Wednesday

Mrs Tsk *
I’ve spent the last couple of days split between watching the enormous crisis unfold up north and proofreading my Book of Japans. One of the central motifs of the book is the binary division of its 24 characters into 12 idiots and 12 experts, with a pivotal event — a major earthquake in Tokyo — making the idiots look like possible savants and the experts look, possibly, dumb.

Life continues to imitate art. Interesting post by Momus. Continue reading here.
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PSFK » Pepsi Reveals World’s First 100% Plant-Based Bottle
Today, PepsiCo unveiled a breakthrough in bottle technology with the announcement of the world’s first petroleum-free plastic bottle in an effort to further reduce its carbon footprint by piloting production of the new bottle in 2012. The snack and soft drinks company will use raw materials such as switch grass, pine bark and corn husks, and has identified methods to create a molecular structure that is identical to polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, which is the plastic material used to produce a majority of bottles. The race to create a petroleum-free bottle was triggered in 2009 when Pepsi’s rival Coca-Cola unveiled a bottle that was 30 percent plant-based. Environmentalists have been critical of petroleum-based plastic because of their high carbon emissions and for being slow to biodegrade.

Pepsi said the new bottle will eventually allow for by-products from its food businesses, including potato peels from chips and orange peels from juice to be recycled into bottles. PepsiCo Chairman and CEO, Indra Nooyi adds the company will ultimately have “a sustainable business model that we believe brings to life the essence of Performance with Purpose.”

You see, that’s why corporations have to be pushed, by the people, the media and by the law, because at first they’ll whine that it is impossible and then they can come up with brilliant solutions like this one. This guitarist would never touch a Pepsi, but I tip my hat to PepsiCo and hope they’ll make a bundle on licensing their bottle tech to other companies.

Orlando, first half.

You can download the file here.

Since Jon thinks this first show of our new 2011 Luna Negra quartet turned out pretty good and since Mark asked here is the first half of our Orland concert on January 20th – warts and all.

I will post the second half on Friday, and since I won’t take my laptop to Europe this time there won’t be many posts after that, until we return on April 9th. You can follow my photos from this journey here.

Tuesday

There will be two versions of the album Santa Fe for sale this year. It looks like Sommerset will manufacture and distribute the CD and it will be available in Target stores – as was/is Spanish Sun. We will also manufacture our own version, our usual Digi-Pak design, which will only be available at our concerts. This SSRI CD will not be digitally distributed and will not appear in our online store in any form. We are hoping to have the album with us on the East coast run in May – which, by the way, was extended to include Chicago. Details to follow.
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Germany to shut down pre-1980 nuclear plants | Green Tech – CNET News
Germany will shut down all seven of its nuclear power plants that began operation before 1980 and it is unclear whether they will start up again, the government said today.
Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the closures under a nuclear policy moratorium imposed following Japan’s crisis, and said they would be carried out by government decree as no agreement with the plants’ operators had been reached.

I think there are anti-atomic power plant protests in France as well – and France has many of them.
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Drink Link Tea Set by Joon Lee | Design Milk
Eindhoven-based designer Joon Lee looks to old artifacts when designing tableware that engages people to converse at the table. The “Drink Link” tea set consists of a teapot connected to its cups, directly linking every person to each other.

Was his inspiration a hookah?
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Caterina.net» Blog Archive » FOMO and Social Media
FOMO —Fear of Missing Out— is a great motivator of human behavior, and I think a crucial key to understanding social software, and why it works the way it does. Many people have studied the game mechanics that keep people collecting things (points, trophies, check-ins, mayorships, kudos). Others have studied how the neurochemistry that keeps us checking Facebook every five minutes is similar to the neurochemistry fueling addiction.

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Tom Waits and Neil Young! (photo)
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Picture from Japan – Owner and Dog Reunited | Seattle DogSpot
“Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all.” – Emily Dickinson

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A six month journey along the 2,200 mile long Appalachian Trail, condensed and reinterpreted into five minutes of stop-motion. (Vimeo)

The video looks awful, I think, but that might be a walk I should take!!
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Nice Rilke Quote
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Book By Its Cover » Amy Cutler
Brooklyn-based artist Amy Cutler makes detailed narrative paintings that look like they belong in an old children’s fairy tale book. In most of her paintings the figures are usually women or some sort of hybrid women in a surreal scene. In Traction, women are pulling a house with their braided hair, like rope. In Egg Collection, the woman’s head is a basket full of eggs and some of the chickens have women’s heads.

Saw Amy Cutler’s paintings at Site Santa Fe. She uses Guache, which is a water-based paint, but while water-color is transparent, Guache is not. I think many of the old hand-written books pre-Gutenberg, for example the old bibles, were illustrated with Guache. Fabulous! I ended up buying the book that was on sale at the gallery. It is beautiful and very well made. The exhibit is up until 15. May and I highly recommend it if you should visit Santa Fe.

Friday Morning

For nearly twenty years Al Gore has spoken about Climate Change. Most people don’t seem to listen, especially politicians. Drought in Australia, then devastating flood a month ago. The earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, happened only a couple of weeks ago. Now Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan. Horrible devastation.

Will we simply continue? Will people go on as if nothing is happening, while allowing their policticans to continue to delay writing Climat Change legislature in order to please the large corporations?

This is what you can do right now:

The EPA is accepting comments on their New Source Performance Standards, a set of rules used to limit the global warming pollution from big fossil fuel industries like coal plants and petroleum refineries.
The big polluters will be pressuring the EPA to slow down the rulemaking process and issue weak, watered-down rules. The EPA needs to hear from you, too.

Tsunami hits Japan (YouTube)
Skyscrapers swaying (YouTube) – amazing feat of Japanese engineering.

The Atlantic (photos)
MSNBC Photoblog (photos)
BoingBoing (photos)

The end of News TV? How would I know, I don’t have TV…
Exhibit one
Exhibit two

I saw this yesterday. Very disturbing.

NYT and “torture”: Searching for a justification – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com
So according to The New York Times, it’s journalistically improper to call waterboarding “torture” — when done by the United States, but when Nazi Germany (or, more generally, China) does exactly the same thing, then it may be called “torture” repeatedly and without qualification. An organization which behaves this way may be called many things; “journalist” isn’t one of them.

We need a serious old-media shakeup. Or maybe they are just giving people what they want and what we need is a culture shakeup?

My thoughts are with the people in Japan. The aftershocks in the region continue to be more powerful than the devastating Haiti earthquake.

Wednesday Links

Handmade Portraits: Liberty Vintage Motorcycles (Vimeo)
Beautiful portrait and some of the things said really ring true.

Analog recording at its finest. The Nagra SN

Cool Brazilian light hack (YouTube)

Millions of Fish Die in Redondo Beach
Can you say Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance.

In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means “crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living”.

Will people wake up?

Bicycle and Djembe (YouTube)

The Beginning of Something Wonderful (photo)