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Tonight's editor: boatsie
All views expressed by today's editor do not necessarily represent those of eKos or eKos listed diarists.
Now Playing Live: Ecojustice! Read and rec before kicking back for our overview.
walk in the light by alicepopkorn
In the face of irony, cynicism, jadedness and despair, I choose hope. In the face of narrow empiricism, the confining corridors of quantification, of dogma of any stripe-rational, political, spiritual or religious, I choose to light a match to the fuse of possibility, and blow up all boxes, sending the church of reason, the church of ideology, the church of churchiness, into the air, with a boooom, so that emptied of their arrogance, these churches might offer us freedom, not more walls, love, not more hate, understanding, not more separation. In the face of hatred, anger and fear, I choose love, compassion, and celebration. If I can’t party in your revolution, don’t put me on the guest list. Link
A Framework for Spiritual Activism
The Whole Earth morphs into the Long Now via The Well
So, what has visionary Stewart Brandt been up to anyway? The Merry Pranktser, who roared to celebrity on the backs of his Whole Earth Catalog and The Well, raised numerous eco-eyebrows lately when he came out in suppport of nuclear energy as the only viable answer to the ravages of climate change and the need to effectively and aggressively address Peak Oil. But before we get into this controversy, let's take a look at his true love: The Long Now Foundation
Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed-some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where 'long-term' is measured at least in centuries. Long Now proposes both a mechanism and a myth. It began with an observation and idea by computer scientist Daniel Hillis :
"When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 02000. For the next thirty years they kept talking about what would happen by the year 02000, and now no one mentions a future date at all. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of an ever-shortening future. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium."
Actions:
Read Michael Chabon on The Long Now
Listen to past seminars on long term thinking; see what’s next on the horizon:
AltEnergy Futures
Our Cities, Ourselves
Our Cities Ourselves matches ten of the world’s leading architects with ten of the world’s most fascinating cities. It helps us imagine those cities in 2030, when 60 percent of the global population – or five billion people – will live in urban areas, mostly in the developing world.
In the middle of the 20th century, cities across the United States were redesigned to accommodate the car. As people flocked to the suburbs, cities were retrofitted with highways and parking lots. Roads expanded, public transit declined and so did our cities. In the decades that followed, cities around the world imported this auto-dominant urban design and began to suffer from its devastating impact.
Our Cities Ourselves proposes an exciting alternative path. Underpinning the images on show are ten principles developed with Jan Gehl, the noted Danish urbanist. With these as foundations, the architects produced visions of iconic sites projected to experience at least a doubling of residents by 2030.
Terapixel Night Sky
Microsoft's Terapixel project, part of Microsoft Research, stitched together more than 1,700 pairs of photographic plates from two powerful telescopes to create the clearest, largest night sky map yet. First they gave us a high-res tour of Mars -- now Microsoft has made the largest and clearest night-sky map ever. It's a terapixel image: 1,000 000,000,000 pixels. The software giant’s Terapixel project stitched together 1,791 pairs of red-light and blue-light plates from telescopes in California and Australia. The result is the map above, which covers the night sky of the northern and southern hemispheres.
Using WorldWide Telescope and Bing maps, you can zoom in on the cosmos, peering through the dust of the Milky Way to distant galaxies. Microsoft announced Terapixel July 13 at its annual Research Faculty Summit.
Ruffling Feathers ... Brandt goes N-U-C-L-E-A-R?
Ruffled Feathers By Michael Wandelmaier
A Brand Nuclear Day: Green Icon Stewart Brand Takes Controversial Stance
Brand discusses his provocative new book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, discussing the need for nuclear energy expansion. Since the book's publication, Brandt has debated his POV with numerous energy and environmental experts. (Grist article)
On the lighter side: Where is Howard Reingold, anyway?
"everything begins with the smallest unit, the individual. Like microlearning: ideas, meaning, and appropriate political action networks emerge as the patterning of micro nodes. Individual sovereignty is totally unaffected by your color, the slant of your eyes, or who is your daddy. The mobile computer can deliver what is known by humankind to each human node — each micro unit. The mobile device, unlike many school and social settings and networks, does not know or care about your color, eyes, or who is your daddy." Smartmobs' Judy Brecht
WarrenS made a New Year's Resolution to write a letter advocating climate action every day. The result is over one hundred letters to congresspeople, newspapers, President Obama, and more. Warren has even had letters published in the New York Times and the Boston Globe.
Learn Warren's letter writing technique here. And be sure to steal his stuff!
From his blog:
Month 7, Day 19: Ta-Daaaaaah!
Today is Day 200, which makes this the 200th climate letter I’ve written since making my New Year’s resolution. Yay, me.
Dear President Obama,
The time is rapidly approaching for a showdown on the climate/energy bill in the Senate.
Please use all the resources at your command to persuade Democratic senators like Ben Nelson that their opposition to meaningful climate legislation is shortsighted and misguided. The consequences of global climate change are being felt right here, right now, all over this country and the world. We’re going to have hotter summers and more droughts, which means more wildfires. There are going to be devastating effects on agriculture everywhere in the world, and states like Nebraska are not going to be immune.
In this context, Senator Nelson’s unwillingness even to vote for cloture is absolutely bizarre; he claims it’s because he doesn’t want Nebraskans to pay higher energy bills.
Unfortunately for all of us, the bill for the energy we’ve used in the past century has now come due, and Mother Nature appears likely to cut off our credit. We’re all going to be paying higher energy bills from now on. Genuine climate/energy legislation is the best first step to making sure that our economy won’t be completely crippled in the decades to come.
I’ve written to Senator Nelson, and to Majority Leader Reid. Now I’m writing to you. I hope you can make some of your erstwhile colleagues recognize the nature of the climate crisis. There is no time to lose, and no time to waste.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
Photo by rosie hardy
On the horizon of green air travel ...
Photo from here
The Human Body as a Subway Map
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eKos diaries from 07/19/2010 |
Diary | Author | Time (Eastern) | Tags |
Thank you President Obama from a long frustrated whistle blower | Lefty Coaster | 7/19/2010 01:34:01 | Recommended, Formaldehyde Emissions, Barack Obama, Dr. Paul Anastas, formaldehyde |
BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 55 | Gulf Watchers | 7/19/2010 06:00:10 | Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, LMRP |
BP Ecocide v12.1: "Undetermined Anomalies" | vets74 | 7/19/2010 10:59:55 | BP oil disaster, BP ecocide, ecocide, Greenpeace, President Obama |
What Happens To All That Oily Sand? You Won't Like The Answer | Something the Dog Said | 7/19/2010 11:23:13 | BP Oil Disaster, Oil Waste, Landfill, Incineration, EPA |
Reading tea leaves, sipping stone soup for a climate bill? | RLMiller | 7/19/2010 13:24:58 | Recommended, eKos, climate change, global warming, S.1462 |
Front Page Quotes Village Truthiness ... need to look behind the curtain | A Siegel | 7/19/2010 14:33:50 | kagro x, ekos, washington post, gulf, oil |
Moms Write "No Coal" on Mt. Rainier! | greendem | 7/19/2010 15:38:09 | coal, energy, environment, ekos, climate |
Science Tidbits | possum | 7/19/2010 15:39:59 | Science, Learning, Teaching, eKos |
eKos diaries from 07/18/2010 |
Diary | Author | Time (Eastern) | Tags |
Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (First Flight of VSS Enterprise edition) | Neon Vincent | 7/18/2010 00:07:01 | Overnight News Digest, OND, science, space, environment |
BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 54 | Gulf Watchers | 7/18/2010 06:00:02 | Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, LMRP |
The Exploding Water of the Gulf | Scarce | 7/18/2010 07:20:22 | bp, Gulf oil spill, Corexit, Dispersants, Methane |
Dawn Chorus Birdblog: Quest for the Red-throated Diver | matching mole | 7/18/2010 07:47:19 | birds, birding, Dawn Chorus, photos, teaching |
UPDATE BP Ecocide v11.3: Seabed Geysers | vets74 | 7/18/2010 09:53:27 | BP oil disaster, ecocide, Greenpeace, President Obama, Senator Nelson |
A DEMOCRATIC legislative & regulatory WIN you didn't know about | Eclectablog | 7/18/2010 11:26:14 | Recommended, Amy Klobuchar, California Air Resources Board, CARB, Environmental Protection Agency |
Cleanliness is next to ECSTASY! | rb137 | 7/18/2010 13:19:36 | ECSTASY, household cleaners, health, environment, chemical sensitivity |
The Downplaying of Dispersants | scorpiorising | 7/18/2010 13:31:33 | BP, Gulf oil disaster, Mary Landrieu, David Vitter, Dispersant |
Corn based ethanol: a waste of taxpayer money. CBO | shpilk | 7/18/2010 14:51:14 | ekos, ethanol, green, environment, agribusiness |
rogue test drive: earthship new tables | boatsie | 7/18/2010 16:02:50 | ekos |
National Academies suggests a different Climate Change Metric | jamess | 7/18/2010 17:02:25 | Climate Change, CO2, Global Temperature, National Academies, National Academy of Sciences |
Plumber Joe Saves BP, but No Credit Yet | Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse | 7/18/2010 21:46:45 | Climate change news roundup, BP, climate change, environment, ekos |
News from the Arctic: 18 July 2010 | billlaurelMD | 7/18/2010 22:53:21 | eKos, DKos GreenRoots, climate change, global warming, arctic sea ice |
Breaking – reports of a seep found near the BP well | deepsouthdoug | 7/18/2010 23:20:32 | BP oil spill, eKos, Gulf Coast, Recommended |
Solar Decathlon: News from Europe ... News from DC ... | A Siegel | 7/18/2010 23:57:39 | solar decathlon, energy cool, solar decathlon, solar, virginia tech |