Imagining Life Without Oil, and Being Ready (NYT)

from the New York Times:

As oil continued to pour into the Gulf of Mexico on a recent Saturday, Jennifer Wilkerson spent three hours on the phone talking about life after petroleum.

For Mrs. Wilkerson, 33, a moderate Democrat from Oakton, Va., who designs computer interfaces, the spill reinforced what she had been obsessing over for more than a year — that oil use was outstripping the world’s supply. She worried about what would come after: maybe food shortages, a collapse of the economy, a breakdown of civil order. Her call was part of a telephone course about how to live through it all.

In bleak times, there is a boom in doom.

Americans have long been fascinated by disaster scenarios, from the population explosion to the cold war to global warming. These days the doomers, as Mrs. Wilkerson jokingly calls herself and likeminded others, have a new focus: peak oil. They argue that oil supplies peaked as early as 2008 and will decline rapidly, taking the economy with them.

Located somewhere between the environmental movement and the bunkered survivalists, the peak oil crowd is small but growing, reaching from health food stores to Congress, where a Democrat and a Republican formed a Congressional Peak Oil Caucus.

And they have been resourceful, sharing the concerns of other “collapsitarians,” including global debt and climate change — both caused by overuse of diminishing oil supplies, they maintain.

Many people dispute the peak oil hypothesis, including Daniel Yergin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power” and chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a company that advises governments and industry. Mr. Yergin has argued that new technology continues to bring more oil.

Andre Angelantoni is not taking that chance. In his home in San Rafael, Calif., he has stocked food reserves in case an oil squeeze prevents food from reaching market and has converted his investments into gold and silver.

The effects of peak oil, including high energy prices, will not be gentle, said Mr. Angelantoni, a Web designer whose company, Post Peak Living, offers the telephone class and a handful of online courses for life after a collapse.

“Our whole economy depends on greater and greater energy supplies, and that just isn’t possible,” he said. “I wish I could say we’ll quietly accept having many millions of people unemployed, their homes foreclosed. But it’s hard to see the whole country transitioning to a low-energy future without people becoming angry. There’s going to be quite a bit of social turmoil on the way down.”

Transition US, a British transplant that seeks to help towns brace for life after oil, including a “population die-off” from shortages of oil, food and medicine, now has 68 official chapters around the country, since starting with just two in 2008. Group projects range from community vegetable gardens to creating local currency in case the national one crashes.

Bleak books like James Howard Kunstler’s “The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century” and Richard Heinberg’s “The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies” have sold 100,000 and 50,000 copies, respectively, according to their publishers.

In Congress in 2005, Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett, Republican of Maryland, and Senator Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat who was a representative at the time, created the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus. Web sites, online videos and numerous social networks connect adherents in ways that would once have been impossible.

Mr. Angelantoni, 40, came to his concern about peak oil from an interest in climate change, because he felt its impact would be more precipitous. “The peak oil conversation is where the climate change conversation was 20 years ago,” he said. He distinguished the peak oil crowd from the environmental movement. “The Sierra Club tells people that if we use less energy, the underlying model is sound,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the case.”

Like several people in the telephone class, he said his concern with peak oil had strained his relationship with his spouse, creating an “unbridgeable” distance between them.

“It’s very difficult for people to hear that this form of the economy is breaking down,” he said. “They think that because it hasn’t happened yet that it won’t ever happen.”

Mrs. Wilkerson has now read two dozen books about peak oil and related topics. For a while, she became depressed at work and had trouble discussing her feelings with her husband because the conversations were so dire, she said. At work, her colleagues told her directly “that they were tired of hearing about it,” she said. “They felt I was going to an extreme, thinking collapse was going to happen.”

She added, “I was ready to move out to the country and be an organic farmer, but I learned that’s not the way to do it. You need a community.”

Despite the rapid growth of Transition US, the movement was much easier to sell in England, said Raven Gray, who came to this country to found a branch here. While Americans embrace doomsday scenarios, they are less likely to work together on how to live afterward, she said.

“There’s lot of apocalyptic people in environmental circles,” she said. “A lot of those people were outraged that we presented an optimistic view of the future. There’s a dark vision driving us, but we’re about moving toward a positive picture of what can be done.”

For Mrs. Wilkerson, who is now growing vegetables in her kitchen, the course, which cost $175, gave her encouragement to move in that direction.

“Whether or not collapse happens, being able to teach other people to grow food so they can weather any adversity is a good investment of my time,” she said.

Punk Rock In The Holy LandOf Lies and Echoes: Documenting Israeli Dissent

from Dangerous Minds:

While the actual events surrounding Israel’s raid of the Gaza flotilla are under debate, there’s little doubt that the event—along with the Gaza blockade policy—has generally degraded Israel’s public image. Unfortunately, many in the progressive movement and leftward in the US and Europe perceive Israel as little more than a theocratic bastion of Western imperialism that harbors no resistance against government policy. That’s because the country’s long, vibrant tradition of dissent groups—from established human rights NGOs like B’Tselem to radical groups like Anarchists Against the Wall—get near-zero exposure in either the mainstream or leftist media in the West.

You’ll find solid proof of Israel’s underground movements in two dynamic and criminally undersung documents: David Massey’s 2002 anthology It’s All Lies: The Fusion of Resistance and Creativity in Israel—Leaflets, Underground Press and Posters and Liz Nord’s 2006 documentary Jericho’s Echo: Punk Rock in the Holy Land.

Massey’s oversized, spiral-bound 100-page collection spans from pioneering early-‘70s groups like the Israeli Socialist Organization and the cleverly named Sephardic org The Black Panthers through to the many draft resistance, anti-cop, and anti-capitalist crews that established themselves throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. It includes a CD’s worth of Israeli punk bands from the early-‘90s Left Bank scene, including Dir Yassin and the Astroglides. Meanwhile, Nord’s 75-minute feature picks up the chronicling from the late-‘90s onward, including performances and interviews with punk bands ranging from the more well-known Useless ID to the more militant Nikmat Olalim, the all-female Va’adat Kishut, and even the rightist Retribution. Along with the great live footage, Jericho’s Echo features insightful interviews with scene figures who recount everything from getting psychiatric deferments from Israel’s mandatory army service to simply getting by in the country’s cities and towns. Both the book and the film show evidence of an important yet little-known politico-cultural temperament in Israel, one of the most highly criticized and misunderstood countries in the world.

It’s All Lies: The Fusion of Resistance and Creativity in Israel—Leaflets, Underground Press and Posters (16.3 x 11.6 inch spiral-bound book)

Jericho’s Echo: Punk Rock in the Holy Land (DVD)

SkateBoarding today... truly unbelievable.

On Sunday, I went to that big contest out by the huge steel globe in Flushing Meadows, Queens. The Maloof "Money Cup".
Number one disappointment: my good friends' son, Alex Olson, did not make the finals. After that it was just a "recon" mission to see what was going on. With $250,000 in cash and prizes, one would figure the skating would be incredible. Well as far as i'm concerned it wasn't! Some stuff was OK, but didn't seem like much considering these "Pros" land less than 30% of what they attempted, and even then, relative to the skate videos and magazine sequences i've seen, not such a big deal.
I was happy to see some old friends and meet some new ones and some nice fans too, good times, but the skating was horribly disappointing. That said, I could see there was some incredible talent out there... But i sure didn't miss not having my real camera, I took just a few stills and a few movies with my little digi, that's it.
In the 70's we used to repeat: "Silly Rabbit, Trix are for Kids!" - main difference: they pay them a lot for tricks now... even if they don't make them half of the time. (Oh yeah, the "kids" are a lot older now too!)

Here's one cool one:

Here's the scene:
What do you think Steve?


btw. please don't think i'm hating on the younger generations, cause i'm not, i'm just acknowledging times have changed and while there is a lot of good in most progress, and great that kids are doing their own thing, it's just not as shiny to me as it is to most, that's all, I'm not bitter one bit.

Lance Mountain in his backyard, 1983. *

I just saw Lance yesterday here in NYC at the new skatepark over at the Chelsea Piers (It's incredible and i will be going back), I even shot a few photos yesterday while he, Steve Caballero, Pat Ngoho, and Steve Olson skated. (Maybe post some after i finish the roll).

Here's a post of mine from last year early in this blogs history that i thought i'd recycle since most of you were not reading here yet.

Here's another previously unpublished photo from my archive.
No flash, No reflector, No fill, No frills, just skills and Kodachrome 64 on a nice day.

*I'll probably be doing some more blog recycling in the slow summer months, and while i travel to keep it changing every day.

NYC Assemblyman Proposes City-Wide Cigarette Recycling Program

from inhabitat

Approximately 176 million pounds of cigarette butts are discarded in the United States every year. Usually they end up on the ground or in a landfill and leach their toxic chemicals into the water table. Assemblyman Michael G. DenDekker, of Queens New York, wants to do something about that. He recently found out that cigarette butts can be turned into all kinds of useful things, so he proposed a bill for a cigarette recycling program for New York City. It would charge a 1 cent deposit on each cigarette — similar to the current bottle recycling system — to fund the recycling program and get those butts off the street.

If you live in New York City and you love the earth, you’re probably as furious as we are when you see those little discarded butts hanging out in the gutters and on the sidewalks. Well, the same can be said for the constituent who turned Assemblymen DenDekker onto this idea. After the idea was proposed, DenDekker found lots of uses for recycled cigarettes. If soaked in water they create a solution that can keep steel pipes from eroding, they can be made into sealants and glues, and a clothing maker in Brazil turns them into fabric.

The bill would put the departments of Environmental Conservation and Health in charge of the recycling program, and it would be funded partially by the 1 cent deposits payed by smokers when they purchase a pack. It would be the first recycling initiative of its kind in the country. DenDekker was a smoker for 30 years, but has since quit and doesn’t mind seeing smokers pay more for their habit, especially because of the waste they cause in our cities. “This is something that is going to be a long process,” DenDekker noted, “but imagine if we had started cleaning them up 20 years ago.”

If you've been reading this blog for a while you know how i hate people just tossing their butts in the street as though they are not litter, so i'll be happy if this bill actually changes things.

Are Cameras the New Guns?

from Gizmodo:

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.

Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.

The legal justification for arresting the "shooter" rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where "no expectation of privacy exists" (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.

Massachusetts attorney June Jensen represented Simon Glik who was arrested for such a recording. She explained, "[T]he statute has been misconstrued by Boston police. You could go to the Boston Common and snap pictures and record if you want." Legal scholar and professor Jonathan Turley agrees, "The police are basing this claim on a ridiculous reading of the two-party consent surveillance law - requiring all parties to consent to being taped. I have written in the area of surveillance law and can say that this is utter nonsense."

The courts, however, disagree. A few weeks ago, an Illinois judge rejected a motion to dismiss an eavesdropping charge against Christopher Drew, who recorded his own arrest for selling one-dollar artwork on the streets of Chicago. Although the misdemeanor charges of not having a peddler's license and peddling in a prohibited area were dropped, Drew is being prosecuted for illegal recording, a Class I felony punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison.

In 2001, when Michael Hyde was arrested for criminally violating the state's electronic surveillance law - aka recording a police encounter - the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld his conviction 4-2. In dissent, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall stated, "Citizens have a particularly important role to play when the official conduct at issue is that of the police. Their role cannot be performed if citizens must fear criminal reprisals…." (Note: In some states it is the audio alone that makes the recording illegal.)

The selection of "shooters" targeted for prosecution do, indeed, suggest a pattern of either reprisal or an attempt to intimidate.

Glik captured a police action on his cellphone to document what he considered to be excessive force. He was not only arrested, his phone was also seized.

On his website Drew wrote, "Myself and three other artists who documented my actions tried for two months to get the police to arrest me for selling art downtown so we could test the Chicago peddlers license law. The police hesitated for two months because they knew it would mean a federal court case. With this felony charge they are trying to avoid this test and ruin me financially and stain my credibility."

Hyde used his recording to file a harassment complaint against the police. After doing so, he was criminally charged.

In short, recordings that are flattering to the police - an officer kissing a baby or rescuing a dog - will almost certainly not result in prosecution even if they are done without all-party consent. The only people who seem prone to prosecution are those who embarrass or confront the police, or who somehow challenge the law. If true, then the prosecutions are a form of social control to discourage criticism of the police or simple dissent.

A recent arrest in Maryland is both typical and disturbing.

On March 5, 24-year-old Anthony John Graber III's motorcycle was pulled over for speeding. He is currently facing criminal charges for a video he recorded on his helmet-mounted camera during the traffic stop.

The case is disturbing because:

1) Graber was not arrested immediately. Ten days after the encounter, he posted some of he material to YouTube, and it embarrassed Trooper J. D. Uhler. The trooper, who was in plainclothes and an unmarked car, jumped out waving a gun and screaming. Only later did Uhler identify himself as a police officer. When the YouTube video was discovered the police got a warrant against Graber, searched his parents' house (where he presumably lives), seized equipment, and charged him with a violation of wiretapping law.

2) Baltimore criminal defense attorney Steven D. Silverman said he had never heard of the Maryland wiretap law being used in this manner. In other words, Maryland has joined the expanding trend of criminalizing the act of recording police abuse. Silverman surmises, "It's more [about] ‘contempt of cop' than the violation of the wiretapping law."

3) Police spokesman Gregory M. Shipley is defending the pursuit of charges against Graber, denying that it is "some capricious retribution" and citing as justification the particularly egregious nature of Graber's traffic offenses. Oddly, however, the offenses were not so egregious as to cause his arrest before the video appeared.

Almost without exception, police officials have staunchly supported the arresting officers. This argues strongly against the idea that some rogue officers are overreacting or that a few cops have something to hide. "Arrest those who record the police" appears to be official policy, and it's backed by the courts.

Carlos Miller at the Photography Is Not A Crime website offers an explanation: "For the second time in less than a month, a police officer was convicted from evidence obtained from a videotape. The first officer to be convicted was New York City Police Officer Patrick Pogan, who would never have stood trial had it not been for a video posted on Youtube showing him body slamming a bicyclist before charging him with assault on an officer. The second officer to be convicted was Ottawa Hills (Ohio) Police Officer Thomas White, who shot a motorcyclist in the back after a traffic stop, permanently paralyzing the 24-year-old man."

When the police act as though cameras were the equivalent of guns pointed at them, there is a sense in which they are correct. Cameras have become the most effective weapon that ordinary people have to protect against and to expose police abuse. And the police want it to stop.

Happily, even as the practice of arresting "shooters" expands, there are signs of effective backlash. At least one Pennsylvania jurisdiction has reaffirmed the right to video in public places. As part of a settlement with ACLU attorneys who represented an arrested "shooter," the police in Spring City and East Vincent Township adopted a written policy allowing the recording of on-duty policemen.

As journalist Radley Balko declares, "State legislatures should consider passing laws explicitly making it legal to record on-duty law enforcement officials."

Wendy McElroy is the author of several books on anarchism and feminism. She maintains the iconoclastic website ifeminists.net as well as an active blog at wendymcelroy.com.

Thanks, Chris!

BP Kills Aquaman

from the Aquaman Shrine

GreenPeace UK is also running a "Logo competition" contest "A few years ago, BP rebranded themselves as ‘beyond petroleum’. And yet BP wants to invest billions of pounds into the Canadian tar sands – the dirtiest oil there is. They are threatening the Canadian wilderness, indigenous people, and the climate at precisely the time we should be cutting carbon emissions.
That’s why we want you to rebrand them. Your brief is to create a logo for BP which shows that the company is not ‘beyond petroleum’ – they’re up to their necks in tar sands."

Here's a few favorite entries i've seen so far:

Happy Birthday to my man Dr. Cornel West

Dressing well is not necessarily all it takes to have style. So what is the relationship between being stylish and wearing clothing? Listen to what Dr. Cornel West has to say on the subject

from prepidemic.com, thanks Brother West

Probably Has Something To Do With Me Being Vegan

When I was 4 or 5 years old I saw my first movie, Doctor Dolittle. It was a big deal, and It was actually at Radio City Music Hall, at least i think it was. Anyway, so now I'm watching this with my kid and i hear this song at it blows my mind for 1967.

John Robbins Has A New Book Out

From the guy who brought us one of the most important books of our time, in my humble opinion, "Diet For A New America" and "The FOOD REVOLUTION", some one who i've respected since 1987, here's "The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less"

John Robbins was heir to the vast Baskin Robbins ice cream fortune and walked away from it in favor of making his own way in the world. Moving to a small island home with his wife and their son, Robbins lived happily for a decade on less than $500 a year, redefined what wealth and happiness meant to him, and became a leading spokesperson for personal and planetary health. Many in the media called him the "rebel without a cone" and the "Prophet of Non-profit." Robbins' books sold millions, and he earned monetary wealth doing what he believed in.

Then on December 11, 2009, he awoke to the news that most of his hard-earned life savings had been lost to the Madoff scam.

In recent years, millions have watched their American Dreams go up in smoke. The international financial collapse, inflation, massive layoffs, and burgeoning consumer debt have left people in dire financial straits-including John Robbins. But having already gone through many of the shocks and adjustments that so many people must now navigate-and come out even more grounded-Robbins realizes that there is a potential upside to our collective financial downturn: a world in which our necessarily curtailed consumerism can lead to a healthier planet, and legions of more deeply satisfied people living on it.

Get the book here at Amazon and let me know what you think. I'm going to order mine tonight.

Dennis Hopper

B A D A S S !

Help Make a Salad Cost Less than a Big Mac

from Good Blog

Thanks to agricultural subsidies, the least healthy foods are also the cheapest to buy.

In 1933, Congress passed a cornerstone of New Deal reform, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which paid farmers to cut the production of commodities like wheat and corn in an effort to lift farms out of the depths of the Great Depression. Since then, government farm programs have evolved into a confusing labyrinth of tax reductions, price supports, and direct payments designed to help farmers deal with fluctuating weather patterns and market prices—all to ensure a stable supply of food.

Just mention subsidies and most people’s eyes glaze over. But government subsidies transfer hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to large farmers who grow just a few types of crops, creating some of the country’s least deserving welfare recipients. Subsidies set price minimums and ensure that corn, soy, wheat, and rice producers get paid regardless of how low prices for their crops are or whether they even need assistance in the first place. These subsidies support the cheap and unhealthy domestic food that shows up in the aisles of the supermarket. And they’re the reason why a salad costs more than a Big Mac.

Earlier this month, the Environmental Working Group, an environmental nonprofit, released its annual assessment of farm subsidies (which, because of changes in the law, is actually less transparent than in years past). The EWG’s president Ken Cook says, “Even after the bitterly contested new health insurance reforms eventually take effect, most crops could fairly be said to have better coverage than many people in this country.”

If the Obama Administration is serious about Let’s Move, its obesity-reduction initiative, then the country needs a better Farm Bill in 2012—one that places a priority on better health care and nutrition. Even the Wall Street Journal applauded Let's Move in its op-ed pages, saying, “The best outcome would be if ObamaCare dies and the first lady's anti-obesity campaign results in some modest success.”

The problem with the existing subsidies is that they don’t to favor the majority of fruit and vegetable growers (nor the school kids that eat their produce). These farmers will need to at least double their acreage to reach Let's Move's proposed nutrition guidelines, writes The Washington Post’s Jane Black. What if the money to pay for those new acres of fresh produce was taken from subsidies that make unhealthy foods artificially cheap?

So far, the House Agriculture Committee appears to be making modest inroads towards this goal by replacing some conventional subsidy programs with crop insurance programs, so that farmers might grow more diversified crops and be encouraged to stop overproducing. As Paula Crossfield of the blog Civil Eats writes, “If the new Farm Bill includes this change, it could spur farmers to diversify their crops, spreading out their risk, thereby creating new opportunities for local food systems.”

Still, the next Farm Bill should aim for the heart of the problem, and lawmakers need to consider substantial reform. Spend a little time on EWG's database and then weigh in on the process before June 14. There’s little doubt, judging by both the effects of subsidies and the looming federal budget deficit, that we need anything less than a complete overhaul.

SKATEBOARD KINGS 1978 - a British documentary crew comes to DogTown

"Skateboard Kings" is a news documentary that was made by a British program called "The World About Us". This episode is about the Skateboard Kings of Southern California, and in particular riders such as the World Champion Tony Alva are featured in their daily lives and exploits in and around DOGTOWN. Ray Flores, Billy Yeron, Paul Constantineau, Jerry Valdez, Shogo Kubo, Kent Senatore, Ellen O'neil, Bob Mohr, Elen Berryman, Kim Cespedes and others. Russ Howell and Stacy Peralta are featured in a bizzare freestyle and safety demonstration. La Costa segment with Henry Hester, Bob Skolberg and John Hutson. There's visits to SkateBoarder Magazine, a few empty pools, a new skatepark, typical DogTown house party, demo's, a visit to the infamous Arizona Pipes, and a skate board manufacturer. This is a "cult classic" special that is hard to find, that's why we've posted here for you all to enjoy and share, for the oldschool hard core skate fanatic.

In fact I posted this on Google Video a few years ago, happy it's still floating around. The BBC asked me for some photos at least 10 years ago, they weren't paying much so i asked them to dig up a VHS copy of this doc. for my archive, i got it. It's pretty laughable, but does have some classic footage and dialog which most of you probably won't believe actually existed. The thing is i remember well the time when they were out working on this program, in fact Billy Yeron and I went back to the backyard pool they emptied for the party session the next morning and shot some cool shots there, the best one I put in FUCK YOU TOO.

My friend, and serious collector of my work, Philippe Petit sent me a photo of the page (actually a signed page proof from the original printing) to post here, since i'm out of town and don't have access to the original. Thanks!

Who Knew? Kevin Costner's Been Working on Oil Spill Cleaning Gizmo For Years

from Good Blog

So apparently Kevin Costner (yes, that Kevin Costner) has spent millions of dollars over the last eight years developing a centrifuge-like device called Ocean Therapy that removes oil from seawater.

Placed on a barge, it sucks in large quantities of polluted water, separates out the oil and spits back 97% clean water....

His scientist brother, Dan Costner, helped develop the device, and together, the brothers formed Costner Industries Nevada Corp. to pursue various energy projects, including a non-chemical battery that could last 15 years.

The 55-year-old actor eventually sank $26 million into the Ocean Therapy oil separator project. He obtained a license for the device from the Department of Energy in 1993 and has been trying for years to promote it.

BP has agreed to start testing Costner's inventions in the Gulf. The biggest Ocean Therapy unit can clean water at a rate of 200 gallons per minute, which is faster than the oil is leaking. If it works, this will totally make up for Waterworld.

Thanks Tara!

I'm Fucking LOST

I have not watched a network series every week for as long as i can remember right now, but i DID get sucked into LOST before the second season began after someone loaned my wife (before she was my wife!) the 1st season DVD's. I thought it was great and actually looked forward to seeing it every week.

I finally got to see the Finale tonight.

All I can say now is WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?

Can some of you please chime in and give me your thoughts?

thanks!

Zero-energy buildings: We have the technology

Last week Maggie Koerth-Baker from Boing Boing spoke with Kent Peterson, past president of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers. This was a lot more exciting than it may sound. ASHRAE standards on energy efficiency end up written into our building codes, which means the organization plays a big role in influencing the shape of energy policy in this country. She talked to Peterson to find out whether zero net energy buildings—buildings that produce as much (or more) energy as they use—were really a practical goal. His answer might surprise you.

"We have studies that show [zero-energy buildings] are practical for approximately 62% of buildings in the U.S., based on technologies we have today," he said. "That's mostly one and two-story buildings and still leaves out a lot that can't reach it, but those buildings can be low energy.

In fact, Peterson said that currently available energy efficiency technologies alone (not even looking at generating power from wind or solar sources) could reduce the amount of energy used by the total U.S. building stock by 50%.

The catch: Hitting that 50% energy reduction goal—let alone getting to zero-energy buildings—means more than buying a better boiler. The environmental systems in buildings—the lighting, heating, cooling, etc—are already pretty efficient, Peterson says. When your heating system is 80% efficient, you can't get a 50% reduction in overall energy use by focusing on squeezing out the last few drops there. Instead, Peterson says we have to put more thought into reducing "plug load"—a fancy way of talking about all the gadgets and appliances we plug into sockets.

Think of all the stuff you leave plugged in all day. Like the microwave. It's nice having that clock function, and it really doesn't take much energy to run. But over the course of a year, all the electricity you used to run that microwave clock ends up being enough to power 30 hours of microwave cooking time, Peterson says. All the little "phantom" draws add up, and they bite us hard.

Automation is the muzzle. I've gotten pretty good about remembering to shut lights off in rooms nobody's using, but expecting me (and millions of Americans like me) to thoughtfully and correctly power down every electronic device they aren't using even half the time is about as unrealistic as expecting Anna Karenina to become the movie blockbuster of the summer. Instead, we can rely on "set it and forget it" systems that turn off unused devices while we're at work or asleep based on timers or occupancy sensors. Peterson already has something like this in his house.

"It's just controlled by my computer in my house, and it cuts power to specific outlets either by timer or click of a button. So I can cut power to my TV overnight, and automatically reduce phantom loads. That system had a bigger impact on my home energy use than all my other energy saving projects combined."

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull - May 1st And 2nd, 2010

Photographer Sean Stiegemeier saw all of these mediocre pictures of the volcano in Iceland nobody can pronounce the name of, and he figured he should go there and do better. He made this time-lapse video of what happened on May 1st and 2nd, 2010.

Duane Peters cartoon

Just stumbled across this ill cartoon including Duane Peters as one of the voices an characters, it's short and sweet, and if you have any idea who DP is and what he's done, you'll appreciate this insanity.

Dropping in one of my old, rarely seen, photos of Duane from the early 80's below the clip.

Chris Farrell: ‘THE NEW FRUGALITY’ Is The New Normal

I've always lived this way, so no new news to me, but y'all need to check this out for real!

from Dangerous Minds

Chris Farrell of NPR’s Marketplace Money program interviewed about his anti-consumerist manifesto, The New Frugality: How to Consume Less, Save More, and Live Better. Living within your means is not only better for you on so many levels (less stress for instance) but it’s also better for the planet if we would just cut back on all the stupid stuff we consume.

Mick Jagger talks downloading and piracy on 40th anniversary of "Exile on Main Street"

This BBC News interview with [Sir] Mick Jagger on the 40th anniversary of the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street contains a few really choice grafs about the myth that the internet has robbed artists of their livelihoods. He seems pretty chill about the perceived threats of downloading, and explains that for a long time, the record labels did a fine job of robbing artists:

BBC: What's your feeling on technology and music?

Jagger: Technology and music have been together since the beginning of recording. [The internet is] just one facet of the technology of music. Music has been aligned with technology for a long time. The model of records and record selling is a very complex subject and quite boring, to be honest.

BBC: But your view is valid because you have a huge catalogue, which is worth a lot of money, and you've been in the business a long time, so you have perspective.

Jagger: Well, it's all changed in the last couple of years. We've gone through a period where everyone downloaded everything for nothing and we've gone into a grey period it's much easier to pay for things - assuming you've got any money.

BBC: Are you quite relaxed about it?

Jagger: I am quite relaxed about it. But, you know, it is a massive change and it does alter the fact that people don't make as much money out of records.
But I have a take on that - people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn't make any money out of records because record companies wouldn't pay you! They didn't pay anyone!

Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.
So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn't.

Here's the entire interview.

From our friend Xeni at BoingBoing