Saturday, June 30, 2012

Diving in Puget Sound

When I was a student at the University of Washington in Seattle, I was 23 and eager to experience new things. I was living a few miles from Puget Sound, a majestic appendage of the Pacific Ocean. Scuba diving was and remains a popular pastime in that area.  I took my initial scuba training in a pool at the university. I was really into it. I spent a considerable chunk of money to equip myself completely for underwater adventure.  

Me on the left

I had some interesting experiences diving in Puget Sound.  Some were funny, like the time I surfaced in the middle of a huge bloom of kelp and struggled like a damn fool to swim out of it. Later I learned, the easy way out would have been to drop below the surface and swim out beneath the bloom on the surtface. Another time, I was with a bunch of divers swimming sixty feet down, just above an old shipwreck, when suddenly an anchor came crashing down, slamming into the seabottom about 18 inches fom my head. We're talking about fifty pounds of iron. Damn. No way would I have survived that thing hitting me. How did it happen? The jerkoffs on the boat we arrived on decided to reposition. After doing so, they just threw the anchor over the side, not even thinking that there were about twenty people swimming directly below.   Definitely used up one of my nine lives that time.



Below is a photo taken by another diver with a camera.  That's me, hanging out with a squad of sea anemones.




After I completed post-graduate studies at the university,  I decided to relocate to Los Angeles to try my hand at other things.  That move also spelled the end of my flirtation with scuba diving.   I sold my  gear to a guy who used it to start a business, cleaning barnacles off the hulls of the yachts moored in LA's Marina Del Rey.









Friday, June 29, 2012

Resource Wars

Michael Klare is a historian based at Hampshire College in Massachusetts.  He wrote a book titled, Resource Wars.  In it, he makes the case that war and violent strife will continue to be a part of life on Earth as we struggle for survival in a world that features ever more people competing for the planet's rapidly diminishing supply of natural resources. We're talking oil, fresh water, food, minerals, fisheries, forests,  tillable land.




We aren't in Afghanistan to fight terrorism.  Not now. Our soldiers are there now to keep the Chinese and Russians out.  If anybody is going to exploit that nation's rich, mostly untapped mineral wealth, it's going to be us. Our military is there to make sure the US is in control.  In Iraq, it was about oil, plain and simple. This is how it works in a wholesale corporatocracy.


Is there a way out of this unholy paradigm?  Not as long as our corporations covet the resources other nations have. Not as long as those corporations are shaping American foreign and military policy.



Thursday, June 28, 2012

Les Preludes

I like classical music, and one of my favorite pieces is Les Preludes, a symphonic poem by the great Hungarian composer, Franz Liszt.(1811-1886).  Equal parts majesty and grace, Les Preludes  has become a timeless favorite in the repetoires of orchestras the world over.

Franz Liszt

The following is a link to a stirring rendition of Les Preludes presented by the Vienna Philharmonica, to an outdoor audience in front of one Vienna's great Palaces.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnITC-IkPVg



Wednesday, June 27, 2012

A Visual Definition of Reckless Insanity

Imagine yourself on a skateboard, headed downhill, doing 81 mph.  If your imagination fails you, check out this You Tube offering...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsYV6NdBpJE&feature=player_embedded#!




Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Electric Cars

I read a piece on the net today that said electric cars are not selling well. Maybe not now, but it's only a matter of time. The price of gas is hovering around $4/gallon at the moment.  It can only trend upward from there.  The world's petroleum supply is in permanent decline.  The days of cheap gasoline are over.

I like electric cars.   They are efficient, and if you get your electricity to charge them from renewable sources, they are pretty much pollution free.   My guess is that by the end of this decade, most of the personal use vehicles sold in auto showrooms will be either plug-in hybrids or all electric.  The combination of high prices at the pump and the urgent need to stop polluting the atmosphere will force the transition away from the gasoline powered vehicles we've depended on over the last hundred or so years.


Nissan Leaf All-Electric


Eventually, the car companies will sell a lot of  their all-electric models.  They are ideal for smaller vehicles that only require a limited range on a daily basis.  For larger vehicles that require a lot of power and/or long range and quick fill ups,  the most efficient choice will be an electric vehicle powered by a device called a fuel cell. These vehicles will run on hydrogen, or possibly methanol or ammonia, both of which are really hydrogen carriers.


Honda Clarity Fuel Cell Car


Why hydrogen? Because it's the simplest, most abundant element in the universe. Because it can be produced in limitless quantity by using electricity to split water molecules, each of which contains two hydrogen and one oxygen atom. When the electricity comes from renewable sources, you have a pollution free source of energy. Hydrogen is non-toxic, and it's no more hazardous to use than the fossil fuels we've long depended on.

Plug-in hybrids (PHEV), a variation of the electric vehicles that are just now arriving in showrooms for the first time, also run on electricity. There is a small gasoline engine on board to keep the batteries charged, giving it the same kind of range as cars powered by gasoline.  Within a decade, we'll see PHEV models available that replace the gasoline powered generator with  a small fuel cell for recharging the on-board batteries.  These fuel cell hybrids will run on hydrogen.


Chevy Volt Plug-In Hybrid


The European Union, Japan, South Korea, and China are spending billions to develop the hydrogen fueling infrastructure required to complement the arrival of  fuel cell vehicles.  The U.S. and Canada are not.  Why? Because our energy policy is controlled by the fossil fuel and nuclear power industries.  Despite their efforts to obstruct the transition to clean, renewable forms of energy,  the momentum is undeniable.  Like the rest of the world, we will make the transition to these clean automotive technologies,  but we will not be the leaders. We will be followers, and the leaders will be selling their technology to us. 







Monday, June 25, 2012

Capturing the Jester

When I was still a kid, I was interested in photography.  That was before the digital era.  I got myself a used 35 mm rangefinder with no light metering and started shooting B&W.  I learned to work in the darkroom, developing film then enlargements on foto paper. I never got very good at it.  Later, while in the Army, I bought a Pentax Spotmatic with a bunch of lenses.   I hardly ever used it.  Just got busy with other things.

After relocating to Oregon a few years ago, I decided to take the full plunge into digital photography.I bought an entry level Canon DSLR, and started to learn.  I made a lot of mistakes.  I also learned a lot.  By the third year, I started to show a little skill.

Things have progressed a lot since then.  In Portland, I joined a couple of photography meetups. Many of the people in those groups are very good with a camera.  I learned a lot just hanging around with them.  Then, my wife and I bought a house with a very large sun room space that I took over and made into a photo studio.  I like shooting pictures of people and I like doing it in the studio, because I can control the variables.  It's all about the light, and that is managed most easily in a studio.

Here are a couple of studio images I shot of a model named Purvversia.  She's really not perverted.  She's just a nice girl who likes to dress up and pretend to be bad.





Pervversia came up with the Jester look herself.  I'll blog more about my photography as time goes on. For now, I'll end it with another image I took of Purvversia just before she was cast out of Eden.








Sunday, June 24, 2012

My Brush with the Reaper

In October, 2006, while living in Salem, Oregon,  I went in for a routine CAT scan.  I had an incessant pain in the groin,  The procedure was done to determine if it was a hernia, which is not terribly worrisome as maladies go.

The next day, I got a call from my doctor. I was asked to come in right away. When I got to the clinic, the doctor told me I had a tumor the size of a baseball on my pancreas. He said there was only a one percent chance that it was benign.  I had no symptoms. I wasn't sick; not at all. Talk about going from daylight to darkness in an instant.  One moment, I'm humming along like I always have, the next I'm staring at cancer with death a near certainty.  Pancreatic cancer is as bad as it gets. Very few who have it live even a year. Emotionally, I was in a tailspin.  I had unfinished business. I was an emotional wreck, like never before.

A few days later, a biopsy was taken from my pancreas.  Then, for another week, I was as distraught as I have ever been in my life, waiting for the results. I just wasn't ready to check out.

Then, the news came.  The pathology report indicated the tumor was benign.  I was part of the one percent.  Until something like that happens, you can't know the meaning of the word relief.

Less than two weeks later, I went into Salem Hospital.   My surgeon, Ron Jaecks, instilled confidence. He also happens to be a magician on the side, when he's not performing life saving surgery.   Ron Jaecks opened me up and worked on me for  nearly seven hours. Apparently, there's a lot of stuff that has to be moved aside in order to do that kind of abdominal surgery. Dr. Jaecks removed 60% of my pancreas and my spleen.  I was in hospital for a week recovering afterward. That was nearly six years ago.  Other than a bit of  problem with elevated blood sugar,  I came out of the surgery pretty much like I was before.  I am most grateful to my wife, Jenny for her devotion and support, and to Dr. Ron Jaecks, surgeon extraordinaire.  He managed some very delicate and prescise cutting on my critcal plumbing. For gizzard work, I can't imagine that anyone could be better.  

Here's my takeaway from the whole experience. My time, everyone's time on Earth is limited. Despite the reprieve,  I saw ever so clearly that the time I have left is running out. So, I said to myself, no more  hand wringing about what other people think.  I trust my own sense of right and wrong. I want to leave this life better for my having been here.  I saw the path I needed to follow. I am on it right now.  Whether I succeed in making a difference remains to be seen.  One thing is certain, I'm having fun trying. 


Saturday, June 23, 2012

Rio +20

Right now, in Brazil,  50,000 participants from around the world, including many heads of state, have convened to talk about the state of the environment on planet Earth. It's called, Rio+20, because it was done once before, in Rio, 20 years earlier.  Sadly,  little was accomplished at the first Rio meeting. Rich countries and their monied interests aligned themselves against the best interests of the rest of the world. The consequences of our collective inaction are clear for all to see.  The world is a third larger in population.  Our dependence on fossil forms of energy is  overheating our atmosphere and wrecking our environment, while our quality of life erodes, stuck in the economic doldrums. The world is now overwhelmed with global scale problems that have substantially worsened in the two decades since the first time we tried to get our act together in Rio.


We  have the technologies and public policy protocols to make things right. What we lack is the collective will.   The people we have elected into governance and put in charge of our fate are not worthy. They are not getting it done. They are not leading us toward a better tomorrow.  They have largely become willing enablers for corporations and other monied interests who put their corrupt self-interest over the welfare and will of the people.

Sad to say, the same regressive forces that stifled the outcome of the first Rio meeting are also at work now.  The second Rio meeting appears on its way to the same kind of shamefully inadequate outcome that marked the first.

The ship of human civilization is foundering.  As Rio +20 aptly demonstrates, our leaders are  incapable of leading. The good ones are mostly toothless, and the bad are corrupt to the core. Corrective action must come in spite of them.  It is encouraging to note that the biggest share of participants in Rio+20 are not corporate hacks or professional politicos. They are the unofficial delegates; witnesses, poised to push back against officially sanctioned malaise.  Change can and will come from the bottom up; from these faceless, disillusioned  masses. They are the ones we must count on to forge a compassionate consensus that will save humanity and the biosphere.




Friday, June 22, 2012

Solitary Confinement

On the 7th of June, I wrote about 'Torture by Sensory Deprivation' .  It's a technique that's long been used in prisons, and in recent decades, much more as a tool of torture. Naomi Klein writes about it extensively in her book, The Shock Doctrine.

The following piece includes the first testimony ever given to congress on the morality and efficacy of solitary confinement.

     http://www.democracynow.org/2012/6/22/torture_in_us_prisons_historic_senate



Thursday, June 21, 2012

My Time in the Army

After I completed my first four years of college, I enlisted in the U.S.Army.  My father had been an officer in the Army Air Corps (now the U.S. Air Force) during World War Two. He went to officer Candidate School (OCS), so I signed up for OCS as well. I began my military service as an enlisted man. I went through basic training and advanced enlisted training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Not a pleasant place. Hot and sticky humid in the Summer; cold as hell in the winter.  Adjusting to military life was not easy.  Mentally and physicallly, it was and remains the toughest thing I have ever experienced. 

It took about 16 weeks, but I got through enlisted training okay.  I was then assigned to the Army Officer Candidate School at Fort Belvior, Virginia, about 15 miles south of Washingfton, D. C. The enlisted training was a cake walk compared to OCS. The first twelve weeks were near constant stress.  I understand why they did it. The whole idea is to train candidates to function effectively in a stressful environment. We're talking about soldiering.  Officers are supposed to lead. They're supposed to be able to function effectively in the most stressful and dangerous circumstances.

We were pushed to our personal limits and beyond. Despite my personal immaturity,  I made it. I got all the way through the 26 weeks of training. I was commissioned a Second Lieutenant.   I am the oldest child and it met a lot to my father that I followed in his footsteps...at least far as the military is concerned. He was proud of me.  I also felt pretty good about myself, having endured the experience and pushed my personal envelope well beyond its previous limits.

I was assigned to a branch of the Army called the Adjutant General Corps. I went on from Fort Belvior to Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana for branch training.   Compared to the guys that were assigned to combat branches like infantry, artillery, and armor,  a gig in A.G. was relatively easy duty.  Indianapolis was a nice city.   I extended my stay there and took the officer training course in data processing management.

After that, I received my first actual duty assignment in Germany.  My time based in Europe had its ups and downs. I was there for a total of fourteen months before a twist of fate gave me the opportunity to end my active duty military commitment early.  I was honorably discharged and a few months later, I was back living in Seattle, Washington, where I was admitted to the University of Washington for post-graduate studies.  

While a student at the UW, I served in the Army Reserve at a base called Fort Lawton in Seattle. After a few years, I was promoted to the rank of Captain.  That was very gratifiying for me and my dad, because he reached the rank of Captain in the Army Air Corps during World War Two. 

When I completed my post-graduate studies at the University of Washington, I decided to move on to seek my fortune in Los Angeles.  I ended my military service at that time.

I can't say that I enjoyed being in the Army. The regimen left little room for independent thought.  They had written regulations for everything.  We used the term, 'by the numbers' to refer to how things should be done in the Army. Some people thrive in that kind of environment. I did not. But, I don't regret my time in the service. I am a better person for having done it.


The Singularity is Near

A few entries back, I wrote about Ray Kurzweil.  He's a big league, all-star technology innovator, who sees a future in which we are all linked to eachother by the brain-computer interfaces we have. We're talking everybody is plugged directly into their personal computer, which are in turn connected to every other personal computer.Would that make us drone-like Borg facsimiles, or perhaps like bees or ants functioning collectively?  Kurzweil forecasts this hyper-linked future, but seems less sure if it will be a good or not so good thing.

I just learned that Kurzweil now has a movie coming out that is titled, The Singularity is Near



Here is a link to a movie trailer for The Singularity is Near...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XWXJDgbeP0&feature=player_embedded

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Element One

For nearly 25 years, I have been an activist for clean energy. We're talking solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and to a lesser degree biomass. My primary focus has been on hydrogen, a key enabler in a any kind of civilization scale renewable energy paradigm.

Element One is one way of describing hydrogen, because it is the first element on the chemical periodic chart. That makes hydrogen the simplest, most abundant substance in the universe.  It is also non-toxic and can be converted to useful work in an internal combustion engine or a device called a fuel cell. When hydrogen is converted to useful work in one of these devices, the exhaust from the process is water vapor.

Hydrogen cannot be found freely nature. It has to be acquired by splitting it away from its bonds with other chemicals, One of those checmicals is h2O...water.  One way, the best way, to acquire hydrogen is to split water molecules in a device called an electrolyser.  All you need is a supply of water and electricity.

Hydrogen is characterized as an energy carrier because it allows one to convert electrical energy from other sources like the sun, wind, and geothermal, into a storable, clean energy commodity  in virtually limitless quantities.

For so many reasons, the world must end its depedence on fossil forms of hydrocarbon energy.  And, for the record, nuclear power is not clean energy. It is not the answer.

Our energy future is taking shape right now and it will be powered by clean, renewables, enabled to a great degree by the use of hydrogen as a clean energy commodity. 

With my business partner, Bill Hoagland, former head of the US Department of Energy's Hydrogen Development Program, I founded Hydrogen 2000, Inc, a non-profit dedicated to raising public awareness of clean, renewably produced hydrogen energy.  Between 1995 and 2005, we produced  a series of documentaries and educational videos to showcase renewable forms of energy and hydrogen.  We got a lot of recognition for our work.  One of our videos, titled, Renewable Power was awarded a TV Emmy.

So much for the backstory.  Now I want to talk about Element One. In 2005, Bill Hoagland and I, along with retired NREL materials scientist, David Benson,  businiessman, Robert Radin, and hydrogen activist Susan Leach, founded a start-up technology business in Boulder, Colorado. We called it Element One. It is built around a patent Bill Hoagland had been awarded for a passive sensor technology for the detection of hydrogen. Bill's technology works.  It is a chemical substance that changes color in the presence of hydrogen   Such a potentially cheap form of passive sensor technology did not exist until we came along.  Element One's technology is a very important part of advancing hydrogen into the role of widely available energy commodity. It is based on a chemo-chromic property that causes a reaction and change in color of the sensor in the presence of hydrogen. 

Since our start-up was founded in 2005, we have achieved many technical milestones. We are now working with the U.S. Department of Energy to travel the last steps to commercialization. 

In the future, many if not most vehicles will be powered by hydrogen, a storable, transportable fuel made ideally from renewable generated electricity, and those vehicles will operate safely in no small part because of Element One's passive hydrogen sensor technology.

Here is a link to Element One's website www.elem1.com


Tuesday, June 19, 2012

The Long Now

What is The Long Now?  It is the name of a foundation launched by Stewart Brand of  'Whole Earth Catalogue' fame, and technology entrepreneur, Danny Hillis. In their parlance, the long now refers to our ability to view ourselves in a time frame measured by eons rather than a human lifetime or less.  In essence, we are part of a bigger picture, based on equalibriums that stretch out over centuries, even millennia in time. The point is to train people to see themselves as part of the fabric of nature that reveals itself in terms that stretch far beyond the length of a human lifetime.

The primary focus of their work is to construct a very unique timepiece; one that only turns over every 10,000 years. 

http://longnow.org/

Monday, June 18, 2012

The Third Industrial Revolution Revisited

A while back, I wrote a piece for this blog about Jeremy Rifkin and his new book, The Third Industrial Revolution.  

Earlier this month, the World Hydrogen Energy Conference was held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The speaker at the conference's opening session was Jeremy Rifkin, and he talked about the energy transition that is already underway.in the European Union and other parts of the world.  We are starting to move away from fossil fuels toward a clean and sustainable energy model using, solar, hydro, biomass, and other renewable technologies that generate electricity.

Jeremy Rifkin spoke for about an hour at that meeting.  His talk there is now on You Tube in three parts. If you want to understand where we need to be going as a human society, I urge you to take the tinme to listen to what Jeremy Rifkin has to say.   He is a charismatic communicator and his message is incredibly compelling.    He speaks with great urgency. He says we have to be completely off carbon in thirty years. Completely, Totally. Unequivocally. He presents a plan for getting it done that is already being embraced in Europe and other parts of the world.

A big part of this transition depends on hydrogen's emergence as the principle means of storing and transporting renewably produced electricity.  

Jeremy Rifkin's talk at the 2012 World Hydrogen Energy Conference is delivered in three 'You Tube' files.

Here is part one...   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=372gPsNWGtU&feature=relmfu

Part Two...   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZH3iYSkQRM&feature=relmfu

Part Three...   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdbayOe8ReY



Nice Ass

I am not ashamed to say I appreciate a nice ass.  In this case, we're talking  about  Equus Asinus, the Donkey. On more than one ocassion, I have found myself on the central coast of California in a wonderfully tranquil place, where a small herd of donkeys are living out their lives in peace and contentment.  I was there at the invitation of Michael Tobias and Jane Morrison,  two remarkable people, who share a special affection for Donkeys.  They call this place Donkeyville. 

Michael Tobias and Jane Morrison have written a wonderful book titled,  Donkey - The Mystique of Equus Asinus.  It includes an  overview of the rich historical record of the human/donkey relationship in art and in literature. The book provides much insight into the biology of donkeys and their genetic history, but perhaps most satisfying are the delightful passages in which the authors reflect on their own personal experience with Equus Asinus.

Shortly after their Donkey book was published, I received the t-shirt below from Michael and Jane. 



Here is a link to the book, Donkey - The Mystique of Equus Asinus





Sunday, June 17, 2012

Natural Beauty

My sister sent me a link this morning to a BBC video . It's a tease for a series called, What a wonderful World. The imagery is quite extraordinary. It showcases the enormous beauty and grace of nature.

Sad to say, the video is also a reflection of just how much we are losing under the weight of seven billion plus humans scrambling for a piece of the planet's rapidly dwindling resources.

Here is the link...   www.youtube.com/embed/auSo1MyWf8g?rel=0 <



Friday, June 15, 2012

Embrace a Worthy Dream

I just had an unexpected brain burp.  I suddenly had a compulsion to produce a personal quote. Something that I might be remembered for after I've completed my living journey.  Just after the compulsion arrived, the words came to mind. Embrace a worthy dream.  The operative word is worthy. As a species, we are in deep trouble because too many of us travel the wrong roads, pursuing  misguided, even ugly aspirations. The unworthy path often rewards,  especially when dreams are shaped by avarice and self-absorbed exploitation of things human and natural. I am not a fan of the weak and cold hearted who succumb to easy, unvirtuous brands of reward.  They cheapen their own souls.

Chasing worthy dreams is not meant to be easy. It's supposed to be hard. It's supposed to challenging. Failure often  goes with it. Perservance was my father's favorite word. I find no shame in admitting I have failed many times...many times.  I am a better and stronger person for having followed my father's advice... Peverance is its own reward.

Pity to those who find personal reward easily. They can't possibly know the thorough satisfaction available to those who struggle mightily before they succeed.

'Embrace a worthy dream' is an idea that has, by word and example, been illuminated countless times by good people all through history.  As we move further into the 21st century, we are faced with a perfect storm of civilization scale challenges;  overpopulation, climate change, resource depletion, destruction of the biosphere. Fixing these unprecidented problems requires that we come together, and help eachother turn worthy dreams into noble reality.



Sunlight Foundation

A bunch of very smart, mostly young men and women have come together under the banner of the Sunlight Foundation. Their mission is to expose corruption and foster transparency in government.  They have created some unique internet tools for collecting and displaying information that, by law, is supposed to be accessible to the public.  Not an easy task because those who maintain such information generally do not see it in their interest for it to be made public.

Example: TV stations make lots of money, huge amounts of money, from political campaign commercials.  By law, they have to maintain records of who bought commercials and how much they paid.  It"s curious that, when accounting has become  a largely digital exercise, that TV stations would chose to maintain records about campaign commercials haphazardly, sometimes on easily misplaced, individual slips of paper.

Sunlight sends people out to individual broadcast outlets to collect that kind of political campaign finance records. Then they put them into easily digestible form, and publish them on their website, Sunlight is doing what the government should be doing as part of it mandate for regulatory oversite.  Unfortunately, with the broadcastr industry, like so many others, the regulatory process has been captured by those very people who are subject to regulation.  You know, 'the fox is in charge of the henhouse.'  The antidote comes in the form of groups like Sunlight.

Here is a link to Sunlight's webpage. http://sunlightfoundation.com/

Thursday, June 14, 2012

X-Rated PETA

Ingrid Newkirk and her merry band of noble miscreants are now x-rated.  You have to admire the aggressive, take-no-prisoners way that PETA pushes back against abuse of other lifeforms. For nearly a decade they've been using print ads featuring celebrities posing provocatively, all of them saying the same thing....They'd rather go naked than wear fur.




Now, the folks at PETA have racheted up the titilation another notch. They've created their own special brand of xxx website. It features a bunch of adult stars, led by big dog Ron Jeremy, Sasha Grey, and Jenna Jamison, using sex to draw in the curious.  Rather than a salacious display of nudity and sex, the site is laden with a range of worthy messages about kindness and animal welfare.

I love the folks at PETA. You have to admire people who operate fearlessly, battling for animals who cannot defend themselves.

The PETA.xxx website link is   http://www.peta.xxx/Default.aspx



Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Sobering Stats on the State of the Earth


I lifted this information from an article I found on he internet. It was presented as a primer for those interested in the context for the global 20+ Rio Environmetnal Summit slated for late June, 2012.

 - POPULATION: Seven billion today, a doubling since 1950, and set to rise to 9.3 billion by 2050, of which two-thirds will live in cities. The population in poor countries has increased more than fourfold since 1961. Forty percent of the world's population today now lives within 100 kilometres (62 miles) of the shoreline.

- ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT: Mankind today is gobbling up 50 percent more of the biosphere for our resources and waste than it can sustain. Brazil, China, India and Indonesia have seen their per-capita footprint increase by two-thirds over the past half century. The United States and China together use up nearly half of the global biocapacity. In per capita terms, rich countries' footprints are around four or five times greater than that of poor economies. The hefiest impacts per capita are made by Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates respectively.

- POVERTY: The number of people living on $1.25 (one euro) a day fell from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 1.289 billion in 2008, or 22 percent of the developing world. For the first time in 20 years, the proportion of Africans living in extreme poverty has fallen, with 47 percent living below this threshold in 2008 compared with 52 percent in 2005. But 43 percent of the population in developing countries live on less than $2 (1.6 euros) a day.

- BASIC SERVICES: More than 2.5 billion people are in need of decent sanitation and nearly one in 10 has yet to gain access to "improved" drinking water, as defined under the UN's 2015 development goals. 1.4 billion people have no mains electricity.

- CLIMATE CHANGE: Emissions of man-made greenhouse gases are scaling new peaks and the early signs of climate change are already visible, in glacier melt, changed snowfall and habits of migrating species. Current pledges for curbing carbon emissions will lead to warming of 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit), massively overshooting the UN target of 2 C (3.6 F) and enhancing the risk of flood, drought, storms and rising seas.

 - BIODIVERSITY: In 2002, the international community pledged to slow biodiversity decline by 2010, and incorporated the target into the UN's Millennium Development Goals. But the drop-off has accelerated, driven especially by habitat loss. A fifth of mammals, 30 percent of amphibians, 12 percent of known birds, and more than a quarter of reef-building corals face extinction, according to the "Red List" of threatened species.

- ENERGY: World energy consumption rose by 5.6 percent in 2010 and is set to double by 2030. Fossil fuels account for more than 80 percent of the energy supply, followed by renewables with around 13 percent, of which biofuels is by far the biggest contributor. In rural Africa, 85 percent of the population relies on biomass for energy.

- DEPLETED RESOURCES: Between 2000 and 2010, 13 million hectares (32.5 million acres) of forests disappeared each year, accounting for the third biggest single source of greenhouse gas. Fish catches increased fivefold between 1950 and 2005. Thirty percent of fisheries are over-exploited, depleted or recovering from depletion. By 2050, the world will produce 13.1 billion tonnes of waste annually, a fifth more than today.

- FOOD: One person in seven suffers from malnourishment. Demand for food will increase by some 70 percent by 2050, which will lead to a nearly 20 percent increase in global agricultural water consumption. Between 2000 and 2010, 203 million hectares (500 million acres) of land were transferred to foreign control, especially to China, petro-economies in the Gulf and rich countries eager for food security and biofuels. Two-thirds of the transactions were in Africa and 14 percent in Asia.

- TAXES AND SUBSIDIES: Subsidies for fossil fuels amounted to $312 billion in 2009. A tax of 0.005 percent on foreign exchange trading could raise $40 billion a year in additional aid for poor countries, which in 2010 stood at $130 billion.

SOURCES:

- Population: The State of World Population 2011, published by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA); UN Environment Programme (UNEP) 2012 report, 'Green Economy in a Blue World'

- Ecological footprint: Global Footprint Network website

- Poverty: World Bank report, February 2012; 2011 Human Development Report by the UN Development Programme (UNDP); UN's Fourth World Water Development Report

- Climate change: Carbon estimate in letter to science journal Nature Climate Change, December 2011; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 Fourth Assessment Report; May 2012 estimate on carbon pledges by Ecofys and Climate Analytics; Global Footprint Network

- Energy: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2011; UNEP; 2011 report by Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and International Energy Agency (IEA)

- Depleted resources: UNEP

- Biodiversity: "Red List" of International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

- Food: UN's Fourth World Water Development Report; Land Matrix Project

- Taxes and subsidies: UNDP's 2011 Human Development Report

(c) 2012 AFP



Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Alien Encounters

The latest sci-fi adventure about a human/alien encounter hit the movie theaters this week. Promethius is another example of human existence being threatened with annihilation.  I haven't seen this one, but it's directed by Ridley Scott, who also directed the first of the Alien series. 

My favorite by far in that series was the second, written and directed by the great James Cameron.




The one I'm talking about, Aliens, starred Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, a genuine,  balls of steel female, who saves a child from the acid-blooded mother alien. Ripley had one of the greatest lines ever in a movie, when she tells the ugly,formidable alien mommy to 'Get away from her you bitch!'

Back to my point,  given the vast distances between potentially habitable places in our own galaxy, it doesn't appear that aliens are a viable threat to life on earth.  Some very smart scientists have been seeking the slightest hint of alien life for several decades. They're using some very sophisticated equipment to identify incoming radio signals.  Thusfar, despite their best efforts, they've found nothing.

Just for the sake of argument, let's say there was an alien civilization that had technology that made interstellar travel possible.  Would they be like E.T.,  or more like Darth Vadar?  







It seems unlikely aliens would  travel light years to come here unless we had something they wanted, like a new place to plant their seed. Jeeze, it's not as if that hasn't happened on Earth before.  The best, most close-to-home example is what Europeans did to the indigenous people of North, Central, and South America, starting in the 17th century.  Indians on this side of the Atlantic were enslaved, pushed aside, or very often, exterminated, because the European newcomers awarded themselves the right to take what they wanted.  The concept was and is called 'manifest destiny'.  It's an incendiary mix of religious animus, greed, and brazen ambition.   White Europeans considered the Indians of the Americas to be vermin with no rights. That's just one cold-blooded and very real example of an alien encounter gone very wrong.  Moreover, it's still happening on a grand scale. Right now, in 2012, the Republican legislators and the governor of the state of Michigan have given themselves the right to victimize and asset strip a number of struggling city and county governments in their state.  What they are doing in Michigan is another damnable example of manifest destiny.

The great cosmologist Stephen Hawking thinks we are foolish to assume alien visitors would behave any way other that rapaciously if they took the trouble to travel light years to get here. And, given the huge advantage they would have in technology, taking what we have would be as easy as engineering a virus that would eliminate humanity in short order, leaving them free to settle in and exploit earth's resources as we have for many millennium.  

Bottom line; where aliens are concerned, if they are out there, probably the best thing would be for them to stay in their own neighborhoods, galactic or otherwise.





Monday, June 11, 2012

The Symphony of Science

Hard to believe that Cosmos, the amazing multi-part science TV series,  first appeared on PBS in 1980. The host was the late Carl Sagan, the most charismatic presenter of sience of the time. Now, pieces of Cosmos and a number of other science TV shows have been re-engineered into a series of very clever music videos. 

Here is a link to the Symphony of Science website...  http://symphonyofscience.com/

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Biomimicry

Biomimcry seems like a concept that should be easily assimilated.  In a nutshell, it is about finding answers to our human scale challenges by looking thoughtfully at nature's model.

Janine Benyus wrote a book some years ago titled, Biomimcry. She is responsible for popularizing the term. She is founder of The Biomimicry Institute


Jeannine Benyus

Here is a list I lifted from Janine's book, Biomimcry, that applies profoundly to the task of creating a sustainable future for the biospshere we all depend on.

Nature runs on sunlight
Nature uses only the energy it needs
Nature fits form to function
Nature recycles everything
Nature rewards cooperation
Nature banks on diversity
Nature demands local expertise
Nature curbs excesses within
Nature taps the power of limits

Embracing these ideas offers a path forward worthy of our species...


Here is a link to Janine's personal webpage   http://janinebenyus.com/

Here is a link to Janine Benyus talking about Biomimcry...

http://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_shares_nature_s_designs.html






Friday, June 8, 2012

Rupert Sheldrake

In 1981, a young British biologist named Rupert Sheldrake authored a book titled, The New Science of Life: It offered a theory of life that was substantially different than evolutionary Darwinism.


Rupert Sheldrake


Sheldrake sees individual consciousness connected. In his view, the brain is not the depository of all one's essence. Instead, he postulates the existence of what he calls morphic fields that connect all living things to each other. He sees the brain as, more or less, like a transceiver that links the body to indivdual consciousness as well as to these morphic fields.  Resonance is a powerful word in Sheldrake's lexicon. According to his theory, morphic resonance is the force that binds us.

Sheldrake's grand vision has progressed little beyond audacious theory. In fact, many scientists  dismiss morphic resonance as little more than illogical magic.  With that disclosed,  there is some evidence that is compelling.

Sheldrake cites the 100th monkey phenomenon as a reason to believe.  In Japan, a handful of snow monkeys (Japanese Macaques)  were observed 'washing' their food in salt water.   It started out with one or two monkeys in one group. Soon enough, that whole group was doing it.  Then, after a certain number of monkeys had picked up that 'washing' habit,  very quickly, almost overnight,  snow monkeys in other parts of Japan, totally isolated from the originating group, began to exhibit the same behavior. Strange but true.




I'm not sure if Rupert Sheldrake is on to something or not.  I do find it difficult to believe that the essence of a human being can be contained in a couple of pounds of brain matter. So, Sheldrake and his ideas remain interesting and very much on the radar with me.

Rupert Sheldrake's website is   http://www.sheldrake.org/homepage.html


Thursday, June 7, 2012

Torture by Sensory Deprivation

The first part of Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine, is about the sophisticated ways sensory deprivation is being used by intelligence establishments of the US and other governments to break the will of suspected terrorists.  Solitary confinement has long been used as a way to discipline prisoners.  Klein makes a very good case that such treatment constitutes cruel and improper punishment. 

It was recently reported that one method used against Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo is to put them in a small room, lights on 24 hours a day, no contact with outside stimulation, except for a constant, loud barrage of Sesame Street on a TV screen in the room. No clock.  total isolation except for guards who make sure the prisoner is unable to sleep.   

Once in my life, I had a brief scrape with forced isolation. It was part of an initiation ritual while in college. At night, I was put in a room, lights on, no clock, and told not to sleep. Doesn't sound much like torture does it.  Here's what I know from that experience. At least for me, isolation is mentally torturous. An extended period of that kind of treatment would be cruel and unusual punishment.

Probably, in some cases, that brand of coercion is justified.  It's not the kind of thing I would want to be the decider on.

There is a young man, an Army private named Bradley Manning, who has been accused of releasing  information classified by the government to the media through an organization called Wikileaks.  I don't know whether Manning is guilty or not. It doesn't seem, based on the kind of information that was released and who it was released to, that this is a case of someone trying to harm his country. In fact, a strong case can be made suggesting just the opposite.  In the United States of America, a person is considered innocent until proven guilty. Everything I have read indicates that Manning is being subjected to constant isolation.  I know that's cruel. As a people, we are better than that.







Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Andromeda to hit head on with Milky Way Galaxy

Some headline, huh?  Two astronomical, galactic scale objects are on a collision course. Fortunately for those of us here in the moment, it isn't predicted to happen for another four billion years.  



It's really quite amazing that astronomers are able to recognize and put a timeline on such a colossal scale scenario.  Somehow, using data collected by the HubbleTelescope orbiting our Earth, they figured this out. Oh, by the way, our earth, our Sun, our solar system are part of the milky way galaxy.  So, look out earthlings living four billion years from now. You've been warned.

Here is the link to the article about this phenomenal bit of scientific gymnastics.

http://phys.org/news/2012-05-hubble-milky-destined-head-on-collision.html



Tuesday, June 5, 2012

The Turin Erotic Papyrus


Imagine a three thousand year old sex magazine. In effect, that's what you get with The Turin Erotic Papyrus. In was discovered in the 19th century in Deir el-Medina, an Egyptian village that once housed the artisans responsible for the great pyramids in the Valley of the Kings.


Turin Papyrus

Located now in the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy, it measures roughly 8.5 feet by 10 inches. Because of its poor condition, it took years of painstaking work to reveal its contents.


Reconstruction  of the original Turin Erotic papyrus



Little else exists that reflects on the sexuality of the ancient Egyptians.   What the Turin Erotic Papyrus reveals is open to interpretation. It seems clear that the Egyptians of 3,000 years ago were as enamoured with sex as most of us are in contemporary times.  Further proof that we are hardwired to be interested in and find joy in that very fundamental part of our existence.

The link to the Turin Papyrus webpage is  http://www.perankhgroup.com/the_turin_papyrus.htm



Monday, June 4, 2012

Twelve Year Old Takes Bankers to the Woodshed

Just saw this video on the net.  It's 12 year old Victoria Grant speaking to a gathering of the Public Banking Association of America.  She makes a compelling case that bankers, in collusion with government regulators, need to be put back under a strict regulatory regimen.   Pretty powerful stuff, particularly when it comes from a child.

Here is the link to Victoria's presentation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx5Sc3vWefE&feature=youtu.be


Sunday, June 3, 2012

Diver Saves Puffer Fish from Hook

This is a story of compassion and courage. Somehow, this diver came cross this puffer fish with a very large hook stuck in its mouth.   For several minutes, the diver gingerly works to calm the fish and grip it so he can remove the hook.  The diver is barehanded, a very dicey proposition considering that puffer fish flesh contains a poison called tetrodotoxin that is 1200 times more powerful than cyanide. One fish has enough toxin to kill thirty humans, and there is no known antidote.

Here is the link to the story....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYJBm-AcpHk



Saturday, June 2, 2012

Whitewater on the Kern

About three hours drive northeast of Los Angeles is the Kern River.  In Spring and early summer, the melting mountain snowpack leaves the Kern swollen,  white, and boiling swift. I had the good fortune of joining friends three times on rafting adventures on the kern river.


I'm the one up front with mouth agape under blue cap.  Does it look like I'm having fun?


Friday, June 1, 2012

Elisabet Sahtouris

Elisabet Sahtouris is an evolutionary biologist. She wrote a couple of great books, From Chaos to Cosmos  and From Stardust to Us. They trace  human existence from the 'Big Bang' into contemporary times.  

Elisabet Sahtouris's  take on where humanity is headed is pragmatic and not terribly optimistic.


Elisabet Sahtouris


I had the good fortune of visiting with her on the phone once.  This was when my book,  The Hydrogen Age was coming out.  Elisabet wrote a much appreciated blurb for the liner notes for that book.

When I spoke with Elisabet, I asked if she thought there was any chance that human civilization could extract itself from the wicked tailspin it seems to be in. 

In essence what she told me was this... 'Even if humanity as we know it,  destroys itself entirely,  it's much less likely that all of the earth's plants and animals  will die as well. At least some will survive, and in the cosmological time frame - a hundred thousand; a million; ten million years from now - the planet will be fine. New lifeforms will evolve; new forms of intelligence will emerge,  and maybe they will learn from the planetary scale miscalculations that are pressing contemporary human culture to the brink.'

Elisabet Sahtouris is a very wise person. Her vision for the future is sobering, but it makes a lot of sense.  One thing is certain.  If we do end up wrecking the biosphere, extinguishing ourselves in the process, we will have only ourselves to blame.

Here is a link to Elisabet Sahtouris's very engaging webpage  http://www.sahtouris.com/