Earth hour

From melting glaciers to increasingly intense weather patterns, we know that climate change is already impacting life on our planet.
On Saturday, March 28, 2009, at 8:30 pm, piano4t will take part in Earth Hour—the world’s largest global climate change event. By simply turning out all non-essential lighting for one hour we will join tens of millions of concerned citizens throughout the world in calling for action to save our planet for future generations.

We’d like to encourage you to join in with this important and inspiring effort.

Led by the World Wildlife Fund, more than 50 million people in 370 cities around the world took part in Earth Hour last year. The lights went out at Sydney’s Opera House, Rome’s Coliseum, the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge. Even the Google homepage went dark for the day.
This year, Earth Hour will be even bigger. In Britain cities large and small have said they’ll participate with more signing up daily. They will join international cities such as Beijing, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, London, Manila, Mexico City, Moscow, New York, Paris, Rome, and Toronto.

To get a better sense of the magnitude and inspiring nature of the event, take a moment to watch WWF’s video about Earth Hour 2009 by visiting www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjWD8pbK5t8.

Participating in Earth Hour is easy, fun and absolutely free. To get more information and to sign up to for Earth Hour 2009, just visit

Music - a means to an end?

That's it - I have finally had enough of the Mozart effect!

I'm afraid I have very little fellow feeling left for those who say that they encourage the study of music because it improves literacy/ spatial reasoning/ memory. One young parent today told me how great it was that my son studied tap dance because it was so good for building numeracy skills. Hmmm, it is always quite difficult to stop the lad dancing, but place a maths book anywhere near him and he'll high step it away pretty quickly. He goes to dance lessons because he loves it, and that's good enough for me!

I think it's time to put those classical music for kids CDs away and start doing something musical - singing, moving and playing - just for the love of it, and not as a means to an end.