Archive for May, 2009
posted by: Richard Gehr in Uncategorized on May 29th, 2009 | | No Comments »
Electronic Frontier Foundation chairman Brad Templeton's version of Hitler going batshit in Downfall (Der Untergang) is not only one of the funniest takes on the ubiquitous YouTube phenomenon, it's also a comedy tutorial on what is and isn't allowed under the Digital Management Copyright Act (DMCA) and the provisions of Fair Use. After you watch his parody, check out the hoops Templeton had to jump through in order to create it legally.
posted by: Nicole Parisi-Smith in Sustainability and Climate Change on May 29th, 2009 | | 1 Comment »
Best-selling author, entrepreneur, and environmental activist Paul Hawken gave an incredible commencement address to the University of Portland's class of 2009 on May 3. It's both a call to action and a heartfelt message to anyone who believes that change is possible.
There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.
...
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it is doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.
The address can be read in its entirety here. Hawken will also deliver the commencement address for Portland State University's graduating class on June 13.
posted by: Richard Gehr in Sustainability and Climate Change on May 28th, 2009 | | No Comments »
With everybody from the mysteriously affluent punk rocker down the block to the president of these United States driving a hybrid vehicle, it may be important to remember that not all hybrids are created equally. London Times auto writer Jeremy Clarkson, for example, recently reviewed the new Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid. And for some strange reason, I don't think I want to buy one:
And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.
So you’re sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you’re doing only 23mph because that’s about the top speed, and you’re thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit.
And it only gets worse from there.
posted by: ecawein in Gulf Coast Recovery on May 26th, 2009 | | No Comments »
When it comes to the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast, we're more likely to see stories about housing, business and employment than education -- which is why we thought this story on the state of elementary and secondary education in New Orleans was so interesting.
Here's the situation. As families returned to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, their children needed schools to return to, as well. The state of Louisiana had dissolved the previous New Orleans Public School system (NOPS) and fired all its teachers and staff. The way forward, they decided, was charter schools. But it turns out there weren't enough charter schools to service all the students returning to NOLA. To quickly solve the problem and get students in desks, the state developed Plan B -- they created a Recovery School District (RSD) to operate alongside the charter schools, re-opening some of the more than 100 public schools that were considered "failing" pre-Katrina.
Now, nearly four years later, the lines between charter and RSD have blurred; some schools are public charters, some are charter RSDs and some are still just RSD schools. Proponents of charter schools say this autonomy of governance from one school to the next is a positive thing for the students, because it allows principals and teachers to make decisions about curriculum and other previously district-wide issues on a case-by-case basis within their own campuses. They say it's working, and they've got a number to prove it.
The unfortunate thing is that this number -- 66.4, their district performance score -- is misleading. Like any average, it doesn't accurately represent the lowest performing schools. In a sad and ironic twist, it seems that just as some of the wealthiest areas of New Olreans were spared the most painful effects of the storm, while the ninth ward remains beaten and battered, wealthier schools and the students who attend them are prospering in the charter set-up while poorer schools and their students are not. Not only do the lower-performing schools have academic issues to think about, a significant portion of the student population deals with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
As was the case with the physical destruction of Hurricane Katrina, the private sector has stepped up to the plate to help ease the burden on NOLA's schools. Though it is a little weird to think that a bunch of high schools and middle schools go by the name "Capitol One University of New Orleans Charter Network," the investment itself is an interesting concept, designed to transition a child seamlessly from kindergarten to university. Groups like the Greater New Orleans Education Foundation and Save Our Schools New Orleans offer the kinds of services other cities might get from a school board or governing body, like needs assessments, strategic plans, cost analyses and teacher improvement workshops.
Head here to read the full story. For more information on the issue, here's a site listing tons of resources on education in NOLA pre-Katrina and post, as well as education statewide in Lousiana.
posted by: Debra in Uncategorized on May 25th, 2009 | | No Comments »
The world lost a radical yogi with the passing of master Ashtanga yoga teacher Sri K. Pattabhi Jois on May 18, two months shy of his 94th birthday. A tree trunk of a man with a commanding presence softened by his sly sense of humor and frequent, beaming smile, Jois made a radical departure from orthodox Brahmin tradition when he accepted his first Western student in 1964.
What does it mean to be radical? The word is derived from the Latin “radix,” or “root.” My yoga teacher Sharon Gannon, co-founder of Jivamukti Yoga School, likes to say, “To be radical means that you’re willing to dig to the root of an issue.”
Radicals don’t just accept “what is.” They open their minds a little wider and they dig a little deeper. They take a closer look at “what is” and think about whether it should be changed. And if they come to the conclusion that it should be changed, they take action.
Jois had assumed that Westerners, because they were not raised as vegetarians, would never be able to learn the strenuous physical postures of the Ashtanga system. Jois believed a vegetarian diet to be the most important practice for yoga, not only because it is in line with ahimsa (non-violence), the first precept of yoga, but because, as he put it in his straightforward, practical way: “meat eating makes you stiff.” But when he saw that the first few Westerners who made their way to his small school in southern India were willing vegetarians, he was so impressed by their own radical departure from their cultural upbringing that he agreed to teach them.
Because of this one, small change in his own consciousness, Jois wound up teaching thousands of devoted students from all over the world. He kept up a relentless schedule in his school in Mysore and traveled around the world to teach for hours, even in his 80s and 90s.
Ashtanga is tough, and Jois was old school. He inspired both discipline and love; barking admonishments one minute and chuckling at a student’s awkwardness the next. And he made it clear that although Ashtanga will get you into amazing physical condition, the goal of the practice is not a great body, it is enlightenment.
Yogis believe to be enlightened is to live in a state of unconditional love, completely free of neurotic preoccupations and self-centered thoughts and desires. An enlightened person serves, and serves joyfully. Jesus and Buddha are the classic examples of enlightened teachers. Jois’s own teacher, Krishnamacharya, always emphasized the importance of using the spirit of yoga to enhance the lives of others. The concept of enlightenment gets bandied about a lot in yoga circles, but it’s a very rare experience to be around someone who embodies it.
The first time I took class from Jois, at his annual month-long workshop in NYC, I was a bit nervous to get into the impromptu receiving line that always forms after class. Students were bowing and touching his feet and I wasn’t sure I felt comfortable doing that. But to my surprise, the moment Guruji looked at me and smiled, I felt such a rush of joy that I ran toward him like a little child to touch his feet and hug him. We shared a few words as we looked into each others' eyes and all I can say is that he was a wonderfully open, happy, wise and loving presence. (Video: Pattabhi Jois teaching in NYC at age 87)
A true teacher wants his students to become independent, and eventually not need him anymore. He wants them to think for themselves, to be well-equipped to make radical decisions of their own. I’d like to think that Jois stuck around as long as he did and gave so much of himself because he wanted to make sure the Ashtanga practice was firmly rooted, not just in Mysore, but around the world. As he once said, “After my life is all finished, Yoga only will remain.”
Debra is the lead singer/guitarist for Devi, “a ferocious guitar-driven power trio equally adept at sprawling psychedelic jams and terse, haunting three-minute rockers."(Lucid Culture)
posted by: Matt Franciscovich in Uncategorized on May 22nd, 2009 | | No Comments »
The buzz about Dave Matthews Band’s new album, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, is overwhelming and if you poke around on the Internet enough, you’ll come to find out that a few songs from the upcoming record have leaked—it was inevitable. But according to Dave’s Twitter, the bandleader thinks “the leaks may have been part of a grand plan of which I had no part.”
By now, most DMB fans know about the band’s exclusive invite-only for fan club members show on June 1 at the Beacon Theater in New York City. Unless you are a member of the band’s fan club (the Warehouse), you’re most likely not getting in, and even if you did get an invite from the club, you’d have to be lucky enough to get your ticket request confirmed via random selection. With only about 3,000 seats in the room, a very select few will have that opportunity.
For the less fortunate fans that would love to go to the show, but cannot attend for one reason or another, there are several alternative options. The concert is going to be broadcast live across the country on the FUSE (also giving away 4 tickets to the show) cable television network as part of a week’s worth of DMB coverage on the channel surrounding the release of Big Whiskey.
It was also recently announced that popular television website, Hulu.com, will have a live stream of the concert so those who don’t get FUSE will be able to see the show. This will mark the first ever concert stream on the site.
And if you can’t make it to the show, don’t get FUSE, and can’t be parked in front of your computer at 9 p.m. Eastern on June 1 to watch the stream, there is still hope—the concert will still be available to watch on Hulu.com after it is over. Phew!
posted by: Max Bernstein in Sustainability and Climate Change on May 22nd, 2009 | | No Comments »
Showgoers who will be trekking up to Mountain Jam in Woodstock, NY at the end of the month might not have much time to take a break from a genre-hopping aural excursion with hosts Gov't Mule, Umphrey's McGee, the Allmans, hometown heroes Coheed and Cambria, The Hold Steady, Richie Havens and more. If they do, Melissa Eppard from Woodstock Wellness is ready to raise some consciousness in the Awareness Village.
The Awareness Village is a community for people to get spiritually and politically active, whether through crystal healing sessions with Micah (a healer traveling from Arkansas), photos and analysis of their energetic fields at the Aura'bout You booth, or by taking Headcount's "What's Your Issue?" survey.
Melissa Eppard, who directs the Awareness Village, sees the project as a means for people to slow down through spiritual growth, and to increase their focus on community by getting involved with organizations promoting sustainability and environmental health: "We're coming to the end of an age. Humanity's been growing at a very fast page and we can't continue to grow at this rate without reassessing the direction we're going. Sustainability is an absolute necessity -- we can't just keep using the amount of resources that we are, and must focus on how we can be responsible for ourselves on a local level."
If that sounds a little too relaxing, don't worry. There are belly-dancing performances -- with snakes. And lessons too. Naturally, I asked if the snakes were part of the lessons because that seemed a little advanced, but she reassured me that those are for the performances only.
HeadCount is cosponsoring an acoustic stage in the Awareness Village that will have smaller, more intimate sets by Mountain Jam performers, among them John Medeski and Melissa's personal favorite, Michael Franti.
"Michael Franti is someone who really walks his talk. Last year when Michael came out and played the Awareness Village, he talked about his experience playing in Iraq for soldiers. Everyone around him had tears in their eyes. It made me think 'This is why I'm doing this.'"
Mountain Jam runs from May 29th to May 31st. You can find out more about the Awareness Village here.
posted by: Seth Fiegerman in Uncategorized on May 21st, 2009 | | No Comments »
Well, it’s the day after the season finale of American Idol and Kris Somebody is the winner. Good for him. But if you’re like me, being semi-conscious in America the morning after an American Idol finale is a lot like living through the day after the Super Bowl when all you care about is checking cricket scores. Impossibly frustrating. I love music but I hate the celebrity and drama that surrounds it on the show.
No one can say for sure what the future of this most recent American Idol will be, or whether he will do something significant to merit that audacious title, but we can now look back at the birth of a true idol. Christie’s announced today that it is auctioning off one of the earliest known poems by Bob Dylan, written when he was just 16 years old at summer camp.
The poem, titled “Little Buddy,” is credited to Bobby Zimmerman and tells the sad tale of a boy’s dog that gets beaten to death by an angry drunk. "He was such a lovely doggy/ And to me he was such fun/ But today as we played by the way/ A drunken man got mad at him/ Because he barked in joy/ He beat him and he's dying here today."
Even Zimmerman’s work couldn’t escape charges that he lifted words from someone else, charges that still plague some of Dylan’s later songs. This time, he adapted the lyrics of an old Hank Snow song. In any case, the lyrics aren’t exactly as complex and nuanced as With God is On Our Side, although the lyrics to that song are also being auctioned off at Christies.
Maybe the lesson here is that the best musicians are the ones that come out of humble beginnings rather than the glitz and glam of a TV contest broadcast live to a hundred million people.
posted by: MargaretHiden in Food and Farm Policy, Sustainability and Climate Change on May 20th, 2009 | | No Comments »
A couple of weeks ago, I was treating myself to sushi with some friends and I also happened to be on one of my “trying-not-to-eat-meat” streaks. There was an item on the menu that I was unfamiliar with, so I asked if it was MEAT?! Who knows!? I don’t read Japanese and am not the most poised sushi eater, so for all I knew it could have been some kind of crazy fruit, special sauce or meat – well, what I consider meat to be at least. The answer I got was shocking to me and it lead to quite the debate over a good portion of dinner. Let me just preface this with the fact that I am thinking, if it’s sushi and there is meat involved, it’s going to be fish! To my surprise, everyone at the table answered, “No, no meat. It’s fish.” After the argument of whether or not fish is meat was well on the table, another friend said, “I guess they do have eyeballs.” To be having this conversation, to me, was completely insane.
Though, I did come to find out that regardless of whether or not one considers fish to be meat, there has been a debate regarding pain felt by fish and shellfish. In fact, Science Daily recently reported on a study done at Purdue University regarding pain felt by fish. Again, something to me that seems so obvious it’s hard for me to believe there is even discussion on the topic!
How you choose to eat, meat or not, is a personal decision whether it be for your health or some deep-seeded ethical belief. However, there is something else to consider when thinking about what you put into your body. Recent studies have shown that how and what you eat clearly have an impact on the planet. The food production industry, including livestock, has significantly contributed to the global warming epidemic we find ourselves in. Vegan Society offers up information regarding the correlation on what we eat and how it affects the environment. Get healthy while helping the environment. Go to the source!
Of course, making the shift from carnivore to vegetarianism, veganism or well…pescatarianism is a big change that will probably need easing into. There are some other interesting and alternative ways to make the changeover if you are just starting to think about the change and don’t want to dive-in head first. NPR's article released on earth day has some great ideas on how to do this and also includes some interesting earth-friendly recipes. Good luck!
posted by: Eric Leventhal in Election and Voter Registration Reform, Trends in Music and Society on May 20th, 2009 | | No Comments »
Since I found out I would be working for HeadCount, a number of people have asked me precisely what Headcount “stands for.” Like any self-respecting graduate student, I cite text written by others, in this case our mission statement: “HeadCount is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization dedicated to voter registration and inspiring participation in democracy through the power of music.”
Some people seem skeptical of any reference to a “power of music.” Ontologically, does it exist, and epistemologically, if it does exist, how can anyone be sure of what precisely it is? They cast a malady of cynicism upon the legitimacy of HeadCount’s battle cry: “Dude, do you mean the power of love? Have you heard ‘the news?’ - you suck and so does Huey Lewis.” And to those persons I say, “Shenanigans my good sir. Any band that’s sold 30 million records worldwide is certainly, to use the parlance of our Wu Tang brethren, 'nothing to [procreate] with.' And that’s entirely besides the point.”
An amateur anthropologist of sorts, my thoughts instantly turned to the field of primatology. The theoretical conception of Volker Sommer and other primatologist researchers rests upon the notion that, although the idea may seem abhorrent to some, humans are inherently alike our primate brothers on the evolutionary tree. Apart from pointing to Darwinian phenotypic and Mendelian genotypic traits, Sommer in particular believes that no human behavior is immune from this connection. Perhaps most controversially, Sommer classifies the high degree of violence and sexual assaults committed against children by stepfathers as arising from the same lack of parental investment innately acted upon by male primates in committing sexually selective infanticide. Regardless of how one feels about this hypothesis, few would dispute that researching our closest genetic matches is a worthwhile endeavor with an eye towards a greater grasp of human behavioral science.
In my quest to understand the “power of music,” I delved further into this underlying notion of the innate anthropomorphism of humanity. (Does this help to explain why Disney sells so many plush play-pals?) I was immediately drawn to Desmond Morris’ 1967 opus, "The Naked Ape." In the chapter entitled “Rearing,” Morris analyzes maternal behavior:
. . . 83 per cent of right-handed mothers hold the baby on the left side, but then so do 78 per cent of left-handed mothers . . . the heart is on the left side of the mother’s body…Groups of new-born babies in a hospital nursery were exposed for a considerable time to the recorded sound of a heart-beat at a standard rate of 72 beats per minute. There were nine babies in each group and it was found that one or more of them was crying for 60 per cent of the time when the sound was not switched on, but that this figure fell to only 38 per cent when the heart-beat recording was thumping away . . . Another test was done with slightly older infants at bedtime. In some groups the room was silent, in others recorded lullabies were played. In others a ticking metronome was operating at the heart-beat speed of 72 beats per minute. In still others the heart-beat recording itself was played. The heart-beat group [fell asleep] in half the time it took for any of the other groups . . . the sound of the heart beating is a powerfully calming stimulus . . . a highly specific one.
Morris culminates the argument by bringing us full-circle. Although his assessment of popular music is pretty antiquated ("Far out! The heart is a giant metaphor for microcosm man."), it’s still revelatory with regards to the notion of imprinted dominion and sovereignty:
It may . . . explain why we insist on locating feelings of love in the heart rather than the head . . . It may also explain why mothers rock their babies to lull them to sleep . . . at about the same speed as the heart-beat . . . Nor does it stop there. Right into adult life the phenomenon seems to stay with us. We rock with anguish. We rock back and forth on our feet when we are in a state of conflict . . . Wherever you find insecurity, you are liable to find the comforting heart-beat rhythm in one kind of disguise or another. It is no accident that most folk music and dancing has a syncopated rhythm . . . It is no accident that teenage music has been called ‘rock music’ . . . it is now called ‘beat music’. And what are they singing about?: ‘My heart is broken’, ‘You gave your heart to another’, or ‘My heart belongs to you’.
I dare those who say we should give up on the power of music to stop tapping their feet long enough to make me. I’m no EMT, but I feel the beat, don't you?
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