There Should Be A Law.....

Have you ever wondered how the mechanism of law making works in Congress? This chart shows you how.

See how easy it is?

Gardening Makes You Smarter

I love Scientific American. This article reports on a study that shows that exposure to certain bacteria in the soil actually increases memory, intelligence and serotonin levels while decreasing anxiety. Maybe that's why I like to garden so much.

Economics 801

Yeah, that's right. True post-graduate level stuff here. When are we going to learn that things don't necessarily scale? This 10+ minute cartoon explains research that points out that more $ doesn't necessarily equal better performance. This certainly gives weight to the notion that we should de-incentivize greed, because it's not performing as promised. Money IS NOT what people ALWAYS want.

Watch.

We Won't Find Aliens Because They're Playing XBox

This opinion piece in Seed Magazine serves up a provocative theory on civilization's progress as being a self-limiting proposition. The basic idea is that once a civilization develops technology, it inevitably uses it to seek ever more self-absorbed and narcissistic pastimes, eventually effectively abandoning real life for virtual existences. All you have to do is imagine the visors from the SyFY show "Caprica" to see the dangers of addiction inherent in such pursuits.

Do Children Pick Your Vegetables? (part two)

I applaud the efforts of anyone involved with teaching our children where food comes from and what is needed to make it grow. This effort sponsored by GOOD, LAUSD, The USDA People’s Garden Initiative, The Environmental Media Association, The National Gardening Association, The Urban & Environmental Policy Institute, The California School Garden Network, and Mia Lehrer & Associates, teaches lessons that only nature can provide.

As the article states, "A school ... garden not only helps children understand where their food comes from, it teaches ecological literacy and teamwork, nutrition and problem-solving."

We should be doing this in EVERY school.

Do Children Pick Your Vegetables?

Well, do they?

Step Right Up! Git 'Yer College Education Here!

For the longest time I have been suspicious of the quality of college education. There have been plenty of Americans going to colleges and universities, but I haven't seen much of the amazing futures promised in commencement speeches. In fact, it seems like the vast majority of college graduates exhibit the same small mindedness and lack of imagination of past generations.

Seth Godin seems to agree. In a recent blog post he decries the coming meltdown in higher education. These seem to be his major gripes (mine, too).

1. Most colleges are organized to give an average education to average students.
2. College has gotten expensive far faster than wages have gone up.
3. The definition of 'best' [school] is under siege.
4. The correlation between a typical college degree and success is suspect.
5. Accreditation isn't the solution, it's the problem.

I'd add to that, that I think colleges and universities are far more concerned about their reputations and continued growth than they are their student's educations and futures.

His solution? Get out, meet interesting and effective people. Learn things from them. Use libraries. Gap years, research internships and entrepreneurial or social ventures after (or during) high school are good ideas, too. We're sending our daughter to Costa Rica this summer.

Here's a link to Godin's post on the issue.

Cheap Homegrown Energy

One of the worries today is getting electrical power to the developing world without burning stuff (coal, oil, trash) to do it.

The folks at Catapult Design in San Francisco have one answer.  Tiny wind turbines built with materials easily found at the place where the power is needed.  Check out this video of people solving the problem.

Growing My Own

Close ups of the lettuce seeds that are growing in my garden.  Don't ask what kind they are.  They came from a packet of mixed seeds.

 Can't wait to taste the final product.  It'll be a few weeks though.

More On What To Do About Your Collapsing City

I always find it perplexing when people resist change that is inevitable and attempt to cling to something that is already gone. Many of our cities are shrinking and there is continual blow-back from some quarters that suggest that this reality be ignored and we move on with an endless growth scenario.

These two articles discuss other options. The first from Dan Kildee entitled "Bulldozing Cities" deals with the notion that shrinking your city might the appropriate response.

The second by Roberta Brandes Gratz, "Shrinking Cities: Urban Renewal Revisited?" suggests that forestalling the collapse of an urban area starts with offering opportunities that attract new small businesses and investment to the blighted area. Even though these two articles are at odds with each other, I think each contain strategic points that are complimentary.

Have a look.

Meet Your Neighbors Without Seeming Like A Crazy Person

How often do we ignore each other in our own communities? How often do we pass by each other on the street and say nothing? Why do we constantly miss opportunities to connect with our neighbors?

The disease of distancing ourselves from each other is the slow death of civility and community. The cure is simple and painless. It begins by just saying hello.

In a time when we are becoming more fractured as a society and alienated from each other as a result, this short article from GOOD.IS is something we should all take to heart. Then the healing can begin. The article covers five ways to start....

1. Say "Hi"
2. Spruce up your outdoor space, and spend time there
3. Practice common courtesies
4. Hang out in your neighborhood, and shop locally
5. Get involved with your neighborhood in a formalized way

Read the article. It's short and the advice is timely.

Hello, Children, I’m Your (12-year-old) Headmistress

Here is a story in the Times of London about a brave 12 year old girl in India who has started her own school to pass on what she learns to the other children in her impoverished village.  She attends classes between 10am  and 3pm, then comes home and shares her lessons with her less fortunate peers.  All this in the face of Maoist rebels who, in the past four months have blown up 30 schools and community buildings.

That's courage.

Buy Local, Invest Local

We want to keep our communities vibrant and strong, right? We want to build places that our children will want to live in and not run away from, right?

What better way to do that than to buy local? Invest local. That's right, sink your investment money into opportunities in your own town.

In the 9,000-person town of Port Townsend, Washington, the residents plan to buy stock in their own community. Although securities law makes it next to impossible for small businesses to issue stock and accept investment, this innovative program they've cooked up has found a way to skirt this obstacle.

Change the future, right at home.

I Love Books

I love reading and one of my life goals has been to have a home library that covers as many subjects as possible. My wife and I have been mostly successful in this regard. Our library has taken over our living room and includes extensive and eclectic selections on religion, the sciences, art, gardening, geography, history, world cultures, architecture, theater and (of course) music.

Now comes confirmation that this endeavour was not simply hubris or whimsy. According to a study in the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, children growing up in homes with a large library of books will do better in school and go farther in life.

The study states that children who grow up surrounded by books are 20 percent more likely to finish college than those who do not and that kids living in a home with a library of 500 books get 3.2 more years of education than his or her peer raised in a book-less home.

I always knew that buying all these books was a good idea. Now I know why.

Dirt - The Movie

Industrial farming, mining, and urban development have endangered our soil. The result: cataclysmic droughts, starvation, floods, and climate change. We take the soil under our feet for granted, but it is what sustains us, not the economy of consumer stuff that we spend most of our time and money on. Disregarding something so essential to our survival can only end in tragedy. This PBS film, premiering on April 20th from Independent Lens, shows us our connection to the land and how tenuous it is.

Heads up, this is our future.

You Take The East Road And I'll Take The West Road

Yesterday I read an account of two cities on opposite coasts that may be pointing the way to a future with significantly fewer automobiles.

First, in Portland, Oregon, the city council voted 5-0 to accept a new bike plan with the ambitious goal of increasing the percentage of people riding bikes from 6% (the highest of any big city in the country) to 25%. Then on the East Coast, in none other than our great megalopolis NYC, the New York City Department of Transportation announced that they will permanently close Broadway to vehicle traffic.

Wow.

This might be prescient as I also read another article that states that the US military is warning that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with significant economic and political impact.

So, do you think the movers and shakers of Portland and NYC have read that second article?

The Writer's Almanac

I love poetry and I start (almost) every day with The Writer's Almanac, a website/podcast provided by The Poetry Foundation.

Each daily entry includes the literary history of the day, authors birthdays, anniversaries of first printings and readings, capped off with a poem, all read by none other than Garrison Keillor , in his resonant baritone voice. It's a lovely start to each day.

How To Avert The Collapse Of Your Shrinking City

How do you save your city when it's shrinking due to economic circumstances? Listen up Detroit because you can take a lesson from what's going on in East Germany right now.

By re-purposing abandoned buildings and suggesting that "city islands" be created with urban green zones and huge outdoor art projects, the International Building Exhibition (IBA) focuses on how a shrinking city can be transformed.

This photo essay and article in Speigel Online suggests how your city can withstand the departure of it's population and the economic collapse that follows and still thrive.

How To Avert The Collapse Of Civilization #7

DON'T WASTE THINGS!

This important perspective is one that people overlook again and again. In fact, many think that it's the mark of an advanced and prosperous culture; "Got so much we can throw it away!"

In How To Achieve Zero Waste At Home Ben Jervey outlines the basic rules for eliminating waste in your home.

This is actually part of #6, "Try not to run out of energy."

Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto

Following up on the last few days of posts, I am encouraging all to read this fine book by...wait for it...Stewart Brand.

Brand is one of the original tree huggers and one of the founders of the so-called ecology movement.  To see him come full circle to embrace nuclear energy and genetic engineering as means to avert a looming global crisis is not only satisfying, but also breathtaking.  In a time when wisdom is often measured by one's ability to ignore facts and stick steadfastly to one's failed ideas and ideology, to see someone of Brand's stature change course to achieve his lifelong goals is encouraging.  If only the rest of us would examine our ideas and challenge our sacred cows to the same ends.

Recently, no less than renowned climate scientist James Lovelock stated that humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades.

He said, "I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change.  The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful."

Brand's book not only argues that we can, it spells out how.

I enjoyed reading it enormously and I hope you will read it, too.

How To Avert The Collapse Of Civilization

This was in my email today from Stewart Brand.  It summarizes David Eagleman's recent talk at the Long Now Foundation.  Here is Brand's email....

Civilizations always think they're immortal, Eagleman noted, but they nearly always perish, leaving "nothing but runes and scattered genetics."  It takes luck and new technology to survive.  We may be particularly lucky to have Internet technology to help manage the six requirements of a durable civilization:

1. "Try not to cough on one another."  More humans have died from epidemics than from all famines and wars.  Disease precipitated the fall of Greece, Rome, and the civilizations of the Americas.  People used to bunch up around the infected, which pushed local disease into universal plague.  Now we can head that off with Net telepresence, telemedicine, and medical alert networks.  All businesses should develop a work-from-home capability for their workforce.

2. "Don't lose things."  As proved by the destruction of the Alexandria Library and of the literature of Mayans and Minoans, "knowledge is hard won but easily lost."  Plumbing disappeared for a thousand years when Rome fell.  Innoculation was invented in China and India 700 years before Europeans rediscovered it.  These days Michaelangelo's David has been safely digitized in detail.  Eagleman has direct access to all the literature he needs via PubMed, JSTOR, and Google Books.  "Distribute, don't revinvent."

3. "Tell each other faster."  Don't let natural disasters cascade.  The Minoans perished for lack of the kind of tsunami alert system we now have.  Countless Haitians in the recent earthquake were saved by Ushahidi.com, which aggregated cellphone field reports in real time.

4. "Mitigate tyranny."  The USSR's collapse was made inevitable by state-controlled media and state-mandated mistakes such as Lysenkoism, which forced a wrong theory of wheat farming on 13 time zones, and starved millions.  Now crowd-sourced cellphone users can sleuth out vote tampering.  We should reward companies that stand up against censorship, as Google has done in China.

5. "Get more brains involved in solving problems."  Undertapping human capital endangers the future.  Open courseware from colleges is making higher education universally accessible.  Crowd-sourced problem solving is being advanced by sites such as PatientsLikeMe, Foldit (protein folding), and Cstart (moon exploration).  Perhaps the next step is "society sourcing."

6. "Try not to run out of energy."  When energy expenditure outweighs energy return, collapse ensues.  Email saves trees and trucking.  Online shopping is a net energy gain, with UPS optimizing delivery routes and never turning left.  We need to expand the ability to hold meetings and conferences online.

But if the Net is so crucial, what happens if the Net goes down?  It may have to go down a few times before we learn how to defend it properly, before we catch on that civilization depends on it for survival.

--SB

Thinking In Ten Dimensions

Want to think BIG thoughts?  Tired of one dimensional thinking in others (and yourself)?

Watch this........

How Buildings Learn Part Six - Shearing Layers

In the final instalment of How Buildings Learn, Brand talks about how buildings live in time and the pressures that they undergo. The layers are perpertually changing; outer shell, framework and the inner shell all exist in a relationship that runs in different time scales, so they "rub" against each other as they pass through time together.  And as Brand says, buildings that last do so because they are loved and able to be refined and their architect is time.

The Romance of Maintenance Part Two - The Reality of Decay

Some buildings that have been seriously neglected.

How Buildings Learn Part Five: The Romance of Maintenance

Things fall apart. The only thing keeping a building up is maintenance. Boring, mundane, day to day, endless tasks that keep a building from falling in on itself. In the fifth edition of How Buildings Learn, Brand talks about how to care for your home/office/sactuary.

Oh and he talks about water a lot. Remember my comment about Wright's Falling Waters?

How Buildings Learn Part Four - Unreal Estate

Zoning, which was designed to improve city life, eventually stifles it. Zoning laws keep people, their work and the services they need, apart from each other, creating islands of specificity that resist change.

Often times zoning laws keep you from doing the very things that you want a home and property for in the first place. Zoning is also designed to separate classes. Rich from poor and high from low. It's no wonder that most folks (except planning commissions) dislike their zoning laws.

In part four of How Buildings Learn, Brand explores these limitations and how people do (or don't) get around them.

Built For Change Part Two - Built To Fail

So many of the good ideas of the 1960s weren't all that good.  Many of the domes A-frames and contemporary designs are now abandoned: too difficult to work with or they leaked or were just uncomfortable to live in.  Here are a few pictures that underscore the idea of architectural failures from the past.  First is this dome in Arizona.

Next is a water park in Russia.

An abandoned apartment complex in Taipei.

And the Grandaddy of all fails, Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Waters which leaks like a sieve and is falling apart because of the stresses inherent in the design.

How Buildings Learn Part Three - Built For Change

Most buildings exist in a state of change, whether they are amenable to it or not. People change buildings, the elements change buildings and laws change buildings. Some buildings just resist change more than others.

In installment three, Brand tells you why the new architecture of the 19060s (domes in particular) failed and why traditional architecture works. Some simple and profound lessons here.

Low Road Part Two - Tiny Houses Movement

There's a movement across the world of people who are dedicated to the idea that we don't need to live in huge monster McMansions. These are the tiny house people. They promote the idea of living in small dwellings. By small I mean as little as 60 square feet. And boy do they have some neat looking houses. 

Here is a selection of some intriguing tiny homes. Just think of how life can be simplified by going smaller. Less heat, electricity and water used. Less upkeep and quicker to clean. Easy to add on to. Easy to find room for. These are just a few examples of the tiny homes people are building and living in today.

Think of how many people that can't afford a standard half million dollar mortgage, can afford a home like this. They might be cramped when the kids come, but hey, just build another right?

Below are some links to these four examples and to some websites that might be of interest.

Photo One - Kjellander + Sjoberg Arkitektkontor Designs
Photo Two - Arkiboat Houseboat by Drew Heath
Photo Three - Caree de'Toiles
Photo Four - Stefan Doll House by Lloyd House
Tiny House Design
The Tiny Life
Coming Unmoored - One woman's adventure in tiny living

How Buildings Learn Part Two - I Take the Low Road

The most easily adaptable buildings are low road buildings. Easy to change. No one cares what you do with them. Building 20 at MIT.

In part two of How Buildings Learn, Brand shows us how people takes cheap marginal buildings and make them home and work space.

Can You Hear Me Now?

As a little side trip in our inquiry into how buildings learn, this video shows how pirate radio stations in London adapt to an urban environment to provide music, news and other information not covered by commercial, licensed stations. Although it is mostly about the stations and their operation, the adaptations they make to a city's buildings to accommodate a station is obvious.

If you can wade through the accents, you'll see some plucky, talented young people create programming for an unserved audience. I especially like the comment about how the underground stations feed commercial radio content.

As cities in developing countries (and the developed world) grow, I'm sure we'll see more homebrew broadcasting of all sorts.

How Buildings Learn

Stewart Brand is one of my favorite nonfiction writers. I just finished "Whole Earth Discipline" and will blog about it in the next week. Today I want to write about his 1994 book "How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built."

A building has a lifespan. It starts with design. Then comes construction. After that, habitation. Now the really interesting things happen. As people use the building, it goes through growing pains. People like to change things. A building either welcomes or resists change. This, along with the march of time, causes it to age. Eventually it will be reborn or die. That is what this book is about: the process and progression. People like buildings that are easily adaptable to their needs. People don't like buildings that aren't. That is also what this book is about.

In 1997 the BBC created a six-part, three-hour series based on the book featuring Stewart as the host and narrator. It is as enjoyable as the book itself. Over the next few months I will be posting a lot about buildings, as architecture and simple utilitarian structures have always fascinated me.

This video is the first of six, which I will post sequentially. It is entitled "Flow" and concerns the fluidity with which buildings must adapt (and be adaptable) to be useful and loved. Have a look.

Tiny Robot Destroys Cancer

It seems that nanoparticles have been created that target and destroy cancer cells. Trials are going on that show promising results so far and it appears that there are no side effects. If this is successful, it could be the end of one of mankind's greatest plagues.

Here's a link to the Caltech press release about this breakthrough.

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

I often contemplate why people are so stupid. Why they are willing, as the old saying goes, to cut off their nose to spite their face. I came across this enlightening article on the subject about fifteen years ago in Whole Earth Review and I thought it would be fun to point folks to it and see what they think.

Briefly the laws are:

1. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

2. The probability that a certain person will be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

and its corollary............

A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

The full article is here.

Jeux Sans Frontières

There is a shocking video up on BBC News today. It was an experiment disguised as a pilot for a new game show in France in which a "contestant" is apparently given progressively stronger electrical shocks when they answer questions incorrectly. The person giving the shocks is one of "80 people taking part in what they thought was a game show pilot.......they were told they wouldn't win anything, but they were given a nominal 40 euro fee. Before the show, they signed contracts agreeing to inflict electric shocks on other contestants."

The electrical shocks are fake. The "contestant" is an actor feigning pain and convulsions. The person giving the fake shocks is being tested to see if and how far they will obey orders.

If this at all sounds familiar, it is. This is an update on Milgram's 27, a famous psychology experiment done in 1961 in which students were asked to do the same thing. Stanley Milgram was trying to see how people related to authority figures and how people who were basically good could be made to do unethical or even evil things.

In the French "game show," only 16 of the 80 participants stopped before the last, potentially lethal shock.

Hitler would have been proud.

Cars Lose Rights

I have often joked that if aliens surveyed our world they would conclude that automobiles are the dominant species. The resources that we allocate to the use and maintenance of our cars is truly staggering. Just look at all the roads and an entire energy system dedicated to their operation. Some folk's garage is larger than their living space.

As an enthusiastic walker, I find it heartening that at long last, the feds have finally placed the needs of pedestrians and cyclists alongside, not behind, those of motorists. The Department of Transportation, now says that the automobile will no longer take complete precedence in federal transportation planning.

Wow, how refreshing. Or maybe we've finally seen that cars aren't the future.

Read more at: DOT Policy Statement on Bicycle and Pedestrian Accommodation

Something Smells Fishy Here

Did you know that most of the fish we eat is farmed? That it's fed chicken parts? And we wonder why it doesn't taste all that good.

In this funny talk, Dan Barber tells us about a fish farm that doesn't feed its fish, measures its success by the health of its predators and is also a water purification plant. It's a radical recipe for the future of food, where it actually tastes good.

More Food News

Last month I was blogging about food and mentioned a recent study about GMO corn being linked to liver and kidney failure in rats.

Well, I like nothing more than poking holes in things, especially my own thinking. I have continued to follow this story and have found more troubling information.

It seems that the study did not exactly prove the previous assertions. In fact, the study may have been tainted by one of its funding sources (Greenpeace). Following are quotes from Discover Magazine's article criticizing the study.

"On Wednesday, we covered the overreaction by a few important online sources to an International Journal of Biological Sciences article claiming to find “signs of toxicity” in three varieties of genetically modified (GM) corn produced by Monsanto. We posted some caveats that made us uneasy about the study, such as the funding sources, the unknown quality of the journal, and the fact that the toxicity claims rely on reinterpreting statistical data that Gilles-Eric Séralini and his coauthors themselves note is not as robust as it needs to be.

"1. Cherry-picking. “They were picking out about 20–30 significant measurements out of about 500 for one of the sets of data they analyzed,” Haro von Mogel tells DISCOVER.

"2. “False Discovery Rate.” The battle over these corn varieties has been cooking for years; Séralini and others published a paper in 2007 on the same issues, and after statistical criticisms like the ones just mentioned the authors came around with this new edition. One of the main shots scientists took at the previous paper, Haro von Mogel says, was that the team didn’t employ a “false discovery rate”—a stringent statistical method that controls for false positives.

"3. “Insignificant” results. As you can see in the study’s chart, there a significant effect shown in “Lar uni cell” (large unnucleated cell count) for female rats fed the GM corn as 11 percent of their diet. But for female rats fed three times as much GM corn, it’s not there. “Are they highlighting random variation or finding genuine effects?

"4. Lack of corroboration or explanation. The government organization Food Standards for Australia and New Zealand (which disputed Séralini’s 2007 paper [Microsoft Word file]), also disputes the recent study, in part because there is no other science corroborating the statistical data—data that was challenged in the previous points. Their response concludes by saying, “The authors do not offer any plausible scientific explanations for their hypothesis, nor do they consider the lack of concordance of the statistics with other investigative processes used in the studies such as pathology, histopathology and histochemistry…Reliance solely on statistics to determine treatment related effects in such studies is not indicative of a robust toxicological analysis. There is no corroborating evidence that would lead independently to the conclusion that there were effects of toxicological significance. FSANZ remains confident that the changes reported in these studies are neither sex- nor dose-related and are primarily due to chance alone.”

I don't care for Monsanto either but, wow, bad science in the service of anti-corporate interests. Who would'a thought?

Duh

Today's post concerns our future as a nation. Much political hay is about to be made about the Common Core State Standards Initiative which is aimed at developing a national framework for core curriculum in our schools.

We're not talking about political indoctrination here (that's probably why Texas isn't interested). We're talking about national standards of achievement in math, reading, science; core skills that ALL children will need to be effective in our future. Alaska (and Texas, of course) have already refused to sign on, on the pretext that this is an attempt to federalize education.

This is why we are failing and why other nations are surpassing us intellectually and economically. Our hubris will not protect us, although it might advance the careers and agendas of various demagogues in America.

This fits in well with a conversation with John Sexton on Bill Moyer's Journal this last week. One of the things that he said strikes me as particularly pertinent.

And I quote..................

"This is a pattern that I see: an allergy to thought, to complexity [and] nuance - a kind of collapse into an intellectual relativism where opinions become fact... It's a dangerous thing... I think there's a growing hostility to knowledge in this country... Our national progress is being retarded because we have fallen into this discourse by slogan. We have fallen into this relativism where it's a conversation to stop and say, "Well, that's your opinion."

I remember that someone, somewhere once said, "And so goes a great nation."

Things Fall Apart or Entropy 201

In early February I posted a video about what your neighborhood would look like in 500 years. Continuing that theme, today's post is a link to a page that further illuminates what will happen after we are gone. Have a look, gain some perspective. Remember, all things must pass.

The World Without Us

A Look At The Scale of Our Universe

This video gives you a look at the true scale of the universe, starting in the Himalayas and stretching out to the edges of what we know is there.  A very grand scale indeed.  Beautifully rendered by the American Museum of Natural History.

Buenos Aires's Librería El Ateneo Grand Splendid

I love books and bookstores. I also love old theaters. As we knock down old buildings and replace them with new, modern ones, a lot of the beautiful, ornate theaters of the past are destroyed.

This old movie theater located in downtown Buenos Aires was slated for demolition, but saved and is now a bookstore.  Click on the picture to see it full size.

Kids Say The Darndest Things

This video shows us what children really think of same sex marriage. That we all could be so accepting. Ping pong anyone?

Oblivion Is Almost Here. Its Cause? Neglect.

I am not often shocked. Having seen so much foolishness, stupidity and outright malice, I think that I am inured to humanity's dark side. But not today. In yesterday's online edition of Slate, William Saletan wrote Game Over, an article about a couple in South Korea who let their real baby starve while they cared for a virtual child in an online world. I just don't know what to say beyond read the article, weep for us.

And I thought yesterday's post was bad.

Scooting Toward Oblivion

When I read things like this I am always reminded of the Roger Water's album "Amused to Death." Steve Mirsky, writing for Scientific American, has written this hilarious and frightening analysis of the the scariest thing driving on today's highways: the multitasker. This particular offender was WAY off the meter.

Scooting Toward Oblivion

Whole Earth: My Original Source

I so often reference The Whole Earth Catalog, Co-Evolution Quarterly and Whole Earth Review that I thought it might be good to introduce my readers to its wonders.

As a young teenager living in rural Virginia, the dearth of ideas offered to me threatened to shrink my head to the size of a peanut. When I discovered Whole Earth publications, I finally had an unending resource for cutting edge ideas from the most forward thinking people in America and around the world. Funny thing is, much of what was in its pages is still relevant today.

So every so often, I'll be posting links to selections from its pages, starting today.

One of my favorite writers was the late Donella Meadows. Her articles on economics were prescient and timely. This twelve year old piece on Nicolai Kondratieff's theory of The Long Wave predicts the situation we are in right now.

These were some of the things he said we could expect during this time, the very things we are currently experiencing.

1. Stagnation in the real economy and volatility in the money economy

2. Social distrust, selfishness, isolationism, scapegoating

3. Deflation of real asset values

4. Retreat to "basic values" and yearning for the strict imposition of law and order

5. Cutthroat economic competition globally, erosion of social compassion locally.

Any of this look familiar? I'm sure going to be re-reading her work.

Mommy, If Flipper Can Eat Seakittens, Then Why Can't I?

Two very interesting asides on the animal rights debate, both from the GOOD.IS site.

First, Mark Peters discuss the movement to declare dolphins as non-human people, in his column, "What Is a Person, Anyway? " This is an interesting issue since the Supreme Court recently decided a case that grants full rights of personhood to corporations. Under these circumstances a sane person would have to ask, "If Burger King is a person, then why isn't Flipper?"

Second, PETA is now trying to rename fish "seakittens," to discourage (and probably attempt to criminalize) the eating of them. Andrew Price covers this in his blog post, "PETA Tries to Re-brand Fish as "Sea Kittens"."

If Dolphins are people and PETA gets its way, won't Flipper be prosecuted for having dinner? Didn't Rome kinda' get like this just before it fell to pieces?

Possum Living

As a teenager I relished anything that smacked of a return to simpler times. I ate up any book that told me how to live simpler and a little closer to the ground. The Whole Earth Catalog figured prominently in this discovery process as it gave me access to tools promoting sustainability. In its pages I discovered a book by a young woman (17!) who, along with her father, showed steps to do this for real, as they were both doing it for real. The book, which was published in 1978, was entitled "Possum Living."

In its pages were all kinds of tips to living a frugal, but full life, high on the hog (literally) without all that much money (also literally). Its author, desiring neither riches or fame, went by a pseudonym: Dolly Freed. Being that we were in tough economic times then, the book was a big hit. After a little publicity and an appearance on Merv Griffin's talk show, Dolly disappeared.

I always wondered what happened to her. Every once in a while I would put her name into Google with no results. Two days ago Dolly finally popped up. It seems that she grew up to have a wonderful life. After dropping out of school in the seventh grade, she went on to go to college and then become a NASA engineer, helping to answer how the Challenger shuttle tragedy occurred.

She reemerged because she thought that she should publish a new edition of the book since we are in tough times again and it would once again be relevant (as if it had ever ceased to be).

She is still publishing it under a pseudonym. And she still relishes her freedom. And I still have her book. It is a first addition and I do wish I could get it autographed.

But I respect her freedom and anonymity too much.

Here is a link to an excellent story on "Dolly's" life today, a link to her website (where you can buy the new edition of the book) and a link to YouTube video of a documentary done when the book was first released, which also contains her interview on the Merv Griffin show (in Part 3).

You Gonna' Eat That Food Or What?

We throw away a lot of food every year. Estimates run from 25% to 50% of what we produce. On top of that is the 4% of US oil consumption used to produce that food. That's an unconscionable amount of waste and there are things we can do about it. Composting your food scraps is one, but there are even better places to put what you don't eat, instead of just throwing it out.

This article in Scientific American outlines the full problem and some possible solutions. Maybe mom and dad were right when they told us to finish what was on our plates.

What Gets You Fighting Mad?

As someone who studies human behavior, I am always interested in the way people react to information that they either don't agree with or don't like.

Let's take the civil rights movement during the '50s and '60s for example. Those that did not like the information they received about the end of segregation tended to react with threats, bullying and intimidating behavior toward those they perceived as their opposition.

Let's now look at today's climate debate for comparison. You don't tend to read about anyone that proposes that our climate is being affected negatively by man's influence displaying threatening behaviors toward those that don't think the world's climate is changing or is changing for that reason.

Now let's look at some quotes from yesterday's Scientific American article entitled, "Cyber Bullying Intensifies as Climate Data Questioned".................

"The e-mails come thick and fast every time NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt appears in the press. Rude and crass e-mails. E-mails calling him a fraud, a cheat, a scumbag and much worse."

"The purpose of this new form of cyber-bullying seems clear; it is to upset and intimidate the targets, making them reluctant to participate further in the climate change debate," (Clive) Hamilton wrote in a column published last week by Sydney's ABC News. "While the internet is often held up as the instrument of free speech, it is often used for the opposite purpose, to drive people out of the public debate."

"What's clear is the e-mails show anger and hostility. There's no effort to ask questions or seek what (Kevin) Trenberth called "the truth." Scientists aren't the only target; journalists covering the issue also routinely find their inbox stuffed with epithets.

"They do not tend to be reasonable," said Rudy Baum, editor-in-chief of Chemical and Engineering News, who has been covering science for the magazine for 30 years. "They do not seem to be interested in dialogue. They are shrill, they are unfriendly, and they are bullying."

"Increasingly," wrote Pulitzer-prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. in the Miami Herald recently, "we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth." Added Trenberth: "In science there's a whole lot of facts and basic information on the nature of climate change, but it's not being treated that way. It's being treated as opinion."

If you take the words "climate change" and substitute the worlds "civil rights," I do believe there are some parallels to be drawn here.

Could You Scoot Over? I Need A Little More Room.

Here are two competing views of our future world when it has nine billion people in it.

Which do you think is a more accurate view. I do know that one comes from a source that has an almost flawless record of predicting the future.

Tell me what you think.

First, a three minute look at this world from Stewart Brand................



Now click below to open a photo essay on the subject by Jonas Bendikson of Magnum Photos.............

The Places We Live

You Want Me To Do What?

So you think you make up your own mind, right? Well, to round out this series of blogs on human behavior (my own little experiment), here is a link to ten of the most revealing studies in the field.

From social identity to risk assessment, humans behave in predictable fashion, while thinking that they are making their own decisions. Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson discovered much of this when they worked for PsyOps during WWII. Their observations became the basis of modern advertising, a field I know well.

My favorite? The first, the Robbers Cave Experiment, conducted the year I was born.

Doesn't it just make you want to (ring bell now) salivate?

The Ten Most Revealing Psych Experiments

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Here's an interesting vid I found on YouTube. I am familiar with the experiment and know it to be true, but I wonder how long it takes humanity to overcome the social inertia that keeps us from change, since at various times, we have.

Water, Power

Two very interesting items have popped up on my radar screen in the past few days.

First, Bobble, is a reusable, $10 water bottle with a carbon filter that is made in the US from recycled plastic, is BPA free, FDA approved and will filter out all the toxic crap in 300 gallons of tap water, while leaving in the minerals. That sure beats $1 per 16 oz. for bottled water from the store.

Second, my good friend Andrew Padula, got me onto this new tech that, while being rumored to be forthcoming over this last couple of years, has finally been unveiled (on 60 Minutes, no less).

The Bloom Box is a new fuel cell technology that promises to deliver low cost, clean electricity from common ingredients. Although in it's final testing stages, Bloom Box energy servers are being used at Bank of America, Google, Ebay, Walmart and FedEx (among others) and have the endorsement of luminaries such as Colin Powell, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Diane Feinstein and Michael Bloomberg. I suggest that you go to the website to learn more and then begin to salivate for the IPO. If you'd like to watch the 60 Minutes story on Bloom Energy, I've included it below.

Do we live in a great country or what?


Watch CBS News Videos Online

You See What Ya' Wanna' See And You Hear What Ya' Wanna' Hear

New research just in!  People pay no attention to facts that challenge their preconceived ideas.  That's a ground shaker isn't it?

The Cultural Cognition Project at Yale has made this discovery.  It basically boils down to this.  Give people access to the facts about any issue and they then filter them through their cultural belief system, basically picking and choosing the facts they will accept to bolster their own belief system.

Give rugged individualists facts about climate change and tell them that the solution to global warming is to regulate industrial pollution and many then reject the climate science. But when you tell them that more nuclear power will fix the problem, says social scientist and lawyer Don Braman, "they said, you know, it turns out global warming is a serious problem. It doesn't matter whether you show them negative or positive information, they reject the information that is contrary to what they would like to believe, and they glom onto the positive information," Braman says.

The same can be said for the second group called "communitarians."  When given the same information about climate change, they say that industry needs to be regulated.  When told that nuclear power can help, they reject that.

Braman adds, "These two groups start to polarize as soon as you start to describe some of the potential benefits and harms."

"Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values," says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project.

From vaccines to nanotechnology to climate change to gay parenting to whatever, we have our minds made up going in and nothing's going to change them, especially nothing as relevant as pesky little facts.

Here's a link to an article in Nature that delves a little deeper into this troubling situation.

One More Food Tidbit

I forgot one other seed source that I really like: The Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in Mineral, Virginia.

As they write on their website; "Southern Exposure Seed Exchange is a wonderful source for heirloom seeds and other open-pollinated (non-hybrid) seeds seeds with an emphasis on vegetables, flowers, and herbs that grow well in the Mid-Atlantic region. We support seed saving and traditional seed breeding. Seed savers and breeders are to thank for our rich selection and we will do whatever we can to support our customers and associates to carry on this noble tradition." I hope you support them, also.

Grow your own, eat well.

Food Rules

To round out this food thread, I'd like to recommend a wonderful, very brief book by Michael Pollan called "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual." Michael has written several books about food and the consequences of our food choices.  This book states three main rules and 64 sub-rules about eating and food.

The rules are clear and simple ideas about eating in healthy ways, such as: "don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food" and "regard nontraditional foods with skepticism" and "eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored."

If you want to change the way you eat, the (un)common sense contained in its pages will help.

As Pollan writes, "Eat food, mostly plants, not too much."

Michael Pollan's Website
Purchase Food Rules on Amazon

Food Does Not Come From A Store. Part Two: Meat

Let's pose a simple question: what kind of meat would you like to be eating? Would you prefer meat from animals that have been raised in cramped pens and boxes, fed hormones to make them grow faster, given antibiotics to prevent the spread of infectious disease? Or would you rather eat meat from animals that were raised like they were a hundred years ago, as in free-range and fed clean feeds (grass, grain, the things that they ate for thousands of years previously)?

If you don't mind the first, you're in luck. About 85% of the meat that you get to chose from comes from non-organic, non free-range raised, sources. If you prefer the latter, your choices are much smaller and the meats more expensive.

Take hamburger. Most of the commercially available burger is laced with the "pink slime." Never heard of it? I'm not surprised. The "pink slime" is fatty slaughterhouse trimmings treated to remove the fat. Ammonia is added to retard spoilage and turned into a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips. This is then added to hamburger to increase profits. The U.S.D.A. also allows the ammonia to be listed as "a processing agent" instead of by name. And they also okayed the processing method and later exempted the hamburger from routine testing, strictly based on the company's claims of safety, which were not backed by any independent testing.

And to emphasize: this pink slime isn't just in fast food burgers or free lunches for poor kids. This processed beef has become a mainstay in America's hamburgers. McDonald's, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains. The federal school lunch program used an estimated 5.5 million pounds of the processed beef last year alone.

This saves three cents a pound off production costs.

How about poultry? The birds are given feed laced, again, with hormones and antibiotics, kept in small confined spaces and most are debeaked to reduce the feather pecking that can occur in birds when they are unable to go about their normal bird behaviors of foraging, dustbathing, and wandering about. This causes the birds stress and pain and produces related hormones that then go into the meat and eggs of the animal. This is what goes into you when you consume them.

And you don't get many companies to choose from when you consume poultry products. As an example, Cargill, is one of the world's largest poultry producers. All of the eggs used in McDonald's restaurants in the United States pass through Cargill's plants.

Although some grocers have begun to stock organically raised meats and eggs, many are reluctant to carry products that fewer consumers purchase, are more expensive and that often have a shorter shelf life. Over the past few years, this has begun to change.

Wegmans, a large mega-store chain, has organically raised beef, chicken and eggs. Most other large chains at least carry organic free range chicken eggs. But how do you go to the next step, insuring that the meats and eggs you buy come from farms whose practices are clean and healthy?

Buy local, that's how.

Below are links for just a few sources for organic free range meats and eggs in Virginia. Also included is a link to Buy Fresh, Buy Local. If you do a little research, you can find sources for almost anything you'd like. Healthy eating.

The Home Farm Store in Middleburg, Va, carries many organic and free range products.
Ayrshire Farm has heirloom free range meat and eggs.
Hollin Farms has beef and pork in Delaplane, VA.
Eatwild is a site with info on grass-fed meats.
Buy Fresh, Buy Local has listings for most of Virginia.

Next: a simple, short book about eating well.

Food Does Not Come From A Store. Part One: Seeds

The loss of genetic seed diversity facing us today may lead to a catastrophe far beyond our imagining. 100 years ago we planted over 150 different food crop species, now we are down to about two dozen. As just one example, of the over 10,000 varieties of apples, but we only utilize about ten now.

The Irish potato famine, which led to the death or displacement of two and a half million people in the 1840s, is an example of what can happen when farmers rely on only a few plant species as crop cornerstones.

Here are some more worrying facts about the food we have available to us.

One kind of seed, called First generation hybrids (F1 hybrids), have been hand-pollinated, and are patented, often sterile, genetically identical within food types, and sold from multinational seed companies. From thousands of seed companies and public breeding institutions three decades ago, 10 companies now control more than two-thirds of global proprietary seed sales. The proprietary seed market (that is, brand-name seed subject to exclusive monopoly – i.e., intellectual property), now accounts for 82% of the commercial seed market worldwide.

A second kind of seed is the genetically engineered seed (also know as a GMO - genetically modified organism). GMO seeds are fast contaminating the global seed supply on a wholesale level, and threatening the purity of seeds everywhere. The DNA of the plant has been changed. A cold water fish gene could be spliced into a tomato to make the plant more resistant to frost, for example. And we wonder why grocery store tomatoes don't taste all that good. Also, recent research has shown that GMO corn is linked to kidney and liver disease in test animals. If you are eating ANY processed corn product (corn chips, foods with corn syrup, etc.) you are eating GMO corn.

Do you want to do something about this? Let's start with seeds. Grow your own. Here's where and how.

Bioneers is a nonprofit educational organization that works to restore the biological diversity of our world.
Beauty Beyond Belief has heirloom vegetable seeds. Beautiful wildflower seeds, too.
Appalachian Seeds has heirloom tomatoes and seeds.
Seed Savers Exchange is a good place to start if you want to "grow your own."
Seeds Of Change pretty much started the organic, heirloom seed business.

Next time: Meat, buying locally (and not at the grocery store).

More Pictures of Landscapes and Food

I'm going to be writing about food for the next few entries and I thought I'd start with something uplifting.

World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, is part of a global effort to link volunteers with organic farmers, promote an educational exchange, and build a community conscious of ecological farming practices.

Portland, Oregon photographer, Jake Stangel, wanted to leave his urban home, ditch his tech and do something real. So he contacted WWOOF (as it's more commonly known) and the organization connected him with a couple who operate an organic farm in Central Florida, where he spent two weeks learning how to work with his hands. "I got to work with a handful of other people — to use my hands and power tools — on this beautiful farm in the middle of nowhere."

Although he left his computer at home, he did bring his camera and the link below shows you some of the results.

Jake Stangel's Florida Farming

New Augmented Reality Mapping from Microsoft

In this February 13th, 2010 TED talk, Blaise Aguera y Arcas demonstrates new augmented-reality mapping from Microsoft. This technology integrates Photosynth, shown in the previous blog entry, into the mapping technology already available on Bing Maps and the walk around that you'll see of the Udvar Hazy Air and Space Center at Dulles Airport, by clicking on the link in this sentence, is pretty impressive. I was certainly impressed. Once you get to the map click on the "picture frame" to the left of the screen next the weather conditions in Chantilly.

Then watch the video below.

Microsoft Photosynth

I like maps.  Street, treasure, geologic, topographic, pictorial; doesn't matter - if it's a map, I like it.  But the world of maps and map making, is being turned upside down.

Internet  mapping sites are revolutionizing the way we get from one place to another and will probably soon put  hard copy, paper map publishers out of business, for good reason.  Paper maps can't be updated just before (or during) your trip.  You can't look at a map and see where construction is taking place.  You can't zoom down into a map, get down on street level and look around you.  These are just a few of the options that are available with web based mapping sites.

Some of the most exciting work in this area is coming out of Microsoft and over the next couple of days I'm going to be looking at it here.  There are several components to their work and I'm going to start with Photosynth, which lets users upload a series of photos of a particular location and then link them together into an immersive multi-panoramic exploration of that location.  This information is now in the process of being embedded in Microsoft's Bing Maps site.  Let's start with the two presentations below.  After the window loads, roll your mouse over the photo in the window, then click.  Next entry: Bing Maps.

Microsoft Photosynth presentations

Urqhart Castle, Loch Ness

Kamchatka Mountains - Vachkazhets

TeleKast Open Source Teleprompter Software

In a former life I directed and produced television commercials. I quit and then edited news for a while as I tried to figure out how to get the media monkey off my back. Now I teach guitar for a living and while I’m much happier, I still have the urge to produce consumable media once in a while. I also have a great fondness for open source software.

One of the things that helps me scratch both itches is a program called TeleKast. It’s an open-source teleprompter software. For those of you not familiar with teleprompters, they’re devices used to make TV hosts, newscasters and politicians seem as though they’re looking right at you as they speak, when in reality they’re reading from scripts rolling up on screens, right underneath the camera’s lens.

TeleKast lets me do the same job at a fraction (as in 0%) of the cost of a professional teleprompter package. TeleKast provides a Script Editor window to type in my script. Another window called Segments allows me to organize my script into scenes. While I’m working on a script, I can see it in the upper-right hand Segment Preview window. I can also add cues for camera, audio, video, talent and one for other.

When I’m ready to roll, there’s a pop-up window that scrolls up my text to read while I record my on-camera or voice-over work. I can adjust the text size and scroll speed and the text background and cue colors. I can start and stop scrolling with the space bar. It’s simple, flexible, powerful.

It pretty much keeps me from sounding stupid when I have to do a read of some sort. While reading my lines on my monitor, I can look directly at my webcam and appear to not in fact be reading my lines, just as the transparent screen of a teleprompter allows speakers to look at an audience and appear as though they're not in fact reading from notes -- even though they are. It's very useful for webcasts. It looks like the software has been in an alpha state for a while, but I’ve been using it for more than a year and like it very much. Works with Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP/Vista and Linux.

Here's a video of my review.  I'm using TeleKast for the read.

Available from SourceForge

Ground Control to Space Ship One

I've always thought that a robust (read: well funded) national space program was the one of the best ideas that our public servants ever had.  I thought that President Bush's proposal to return the US to the moon and then go on to Mars was one of the best things about his administration.  After all, who else but Uncle Big Bucks Sam could afford to do something that big, that so few private individuals had any interest in?

Well those days have changed and it's probably about time that my thinking changed with them.  Although I was initially very disappointed, President Obama's new budget for NASA is apparently designed to encourage the private sector to take over the heavy lifting, while NASA continues working on more far reaching projects.  Esther Dyson, one of the people whose work and thinking I most admire, has authored an article in next month's Foreign Policy magazine that agrees with this approach.

Tell me what you think.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/08/prepare_for_liftoff

Management is Dead

So many people enjoy bashing the Grateful Dead and their followers that they ignore any of the good that they have done.  They have offered their support to organizations such as Seva, (a nonprofit that brings eye operations to impoverished people), Riverkeeper, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Wharf Rats (a group that help fans become and stay sober), among others.  The Dead have taken their social and community responsibilities very seriously.

Few also realize that for quite a while there has been serious academic study of the Dead, their business organization and their fans.

The March issue of the Atlantic offers an excellent article on the Grateful Dead Archive scheduled to open soon at UC Santa Cruz.  One of the most interesting aspects, to me, will be the insights offered into the Dead's business philosophy.  As the article states, the Dead were visionary" in the way that they created customer value, promoted social networking and did strategic business planning."

The Dead incorporated in the mid-70's, established a board of directors, founded a profitable merchandising wing (named Grateful Dead Merchandising, oddly enough) and even though they allowed taping at their concerts and encouraged tape trading, they did not hesitate to prosecute copyright violators.  They weren't greedy and adapted well.  Who can say that about many companies today?  Wall Street could certainly take a lesson.

Not bad for a bunch of dirty, lazy hippies.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201003/grateful-dead-archives

What Did You Just Say?!?

And to round out my entries on language, I thought I'd just add one more useful link.  There are many online translation sites on the web, but after you know what to say, just how do you say it?

Forvo is a site with over half a million words, almost as many pronunciations and 231 languages represented.  The recordings are all pronounced by native speakers.

Want to know how to correctly greet visitors in Telugu?  Toast someone from Wallonia in Walloon.  Curse in Klingon?  It's all here and so much more.  Qapla'.   *walks away*

http://www.forvo.com/

Your Brain On Language(s)

And while I'm thinking about language, did you know that speaking more than one language can make you smarter and more creative? I wish I'd known that back in high school. I probably would have learned more than a smattering of words in different languages.

Here's a link to a study that shows that mastering a second language makes your brain processes information in both languages.  Oh and the study also shows that you are more flexible and adaptive in your thinking process.

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2009/vanassche.cfm

65,000 Year Old Language Silenced

The last member of the Bo tribe, Boa Sr, died last week making another ancient people extinct. When a people go, their language and culture go with them. With rapid globalization many would ask, "So what?" Estimates of future language loss range from half of more than 6000 currently spoken languages being lost in the next 200 years, to 90% by the year 2050. No matter how you count it, that's a lot of ideas and culture gone forever.

As author and anthropologist Wade Davis puts it, language extinction effectively reduces the "entire range of the human imagination... to a more narrow modality of thought" and thus privileges the ways of knowing in dominant (and overwhelmingly Western) languages such as English. Foucauldian ideas of power and knowledge, as both inseparable and symbiotic, are implicated in the universalizing of Western knowledge as truth, and the rendering of other forms as less valid or false: mere superstition, folklore, or mythology. In the case of language extinction, those "voices which are deemed to be inferior or secondary by colonizing, globalizing, or developing forces are literally silenced."

Davis also says, "Genocide, the physical extinction of a people is universally condemned, but ethnicide, the destruction of a people’s way of life is not only not condemned, it’s universally, in many quarters, celebrated as part of a development strategy."

Every time we lose a language we, as a world, are further impoverished. Below is a video of Boa Sr singing and speaking in the Bo language. Listen and weep for her and for us.

The 10,000 Year Clock

In my last two posts I've referenced The Long Now Foundation.  I thought it was about time that I introduced you to it.  Time is what the foundation is all about.  They are dedicated to elongating the attention span of the human race.

Few would argue that many of the problems we face today do not stem from short term thinking to long term problems.  Long Now is trying hard to fix that.

Below is a five minute video that was done for CBS's Sunday Morning program a while back.  Blow that is a link to The Long Now Foundation's website.




http://www.longnow.org/

Aluna

As a member of the The Long Now Foundation and supporter of the ten thousand year clock they are building, I have long been interested in any project that gives humans a greater sense of the scale of time.

Contemporary culture encourages us to think in ever smaller scales of time; a year, a quarter, a month, day, hour, minute, second.  At this rate we'll soon have no sense of the future or the past.  In fact I believe many of us have lost that ability already and it is evident in the way we frame our ideas of how things are going and how they proceed.  We now want instant solutions; instant economic recoveries, instant health care and an instant end to our problems.

The Aluna project is another antidote to the irrational short term thinking of our time. Larger than Stonehenge, Aluna is will be the world’s first tidal powered moon clock. It will change the way we consider time and our understanding of our planet.

Things take time.  Have a look at the video.



http:///www.alunatime.org/

Things Fall Apart or Entropy 101

I often tickle my students imaginations by asking them how we'd know if there had been an advanced civilization say, 50 thousand years or so ago.  Their first answer is usually, "By the stuff they leave behind."  I counter with, "Probably not."

Covering 500 years in your neighborhood, this two minute animated video from The Long Now Foundation, of which I am a member, illustrates the point well.

New Album, Old Review

I just finished up producing a new album for classical guitarist Scott Schwertfeger.  Eleven tracks of beautiful solo nylon string guitar music. It should be available in about two months.

Also my review of the Arturia Moog Modular V has been picked up by BoingBoing.  If you want to read it again (and some dumb and some clever comments), here's the link.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/29/moog-modular-a-synth.html

Useless Infotainment at 11:00

I think a lot about news these days.  Not "The News," but news: the way we consume it, the way it's presented, the way it's filtered and edited, the way much of it is actually ignored by the people who are supposed to report it and the public who is supposed to pay attention to it.  Mostly, I lament that news has become just another "product" to be consumed and that you can pick the news you wish to believe, as if you could pick and choose your own version of what's real.

The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  When did we start to think that what we believe is more significant than what is really going on around us?

I believe it was Edward R. Murrow who once said that news is what rich and powerful people don't want you to know about.  How much of today's news passes that test?

      He also said, “If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable.”


This gives you some insight into where I'm going with this post and why I fear for our democracy and nation.  I used to work in news, as an editor, that's why I feel the way I do.  Chris Lee still does and he has some opinions about what happened to get us to this sad state.  Read and weep.


http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/01/when-it-comes-to-news-why-wont.html

Moog Modular V 2.5

I remember the first time I encountered a Moog Synthesizer: Switched-On Bach. I was all of 14-years-old and absolutely captivated. All those knobs and patch cords. And then there were the sounds that it made. To an adolescent boy growing up in the mid-late ’60s whose hero was Mr. Spock, it was like a futuristic dream come true—my own musical version of the Starship Enterprise and for only a few thousand dollars. The Last Whole Earth Catalog even featured a review of it by Wendy Carlos herself!

Then I learned how much a few thousand dollars actually was. I tinkered with resisters and capacitors, transistors and chokes, but I couldn’t do anything like that. But this is what led me inexorably to a career in music and recording. Well, and the Beatles helped, too. Flash forward 41 years and many synthesizers, guitars and amps later, I still could not seem to afford that big gleaming Moog dream.

Then a company called Arturia released a virtual software version of my childhood Holy Grail, the Moog Modular V. And there were nine—count ’em, nine!—oscillators. Filters, envelope generators. A fixed filter bank. A sample and hold module. A bank of configurable mixers. And with enough computer firepower, I could finally make the sounds I’d heard Wendy Carlos make. The software even has stereo chorus and delay lines, a very neat addition to the package to fatten up your sound without having to use any outboard effects. And did I mention polyphony? Yes, unlike its hardware predecessor, the Moog Modular V offers up to 32 voices, if you have the processor power to deliver them.

I’ve been using this powerful, flexible piece of software for almost four years now and I have to admit that it does almost everything I ever wanted a music synthesizer to do. It does things the hardware version couldn’t even do. My only complaint is latency (delay). I would never use it live, but then again I haven’t been playing live these days, and if I did, I’d probably sample off the sounds I want to use and do it that way. The software can be used stand alone or as a plugin, for Mac or Windows OS.

Arturia Moog Modular V2.5 Software Synthesizer

$190

Available from Amazon

Software by Arturia

Here are two audio samples:  http://www.kk.org/cooltools/moogmv1.mp3
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/moogmv6.mp3