THIS is the reason you don't allow overly broad stupid legislation like the Patriot Acts I and II and the most recent Military Commission Act to pass. They are always unintended uses that far exceed the original intent of the law. In this case, a couple in their mid-forties were being overtly sexual on a Southwest Airlines flight and have been charged under the Patriot Act (which was designed as a tool to charge terrorists.)

What a joke. Why are Americans putting up with this? WAKE UP. Unbelievable.

I mean, don't get me wrong. They should have been hauled off the plane if he was threatening the staff, but charge them with mischief, not under the fracking terrorism act.

Craig Ferguson had a funny episode on this story: "When the other passengers saw these goings-on, they were surprised and thought....'What, entertainment on a Southwest Airlines flight?'" Funny. But not.

Ben Franklin said it best: "Those who would trade liberty for a bit of safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

This is appalling.

I urge everybody to watch this:

I would like to offer up a business idea to an enterprising young engineering student. Develop something that operates a bit like a speeding ticket camera but that is for sound level instead. Build it so that it can sit in intersections and detect noise levels of Harley Davidsons and other bikes with modified exhausts that are so f**king loud that they echo throughout the entire downtown core at all hours of the day and night. When it senses a burst of motorcycle revving, it will send a very targeted Electro magnetic pulse blast at the bike, knocking out the electrical system on the bike. Voila. Peace and quiet and one more bike that is inoperable. If you put this on a drone balloon hovering over the city, you could also use it to detect and knock out boom box cars!

Hate noise? Check out http://www.noiseoff.org

I think I have found the magic number. Every fifth article from Mark Morford is so brilliant, insightful, and articulate that I need to post most, if not all, of it here for my readers. Today is the day for another.

In one fell swoop, Mark has managed to hit on a whole bunch of my favourite subjects: the environment, structure driving behaviour, adaptation, complex system effects, social policy, cultural behaviour, global policy....he has hit it all.

The archive of his writings can be found here. The current article is below:

No wait, not six. To hell with that. Make it 10. Ten bucks a gallon, no matter what the going rate for a barrel of light sweet crude. That would so completely, violently, brilliantly do it. Revolutionize the country. Firebomb our pungent stasis. Change everything. Don't you agree?

Here's what we could do: Give gas discounts to cab drivers (at least initially) and metro transit systems and low-income folks, those who have to drive their busted-up '78 Honda Civics to their jobs scrubbing restaurant toilets and flipping burgers and vacuuming the residual cocaine from the seat cushions of numb SUV owners. Everyone else, 10 bucks a gallon, across the board. Eleven for premium.

It would take some finessing. Maybe also give a price break to some truckers and trucking companies (so vital to the overall economy), but not so much to global delivery companies (FedEx, DSL et al.), because not doing so would force them to raise shipping rates and force you (and me) to reconsider buying everything online and hence will encourage you to shop locally once again, thus reviving a stagnant local economy.

Voilá -- gas crisis, oil crisis, warmongering agenda, pollution issues, road rage, traffic congestion, urban decay, oil profiteering -- all completely almost totally somewhat solved. Or at the very least, dramatically, gloriously shifted toward ... I don't know what. Something better. Something more humane, less greedy, more sustainable. Could it work? How outraged and indignant would you be to have to pay that much for gas? How long would that feeling last?

Take it one logical step further. Set up a national system whereby if you want to buy a vehicle that gets less than 20 mpg in the city, you pay a $1,000 Global Warming Surcharge and that money goes straight to a local organic farm, or school, or environmental think tank. And if it gets under 12 mpg, make it three grand, plus a slap to your face from a small, angry child. Got yourself a shiny new Hummer? You pay five grand extra, you can only buy gas once a month and all the truly beautiful women of the world will shun you like Charlie Sheen (oh wait, that already happens). See? Revolution is easy.

What, too far fetched? Too implausible? Not at all. Sure, 10 bucks a gallon would be extremely painful for a while. Citizens would wail. Commuters would scream and stomp and die. But then we would do what we always do. We would evolve. Adapt. Systems would quickly transform, habits would instantly shift. It would be easier to implement than the goddamn mess that is Medicare reform, far easier than Lots of Children Left Behind, more viable and livable than the toxic existence of Homeland Security and the disgusting Patriot Act.

But of course such an idea is also, right now, absolutely impossible. It will never happen -- not 10 bucks, not six, not even a buck more per gallon -- and not just because no politician anywhere on either side of the aisle has the nerve to come out and suggest that Americans might actually need to drive less and conserve and make a change in their gluttonous habits. This is, of course, absolute death for a politician. Tell Americans what to do? Dare to suggest that they're doing something wrong, or that their behaviors are dangerous and destructive and irresponsible? Are you insane? This is America! We're flawless!

No, the primary reason such reform won't happen is because, simply put, we are the most entitled nation in the world, perhaps in the entire galaxy. Americans are trained from birth to believe we deserve as much as we desire of every exploitable resource on the planet, be it water or natural gas or oil, coal or salmon or steaks, Big Macs or diapers or iPods or bizarre varieties of blue ketchup. It is, in a word, perilous. It is also, in another, slightly more devastating word, our downfall.

Look, I adore cars. I adore driving and I cherish open roads and smooth horsepower and a musical exhaust note and I fully believe most German automotive engineers should be sent gifts of candy and Peet's coffee and porn. I would, like most everyone else, be absolutely loathe to give much of it up.

But you know what? Big freaking deal. I could learn to live without so much. I like to think I would be able to step back and see the bigger picture, realize what is and isn't absolutely essential, what does and does not absolutely define my identity and my life, modify accordingly and laugh/shrug/sigh it off in the process. In other words, I could make it work. And so could you.

Ever been in a citywide blackout? One that lasted for more than a few hours and stretched on into the night? Ever see people suddenly shift gears and become astoundingly helpful and polite and sharing? Happens in a matter of moments. Disasters do it. Katrina did it, on a scale we haven't seen in years. Sept. 11 did it, emotionally speaking, before BushCo whored that tragedy and turned it into the most vile political poker chip in American history. Shocking change brings people together. Brings out the best in humans. Or at least, makes you rethink what's truly important in your life.

Another example: You know what would happen if guns -- all guns, everywhere -- were banned outright tomorrow? Well, right off, nothing much. Criminals would still commit crimes. Lawsuits would skyrocket. The NRA would shoot itself in the face in screaming protest. Crime rates would dance all over the map. It would be a little ugly.

But then something remarkable would happen. Over a short blip of time -- say about 10 or 20 years, as gun manufacturing ceased and the culture of gun violence died down and our favorite death object was less visible in the news and in video games and on TV and in every aspect of modern life, well, guess what? Guns would begin to disappear. From the culture, from the drug dealers, from the streets, from public consciousness. They would turn into a sad relic, like eight-track tapes, like the bubonic plague, like the Miami Sound Machine. Think 20 years is too long? BS. It is but an eyeblink, a twitch, a faint toe spasm in the great long orgasm of time.

This is the unappreciated, under-reported magic of the human animal. We are infinitely adaptable. We can accommodate far more than politicians and pundits and the morally knotted Christian right would ever have you believe.

Ten bucks a gallon. Imagine the mad scramble by carmakers to invent new ultra-gas-sipping, enviro-friendly technologies. Imagine communities coming together for ride-sharing and mass transit. Bike sales would skyrocket. Walking shoes would be the new bling item. We would mourn the loss of cool car culture even as we celebrated the birth of, say, moped culture. Telecommuting would explode. Sure, the superrich would still tool around in their bloated Escalades, oblivious to the world around them, thinkin' the world is their dumb bitch.

So what? The rest of us can simply roll our eyes and laugh, evolve and sharpen and sigh, and wonder what great change we can embark upon next.

Another brilliant rant from Mark Morford. See the full article here.

Excerpts below:

Look, see those tire marks? That ungainly footprint? Feel that breath of humid doom upon your skin? Yes, the president was just here. Up in Napa Valley, riding his official Trek Mountain Bike One over the rocks and down the trails and through the cool California mud, a small army of handlers and Secret Service agents and emergency medical personnel by his side and/or rumbling along behind him in big black SUVs. It was very cute, in a fingernail-yanked-with-pliers sort of way.

It was Earth Day weekend. The president talked about how mountain biking helped him "settle his soul" and "burn off excess energy when you're living life to its fullest," which apparently means blindly running your nation into a bloody flaming wall at full speed like a drunk NASCAR driver on Ambien. He talked about how he enjoyed mountain biking because it had such minimal impact on the pristine, wild surroundings. Shockingly, lightning did not strike him dead on the spot.

Later on, the prez talked up the need for wildly implausible hydrogen-powered cars to the California Fuel Cell Partnership, a group who, if they had a drop of integrity and brains among them, didn't believe a single word he said.

[...] This much we know: Bush is, it has been widely noted, the worst environmental president in modern America history. He has done more to eliminate protections and pollute the air, sell off national forests, whore the waterways, drill for oil and eviscerate pollution regulation than any president on the books. His environmental record is abysmal, shameful, and includes installing two of the worst secretaries of the interior in history, the abominable Gale Norton and now her male counterpart Dirk Kempthorne, who have turned around and reduced protections and sold off more forestland to private concerns -- oil, timber, coal, you name it -- since the Harding administration.

[...] Bush is, after all, a failed oilman. He has done all he can to ensure we will be dependent on the black death for the next two decades, minimum, which is, not surprisingly, the average remaining life span of his favoritest CEO cronies in the oil business. Serve the masters first, the Saudi sheiks second, the American people about, oh, 157th. It is the BushCo way.

[...] There is no beauty in American political policy toward the Earth. There is no poetry or grace or true heart in how politicians -- especially Republican politicians -- view our natural commodities, no respect unless it is based on fear, unless it is begrudging and resentful, like when a hurricane makes a mockery of the president's feeble and unconvincing attempts to prove he cares. Has it always been this way? Maybe. But some leaders are far, far worse than others.

This is perhaps the most frightening thing about the Bush visit, about him having the nerve, the sheer vulgar gall to discuss the quality of his soul while biking through a natural habitat his administration so violently works to defile. It is this: He actually meant it. Bush was probably genuinely heartfelt about enjoying his ride through our troubled trees. He thinks he is attuned and connected. He thinks nature is nifty and calming. And, simply put, there is no more dangerous a leader on the face of the earth who, in every policy and every law and every action, abuses and distorts and molests the world around him, and yet who can turn on an ideological dime and calmly glorify that very thing which he helps destroy.

Recall former Spokane Mayor Jim West, big scandal just recently, an outspoken and homophobic über-Republican on the outside, a guy who helped pass anti-gay legislation in Washington state and railed against gay rights in public, but who happily turned around and for over 20 years solicited 18-year-old boys in gay chat rooms at night and offered them free candy, T-shirts, sex, jobs. Bush is just like that. Abuse your issue openly during the day, screw it at night. And worst of all, give not a single thought to the brutal dichotomy.

[...]

Full article is here.

(If you are looking for the 2007 event information, please click HERE.)

I am very excited about our launch of the 30 Days of Sustainability. For the month of March, Vancouver will host a cornucopia of events and activities, all focused around bringing sustainability to our lives and our city.

Special features of the website include: 

Some friends and I decided that we want to write a Web 2.0 manifesto over at ChangeThis. We submitted our proposal to the ChangeThis team and they accepted!

So now we need you to go over and vote for us on this page!

Here is the summary of the proposal:


Please forward this to anybody you know who can assist us. If enough votes come in, they will then take the polling page down and notify us that the manifesto is a go.

Then comes the hard part - we have to write it!! Luckily we're part of the way there already.

Once it is written, they choose whether or not to finally accept it and publish it as a Manifesto.

Thanks for the help everybody!

P.S. To those of you who voted for my last manifesto back in December 2004, thank you. It never went in because after they accepted it, they sent the submission rules and the rule 1 was "It shouldn't be angry." Given that my Technology Buyer's Manifesto was like one big Dennis Miller rant, it would have had to have been completely re-done from the ground up and I didn't have time what with the new job and everything. So here goes try #2, this time with the help of my friends. In fact, they were the inspiration for it since they got me into all of this stuff to begin with!

Back in 2003, I attended a pivotal event at the Vancouver Enterprise Forum. Normally, these events generally follow a predictable pattern. People fill in the room, buy a drink and wander aimlessly. The venture capitalists avoid the nervous entrepreneurs with the bad pitches and the keen students stand nervously in the corner, not sure who to talk to. Old friends meet up and chat and newcomers do their best to try to look as comfortable as the old-timers.

Now, don't get me wrong. This is not a comment on the Vancouver Enterprise Forum, which does a great job of bringing these people together time and time again. It is a comment on the state of networking generally in this city, if not the western world.

But that evening was different. Darcy Rezac, Managing Director of the Vancouver Board of Trade, got on stage with a microphone, introduced himself, gave the group some ground rules and "permission to network".

Some of his rules included:


The energy that this talk unleashed was enormous. People laughed and chatted and exchanged cards. In fact, it was hard to shepherd them out of the room to the upstairs theater for the actual talk! This evening was a turning point in my own understanding of networking and I will always remember it. I bought Darcy's first book "The Frog and the Prince" that night from Gayle and read it that night.

Well, I'm pleased to report that Darcy Rezac, Judy Thomson, and Gayle Hallgren-Rezac are at it again and are releasing "Work the Pond - Use the Power of Positive Networking to Leap Forward in Business and in Life" on October 4, 2005.

No matter what you do - business, government, or non-profit work - if you need to work with people and build out your eco-system of "weak links", you need to read this book. I highly recommend it.

Congratulations Darcy, Judy, and Gayle!

Only Mark Morford can put all of this into one article and tie it all together so well. Excerpts below. The link to the left takes you to the full article at SF Gate.

...James Dobson, the cute little founder of the cute little ultraconservative rabidly Christian happily neo-homophobic Focus on the Family, actually stood up and proclaimed, to the media, to the world, with a straight face, with no sense of irony or shuddering humiliation or an overpowering sense that he was, in fact, contributing quite nicely to the overall violent oatmealy ignorance of the planet, came right out and announced that the wildly popular and much-loved SpongeBob Squarepants cartoon character is, actually and truly, probably gay. And therefore, of course, SpongeBob is a dire threat to all childrenkind and must be avoided at all costs lest the wee ones watch the cartoons and become overwhelmed with a mad desire to wax their chests and buy a new Miata and drink cocktails made with lemonade. More or less.

And why? Why is the adorable yellow sea sponge suddenly considered to be contributing to the mental and spiritual and genital degradation of millions of innocent children? Because he's a hyperactive none-too-bright short-attention-spanned spazzball of lovable non-sequiturial nonsense who induces rabid devotion among children and gay men and straight adults alike? Why, no. Not quite.

It's because the frantically animated sea creature is now appearing, alongside noted pagan cartoon perverts Barney the Dinosaur and Winnie-the-Pooh and the Rugrats and Bob the Builder, in a nonprofit video sent to 60,000 schools and designed to promote that vile demon called, ahem, tolerance. And diversity.

...But now, the not-so-cute part: Much like that other small-minded cluster of clenched nonbrains over at the Parents Television Council, the very tiny but weirdly vocal group that single-handedly managed to hurl the FCC into fits of hysteria regarding naughty swearwords and exposed nipples in the national media, these groups are having one helluva moment right now, one influential and dangerous time in the cultural limelight.

These are the minuscule and shrill groups that, perhaps in a period not seen since the Puritans forbade dancing and kissing and the color fuchsia and all pleasure of any kind, have a shockingly powerful pull on American society and who reputedly helped tilt the election toward Bush and who increasingly have the ear of Congress -- a Congress, it must be noted, that's increasingly crammed with evangelical Christians and homophobic nutjobs and Tom DeLay.

...All of which somehow reminds me of the Spanish Catholic Archdiocese, also recently in the news after undergoing an amazing spasm of lucid awareness in how, for a brief blip in time, the church officially allowed that condoms might be OK. Did you read that story? About how Bishop Juan Antonio Martinez Camin, in Spain, announced that condoms are actually pretty good for, you know, controlling disease and inhibiting the spread of HIV? Miss that one? It's understandable. Went by pretty fast. In fact, the astounding stance lasted exactly 24 hours, just enough time for the Vatican to get a whiff of it and for the Vatican's Archbishop of Hateful Sexless Myopia to make a nasty phone call to Spain, promptly threatening the Spanish church with nothing short of castration and excommunication and genital warts.

Whoops, nope, we were wrong, muttered the Spanish church the following day. Condoms were evil all along. Condoms are wrong and condoms don't actually prevent the spread of HIV and we don't care if they save lives or prevent pregnancy or STDs because condoms promote -- what is it again, cardinal? -- oh, yes, "immoral sexual conduct."

...Which in turn reminds me of Bush addressing a cluster of antichoice activists a few days back, touting the vicious and degrading "culture of life," which translates directly as, "We aging sexless white Christian males shall hereby stop at nothing to slap women's rights back to 1955 and chip away at female procreative choice, all while preventing stem-cell research from ever saving the life of a single cancer or Alzheimer's patient. God bless." Ah, progress. And then, in the next ironic breath, Bush announced that his warmongering administration is ready to request another $80 billion from Congress to further the violent and treasonous and unwinnable war on Islami-- er, on non-Christia-- er, women-- er, gays-- er, decent grammar-- er, dictators who control our oil-- er, "terror."

...Note the connection. Note the blood-red thread of fear and dread and homophobia, the brutal irony throughout all these stories. Shrill extremist sects and small-minded leaders with too much control, saddled with self-righteous and outdated doctrines that refuse to allow the culture to progress, to laugh, to moan in joy and sticky happiness. Note the people who look at hilarious children's cartoons and see only sinister mind control, who look at their fellow human souls and see only an army of debauched heathens, who look (reluctantly) at their own genitals and see only a gnarled clump of pain and confusion, who look up at the beautiful blue sky and see only a massive canopy of daggers.

How incredibly sad. And, for right now, how very, insidiously dangerous.

A Cornell university study has found that 44% of Amerikans favoured "some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans." But remember George Bush, "this is not a war of Christian against Muslim or Westerners against Easterners, it is a war on terror." Umm, yeah, right. Shockingly, those who were most inclined to vote this way were either Republican or "more religious." Given that the local Muslims were probably not voting for their own civil liberties curtailment (but then again who knows? The Christians have certainly agreed to it), I am guessing that the "religious" people in question were the more fundamentalist Christians.

QUOTE

The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29 percent thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising.

UNQUOTE

The original Cornell press release link is here.

Currently listening to (ironically) Robin S - Show Me Love (Stonebridge mix) from the album "Club Sounds Vol. 27 CD2"

(Thanks to William Gibson's blog for the link)