big on love, tolerance, and the human potential
They’ve been whispering in Washington that Mexico’s President of six years said that George W. Bush is “the cockiest guy I have ever met in my life.”
Vincente Fox was Mexico’s leader before the 2000 election when he was thinking Bush would never become president. “I can’t honestly say that I had ever seen George W. Bush getting to the White House.”
In most racks of records, it was the same albums over and over… but Village Music took a more intimate approach to inventory becoming important to many in the music business and cherished in its community.
B.B. King brought his bus several hundred miles after a performance in Nevada to spend a few hours shopping here.
Top artists from around the world stopped here, and many of the legends of California music such as Ry Cooder, Santana, Bobby Weir, Bonnie Raitt. Even the continental Mick Jagger. Click here for a larger version of this grand picture.
Now stars and fans are saying a bluesy goodbye to a great, great record store.
Village Music in Mill Valley, California is closing after fifty years, along with thirty-five percent of America’s small record stores that have closed since 2003.
I lived in Mill Valley and spent years enjoying the downtown village culture.
I crafted a retail store across the street from Village Music that sold only custom and used blue jeans, built a stunning nursery store called ‘The Park at Old Brown’s’, plus an espresso cafe nearby known as the “Be Here Now Cafe” – way ‘a-head’ of its time.
It took awhile to find a willing old barn before I brought a truckload of weathered redwood planks to hammer on the walls of the Sweetwater Saloon.
One of the most well-known and relaxed music establishments in the USA, unless outside the door when a famous group or rock star came to town, the Sweetwater desparately needs help – a surprise 30-day lease termination after 30 years of paying rent!
“Bottom line is, I can’t pay the rent here.”
Northern California village culture has taken a beating from development pressures, perhaps more than any similar region as San Francisco quickly and without notice became a global financial center. Local folks in Marin County have paid skyrocketing prices that today only a mono-culture of the very rich can comfortably afford.
Places that five or 10 years ago were empty tundra are now dotted with lakes — a result of thawing permafrost.
As the northern permafrost and tundra come to life, massive quantities of gas will be released as bacteria once frozen in the landscape are revived.
Reuters is reporting that the greatest increase in global warming might be melting microbes mooching mammoth dung – layers and layers of waste from huge herds of prehistoric animals mixed with previously frozen ancient plants, grasses and tundra.
A top regional scientist studying northern soils of Russia, areas the size of central Europe, reports that the warming organic matter will soon come to life. Massive quantities of gas will be released, such as methane, dwarfing mankind’s emissions and accelerating warming irreversibly.
The potential releases of carbon are “so gigantic that they dwarf global oil reserves”.
We always think, with our Mercator map mentality, that Russia is that faraway place with the beautiful former capital St. Petersburg and the intriguing Moscow. But what if we look at the map and see Russia from the North Pole?
The result is astonishing — and not a little scary.
The following countries, former Russian republics and satellites, border this massive country:
- Finland,
- Norway,
- Denmark (through Greenland),
- Ukraine,
- Armenia,
- Azerbaijan,
- Belarus,
- Estonia,
- Georgia,
- Kazakhstan,
- Kyrgyzstan,
- Latvia,
- Lithuania,
- Moldova,
- Tajikistan,
- Turkmenistan,
- Uzbekistan,
- Georgia,
- China,
- North Korea,
- Mongolia,
- Turkey,
- Iran,
- Pakistan via Tajikistan,
- Afghanistan,
- China
- United States
- Canada.
As the Internet advances, what will be the sequins of vents for the future of newspapers?
And what of journalists and staff that may no longer have jobs?
If it’s Goodbye to Newspapers, what’s next? “The age of the newspaper baron is over, and the media tycoon does not tend to be terribly interested in democracy.
“The loss of advertising and circulation revenue to companies such as Google and Yahoo, which remain uninterested in funding reporting staff; the rise of a Wall Street theory that says profits can be maximized by minimizing the product; and an uncritical deference to power particularly among the Washington press elite have each helped to undermine not just the business models underpinning independent journalism, but also its ability to supply information the citizenry needs for democracy to work.
“Is it so difficult for wizened newspaper men, and their cherished readers both young and old, to test out some new funding models?’
Perhaps we can let journalism drift. Perhaps hiring writers to inform us will become unnecessary.
We could try other methods. Open Access has its promoters. Librarians might lead our media. Why not?
Imagine a world where anyone can instantly access all of the world’s scholarly knowledge – as profound a change as the invention of the printing press. Technically, this is within reach.
All that is needed is a little imagination, to reconsider the economics of scholarly communications from a poetic viewpoint.
Any baby boomer worth the desk they once crawled under should bravely study ‘extinction risk analysis’. Every baby boomer is already initiated.
Particularly now, while species drop to warn us, paranoids rush to rule us, while Russia still refuses, and not one industrial foundation isn’t crumbling, baby boomers are the only generation initiated in the study of utter annihilation.
Thus, there’s duty calling, the other calling, the loudest wail humanity will ever hear, in one word, extinction.
But we’re not yet worried.
Though it seems the Defense Department studied little else with the trillions spent on Mutual Assured Destruction, there’s surprisingly few links for ‘extinction risk analysis‘ on Google.
Worry?
Climate change might merely be the opening curtain to the New Green in most pondertoria, an opportunity to invest, gain status and prove once again that expertise is measured merely by an audience.
Worry?
Before extinction, there’s much more to think about, e.g. shortages. We seem to be discussing shortages every day.
Insufficient grain is a soils research issue, genes not admitted. Insufficient water is just another boon for overpaid plumbers. Insufficient housing is dealt new in a new New Deal with higher rates. Insufficient heat will revive sales in solar and 2.7 million 300 foot windmills we’ll find a place for. Insufficient oil will tear us away from both donkey jihadi and donkey dominionists. Insufficient fish is an enforcement issue, a fissure of dietary fashion fixed when we’ve affixed satellite sensors on every nubile salmon and erect fin; Oxley for caviar and Sarbanes for sharks. Insufficient safety and civility we’ll repair with cameras, cameras everywhere, cameras providing speedy enforcement, speedy divorce, speedy recidivism; cameras behind your eye.
In the past, how have humans behaved when they encounter shortages?
As if not listening to the calming effect of a nuclear air raid loudspeaker, the Lifeboat blog continues to look at the sky and studies ‘extinction risk analysis’. There’s not an Alexandrian library of knowledge on the subject. We haven’t been doing much thinking about extinction.
Once you realize that humanity has lived entirely without existential risks (except the tiny probability of asteroid impact) since Homo sapiens evolved over 100,000 years ago, and we’re about to be hit full-force by these new risks in the next 3-15 years, the interval between now and then is practically nothing.
Ideally, we’d have 100 or 500 years of advance notice to prepare for these risks, not 3-15.
But since 3-15 is all we have, we’d better use it.
At least Lifeboat is beginning to look human extinction in the face. Put that under your desk.
Mood music for an extinction
From ‘The Golden Age of Homeland Security’.
As caliphate and global warming rekindle thoughts of doomsday, it’s time to brush up on Duck and Cover and take a serious look at this collection of H-Bomb-era links and artifacts.
Long before duct tape and poly, All things Atomic reveals how to deal with panic in the year zero by offering a “Musical Manhattan Project” with plenty of lyrical memories to accompany deep analysis of whither instant annihilation or slow extinction. [via learning2share]
Robin Williams
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL6SD1IdnzQ]
It’s a well-known story in Berkeley, California that the UK’s Body Shop brand is based on lies, greed and careful counterfeiting. It’s an annoying story that helps cement anti-corporate feelings for which Berkeley has come to be known.
Peggy Short and Jane Saunders started the Body Shop in 1970s Berkeley, a cost-cutting shop – bring your own bottle – that tested the hype in the cosmetics market and made great efforts to assure ingredients were safe, sustainable and humane.
The story here reveals that the name of their highly respected innovative retail venture, The Body Shop, was stolen, their ingredients list was copied, their slogans and descriptions were lifted, and their philosophy was pilfered to become Anita Roddick’s hoist to wealth, fame and false regard.
Jon Entine writes that the Body Shop in Britain has been fibbing for decades; its founder Roddick “could care less about ingredients”. She was a “mythmaker” who fabricated claims and invented stories merely for marketing appeal.
“…natural-sounding cosmetics: cocoa butter inspired by Hawaiian natives; peppermint foot lotion mixed on request of the London Marathon; eye gel developed for a computer firm concerned about worker eye strain.
“The stories were all fabrications.
“The pineapple facial wash – we talked about Anita going to Sri Lanka and seeing the women rubbing pineapples over them. You know, that kind of nonsense.
“Why was it nonsense?
“Because it wasn’t true.”
This article should have been published many years ago. Roddick may have damaged significant efforts to clean up the cosmetic industry, instead leaving a capstone of lies above her tombstone.
“While traditional cosmetic firms peddled beauty in a bottle, under her vivid command The Body Shop took a commodity product and charged a huge “integrity premium”, packaging idealism and hope for a better world, and making Roddick rich and influential in the process.
“Many women idolised her for promoting a feminist business ethic based on “love” and “care” and “intuition”.
While Anita Roddick trumpeted hollow claims about saving whales with Greenpeace or helping workers in the developing world, she sued the California firm she counterfeited to stop using the name she had taken years earlier!
Jon Entine writes perhaps the only honest obituary.
Wise and patient leadership would be nice but…
Bush said the aim was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and end Saddam’s support for terrorism.
Alan Greenspan reveals, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”
From Dvorak’s blog:
Greenspan, hardly a liberal and not exactly a fan of Clinton while he was in office, now considers Clinton a “political hero” compared to what Bush & Co. have done to the economy since, turning Washington into a place where “[g]overnance has become dangerously dysfunctional.”
Data explosion shakes up IT, by Jeremy Kirk
“In just three years, the bytes of data generated by digital cameras, mobile phones, businesses IT systems, and devices will equal the number of grains of sand on the world’s beaches.”
via preoccupations
If I were suddenly to become a hawk, I would still believe the Bush Administration has failed. Many supporters of war are unhappy.
Hoping for the next presidency, the Newt Gingrich stump says “It has been almost six years since the attacks of 9/11, and the United States has yet to confront the threat posed by the irreconcilable wing of Islam.”
“The current strategy, structures, and resources of the American security apparatus are utterly inadequate to meet the challenges confronting the country.
“The United States faces active enemies that work every day to destroy it. Still, the United States does not act with the urgency of purpose required for victory.
“In comparison, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, it took the United States and its allies less than four years to defeat Italy, Germany and Japan. In less than four years, the United States built a two-ocean navy, put 15,500,000 men and women in uniform, produced more than 50,000 aircraft a year (and more than 100,000 armored vehicles in 1944 alone) and built the most expensive project, the B-29, and the second most expensive project, the atomic bomb.
“The gap between what it will take for the United States to win this war and what is actually being done is so wide that [war continues to be so invigorating…]
If we want home users to be secure, we need to design computers and networks that are secure out of the box, without any work by the end users. There simply isn’t any other way. – Bruce Schneier
Seuss Bush. These Thobbers are robbers.
Thobs seeth.
“Seething”, said a Saying Thing, “keeps Thobs breathing.”
A Thob’ll lob a boomin’ doomer;
the stickory of the hickory, and that’s a bat, that.
Thobs flay a day wailingly unfailingly.
These acts are facts in flix and fax.
A shown known.
Thobs throb in seethin’-breathin’,
hmmm, a cheese-wheeze:
“Bottle a lottle profit, Prophet.”, said CapiTroll.
“Hell Sells. Make a mint. Go to print.”, EdiThor yells.
No budget will nudge it.
Thobs blather when they gather,
reapin’ the keepin’ of rote in the vote.
Some come to the Tell Ya Regalia to sell ya
a Rightly hat, a Rightly hat is adequate to salute repute.
Will we surmise the Next Exercise? Asia Multi-Phasia?
“So,” said a Saying Thing, “Can’t you see I hear in the ear? A Thob’s talkin’ so I’m walkin’.”
Sluice Bush.
These words, this snippet, sums for me the error of the war on terror, which is launched against
“a criminal menace rather than anything on a par with past strategic threats”.
And there’s much more in this healthy rant.
“While the Islamists may declare their ambition to be a ‘western caliphate’, this is as ludicrously implausible as the dreams of 19th-century anarchists.
“The rantings of Osama bin Laden cannot justify reversing the tide of western liberty.
“Indeed, while arming against communism helped defeat communism, arming against terrorism only feeds the beast.”
Exhibit A: Eisenhower’s thesis.
Spot ’em!
Which 25% think the First Amendment goes too far?
28% believe the freedom to worship does not apply to fringe or extreme groups.
37% say media shouldn’t “freely criticize the U.S. military about its strategy and performance”.
Provocative stats about Americans posted at ablogistan.
The First Amendment Survey is here, painfully.
“The top Google ad is about twice as likely as the top free search result to be malicious,” and “Web sites that display trust certifications are twice as likely to be wicked”.
Google Tech Talk video, Searching For Evil, Professor Ross Anderson from the University of Cambridge [link to story]
Awards to a fellow you will enjoy:
1975 Army Commendation medal
1998 American Alpine Club David Brower Conservation Award
2002 Peacemaker Award from Montana Community Mediation Center
2003 Climbing Magazine “Golden Piton Award” for humanitarian effort
2003 Vincent Lombardi Champion Award for humanitarian service
2003 Peacemaker of the Year” Benedictine Monks, Santa Fe, NM
2003 Outdoor Person of the Year – Outdoor Magazine
2003 Salzburg Seminar fellow, sponsored by Microsoft
2004 Freedom Forum “Free Spirit Award” National Press Club, D.C.
2004 Jeanette Rankin Peace Award – Institute for Peace
2005 Men’s Journal ‘Anti-Terror’ Award
2005 Red Cross “Humanitarian of The Year” Montana
2006 University of South Dakota “Alumni Achievement Award”
2006 Golden Fleur-de-lis Award for Peace, City of Florence, Italy
2007 Brookdale Community College (NJ) – Global Humanitarian Award
2007 Rotary Club International – Paul Harris Fellow Award
2007 Concordia College (Moorhead, MN) commencement speaker
2007 Mountain Institute – Excellence in Mountain Community Service Award
Feeding antibiotics to chickens provides no economic benefit.
An estimated 70 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States—more than 24 million pounds every year—are used on farms, mostly in animal feed. Health researchers have long worried that this heavy load of antibiotics is causing strains of bacteria to evolve that are impervious to the drugs.
Farmers have justified their practice on the grounds that antibiotics help fatten up the birds, thereby increasing profits. But a groundbreaking study (pdf) by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health pulls the rug out from under this argument.
Using data collected by Perdue poultry farms, Hopkins researchers calculated that Perdue lost $.0093 per broiler chicken when using antibiotics.
For each dollar spent on antibiotic feed additives, the return was less than 10 cents. “We were surprised to find no measurable benefit and actually a business loss.” [Discover story]
Teach a kid to surf and you protect him for a lifetime, at JP’s blog about information
Update:
JP warmly asserts his parental creed:
Legislation is a poor substitute for morals, ethics and values. Systems-driven constraints on behaviour are an even poorer substitute.
What children need is time.
Time with their parents, time with their peers, time with people who will build them up and encourage them and help shape them.
Time with people who will teach them how to fish.
My melted piston or how I learned to fear paranoids.
Here’s why arrogance and aggrandizement in politics, religion, nationalism and racism will fail, and for screaming jingles out loud, here’s why Jihad is doomed at the donkey:
The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension. – Ezra Pound
Most of the syndicated columns in the nation’s newspapers are conservative. Only 20 percent of our newspapers are evenly balanced.
As you would expect, the Baltimore Sun retorts that it doesn’t matter; blogs take up the slack.
The nation isn’t exactly starved for a diversity of political viewpoints. Never have so many been able to say so much to so many others.
If I could buy a dollop of Devon clotted cream from a dairy with the scruples not to pasteurize even a dram of its freshest milk, would I buy an ounce, a few grams, a liter?
It’s an issue. Brits are going to jail over the matter. They’ve been worried about EU requirements to convert to the metric system by 2010.
I’d walk a mile for a scone and Devon cream [wiki]. Or 1760 yards. You know, 5280 feet. In Britain I could walk 8 furlong, 80 chain, 320 rod, 8000 link, or of all things, more than 15000 hand.
Thankfully, the EU has issued a reprieve for the beleaguered of Britain. After all, it wouldn’t seem the same to walk a kilometer for a scone and Devon cream.
In 1950 Alaska, a battle brewed over Imperial quarts and American quarts that favored mothers and children and drove grocers and governments nuts.
JUNEAU, Alaska, March 6—(BUP) – A first-class milk war between Juneau grocery and local farmers neared a head today with British Columbia milk the cause.
The trouble started when milk from British Columbia’s Fraser Valley was shipped to a Juneau grocery, selling at 30 cents an Imperial quart.
The long-established milk price was 28 cents per quart, American size, or four ounces smaller than the Imperial measure.
The 20th Century Grocery immediately sold out 130 cases of Canadian milk. The Juneau Dairy Association then told the store it could no longer get local milk. The grocery then dropped its Imperial quart price to 25 cents while the supply lasted. In retaliation, a second grocery dropped its price to 25 cents a quart, but thrifty housewives continued to buy the Canadian product, getting the extra four ounces.
Near the busy and famous intersection of Portage and Main in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, my friend the Scottish terrier McNabb waited at the curb with all of us until the policeman whistled us across.
I was a preschool toddler. Though my memory is clear, the images may not be accurate.
We walked to a counter cafe called Sam’s, a blue and white facade, and Sam wore greasy whites and carried a smile that helped me trust the world. I recall learning ‘sunny side up’ and I recall Sam celebrating with me. Only a warm-hearted man sees eggs can be precious.
McNabb was featured in the Winnipeg newspaper. I didn’t know it, but day after day he went to the corner, waited for the whistle, walked to Sam’s, celebrated whatever Sam celebrated with him, walked back to the curb, waited for the whistle, and everybody was amazed and everybody loved him.
Not ashamed to say it, I’m a person that wants an entirely new political landscape and a world without war.
It’s becoming clear that we’re expanding the theater of conflict from the Middle East to across all of Asia and again over the Arctic. If headlines are correct, the largest and most costly war games in history will launch late this year.
The bling of war costs more than every breakfast on earth. In the grand habit of argument, a weapon is everything but posturing may cost as much.
Soon the buzz will increase that the nations of the world are forming new alliances; that venerable military and peace-making institutions are bending to accommodate unforeseen demands; budgets are strained; manpower and machinery shortages threaten supremacy at every turn.
We want supremacy?
Although this statement contributes little to the challenges we face, I concur with Richard Gere when he asks, “Why do bad people become our leaders?”
