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the airships arrive, originally uploaded by ~Emma Cox~.

getting wood

NOS Antique Bicycle Wood on ebay wooden Handlebars Stem 1880s, originally uploaded by Ciclo Di Cuoio /Cycle Leather+Vintage Pro Bicycles.

This is beautiful.

Does green building demand complexity?

Just read the Oct. 2009 Buildings article about New York City's One Byrant Park, a recently-completed skyscraper that has become the first office tower in the world to achieve LEED Platinum. Green features which are growing common in smaller buildings but are mostly unheard of on this scale (2M sq ft) include:

• it's mostly constructed of recycled and recyclabe materials
• insulating glass allows max daylight while reducing heat transfer
• a low-emission cogeneration plant complements power
• a grey water recycling system designed to save millions of gallons per year
• planted roofs, etc.

It's pointed out in the article that "Besides being the most environmentally advanced skyscraper in the world, it's also one of the most comlex." While some of the reasons for that complexity include things like being located at one of the world's busiest intersections and enveloping a 1,055-seat Broadway theater with an historical facade, much of the complexity comes from the systems necessary for its planned high performance.

I think that as we move forward with sustainable building, we'll be treading each side of the complexity issue; smaller new and renovated buildings will be very simple as inefficient systems are done away with in favor of using the building's immediate environment for conditioning, circulation, etc., but big buildings will tend toward increasing complexity, as they try to meet very different goals on a much larger scale, and various harvesting techniques will become more feasible when done in larger amounts.

Opportunity rests in both increasing simplicity and complexity; the trick is understanding where. That understanding, though, is only going to grow more complex.

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Yoga above the clouds, originally uploaded by carl kalabaw.

bike racks vs. skip stops

The federal government’s landlord, the General Services Administration (GSA), was surprised in 2007 upon completion of the super-green San Francisco Federal Building when it was told by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) that the building didn’t qualify for a LEED rating. It had specifically been built to raise the sustainable bar, and GSA took it as a snub that LEED hadn’t been conferred. Architect Thom Mayne of LA’s Morphosis, didn’t seem as concerned; maybe-well-earned confidence buoyed him as he pointed out the problems with LEED that prevented it from recognizing the building’s achievements.

Most agreed that a LEED rating, which awards points based on a spectrum of measures integrated into the construction and intended operation of a building (but not so much the actual operation), wasn’t up to the task because the federal building was too advanced, incorporating features not yet addressed by LEED. Evidently the USGBC eventually agreed, as it just granted a silver rating to the building. Still, even though GSA and USGBC are praising the achievement, a silver rating seems to fall short for a building that so clearly exemplifies much of what the USGBC promotes. And Mayne? I haven't found any comment; he's busy following up on the performance of his SanFran building (I hope he reads this Epoch Times article) and designing newly astonishing ones in some of the world's other important cities.

A side view of the new Federal Building in San Francisco.

(Ivan Velinov/The Epoch Times)

Persistence

Sometimes things that have been forgotten or purposely shelved emerge, whether from the slime or some shining glory, into our current events that are tied inextricably to other things about which we only have tangential awareness, and it’s like a firecracker going off when the connections are made. For most of my life I’ve been aware of the names Manson, Tate, and Polanski, and I’ve known that various levels of sadness surrounded those names, but until this morning had no idea the first two were tied in any way to the third.

But then I was reading the comments in a favorite blog this morning and they tied together awful events that unfolded just before I could have been aware of them, which had ensured that I would only ever hear about them as snippets bubbled up through popular culture, ferried but never explained by those who actually remembered them as events rather than micro-history. It turns out that Manson and his followers killed Sharon Tate (which I knew), an actress married to Roman Polanski, a director* (which I didn’t know). She was eight and a half months pregnant (which I thankfully hadn’t known). Eight years later, the widower drugged and raped a 13-year-old (If really pushed I might remember that Polanski was a rapist, but probably not. I’m sure I heard that association at one time or another, probably diffused through the euphimisms used to soft-peddle his crime, but I doubt I really stored it away in memory. ) and skipped town.

All these sad and awful and tawdry facts settled onto the floor like dust, the connections quickly swept into corners by our lives. Sometimes it’s good to forget about things, but forgetting doesn’t truly insulate us because at any moment they can float back into reality, dragging their forgotten connections behind them like spider silk. It’s like karma, which I do and don’t believe in, making itself obvious in our lives, reminding us with clear facts that everything we ever do has a result, and will persist, in one way or another, and we normally have the choice whether that persistence is positive or negative.


* Yes, I intended to say a director as if he’s just one of many, as if he was a truck driver, because in spite of his talents at movie making, he is just one of many. It’s just a job, and neither his talent nor his name give him any special insight into anything other than movie-making, and they certainly shouldn’t offer him any special consideration (which they’ve seemed to for 30 years), and that is important to remember when he is judged as a fugitive, pedophile, and rapist in the coming weeks.

TV, R.I.P

It happened to newspapers and journalism first; T.V. as we've known it is not far behind. I have almost no reason to watch it anymore.

Intelligent Video: The Top Cultural & Educational Video Sites

Movies 101: Where can I legally see movies for free online?

I feel a little dizzy at the possibilities...

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STS128-S-038 by NASA: 2Explore on flickr

It's easy to forget, after 128 missions, how cool this really is.

Jefferson vs. Hamilton: the debate persists

Had a serendipitous surprise on my morning commute today. I’m listening to the audiobook of The American Future, in which Simon Schama makes the point that yes, rebuilding societies after we’ve bombed them into submission actually IS the mission of the Army. Universally-admired Generals like Eisenhower and Marshall didn’t flinch at the idea, and they probably would’ve squinted and looked at you like you were an ugly, rude little thing if you’d suggested otherwise. These were men that knew how to get things running, as Simon says, ‘to build democracy.’ They were cut from the grey cloth of the West Point that founder Thomas Jefferson envisioned (I hadn’t known that little bit either; is there anything Jefferson didn’t do?), a place that would teach its students not just to efficiently and scientifically conduct war, but more importantly to wield those same skills to build the infrastructure and foundations of the new country.

The serendipitous part was that I was about a mile as the crow flies from Detroit’s Fort Wayne when it was mentioned in the book as an example of the sturdy work of Montgomery Meigs, one of the first and best examples of the Jeffersonian West Point engineers. If I hadn’t been running late, I would’ve sat in the parking structure to hear more about his years here, building a fort and barracks which still stand after almost 200 years. Meigs has captured my attention in the book, not least for his ‘establishment’ of Arlington National Cemetery, done out of spite toward his old commander, friend, and fellow early West Point grad Robert E. Lee. When he heard of what he believed was the odious betrayal of Lee accepting the position of General of the Army of Northern Virginia, Meigs suggested using the family mansion of Lee’s wife as a burial ground for the Union dead. The first men (soon to include Meigs’ son) were buried next to Mrs. Lee’s beloved rose bushes; ‘If they ever spend another night there,’ Meigs fumed, ‘they’ll sleep with the ghosts.’ It doesn’t get any more American Gothic.

But that’s a digression from saying that, yes, the military does need to be in the business of rebuilding that which we tear down. As I was listening to Schama, I remembered some of my own experiences with my fellow enlistees and this funny and smart TED Talk by Thomas Barnett, who proposes a new way of dealing with this problem: split the military into two wings, one for tearing down, the other for building up. Given the complexity of the overlapping missions of the military, I believe Jefferson would have been fine with it. Definitely give it a listen.



Side note: If you're a political history nerd, Schama also outlines the debate between Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton regarding the mission of the Army as well as the function of government. Its applicability to the current tropes of both parties (but especially modern conservatism) is profound.

#csfri

Let’s Celebrate Science Fridays.

I’m thinking we should borrow a little bit of each Twitter Friday to celebrate all the good in science and rationality. Nothing against Follow Fridays, but there’s room for another meme, or tweme, or whatever you want to call them, and what better one than humanity’s greatest accomplishment, the one subject that can unequivocally be identified as giving us a rational framework for understanding the world in which we live?

As for the day, why not Fridays and why not now? NPR has Science Friday, Australia’s National Science Week starts tomorrow, and we in the U.S. are being actively encouraged to devolve into shouting matches rather than rational discussions using facts on critical issues (which unfortunately isn't anything very new). Seems like a good day and time to me.

Let’s celebrate the big discoveries, the anonymous toilers, the ideas, and the underlying tenets of science every day, but on Fridays let's make it clear how much we're already tweeting about it.

#csfri

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The Up balloon over Disneyland Paris, by BaaBeE9

They just set a record 329 balloons launched at one time in France, and in the video below the balloon above was visible. Disney is using it to launch the movie Up in Europe.

The Aquatic Ape

I was happy to see one of TED's new videos was Elaine Morgan discussing the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis this morning (I often watch the laptop to get me through putting away dishes). I stumbled across her book The Aquatic Ape years ago in the library, was so amazed I read it a few times, and wondered why in the world we hadn't heard more about this. At one point I tried to find it to buy, but it was out of print. Flash forward a decade and a half or so and here she is by video explaining why she thinks we don't hear more about it, and the book is available at Amazon.

Watch the video, though. I'm no evolutionary biologist, but I know a bit about it and it seems to be a very compelling argument, even if for nothing more than to synthesize our understanding, to add a branch to the whole story, fleshing it out.

saving energy so you can use it somewhere else

I'm a little skeptical every time I see something like this from someone like them, but it's a cool widget anyway. However, they missed a number of my favorite energy intensive pastimes that they may want to consider adding:

• Shooting rats at the dump
• Peelin' out to impress the ladies
• Burning tires
• Chasing rabbits in the field with my jeep
• Whaling
• Burning coal for heat while reading Charles Dickens to my filthy children (I'm a fool for accurate reenactment)
• Cruizin' and drinkin' fo-tees

a funny exchange

In the random execution of my job, I came across something this morning that I wanted to clarify, so I emailed Doug, who knows some experts:

Git your guns, I need some lawyerin'!
Would you kindly guide your and your various lawyers' eyes to the below and tell me if it means what I think it means, that it's OK to carry a shotgun into a federal facility if you're legally hunting? The public (not to mention Dick Cheney) needs to know!!
From 18 USC 930:

(a) Except as provided in subsection (d), whoever knowingly possesses or causes to be present a firearm or other dangerous weapon in a Federal facility (other than a Federal court facility), or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both.

(b) and (c) excluded for readability

(d) Subsection (a) shall not apply to -

(1) the lawful performance of official duties by an officer, agent, or employee of the
United States, a State, or a political subdivision thereof, who is authorized by law to engage in or supervise the prevention, detection, investigation, or prosecution of any violation of law;
(2) the possession of a firearm or other dangerous weapon by a Federal official or a member of the Armed Forces if such possession is authorized by law; or
(3) the lawful carrying of firearms or other dangerous weapons in a Federal facility incident to hunting or other lawful purposes.

His reply:

Are you going to dress like Elmer Fudd and, when you approach the metal detector, you’ll whisper "shhhh…be vewy, vewy quiet…I’m hunting rabbits…pwease wefer to section (a), subsection (d), 3, heh heh heh heh…" Can I watch?

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May 09 159 by Lord Jim, featured in the flickr pool Neon Boneyard

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File under 'if you've thought of it, you're definitely not the only one':

Rock Climbing, Oklahoma City by 1980Andrew

Detroit has a few opportunities to do the same thing. This would be great, especially right next to traffic on the Rouge Bridge.

conserve

I didn't read the Palin op-ed carefully. Even skimming it went against my recent self-imposed blackout of all things AK gov. But I was looking for news on something else and there it was, both her shpiel and the numerous reactions to it. One of those reactions came from someone else I don't give much attention to, but in this case he reflected exactly what I wonder about regarding Republicans and conservatism. Isn't the central tenet to be careful, not move too quickly, and... conserve? So how can conservatives be in favor of burning through essential natural resources? From the Daily Kos:

But I don't eschew the value of conservative thought, with the emphasis on conservation. A truly conservative person, a cautious and pragmatic individual, would save some supplies, just in case. Call it rainy day money, or emergency supplies, whatever you like. In tough times, those reserves will help you survive. And the best way to employ them is in conjunction with a plan. Like our would-be farmer from the analogy, those reserves might help you survive until you can set up a self-sustaining system to meet your needs. A survivor on a raft in the ocean might try calculating how long it might take before rescue, or how far to travel to a life-sustaining island, when figuring out how to ration his or her emergency rations. But, just eating those rations up in the hopes that something will change by the time you're finished, is not acting to a plan. It is a desperate, foolish act, because when you are reduced to that level, you have given up conscious control over your own destiny.

I learned that style of conservatism, ironically, in college. Having very limited cash resources taught me the sting of burning through them without setting aside at least a little, or trying to shave a little off my consumption every day to extend the days that I'd have money. It's a simple lesson, really. Those that blather on about too much spending and too much change should probably also be lecturing the likes of me on the merits of slowing down a little and saving a little of our energy resources.

Heh.

I'm reeeaaallllly not one for I-told-you-so, especially in this case since most everyone agrees with me anyway as is evident by bailouts, manipulated bankruptcies, etc. (though not for Ford, pointedly), but I stumbled across this little ditty from October 2006 while looking for something else.

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Dip Garden, by Aerial Photography

A new favorite flickr contact: Aerial Photography.

One of the things I miss most about flying for a living is the wonderful perspective 1,000 feet gives you, and the combination voyeur/explorer feel of looking into people's lives and the natural world from a very powerful and unique perspective, straight down.

vote for growth

Finally got a chance to take in my recycling last Saturday. RecycleHere! was in Corktown (not quite here, but until I get curbside everything, I'm sticking with these guys in spite of the drive) so I filled every cubic inch of the car and headed to the train station.

While there I met Matthew Naimi, the guy who started RecycleHere!. We ended up standing on the curb, talking for about 30 minutes about his run for Detroit City Council, RH's business model and activities, growing recycling in Detroit, urban agriculture, even urban aquaculture; in fact, he not only didn't look at me like I was from Mars when I suggested growing fish in the city, but he took off with the idea like only someone who's thought of it before could have, suggesting that the effluent and water from the fish be turned into compost for the co-located crops.

The first thing I asked about, not having an opportunity every day to talk to someone knowledgeable about how Council really works, was whether my friends and I had it wrong - would the city in fact benefit from a representational rather than the current at-large Council? Absolutely, he said - we weren't missing any subtleties. Accountability is lacking and this is the only way to get it. Indeed, there's an initiative that will be given some thought during the next session (I think) he said. This would be great, but I'm not optimistic that anything is going to change unless at least a few of the Council members are changed first. Those sitting now have been able to get re-elected specifically because of the lack of a representational requirement; I don't see them acting against their own interests, no matter the interests of Detroit.

Some other items:

• Matthew's got a great grasp of the social and organizational issues around not just garbage removal and recycling in the city, but also of the unions and utilities.
• RecycleHere! comes across all happy and light (note Carl Oxley's bee logo) but positioning it the way he did and making it viable was very savvy.
• He's supporting a Detroit-based recycling program that, if successful, will replace his company. He's willing to put himself out of business to see the city succeed.
• He supports urban agriculture, and understands that this isn't just a nice way to help inner-city residents grow some good organic food. Detroit's vast open spaces are a resource the city could leverage to underpin a number of directions for improvement.

If you live in Detroit, give serious consideration to Matthew Naimi for City Council. More info at recyclehere.net and on Twitter.

this is kinda short, but...

...y'know, Twitter's down. That whole Iran voting like it's 2000 in Florida thing.


Just saw a trailer for a Depp/Bale movie about John Dillinger called 'Public Enemies.' Looks so cool I don't even mind that it's yet another chance for my wife to get all drool-y over Johnny.

Just have to get Iowa onboard...

Stumbled across this looking for something else. It's the abstract of a UC Berkeley Engineering study on corn ethanol.

It is shown here that one burns 1 gallon of gasoline equivalent in fossil fuels to produce 1 gallon of gasoline equivalent as ethanol from corn. Then corn ethanol is burned as a gasoline additive or fuel. Burning the same amount of fuel twice to drive a car once is equivalent to halving the fuel efficiency of those cars that burn corn ethanol, and will cause manifold damage to air, surface water, soil and aquifers. The overall energy balance of corn conversion to ethanol demonstrates that 65% of the input energy is lost during the conversion. Carbon dioxide sequestration by corn is nullified when corn ethanol is burned. Therefore, we conclude, subsidizing ethanol from corn as a gasoline oxygenate is one of the most misguided public policy decisions made in recent history.

College freshmen get it (though the crisp 1 to 1 ratio above may be a little more blurry than that). We need to stop subsidizing (some say to the tune of $5B) this wrongheaded approach that is pushing up food prices, increasing our dependence on petrochemicals, and exacerbating the problem it's touted to solve.

'What are they thinking?' They're not.

I know not everyone surrounds themselves with as much environmental info as I do, but I've been barraged the last few days by two stunningly ignorant comments, and one that just made me want to strangle someone.

The first, a discussion about the serving options for a recent birthday party. We were going to get about 50 inexpensive plates (not ceramic, but you know, actual non-throwaway plates) so they could be used for all such parties in our family. Someone was trying to dissuade us in favor of plastic due to the work of cleaning them. We said we didn't want to keep generating all that one-time-use garbage, buying plastic plates every time there was a get-together, throwing more crap away. The answer, "But they're already made."

The second came while talking to someone about the floating mass of platic and garbage in the Pacific north of Hawaii (I mistakenly mentioned it was the size of Texas. It's actually twice that.). Their solution, "You'd think they could figure out a way to burn it."

The one that made my hands clench hungrily was when a condo organization's board member dismissively waved off the assertion that leaving every front and back door light on all night (which she'd just suggested for security's sake) would waste a lot of energy and add to the growing amount of light pollution in the area. "Nobody cares about that." Tool.

I tend to believe it's only an information problem that stands in the way of solving most of our problems, that if we can just inform most people about the effects of certain actions, they'll come around. But it's more than that, isn't it? People need to be able to think past the very next thought in their heads, and if they don't do that habitually, who the hell has the time to train them?

A Sticky Problem

I enjoyed this morning's NYT editorial 'Forests and the Planet' about the House climate bill including pollution offsets, and jumped in with both feet. It mentioned how environmental groups (NYT says they were ‘European,’ that could be; I don’t remember) standing in the way of the proposed Kyoto Protocol’s proposal to allow offset payments by nations if they didn’t meet carbon reduction levels. Excluding that from Kyoto contributed to rampant deforestation, a Pennsylvania of rain forest every year, which then can't sequester as much as 20% of global carbon pollution. It may have even been the first time I heard the phrase about the perfect being the enemy of the good, because that’s what this obstruction was. It stuck in people’s craw that a polluter, the developed world, could just keep on keeping on and write a check and ‘get off’ without doing their fair share.

I’m the first to admit I can be a vindictive, petty prick; I really do want to see companies suffer if they’ve knowingly skirted legalities, suppressed science to increase profits, and lied about it all through slick marketing campaigns, and I want to see traditionally dirty industries cleaned up. That said, if I can see the benefit of allowing nations and companies to pay their way out of decreasing their emissions, why didn’t the Europeans? We all Most of us want companies and nations to run cleaner, but if we can’t quite get there, doesn’t denying the option of paying for some other positive measure smack of the worst kind of petty hair-splitting? The active word here is ‘pay.’ One way or another, money will be diverted from the bottom line to anti-pollution efforts. Further, as long as a company or country is paying these fines, it leaves the door open to influencing them further. What I’m trying to say is, as far as the editorial is concerned, count me in. I think we should definitely support this kind of measure, if not as an end goal at least as a step in the right direction.

The problem, as always, arises once we consider the economics. The editorial uses the example of an acre of rainforest being worth $250 when converted to crops but $2,000 when used as a carbon sink. What happens after ten or so years of slowing deforestation, though, when the drumbeat of impending global warming doom has dulled and the prices of mahogany and bananas have risen 1,000%? Then will forest acreage be worth more than $2,000? What if it’s on a waterway, offering easy access to growing populations (we’ll be pushing 8 billion by that point) in need of food, work, and escape from crushing megalopoli? I’m not backing out of my support for the idea, just pointing out that if we are lucky enough to implement it, we’ll need to stay very diligent, taking action to minimize the decrease in its impact as long as it will be useful. Some things we'll have to do will include:

• Devalue some forest products (wood, especially exotic woods)
• Value sustainable products (fair trade coffee and other sustainable agriculture, ecotourism, medicine research, carbon sink service)
• Implement a policing system to ensure compliance (You think getting Pakistan to fight the Taliban was expensive? Try getting Indonesia or Brazil to crack down on every illegal logger. That $2,000 per acre could disappear pretty quickly.)
• Implement a carbon-negative economy before the value of carbon sinks drops enough to make sense to mow them down again.

Again, having the safety valve of paying fines if standards can’t or won’t be met is a needed step, and I applaud Congress for including it (even if it is due to a backroom deal with lobbyists - not that it is, I just wouldn’t be surprised). But it’s only the beginning of a very long, very complex fight.

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Paris Exposition: night view, Paris, France, 1900

The Commons on flickr is putting out some very cool photos. I like this one, and it reminds me of Van Gogh's 'Starry Night Over the Rhone.'

The pious and the sinner

Photo borrowed from Lickbike.com

There was a good NYT piece today on the rivalry between 'Gino the Pious' Bartali and 'Fausto the Sinner' Coppi, a legendary debate which, while it still holds Italians in thrall, I'd never heard of before, and given that my love for the sport is twenty years old, I should have. I'll be checking out more cycling books discussing the pre-Hampsten/Hinault/LeMond/Indurain years.

The article mentions a photo (above) of the two sharing a water bottle that is claimed by each side as proof it was their man who was the better teammate; for my money, I'd say it's Coppi doing the hand-off.

Roast

Dinner at Michael Symon's Roast in the Book Cadillac last night.  Fantastic.  It's great for couples but, really, Roast makes for a great group dining venue.  We started with mussels that had the faintest hint of dill followed by our entrees.  I had the roasted whitefish that was complimented with crab and, again, dill with a nice riesling and was very, very good.  However, Michelle had the smoked pork chop with polenta and peppers...this dish took you places.  I had visions of a grassy, flowery field on a sunny day, really.  The subtle smokey flavor followed by the succulent pork melted in your mouth like soft serve ice cream.  Dessert was a vanilla brulee for me and a cherry almond crisp with sherry ice cream for Michelle.  I think I came out on top with dessert.  

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Atlantis and Hubble against the backdrop of the sun. Taken by Thierry Legault and shared by nasa hq photo.

"I am but an egg."

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On Top of Things, originally uploaded by Allard One.

my ‘running capitalist dog’ post

Cleaning off my desktop this morning I skimmed an article about Roger Baldwin, civil libertarian and the founder of the ACLU, saw a caption about communism (he wasn't), and was sent on a mental tangent. It dawned on me for the first time how similar the struggle between capitalism and communism is to that between rationality and religion. In both cases we’re presented with systems that have been tested, again and again, and while capitalism and rationality do have their occasional shortcomings, they work really well as long as they are practiced consistently and fairly. Communism and religion? Their ideas may feel good, they strive to quickly answer questions people want answered, but neither can produce any tangible proof of their validity. The practice of communism especially was based on predicted results of untested hypotheses and relied on a complete lack of history to sound believable. Nevertheless, people bought into it based on nothing more than a hunch. What’s funny about this is the fact that so many people who are die-hard, laissez-faire, no-new-taxes business types are also religious. Crazy.

Then, during lunch, I came across a post titled ‘Buffett Speaks’ by Frank Boosman. More red meat for my patriotic mood.

Sign. Me. Up.

Doug, Pete, and Chad, too, I'd bet.



Thanks to fixed gear for the global awareness.

it's coming...

Tesla's Model S (for sedan). Half the price of the roadster and slated for 2011. Sounds like a long way off, but it's not.

A sneak peak from Treehugger:

MRSA

Great. A new acronym we're going to wish we'd never heard. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is a bacterial infection that is resistant to most antibiotics. I'll spare you the grisly skin details, but suffice to say it kills more people in the U.S. now than AIDS. 'What's the culprit?' you may be wondering, 'global warming, insects?' Pigs.

Pigs grown in CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), the industrial scale source of almost all of our meat, even a lot of the stuff labeled 'organic,' are packed in tighter than Londoners in the 1300s. And, like every European city in the Middle Ages that mixed high density with animals and shoddy cleaning, CAFOs breed disease almost as efficiently as they breed create tail-less pigs. Enter MRSA.

I'd never heard of this particular infection until today when I read two different pieces about it (I'm supposed to be on vacation). Just one more reason to start cutting down on your meat intake unless it's from more natural, sustainable places than antibiotic- and petroleum-fed factories. And this really is the only thing that's going to bring about change: your decision to eat sustainably. This is not a top-down solution, especially because the President's choice for Secretary of Agriculture is an industry guy. We have to start giving a damn about where our food is coming from and demanding better.

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Cool picture. Depressing story.

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I don't care if they've become cliches. Hiking canyons like this is very high on my travel list.

Not in Chicago? That's right, bitches!

I'm not sure how Detroit got included in that very short list of cities showing Medicine for Melancholy, but I'm sure glad it did. Unfortunately, when we saw it at the remarkable Detroit Film Theater (want a beer and a brownie before the movie in a beautiful setting? no prob) there was an issue with the whole digital vs. 35mm format thing so the colors and crispness were pretty much nonexistent. But, for our troubles, the theater manager not only let us know up front, but handed out free passes as everyone left. A class act, one of Detroit's finest. M4M will be playing there three more days, Feb. 20-22. You should go. If you can't, the website says it's available now on IFC in Theaters or on DVD this spring.

Bike-friendly fixie tour of San Francisco! Indie soundtrack!

It only sucks if you're the co-optee

Even my dental hygienist, a nice lady but not what you'd ever call 'cool,' is on Facebook. Time (about as cool as my hygienist) jots down ten reasons why X-ers are shoving the cool kids away from their social networking table and taking over; flab, mom support groups, twenty-year-old cassette tapes, and all.

There was a time when it was cool to be on Facebook. That time has passed. Facebook now has 150 million members, and its fastest-growing demographic is 30 and up. At this point, it's way cooler not to be on Facebook. We've ruined it for good, just like we ruined Twilight and skateboarding. So git! And while you're at it, you damn kids better get off our lawn too.

What's interesting to watch as our culture really sharpens its Peter Pan chops is how the irrelevant and uncool (read: anyone over 30 with a boring job) are now not passively being left behind as each younger generation adopts and casts off their fads. We're actually wresting those fads away from the younger set, practically forcing them on to redefine cool away from us and (in Facebook's case at least) helping the thing to gain marketabilitty even as it loses bleeding-edge coolness. I can't think of any examples of this happening before, can you?

Michigan Central Station - 1987

Caught the Black Keys last night

FOUR people's worth of really good noise poured out of those two guys.

splatter

For every prole that ever indignantly asserted, "I coulda done that in five minutes!," now you can give it a shot.

added Charlie Rose to the TiVo season pass

Can't sleep tonight. Got up to grab a quick snack and watch a few minutes of TV which quickly turned into 25. On PBS, Charlie Rose was interviewing retired General Jack Keane about the situation in Iraq and the Middle East. It was refreshing to hear a journalist carefully parsing out his questions while respectfully acknowledging the complexity of the situation and the experience of the person in front of him, and enthralling to listen to the very measured but very knowledgeable and direct answers Keane gave him.

I've dropped out of knowing day to day what is going on in Iraq, but according to Keane, the end of this month will bring provincial elections that will shape the gov't much more fairly than the first go 'round due to increased Sunni enfranchisement. He's of the opinion that an Arab Muslim democracy allied with the U.S. is not just a goal, but almost an inevitability. I hope he's right.

He also talked a bit about Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and India. An interesting point that he made about the dismal situation in Pakistan was Musharraf's easing of pressure on the Taliban once the U.S. asked for help in Afghanistan from NATO. Our inability to dedicate the number of troops to stabilize the country and subsequent request for assistance made us look weak to Musharraf, leading him to hedge his bets and try to appear less an American toady to the Islamists. Another point he made was that the U.S. has been and will need to continue trying to convince India to throttle back a little on the Pakistanis, especially in Kashmir so that the Pakistanis can retrain their freed-up troops for counter-insurgency work so that they can address the growing internal dangers of Islamic fundamentalism. The fulcrums and balances are incredibly complex and bely the politics and shallow media reporting skimming over the top of them.

January 20th, 2009

"Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer..."

great idea

Check this post out on Pruned. It's about really driving home the experiences of others, making them present in our daily lives.

BTW, their symbol's NFLX

If they don't have your next DVD available at the closest shipping center, Netflix will now mail you the next locally-available movie in your queue while you 'wait' for the first movie in your queue to find its way to you. So they're basically tacking on a movie you want to see for free, without counting against your account for that month, just because it might take an extra day for your first movie to get to you.

Part of me rankles at this type of thinking as they're just movies, and it's just a day or so. Anyone who'd actually get upset about this needs to readjust their priorities.

That said, I also recognize the remarkable level of service they embrace by doing this; they're saying that their customers should not expect just solid service at a good price, but truly exceptional service from people who actually look for ways to solve a problem before anyone reasonable even thinks they have one.