Has it been a year already??

I guess it has—a whole year since I last posted here. Wow, that was some bender!

Actually, in the time I've been away from sponsible I've gotten in involved in other projects that have required as much of my time as sponsible once did. Let me tell you about them...

Physical Edison was an idea I first had about three years ago as I considered alternative energy sources. As a lifelong fitness devotee and someone involved in the industry, exercise is always near the forefront of my mind, so it was natural that my passion for the environment and my interest in fitness would inevitably merge. Physical Edison was the result.

The idea was to convert human energy on a grand scale into electricity. You see, we people expend enormous amounts of energy each day (measured in kilocalories), some of which goes to use; a lot of which is wasted. While converting human energy into electricity is by no means an original idea on my part, doing something substantial with the concept, as in human-powered gyms, was an idea whose time had come.

Along with my business partner Joe, I worked on PE for the better part of two years, along with input from the amazing Ed Begley, Jr., among others. I pitched the idea at consecutive Milken Global Conferences to people like Jerry Brown, Grey Davis, T. Boone Pickens and other movers and shakers. All were intrigued, none wanted to help me get the ball rolling.

The Physical Edison website was beautiful. It was built on a Joomla! framework and included our business plan and lots of supporting data. I was pround of our creation and despite the fact that I couldn't seem to be able to raise the funds to get the project started, hope sprung eternal... until I got hacked.

Last Fall I returned home from work to edit the site but couldn't log in to the back end. Then when I typed the URL into my browser I got a black screen with an ominous digital tune playing and the words "You've been hacked by Black Death" scrolling across the screen and an image of the Turkish flag waving. Great.

Long story short, it was beyond salvaging and so I took my misfortune as a sign that it was time to close the door on the project and open one to another. But that's a story for another post...

We're Baaack...

It's been a few months, I know. Fact is, after keeping two blogs for the better part of a year, both focused on changing the environment, both literally and figuratively, I saw the election of Barack Obama as a chance for blessed respite.

I, like so many others, could be accused for placing too many hopes and dreams, too many expectations, upon a single man. Certainly Barack Obama is an incalculable improvement over the person he replaced, and yet, he's still just a man, with human frailties and a divided and oftentimes ineffectual Congress.

Still, it's clear that of anyone to serve as President since John F. Kennedy, Barrack Hussein Obama looks to be the guy who can push the kind of agendas that make progressives like me especially proud to be a part of the American fabric.

So as the great Thom Hartmann always says, getting Obama elected was only the beginning. Now it is up to us to push him to greatness. Sponsible. org aims to do just that.

-Shawn

A NEW DAWN

It's hard at this point to write something that hasn't already been written, express a thought or emotion that hasn't been more eloquently stated by scores of others. Suffice to say that with Barack Obama's win this past Tuesday night the world was forever changed for the better.

In the two days since this magnificently historical event global ebullience is still high. We seem to collectively understand the implications of a man of color rising to fill the top job in America. As a country founded on principle rather than persuasion, we have only recently attempted to truly manifest the potent words of our Declaration of Independence, "All men are created equal." On Tuesday night we finally realized this prophesy.

President-Elect Obama's win was both a valediction to a terrible, terrible period in our history and a coming-out party for one that at long last gives depth of meaning to another famous phrase from the Declaration, "We, the people."

As of Tuesday night a black child could also dream of becoming President, a privilege formerly reserved only for white boys. And thanks to the spirited campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton, now girls, both black and white, can share this lofty reverie.

Internationally, we've pulled ourselves up from the depths to which the Bush administration had sunk us. Whereas we were just recently perceived as callow bullies, insensitive to the global brotherhood the European Union has begun to build, our tarnished image has now been shined as we put our fears and prejudices aside to do the right thing.

In electing Barack Hussein Obama as President of these United States we didn't elect a black man or a man of mixed heritage or a man with a different name or a man whose father was born in Kenya. In electing Senator Obama we chose the best man for the job, because of and in spite of all of these things. It's not so amazing that we picked a black man to be our next President. What is amazing is that we picked the right man to be our next President, and he just so happens to be black. That is true equality.

God Bless America and God Bless our 44th President, Barack Hussein Obama.

Bring International Attention to Malnourished Ethiopian Children

Sponsored by: UNICEF

The effect of drought and rising food prices in some parts of Ethiopia is headline news, yet few people know the truth of the situation.

Children are the most vulnerable to nutritional deficits and the first to succumb when there is not enough food to go around. The Government of Ethiopia estimates that 75,000 children under the age of five live with severe acute malnutrition. And 25 to 50 percent of children with severe acute malnutrition are likely to die if they don't receive proper treatment.

But there is hope for the children of Ethiopia. UNICEF-supported therapeutic feeding programs have been set up around Ethiopia following the establishment of a national protocol for severe acute malnutrition. This approach has revolutionized the treatment of malnutrition in Ethiopia, leading to a significant drop in mortality rates for malnourished children of all ages.

Bringing international attention to the plight of these children and the benefits of the therapeutic feeding programs can help save lives!

To add your name to the petition to help raise awareness about this terrible situation please go to http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/209965929?z00m=17735456

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This is Really Inspiring

I love these kids!

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