kde interface’ induced headaches.

6. Cairo dock is an amazing OS X like dock that brings a little of you onto your desktop with its amazing ability to be customized down to the littles separator or sub-dock. I could go on and on about it but i recommend just searching it on Youtube and Google. If it’s too time consuming, then I would recommend AWN, just type it in synaptic, which brings us to number five.

5. Synaptic Package Manager is something that keeps me using Ubuntu because it makes it easy to just search for a package and have it on your hard drive in a matter of seconds. It comes built in to all gnome distros and is a necessity if you are someone who spends all their allot of their time on the computer.

4. Boxee is a media center that brings sexy back into home theater systems. It’s sleek and works great right out of the box, has so many apps that can be downloaded straight from the program itself, plug-ins galore, a great interface for playing media already on your hard disk, awesome picture quality and feel for a home media center (also fun and easy to set up), the list goes on and on. Just f*cking download it.

3. Hulu desktop is what keeps me sane during stress filled weekdays when i can just kick back and watch 30 Rock, Heroes, The Office, etc. straight from my desktop in crystal clear streaming quality. It’s perfect and would be tied for #1 with the next two if i wasn’t so lazy.

2. Open Office is Microsof Office on dope.

1. Songbird is an amazing music organizer/player that puts itunes to shame. It’s made by mozilla so you know it’s going to be customizable and user friendly right out of the box and it easily retrieves music from the music folder in your home directory so it’s no hastle getting things in and out. Music is huge to me, and this app makes me happy to be alive.

That’s my list and the first of many to come.

I was thinking about how Linux Mint wasn’t totally different from it’s parent distro, Ubuntu, and I was wondering if that would apply in the same way to Debian. Which is better and in what way? Ubuntu, Debian, or Linux Mint?

What I was able to come up with is this:

Debian is cool once you get it up and running and requires a little experience with linux to do so. NOT BEGINNER FRIENDLY in most cases.

Ubuntu is more user friendly and works basically out of the box. Takes a little research to configure to your liking, but nothing the Ubuntu forums and Google can’t answer. ~Big-ass community~

Linux Mint- Great for beginners because it has allot of it’s stuff pre-installed, like codecs, players, etc. Once you have a basic knowledge, moving up the ladder would be manageable. Maybe if you are hesitant about going up one ring you can get Ultimate Edition.

I started out with mint and for now I’m digging Ubuntu so i don’t plan to move up.

I’m feeling discomforted and uneasy because I’m second guessing myself again. Might not seem a big thing really but to me it is because I cannot stop thinking about it.

In the Shamanism course I’m taking we are told to use Tobacco as an offering to the Nature Spirits because it is sacred. Yes, of course it’s sacred but the focus of this course is quite Native American. While this is fine and I respect the Native American ways very much, it is not my cultural tradition which is Celtic. I feel very strongly about this, so I don’t feel right using Tobacco as an offering. I am drawn to using the Three Sacred Herbs of the Druids – Meadowsweet, Mint and Vervain.

Is this right or wrong? Should I be using Tobacco instead? If my instructor knew I was using something else I don’t think she’d be very happy. But I’ve also learnt that another name for Shamanism is ‘The Way of the Heart’, meaning it encourages one to follow ones inner self-expression and heart. My heart is telling me to use something else other than Tobacco but I’m struggling with myself to know what to do. I’m not confident in myself and my gut instinct and this is really bothering me.

Celtic Shamans of old would not have Tobacco, so they would have used sacred plants available to them. Culturally specific! To the Druids, although all plants were sacred to them, Meadowsweet, Mint and Vervain held a special place. I feel more comfortable following this but why do I feel as though I’m doing something wrong?

On a more mundane level I’m going in for my gall bladder operation next Monday and I have to be honest and say I’m feeling a little apprehensive about it. I suppose it’s the thought of going into hospital even for just one day and being anaesthetised. I’m very glad I’m finally having the op done though as I’ve waited so long for it.

Blessings
Deep~Glade

The holidays are the time of the year when I most enjoy gourmand beauty products. It’s something about the yummy smells wafting from the kitchen and the cold weather outside that brings out my love of spicy & sweet scents. The crave-inducing product that I’m using this season is Sumbody’s Milky Rich Salt Scrub, which blends warm, sugary pistachio oil and sweet orange peel in a shea and cocoa butter scrub that smells exactly like divine Italian cookies. To my delight, this heavenly scent comes in a bath fizz, soap and salt scrub bonbon products as well. If you’re not into cookies (really?), you might want to check out the Pumpkin Pie and Tingle Mint versions, which also come in sugar scrubs, in case you prefer sweet over salty!  You might also check out Sumbody’s Fatigue Zapper to have on hand during holiday shopping and partying marathons. The invigorating oil blend of cayenne, rosemary, ginger, ginseng, lemon, grapefruit, peppermint and coriander comes in a purse-size roll-on. It provides a zap of energy and instantly clears your head when you apply it to pulse points and breathe deeply (I’m keeping this handy for the inevitable stuffy noses of cold season as well). Writer :: Jolene Hart

While the Northern Hemisphere tilts away from the warming light of the sun, hot punch recipes are being dusted off. Some provide warmth, others exist solely to bring a tint of colour to the milky white skin of Englishmen.

Rejoice then, that you live in Sydney, where access to sun, surf, parks and beaches are plentiful and open to all.

As you head to any of these places, to meet in large groups or small, the default choice for refreshment is a six pack of coldies or a bottle of wine. I’d ask you to consider for a moment stepping outside of that norm and heading, replete, with a fine jar of tippling punch on your next park sojourn.

Punch was invented back when alcohol was so rough, punters only wanted to mask the flavour enough to get it down and start the glorious journey to intoxication, these days, punches in the summer or the winter showcase flavours of booze,  fruit and herbacious additives. Experimentation is the key here, perfect punch is a very fluid concept, go with what’s fresh and match the flavours as best you can.

Punches are best described in ratios, as everyone will have a different sized jar, bowl or bathtub, depending on the size of one’s frivolity, and frankly your ambition.

My Summer Punch

Fill a preserving jar with ice and slide slices of lemons, limes and oranges down the side with a barspoon. Add 2 parts Tanqueray Gin, 1 part Lillet Blanc, 1 part pomegranate juice, 1 part cloudy apple juice, 1/2 part fresh squeezed lemon juice. Garnish with mint, think bush not sprig.

The walk or drive to the destination should provide sufficient mixing.

Enjoy, and feel free to share your own punch combos in the comments.

Oggi è una giornata importante, si festeggia il Shopping Reminder Day, la Giornata della Lista della Spesa.

La canzone Your shopping list are poetry, del gruppo rock belga Mint, è la perfetta colonna sonora, anche perché a me ricorda il fatto che fare la spesa insieme può essere un’esperienza molto dolce, per una coppia.

Naturalmente, non sempre è così, anzi, in certe relazioni fare la spesa è un noioso incombente settimanale.

Ma altre  volte può essere un gioioso balletto d’amore tra gli scaffali del supermercato, a comprare le cose che servono a sopravvivere un weekend senza uscire di casa.

Mi ricordo ancora quando, nei primi anni novanta, venendo da una città già allora un po’ più indietro del Veneto moderno e avanzato, con la mia ragazza di quel tempo avevamo scoperto la meraviglia dei primi ipermercati, con una varietà e una possibilità di scelta che nei piccoli supermercati della Trieste di allora nemmeno ci sognavamo.

Un po’ come i berlinesi dell’est quando scoprirono i fornitissimi negozi dell’ovest, camminavamo a bocca aperta per questi scaffali pieni di ogni ben di Dio, e nella nostra beata gioventù riempivamo il carrello come lo riempirebbe un bambino di otto anni.

Il primo fu un Cadoro sulla strada per la montagna, me lo ricordo ancora.

Lo so che quei momenti non torneranno mai più, ma mi piacerebbe nella mia relazione d’amore di domani provare di nuovo lo stesso piacere nel fare la spesa insieme, perché può essere un momento dolce e intenso dell’essere coppia.

Infilare noncuranti nel carrello il barattolo di nutella, non mancare di rifornirsi nello scaffale dei superalcolici, salire sul carrello dopo avergli dato una spinta, comprare qualcosa di assolutamente inutile o incucinabile ma accorgersene solo dopo essere arrivati a casa.

E forse, in quei momenti, si può persino fare a meno della lista della spesa.

]]> http://hotmommas.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/29-free-online-business-tools-for-which-i-am-thankful-building-a-million-dollar-business-part-time/ Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:53:57 +0000 hotmommas http://hotmommas.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/29-free-online-business-tools-for-which-i-am-thankful-building-a-million-dollar-business-part-time/

If you’re like me, then the holidays are the only time you have to dig out the neurons covered in dust that have been on sabbatical while you:

-         Herd cats

-         Deal with other mammals in your life

-         Follow your own grandiose visions

So, I am using this post to share some of my favorite “get your act together” tools I use for “dealing” on a daily basis. Keep in mind, I am a busy, quasi-stressed out mom, entrepreneur, and colossal nerd.

THINGS I USE TO DEAL ON A DAILY BASIS

1. www.Mint.com – A free finance tool
2. www.Doodle.com – Easy group scheduling tool (see “cat herding” above)
3. www.GoogleDocs.com – I use an excel sheet in Google Docs to manage my team, some of whom are virtual. Love it.
4. www.PollDaddy.com – Polls are a great. I really like them. The fact that they are free makes them even better. You can use Google Forms as well.
5. www.EventBrite.com – This was introduced to me by the guys at iStrategyLabs. Use it for your real life events or virtual seminars. You will see why.
6. 1888PressRelease.com – Good stuff. I always like things that give you reach you don’t deserve because you have no money. But, we can’t let that stop us!
7. www.TwitterAnalyzer.com – Gives me good stats I can share with the guys in my department and let them know I’m not TOTALLY wasting time.
8. www.SlimTimer.com – It’s like you’re back in high school with your mom telling you to get your homework done. Love it.
9. Six O’Clock Scramble – Healthy meals in 30 minutes. I’m sure I would use this if I cooked. Okay, also, this is not business. But, you gotta cook, right? And if you spend 30 less minutes on cooking, then that’s 30 more minutes for your business.
10. www.FitDay.com – While we’re on the health topic, my favorite free health tool. Most entrepreneurs I know in EO (Entrepreneurs Oranization where you’re under 40 and have sales of $1 million or more) have some major hobby, including working out, etc.

What tools are you thankful for (more like the above, and less like – uh – a jack hammer). Or, as my aunt and dad and other erudite folks might correct me, “For what tools are you thankful?”

THINGS THAT ARE HIGHLY ANNOYING.

I have just read this blog, and am feeling quite snarky now. I am less thankful for the following:

• Trump Network on Twitter– How did Trump let this happen to his name?
• The “make cash at home” people
• The “make money on Google” people
• The “you can earn money on Twitter” people
• When I am looking for a document on my computer and click through like six windows, and then do that every time I need to find a document, several times a day, for years.

IF YOU DON’T LAUGH, YOU’LL CRY

It is important to laugh, because if you don’t laugh you’ll cry. Here are some of my favorite sites right now. These are only for people with sick senses of humor. If you are “normal,” don’t bother.

1. @darthvader – That’s right, you heard me.
2. Does this Blog Make Us Look Fat?
3. The Bloggess
4. The Onion

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and don’t forget to nominate the dynamic women in your life (over 18) as a role model for the Hot Mommas Project 2010 case competition. We make everyday women’s stories teachable to help the next generation. Email us with your nomination including name, contact, and reason for nomination.

Related links:

Why Mentoring Matters for Girls and Women – and How to Be Part of the Solution

My Interview on Washington Business Tonight on “Hibernating for Business” (Windows Media Player Needed)

The garden is almost on automatic in November. I am still harvesting lettuce from pots in the greenhouse along with basil. This goes well in sandwiches with tomatoes grown by Matt Foley in nearby Rush. Outside, parsley, sage, rosemary, kale, leaf beet and cabbage are going strong. Brussel sprouts are coming right while the chives and mint are dying back for the winter.

However, my job as Food Minister took me away for a couple of days recently to represent Ireland at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation ‘World Summit on Food Security 2009′ in floodless, crisp and sunny Rome. I met with farmers from Africa, South America and Asia aswell as Europe, New Zealand, Australia and the USA, not to mention representatives from 65 governments. I discussed farming and food with fellow ministers from Cuba, Finland, Mozambique, Syria, France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, New Zealand, USA, Norway, Japan, Canada, UK, Switzerland and my EU Green Party colleague, the Deputy Agriculture Minister in the ‘Ceské Republiky’, Jirí Urban, (he says ‘just call me George’!).  Colonel Gadaffi, Robert Mugabe, Silvio Berlisconi and the Pope were about but our paths did not cross except in news reports!

There was not much to be proud of  for world leaders at this summit. In 1996 the world agreed to halve the number of hungry people to 400 million by 2015. Clearly the  strategy is not working. The number of people going to bed with hunger pains each night is now over one billion, one in every six people worldwide.

Many of the poorer farmers I spoke with are saying that their food security is getting worse because corporations and wealthier countries are buying up the land they have traditionally farmed. Essentially agricultural colonies are being acquired by the ‘Mother Country’ so the rich at home can be kept food secure at the expense of the poor abroad.  This land is often used to grow genetically modified soya or palm oil to make biofuel. Those smallholder farmers generally become wage slaves on these corporate farms paid low wages to buy whatever food is affordable and available on the open market.

What these farmers want is to have their right to food sovereignty upheld. Sovereignty is about having not just enough food, but having the means to provide for one’s food needs. For them food security is not an adequate objective. Looking for food sovereignty is too radical for most of the countries who pay for the upkeep of the United Nations. Radical or not, it is obvious that the current strategy is not radical enough. The progress to even halve the number of malnourished people is going backwards at present. Log on to the websites  www.fao.org or www.1billionhungry.org for more information.

Meanwhile the dynamic approach I called for at the World Food Summit was to assist directly smallholder farmers, especially the many overlooked woman farmers,  so they can be viable food producers for their communities. Unless we can reverse the flight from the land to large urban centres and get more people growing and producing food, then all this talk will do very little other than make climate change worse!

I spoke at the workshops in Rome too. One about ‘Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation‘ heard the Indian Government spell out the effect of a 2 degree temperature rise. This would mean a loss of 12 million tonnes from the Indian wheat harvest. The polar ice-caps (what is left of them) are showing 3-5 degree rises in temperature there.

In other words we need the food, but we need to minimise our emissions of greenhouse gases to produce it. This is why helping smallholders is also important. Ecological and organic farming emits less greenhouse gases and is also more drought and flood tolerant. Local food systems which reduce food miles are badly needed too. Put simply, the world needs more people growing more food for themselves, their families and their communities.

Mikhail Gorbachev writing in The Examiner recently told us to forget the Berlin Wall. The ‘wall’ all of us must now tear down is CLIMATE CHANGE. He wrote ‘we need a circuit-breaker to escape from the busines-as-usual approach. We live in hope with the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen around the corner. Meanwhile, let us resolve to encourage EVERY  activity which brings our world closer to global food security and local food sovereignty. No farm, smallholding, window box is too small, no person is too busy, no weather is too bad to make a contribution to feeding the world – starting with yourself!

You may have read back in May, that Oracle Organics Body Wash is my favorite way to suds up sans bar in the shower. There’s a tiny glitch though, my supply is depleted and Oracle Organics is on maternity leave. Which leaves me to my second favorite body wash, of which there are actually two: Weleda’s Wild Rose Creamy Body Wash which I have already spoken of, and Pangea Organic’s Pyrenees Lavender with Cardamom Wash.

I had forgotten how much I love Pangea’s Lavender Wash! The beautiful, luxurious suds that this wash creates are astounding. No puff is needed to achieve this lather, but of course feel free to use one. The scent is lovely as well. It’s a light lavender, with a hint of blood orange. I’ve never noticed any cardamom as the name suggests, and I’m on my second bottle.

I’ve tried a sample of the Canadian Pine with White Sage and it certainly lives up to its name. It’s all about the pine and sage, and lots of it! If you like forest hikes that are balsamy, piney, sagey, and green, with loads of fresh air, go for this one. You’ll be enveloped in a sudsy woodland, right in your own shower. Quite apropos for the rapidly approaching wintry holidays.

If bar soaps are your preference, which I have to admit I’ve become partial to lately, Pangea’s are not to be missed. Like the washes, theses dense bars pack some serious suds-action. I’ve tried two, Pyrenees Lavender with Cardamom and the Indian Green Tea with Mint and Rose Petals. To be honest, I can’t tell you much about either scent. They both became a variation on a subtle rosemary theme, but what stood out was the exceptionally silky lather. I bought them when they were on sale at Whole Foods a few months ago, so keep your eye out for those specials!

I appreciate the full disclosure on the packaging that there are no petroleum-based ingredients, sulfates or detergents, synthetic preservatives, artificial colors or fragrances, or GMO’s. In addition, all of their products are handcrafted, organic and fair traded, and cruelty-free.

And PS: Happy Thanksgiving to you, your friends, and family!

Pangea Body Washes are $16 and available at Whole Foods and Pangea’s Website.

Pangea Bar Soaps are $8 and available at Whole Foods and Pangea’s Website.

Posted by ~Trish