Calling for reciprocity of respect, This isn’t politically correct, this might offend my religious connects.

When Aspecks was started, we made a conscious decision not to talk about religion because of its sensitivity. The decision was made to preclude the chance of causing offense. However it is for the precise reason that religious faith is so sensitive a topic; we would be doing ourself an injustice (as members of a diverse global community) by not addressing it. The revulsive insensitivity of this video was part of the stimulus for the change in our position.

Religious faith is an unshakeable pillar of many of the world’s societies which provides moral and ethical direction to many people’s and societies in varying degrees. The beliefs of Atheists or uncertainty of Agnostics are also by their very nature an exhibition of, or another form of faith (an acknowledgement of it at the very least). Some people are devout believers of their faiths and live quite strictly according to their teachings, while others merely ascribe to various faiths by name alone. However, in order to exist as a positive contributor in any community, a person must have some understanding of ethics/morals and how to treat other people.This would develop as a natural consequence of collective learning from socialisation between people over long periods of time.   [read more..]

By the end of the year the Canary Island’s El Hierro claims it will be the first energy self-sufficient island in the world. El Hierro is already a paradise for walkers, nature lovers, bird watching holidays and rural and ecotourism and now it is to be entirely powered by one hundred per cent renewable energy. It makes perfect sense that the locals should wish to preserve their island but as the above video shows, perhaps El Hierro is offering something more than preservation, a blueprint for the world to become sustainable too.

This remarkable feat will be achieved through a €54 million project combining a 10 megawatt wind farm with two water reservoirs to store excess energy, the larger of the two is to be located in an inactive volcano crater and can hold 500,000 cubic metres. The electricity supply network will be supplied from a hydroelectric power station, while wind power will feed the pumping system and be stored as potential energy in the larger deposit, and thereby guarantee stability to the distribution network. Any excess will go directly to the supply network. The project will save annual consumption of 6,000 tons of diesel, equivalent to more than €1.8 million. Already declared a Unesco Bio-Reserve, nearly 70% of the island is protected land. Biosphere reserves are sites established by countries working with the UNESCO-MAB Programme to promote biodiversity conservation and sustainable development, based on local community efforts and sound science. As places which seek to reconcile economic development, social development and environmental protection, through partnerships between people and nature, they are ideal to test and demonstrate approaches to sustainable development at a regional scale.

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A.ssociated S.eparte P.eople E.xchanging C.ulture, K.nowledge & S.kills

Our goal is to show that no information about our globe’s vast variety of cultures and sub-cultures; historic experiences, knowledge and skills should be exclusive. By virtue of the fact that we are all different individuals that identify ourselves with distinct lifestyles, places, beliefs and even morals which are bound to overlap somehow (especially now due to what we call globalisation), we have the capacity to find common ground. On this exclusively inclusive common ground, we realise that if we learn about how other people live, what they do and what inspires it, we can apply aspecks of that knowledge to add onto our own repertoires as we collectively grow as a global society.  Please get in contact with us if you are keen on becoming a contributor to the website. We want your perspectives, interests and cultural insights be they large or small, expressed in your own choice of medium and subject. Sign up for an account and we can arrange to set you up as a contributor/writer. Get in touch as your comments and feedback are desired as always.

A.ltering S.tereotypes P.ositively (by) E.xpressing C.ulture & K.nowledge S.hared

Zack Kim is a Korean guitarist who has become known for his mastery of a technique called “free hands”, which involves tapping the guitar strings with both the left and right hands simultaneously.  His style is different from the tapping popularised by Eddie Van Halen, where the guitarist taps with the right hand parallel to the strings (often whilst fretting with the left hand – although not always). This is guy is no run of the mill guitarist as over twenty-three million views (and counting) on the video above testify to. Zack’s style is effectively like playing the piano on the guitar but is actually a lot harder owing to the difficulty involved in fretting the correct notes. Check out Zack’s YouTube channel to see some more of his arrangements, which range from classical and jazz to the Simpson’s theme tune, as well as some of his own original compositions such as the beautiful “Pieces (of you)”.

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President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples.” Whilst Aspecks agrees with the line of thinking taken by the Nobel Committee that Obama embodies precisely the international policy and attitudes that it has sought to stimulate for 108 years, the award seems a little like tokenism, after all who else in the world is capable of generating as many headlines. So does Obama deserve the award or is this just a finely executed (well-intentioned) publicity stunt that raises the profile of the Nobel Committee and the values it espouses?

Obama has indeed made some bold steps since taking office, including the calls for nuclear disarmament and the negotiations surrounding the stalled Middle East peace process, but eight months in the White House is hardly enough time to redecorate let alone achieve any measurable outcomes. Indeed the award is all the more surprising considering that nominations closed a mere two weeks after Obama had won the election. Moreover, political will is always susceptible to compromise so that policy change is often slow to manifest successful results in reality. After all the US and Russia have only agreed to reduce the number of nuclear warheads they possess, not get rid of their nuclear programmes entirely. Perhaps the award to Obama would have been sweeter to digest if it had been given to him at the end of his Presidency (in eight years hopefully) when he has had the time to actually achieve some of his goals.

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