Auroville, and a few other communities around the world, hold many of the keys for the improvement of our civilization and the survival of humankind. Among these keys I would count the attempt to affect an evolution in human consciousness, the use of education as a means to transformation, the placing of curbs on materialism, the adoption of sustainable practices of food production, nonviolent and democratic governance practices, embracing of pluralism and heterogeneity, abandonment of sexism, racism, homophobia and the attempt to live in greater harmony with our environment. Not all of these keys will be expressed in every intentional community, and no doubt there are others that I have forgotten. My own community, Wahat al-Salam – Neve Shalom, for example, focuses on showing that two peoples who are in conflict can change the nature of their relationship to one of working together for peace. It does not try to address environmental issues at a community level. So it holds “some of the keys”, but not others. Still, it is very easy to take a contrary view of communities. One can say that nobody is listening, that such communities are too few and marginal to make a difference. One can say that, even on a small scale, communities are incapable of living up to their own ideals, that human beings are imperfect, and the negative qualities of the larger society tend to affect communities more readily than the communities spill their positive qualities over into society.

Continue reading →

The Guardian has an article headed “Biodiversity is below safe levels across more than half of world’s land – study” (Habitat destruction has reduced the variety of plants and animals to the point that ecological systems could become unable to function properly, with risks for agriculture and human health, say scientists)

From what I saw at Solitude Farm, here in Auroville, the solution is there, in Permaculture. But it requires quite a radical change in the way our societies would work. But Permaculture would also create the change, from the ground up, in a fairly simple level, and no doubt incrementally.

Websites:
Auroville
Auroville Permaculture
Solitude Farm

It seems, in WordPress, that it is not enough that a theme shouts about its support for RTL. And even when a theme gets positive reviews from a site like onlyrtl.com, that may not be the full story. The proof is in the pudding. And, because of such positive reviews, it isn’t so easy to check before purchase.

That’s my experience after purchasing Elegant Themes Divi theme, whose developer makes claims about RTL support on its pre-sale pages.

I’ve used themes (like Weaver II – another Swiss knife type theme) that simply work out of the box with RTL, but now I see that this isn’t the case with Divi. There are complications; and their forum is full of attempts to fix things with custom CSS. That’s not how it should be.

I can’t prove it, but my hunch is that themes that start with RTL built in from the ground up, from when the theme’s coding began, probably work better than those that add it later as an after-thought.

In any case, a little honesty is called for from web developers. It’s better to be up front about what a theme supports rather than deal with disappointed users later. Sometimes a user may be willing to get his/her hands dirty and try to deal with short comings simply because a theme is, in many ways a good solution. And user needs, just like themes, come in different shades. For example, it seems that the Divi theme works more easily in an environment where only RTL is needed, but may be more complicated in a case where a multilingual site is needed. (Now I’ll have to see.) Or, a user may require only slight and occasional use of right-to-left languages. I happen to need the theme for multilingual sites with hundreds of articles in Hebrew, Arabic but also LTR languages. I previously have extensively used SPIP CMS, which works very successfully with multiple languages. SPIP got it right. I don’t think it’s rocket science, just a matter of dedication, on the part of developers.

Update on use of the Divi theme

On the small site on which I’ve been working, the main RTL problems have been resolved by quick responses from Divi’s tech support. Every issue required a separate custom CSS fix. For all I know, there may be dozens of further possible RTL issues.

The fact remains that some WordPress themes get it right from the beginning; I’m not sure how. In the case of Divi, it seems to make better economic sense for the developers to rely on their tech support than to ensure proper RTL compliance from the base up.

In order to live in this world and enjoy rights which ought to be guaranteed to every human being regardless of their birth, we unfortunately need a passport or equivalent piece of paper. The value of these documents is judged according to what they confer.  Mine comes from a country I’ve hardly ever inhabited, and of which I am not particularly proud or enamored.  But I’m aware of my good fortune in possessing a document that, compared to those of many other countries, is considered high value. Today its value seems to have shrunk a little, which is a pity.  I wonder why anyone would vote in favor of devaluing their own citizenship? Anyway, until the happy day comes when we can choose to belong to any nation we like, this is the passport I’m stuck with.  Goodness, so many are stateless and have nothing at all.

After googling for a while and not really finding any answers, I realized that the simplest way to deal with gender issues in forms is to change from binary M/F radio buttons to a text field and make response optional.  Yawn.