tea.

My Dad is a pilot and he flies long-haul (So from here in the UK that's the Middle East and yadda yadda.) and because all of the trips were allocated on a roster, he was rarely at home for my brother and my birthdays. There was a stretch of six years where he missed our birthdays every time, along with Christmases, New Years and most others, haha.

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He didn't have much choice in the matter, and I'm fairly certain that a lot of other parents wouldn't, either. So no, I wouldn't penalize them for not showing up due to work commitments that they have no control over. They should make it up to the child afterwards or beforehand, though. That would have made such a difference.

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If a divorced parent throws a no-show, then I'd say it depends on whether or not the child wanted them there. My Dad only wanted to be around for my birthday after the divorce, and I really didn't want him there, so.

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If a parent wilfully misses their child's birthday when their child wanted them there, then they need to take a long, long look at themselves. That's kind of despicable.

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“Missing someone, they say, is self-centered.
I self-center you more than ever.”
- Saša Stanišić, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

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“It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”
- Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

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"A philosopher once asked, 'Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?' Pointless, really...'Do the stars gaze back?' Now, that's a question."
- Neil Gaiman

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“Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.”
- Mark Twain

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“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
- Ernest Hemingway

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“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
- Marcus Aurelius

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“Your body is the house you grew up in. How dare you try to burn it to the ground.”
- Sierra Demulder

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“Never memorize something that you can look up.”
- Albert Einstein

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“True love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops.”
- William Goldman, The Princess Bride

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“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
- Dalai Lama XIV

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"He asked, ''What makes a man a writer?"
"Well," I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge."
- Charles Bukowski

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“The earth laughs in flowers.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“When someone is crying, of course, the noble thing to do is to comfort them. But if someone is trying to hide their tears, it may also be noble to pretend you do not notice them.”
- Lemony Snicket

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“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
- Dalai Lama XIV

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“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
- Sylvia Plath

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“You don't make art, you find it”
- Pablo Picasso

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“Her heart was a secret garden and the walls were very high.”
- William Goldman, The Princess Bride

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“Two things cannot be in one place. Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”
- Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

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“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

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<< It's been a long time since I went looking for these - thank you ♥ >>

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I guess it depends what you consider natural. On the one hand, humans are just another blip - we're a species which is currently on top but will inevitably die out, much like the dinosaurs (I've seen Ice Age. I'm clued up on this.) so in a way, the fact that it is human activities which are directly responsible for much - if not all - of the change that we're seeing in the planet is natural.

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On the other hand, the dinosaurs were at no stage this aggressive about their whole domination phase.

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The Earth is heating up. It's a fact, it's undeniable. Scientists across the world agree that it's because human's have altered the composition of the atmosphere to such an extent that everything is out of whack, and a significantly larger amount of the sun's energy is reaching the Earth's surface and isn't being reflected back into space. Which is fine if you fancy a tan. It's less fine if you're the Earth's albedo, which is decreasing as the ice melts, which causes the albedo to decrease, which causes the ice to melt, which causes the albedo to decrease, which causes the ice to melt - You end up with a positive feedback loop which pinwheels out of control.

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So humans are causing the Earth to heat up like the bottom of your laptop on a Saturday night.

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When it comes to extinction, the "natural" rate is supposed to be 1-5 species per year. Yes, it's a natural phenomon. No, it isn't supposed to be happening at a rate up to 1,000 to 10,000 times this. But it is.
Scientists estimate that we are losing literally dozens of species every day (Don't quote me on that. Quote the Centre for Health and the Global Environment, New York)
Species loss like this means that we're actually in the midst of the sixth mass-extinction of plants and animals. That's the sixth-mass extinction in the past half-billion years, which is ridiculous.
As for whether or not humans are the cause; 99 percent of currently threatened species are at risk from human activities (The Disney hit: "IUCN Red List Knows Best"). Primarily the activities that cause habitat loss, the introduction of exotic species, and global warming.
Because the rate of change in our biosphere is increasing, and because every species’ extinction potentially leads to the extinction of others linked to that species in a complex ecological web - numbers of extinctions are likely to snowball in the coming decades as ecosystems unravel.

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