I rarely post articles  – but this one about the Pakistan floods and subsequent relief efforts hit home very hard.  My parent’s hometowns have been largely spared from the devastation.  Sadly, a number of my friends have seen ancestral homes/towns gone.  Many are spending hours on Googles pages looking for family members who have not been in contact.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he has never seen anything like the flood disaster in Pakistan, and urged foreign donors to speed up assistance to the 20 million people affected.  The situation is dire and compassion is in short supply for those hurt the most.

One issue which needs to be acknowledged is the reluctance to give money to/for Pakistan.  The reasons are many.  This article appearing in Foreign Policy clearly states the challenges and the issues.  I encourage you to read the article in full – but the summary is a poignant  plea to the better angels of our nature.

Pakistan has suffered from desperately poor moral leadership, but punishing the helpless and homeless millions of the 2010 floods is the worst possible way to express our rejection of the Pakistani elite and their duplicity and corruption. The poor, hungry, and homeless are not an ISI conspiracy to bilk you of your cash. They are a test of your humanity. Do not follow in the footsteps of the Pakistani elite by failing them. That would be immoral and inhumane. This is a time to ask only one question. And that question is: “How can I help?”

Full Article on Foreign Policy can be read HERE

For those looking for the Google Crisis Response Page:

http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/pakistan_floods.html

There was a special feeling which came from people telling you what your programming meant for them and their kids.  Discovery Channel turns 25 and I have so many fond memories of the people, the adventures we shared and the mission to make the best programming which could be made.

“Put the green on the screen” was the motto of how the money was to be spent.  We spent time, care and money to get the images people have never seen and tell the important  stories of our world.

Yes, I’m extremely proud of my Discovery roots, the colleagues who worked together so closely and the work which still stands today among the best ever done.

Congratulations and here’s to 25 more years!

My colleague, Jarod McCormick has a PhD and is one serious hacker when it comes to putting together equipment.  He recently shared the rage of high-end kitchen in world of fine dining: the Sous-Vide

This method is defined by vacuum-packing meat and cooking it in a precise temperature-controlled water bath.  Want a cut perfectly medium-rare?  Here is how to do it!

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Clockwise from top: Steaks cooked to various temperatures, a perfect hanger steak, chart of moisture loss. [Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

There are commercial uits available – but Jarod is talking about thermocouples and a few Home Depot parts.  Summer s around the corner and so are the BBQs.

The blog Serious Eats has some great pointers on this neat cooking technology.

Senator Roy Herron serves the good people of Tennessee.  Roy is a friend and is running for Congress.  In today’s partisan environment, Roy shares a thought:

Thirty-three years ago tomorrow, my father drove his pickup to our farm, a mile or so from the farmhouse where he had started out sixty-four years earlier.

He turned at the old country store his parents had owned.  He drove past the brush pile and the woods where he’d first taken me as a 10-year-old hunting for the covey of quail that was almost always nearby.

He parked the truck, climbed the fence, then walked past the buttercups, more buttercups than one could count and so yellow that they painted the end of the field where an old house had stood.  As he walked on the soft ground to the grain bin, he looked past the barn to the pear orchard that had been created before he was.  Above the gnarled old pear trees was a bright blue sky.  He called out and the brown and white Hereford cattle ambled across the green pasture toward him.

The earth was warming and coming alive again.  The early sunlight fell gently on him as he took the bucket of yellow corn from the grain bin for the cattle.  I hope he fell gently as he returned to that earth again.  A heart attack took him.

He died when and where and how he wanted.  He fell on his favorite farm, at his favorite time of year, on a glorious and beautiful day, in the quiet and peace of early morning, on the sacred Sabbath.  And no one, most especially Mother, had to watch him die.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Scripture says.  Son of the soil back to the soil.  The farmer to the farm.

A World War II veteran, a respected judge, my father touched the lives of many. In turn, for his funeral, our Methodist Church sanctuary was full and then some. Several who did not come early, and all those who came late, stood outside.

Sitting in the front center pew, a first-year law student, I listened to the pastor talk of Dad’s judicial passion for justice and his compassion for the weak, his strong sense of equity and fairness, his Biblical concern for the less fortunate and the hurting.

Then the preacher reminded us that his good deeds and kind ways did not have to die with him.

Theologians and preachers say a great deal about eternal life.  They tell many things about heaven, streets of gold, mansions on high. I had read and heard those things all my life.  But this much I realized sitting in front of that flag-draped coffin: as long as Dad’s children and grandchildren and their children live, my father could live.  As long as we love, Dad’s life and love will not die.

Today, particularly in Washington politics, it’s hard to find the love.  Instead, Washington politics is plagued by partisanship and division.

My father would be disappointed.  Before my devoutly Democratic father became a judge, his law partner in their two-lawyer firm was the county’s leading Republican.  Dad and his law partner knew they did not have to agree on every issue to work together for the benefit of those they served.

This country needs far less partisanship and much more patriotism, less hostility and more hospitality, less yelling about the other party and more listening to and learning from the other person.

Good people in both parties can have good ideas.  That is part of the strength and beauty of America, of this democracy, and of God’s world.

We no longer can afford the luxury of excessive partisanship.  This country’s challenges are too great and too many are hurting too much.  We need more people like my father’s generation who knew it doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or Republican if you forget you’re an American.

Yes, I was at TED and had a chance to speak on the TED stage.  But Sir Ken Robinson is the undisputed champion of TED talks.  This is one of my very favorites and everyone should have a chance to see him speak