25 JULY 03

Well, I found a bounty of bugs in Florence. I wrote them up and sent them to Peter for fixing. Last night Beth and I went to an Indian Restaurant and had spicy food – something we don’t getto eat with Elizabeth very often. After dinner we went to a cafe for some coffee and cake and then went home and listened to some smooth music on the steree-eree-ereee-ooo. John Coltrane (Giant Steps), The first Enya record (which is actually pretty good), Voices by Roger Eno, Music has the Right to Children by Boards of Canada, and a home-made compilation CD of various tunes, ranging from Dead Can Dance to Hawaiian slack key geeeetar music.

This morning, Beth and I went to breakfast at All You Knead, where I had my usual eggs ‘n’ Bacon, and Beth her usual Crepe… today, I work with Florence as best I can, and rehearse as much as possible. I’m thinking of bringing the CS2x with me on the plane, so I can rehearse right up to leaving and then upon arrival in VT. I can always ship it back by UPS.

Political statement for the day: Fuck the TSA and their tin horn fascism, those half witted lackey pinheaded freaks from hell.

26 JULY 03

Re-edited the trees section of SEI, so I can more easily cross fade between two different camera angles at once, making for a more fluid performance. Right now it’s too choppy and eats up too much keyboard space. Beth and E went to see Sinbad at the movie theatre, and then went to the park. Tonight, I cook up some din din and then tomorrow Beth goes to Texas AGAIN, and with E out of summer camp, I’m basically SCREWED as far as getting any work done is concerned. But I’ll have lots of fun playing with Elizabeth.

Last night I went to SomArts for the Electronic Music Festival.

I missed the first act, but the second show was Bran(…) Pos. He ran his voice through a mic into some processors. EVERYBODY who gets a mic and some processors does this. He’s just very systematic about it. I think the sutff I did in 1992 with processed vocals was intrinsically more interesting. I didn’t find his work that vital.

Next was DISC. DISC is a mix of Matmos and kid606. I found them loud and tedious. A big disapointment. I’ve listened to both Matmos and 606,so I figured this might be really interesting. It wasn’t.

The last act was O.Blaat. The music played was much more interesting than the presentation. There were several lights (incandescent and flourescent) strung about the hall. They would come on at seemingly random times, loosely affiliated with the music. The music was better than DISC, and was really quite interesting until the very end when it got so loud I had to leave. The lights were pointless.

Overall, a mediocre evening. But I ran into Charles K., Pam Z, and Dan J., which was nice – it was good to touch base with them. Afterward, Jef, Mark, and I went to Dylans and hoisted a few.

27 JULY 03

An ongoing conversation I’ve been having with Ian Wallace about Jazz is ongoing, and he was so kind as to reprint some email I sent him in this regard, so he might clarify his position regarding the state of Jazz in our world to myself and others.

Read his online diary thing at:

http://diaries.krimson-news.com/IanWallace.shtml

Ian’s a great guy, and a fantastic drummer who’s way inside all this stuff.

His (and Keeling’s and Reuter’s) diary is one of the highlights of my day.

The present conversation is as follows:

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Sunday, July 27 2003
I got a letter from Henry Warwick relating to my thoughts on the state of jazz and rock. I think he missed the point I was trying to make. So in case anyone else out there felt the same way, I will try to clear it up.

From Henry;

In your latest diary, you wrote:
> So what is jazz now?
> Well to my mind it is now another form of classical music just like the
> symphony orchestras and chamber music ensembles of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven,
> Brahms, Haydn, Rachmaninov, Elgar, Vaughn Williams, John Williams, Leonard
> Bernstein, Elmer Bernstein, etc., etc.
> So is there anything wrong with that?
> Well no, absolutely not. Just because something is old or played in a certain
> tradition doesn’t make it any less beautiful and moving. In fact, it may
> serve to make it more so, like old wines or an old violin. And that’s what
>Annie does; she plays classic jazz.

Henry responds;

I’m sure Annie is a great singer, and I would never detract from her
efforts, but I must strenuously disagree with your assessment that it is a
new classical music. That is the line taken by Marsalis / Couch / Giddins et
al – that it was something that happened and isn’t happening any more.

HW

Part of my reply was;

Also while I’m writing to you I’d like to say that I think you got the wrong idea in regards to my posting about jazz and rock and the general state of music. This is my fault in the fact that I didn’t make myself clear enough. I love jazz more than any other musical form and continue to believe that it is still being played creatively and soulfully. It’s just that I think that it has gone as far as it can go in form and structure. This to me isn’t a bad thing.

Wonderful classical music still continues to be written and so does jazz. They just allude to the tradition that has been created in the past. Take Wayne Shorter’s last two albums; Footprints Live and Alegria. These are the highest form of playing and composition and creativity, but there’s nothing particularly new in form, harmonics and construction. Is this a bad thing? I don’t think so. I happen to think it’s a wonderful thing. Annie is the same way, she carries the torch using the tradition of jazz and making it her own.

I certainly don’t think jazz or rock is dead. Far from it.

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To which I can only agree, really, and so the conversation continues…

Today, I drove Beth to the airport. She’s back in Dallas for more SAP training – this came up without much warning. So, now I have to rehearse and pack for Vermont, design Dennis’s CD cover, AND watch Elizabeth all week because E isn’t in summer camp this coming week. I don’t mind being with E this week – it’s just that I have all these other MASSIVE deadlines to deal with, including sending out acceptance letters to people re: the SF Performance Cinema Symposium. I also need to line up news organisations to help promote this event. And keep an eye on her Boo-ness – this isn’t going to be easy.

So – it looks like I have my work cut out for me. Oh – and I have to find a job, ‘cuz I’m broke. Details, details, details.

Also, the bounty of bugs I found in Florence were mostly user error. There are other bugs in it, but they are so peculiar and oddly functional, that I’m actually able to use them, as a kind of glitch aesthetic. Eventually I’ll need them smoothed out, but for now, the errors actually enhance the material. Well, who’d-a-thunk-it?

PS: Listening to Harry Shearer’s Le Show, I heard someone do a parody of a song by the Pheremones. They did a song back in the 80s about “If you ain’t got the DOUGH Ray Meeee folks” which had to do with immigrants coming to America and finding nothing but poverty. The singer of this new version adapted it to California. Clever and kind of funny, but mostly if you live here…. Shearer’s website hasn’t listed the song yet, so I’ll find out who did it later this week. I always liked the Pheremones – I saw them play every Wednesday at the Grog and Tankard in Washington DC.

I wish they’d get some new music together – with the likes of George (sock puppet) Bush blowing thigs up, emptying the treasury, and ruining the planet – and the puppetmaster NeoCons running rampant all along – the world NEEDS Al and Jimmy doing that Pheremone thing.

28 JULY 03

Elizabeth is out with her godmother, Bree, today. Bree is a professional cat sitter / dog walker with her own business, Claws and Paws. She’s great with furry beasties. And E loves going with her to feed the little critturs. Otherwise:

Feeling over worked and bleak.

Came across this in my lyrics collection.

It made me laugh, because it was written by the Pheromones back in 1989. So I thought it might be of some interest.
Goes to show just how little the world has changed… The tune is a modified Irish Reel – sing songy, kind of surgy, and very silly – the arrangement being a guitar, squeezebox and vocals.

Dance with the Young Republicans
by Al and Jimmy Pheromone

Let me tell you all a story about a modern master race
That eats industrial food and raise their kids on atomic waste
They’re as tough as they come and when they’re young
They play with guns and bombs
Disemboweling bad guys with the endorsements of their moms.
In high school they play football to the atonement of their minds
- to the sound of cracking ribs and the splintering of spines.
In college they pay time for their tops to be refined -
Then gathering in hordes to hear the wisdom of Holy George!

And we’ll lift our heads high
And Dance with the Young Republicans
We’ll tighten our neckties
And Dance with the Young Republicans

They’re not great businessmen suited in starchy etiquette
Just passion minded youngsters who look great in leatherette
And sport the latest colour, as long as it isn’t red
They look so natural in khaki pants and a brown shirt instead.
Well I guess the social thinking of the army has a bond -
You’ve got to admit there’s something about a man in uniform.
The best part of this trend is you don’t have to spend
A part of your lives having to serve
When you’re in the fashion reserve!

And we’ll lift our heads high
And Dance with the Young Republicans
We’ll tighten our neckties
And Dance with the Young Republicans

She can drink and smoke and vote and has a place out with the boys
Her goal is to control the things the privileged class enjoys.
And motherhood will follow a career with equal pay,
She doesn’t think her drinking buddies would take it all away.
But the rights that she’s embraced were won by people she’d despise
And opposed by those who top the list of men she’d idolise.
And if she had nothing to lose, I guess I’d understand
She’s just a political reactionary of THE FATHERLAND!

And we’ll lift our heads high
And Dance with the Young Republicans
We’ll tighten our neckties
And Dance with the Young Republicans

And we’ll lift our heads high
And Dance with the Young Republicans
We’ll tighten our neckties
And Dance with the Young Republicans

YO!

30 JULY 03

Today I send out the acceptance notices to people in the SF-PCS. Today, Elizabeth is going to start a three day day-camp at the YMCA. Yesterday I developed a database to track everyone in the SF-PCS. I also sent off a new design for Dennis Young’s CD. He didn’t like it and I think we’re leaning toward the first design. I’ll send him one more later this week, and then we’ll decide.

Yesterday the Pentagon had the stupid idea of selling futures on terrorist attacks. The Onion couldn’t have invented something so utterly amoral and insane as that. Once it came to light, and everyone laughed nervously and then shouted at them in utter rage, they quickly withdrew the concept. Frikkin morons.

Sunday, November 05, 2006
Interesting mileage data

On an energy list I subscribe to (sf-bay-oil) an fellown named Earl Killian did a bunch of research on the actual mpg of various forms of transportation. The data follows. Basically, trains, as they are presently implemented, are not as efficient as one might think.

From his post:

The good news is that I dug up yet more efficiency data, which shows that some mass transit can be pretty efficient. I found a reference which claims they measured BART energy use and passenger miles for two weeks and computed 136 MPG, which is pretty good (a fair bit better than a Prius, and a lot better than the Amtrak commuter rail numbers). Better numbers were claimed for BART rush hour use, but for the same reason as above, I think you need to look at the global picture. BART is of course electric, like the RAV4-EV (176 MPG at 1.57 load factor). Even better is SBB, the Swiss Rail system: 279 MPG. (It is also electric, and their electricity is primarily hydro, so little greenhouse gas emissions there.)

I am wondering where an ebike fits into all of this. when I find out I’ll post that. What is startling is how lousy the trains fair. It could be that they do poorly because they are so underutilised and have a great deal of embedded energy, but I could be wrong… More soon.

Friday, July 21, 2006
Ford: they lost money because they build gas guzzling death monsters.

What I find amusing about Ford and all the other hapless American car makers is this:

Even with “hybrid technology” the stupid Ford Escape still only gets (on a good day) about 25 mpg. My neighbour’s Toyota Prius regularly gets twice that much, and often more.

When my wife and I bought our car, an Audi A4, back in 1997, we bought it as a highway cruiser, because she had to drive all the way to Santa Clara for work (She’s been telecommuting since 2000 – so thank Bog those days are gone) Once it was paid off in 2002, we figured – heck – we don’t drive that much anymore, and the car is in perfect condition. To this day it still gets 32 mpg on the highway, and 24 in the city. When we bought it, high test was about $1.50 a gallon. Now it is $3.50 a gallon. about 2.3 x as much, Which means our car’s mileage per dollar of gas is 42% of what it used to be.

So, our 32 mpg car, for the dollar spent, now gets 13.4 mpg per dollar.

This means that an SUV that once got 12 mpg is effectively getting 5 mpg per dollar. So – doubling your mileage from 12 to 24 is really only getting you back to 10 mpg, which is less than where you were…

That is the razor of PeakOil – “we’ve doubled the mileage on our SUVs” isn’t going to wash because the mileage they’re starting from is so absurdly low and isn’t keeping pace with the increase in expense.

America IS ready for hyper-efficient vehicles. I also believe that America IS ready to let go of the SUV. It will start with commuters and city dwellers, and eventually sink into the brains of the suburbanites who still labour under the illusion that they NEED an SUV to get their spawn to soccer practice, or that driving an SUV three blocks to the liquor store to get some beer and a pack of smokes is any more effective tan driving a Prius three blocks to the liquor store to get some beer and a pack of smokes.

Tuesday, February 28, 2006
A Syriana Moment

Last week my wife, our daughter, and I went to visit the George Washington Museum in Morristown, NJ. The Museum itself was closed due to construction, but the mansion where he lived was open, and it was a very instructive and insightful display as to how people lived before petroleum. It was only a few generations after the Revolution that oil was discovered in Pennsylvania, and America was drop kicked directly front and centre into the Petroleum Age. I would argue that the age of the American Empire is almost directly coincidental to that resource. While it is true that the european invasion of North America was a rapacious disaster for the locals – starting with a mass death from smallpox, and culminating in death camps and forced migrations – that particular brand of murder and imperialism was largely limited to the North American continent, and the American Ruling Elite hadn’t yet dreamt of the global hegemony it now enjoys.

The addition of oil to the mix is what made America’s global empire possible, as it directly leapfrogged the coal powered weed of the British Empire. This leapfrogging was aided, in no small part, by the tiny brained tribal battles of Europe’s idiotic fratricidal warfare. And before this oil fueled leapfrogging, the European immigrants lived rather dire lives in America, and the Morristown settlement was no exception. The houses were, for the most part, small hovels centered around a hearth. In Morristown, the largest house was the one that was Washington’s HQ for the winter there. Even by today’s standards, it was a large house, but we had driven through endless acres of McMansions that were larger. The winter Washington spent in Morristown made Valley Forge look like a picnic. Valley Forge had breaks in the cold – the winter in Morristown was one of the coldest ever on record.

The ground in Morristown is similar to much of that part of the country – thin soil on top of a hilly rocky base – not very good for farming. The winters are cold and snow is common. The Summers are hot and filled with mosquitos. Not an optimal location. Today, many thousands of people call it home, as they bask in their centrally heated and air-conditioned homes, many of which are much larger than the mansion Washington called home, and most of them much larger than the hovels the peasants lived in at the time of Washington.

During the winter, sometimes parts of the big house were left unused as they were too hard to heat. Note: this is how Washington, a member of the ruling class, lived. The servants who lived there were crowded into a few small rooms with low ceilings.

There was a book for children in the heated trailer next to the house. It talked about how different the life of a child was in the 18th century. At the age of 12, children were given adult responsibilities, and girls were often married off a few years later. Schooling was limited to the barest necessities of reading, writing, and simple arithmetic. Books were rare and expensive. The evening meal was the largest and it took much of the day to cook. People worked, all the time. Knitting was a continuous occupation, as was the carding and spinning of yarn. In fact, people would load up a spinning wheel on a horse just to go visit a friend. Women would often get together and spin thread as a social occassion.

Due to the local soil conditions, farming was hard and continuous. Because houses didn’t have the luxury of fibreglas insulation, and houses were built without precision saws and tools, homes were often drafty affairs with low ceilings and small windows. Trees were cleared quickly, to make way for farms and to be used as wood. Thanks to replanting and the advent of petroleum, there are as many trees in New Jersey now than at any time since the arrival of Europeans – in fact, by 1900, much of NJ was clear-cut rolling hills of farm land. I walked back to the mansion and stood in the upper hallway looking out over the Museum grounds, and that’s when I had a Syriana Moment.

I was thinking of the Matt Damon character talking to the prince of Syriana:

“You want to know what we think of you? We think that 100 years ago you people were living in tents and chopping each other’s heads off, and we think that’s exactly where you’re going to be in another hundred years.”

I looked out the window at the parking lot full of SUVs and minivans. I looked in the sky at the contrails of jets flying off to distant parts of the globe. I looked at the rocky eaten soil, and the spare grey trees. I thought that General Washington probably looked out that same window at similar trees – shivering thin midwinter sticks – and that he gazed at a similar broken land. Where the asphalt parking lot now sits filled with gas guzzling wagons of heated suburban comfort, was probably a collection of meagre frozen tents full of enlisted men and disease, huddled together against the cold.

And then I thought:

“You want to know what I think of you? I think 200 years ago you people were scratching out a miserable existence on this crappy rocky soil, and that’s exactly where you’re going to be in another 200 years.”

Saturday, February 18, 2006
Spreading the Word

Friday was an interesting day. I teach an illustration design class (basically, Photoshop 101) on Fridays, and I prepared a packet for them to read. It consisted of Roscoe Bartlett’s talk before Congress on the Peak Oil issue, Duncan’s infamous “Olduvai Theory” paper, and a few other shorter works, including one by yours truly. The reading became increasingly less doomer/fatalistic, as I wanted the students to be left with a sense that hard times are ahead, but they need not end in catastrophe.

They were stunned. The reaction was “Why hasn’t ANYONE TOLD US???”, which I read as “Why isn’t this on CNN, ALL THE TIME???” One girl looked like she was going to cry. I felt bad, but I did forewarn them: this is TOUGH STUFF. You Will Be Depressed.

Luckily one girl, who is several years older than the rest in the class and is Cuban, had some good things to say – she explained that when it all went to hell in a handbasket in the 1990s in Cuba, at first, life was VERY tough. But after a while people adjusted and learned how to live on less. One thing she said that I thought was really important was this:

“After a while – you think about other things. The situation stabilises, and you learn to cope and find a way to be happy. Life goes on.”

She was able to emigrate to the USA, and she is in contact with her extended family back in Cuba. She has nothing good to say about the Castro regime itself, but she does miss having health care and free education. With what I showed her regarding Peak Oil, she feels she has already lived through a Peak Oil de-powering process, and she is sad that it seems she will have to go through another one.

She also said that many people in Havana (who could afford it) left the city and started small farms and ranches in the countryside. This opened up some room in the city, and almost instantly gardens began to flourish. However, she also said that if you dumped vegetables in the back yard, they’d sprout and grow due to the temperature and climate in Cuba. She has no idea how the Big City Near Us can possibly cope in a rapid depowering scenario.

That’s where I piped in, saying that it is imperative that we – all of us – work together to prevent a rapid depowering, how it is important that we all work together to help the human race transition to the next phase in civilisation, and to get there with grace and dignity.

I also pointed out to them that the thing that cuts at contemporary Civilisation the most is not losing gasoline, but fertiliser and metals. The oil pissed away on transport is actually fairly elastic, and I showed them examples of electric cars, electric assist tricycles, and a variety of other transportation alternatives – and this is where we can make the most changes that would have the most immediate and beneficial effect.

We talked about population control, and the necessity of having children – just having FAR FEWER of them. That became rather complex and heated, so I stipulated that we would discuss it again another day, and went on to a different, if related, topic – food production. The Cuban girl had much to say on that (which makes sense if you know her. I really like her – she’s very smart and very talented – but dang… she DOES talk an awful lot…) and soon class was almost over and the assignment was given:

Illustrate a post carbon society.
Doom and death? Clean and mean? Smaller and Sweeter? Wetter and Better? Whatever – JUST CONVINCE ME. DO NOT COMPROMISE. I gave them the physical parameters of the work.

They left looking like they had just been sentenced to life in prison. I went to lunch with some of them, and we had a long discussion on the subject. The general mood was “OK, well, let’s get on with it.” Which I found inspiring, and it makes me think that the Doomer Scenario may never come to pass – people can work together and we can make this happen.

“Yeah – it’s brutal. you’re gonna be really pissed and depressed for a while. But you’ll get over it, and you’ll have a better idea of what to do. You won’t be sad forever. It’s better to know this so you can work on it now, than to go skipping along with your fingers in your ear, pretending like it doesn’t matter.”

I hope to put some of the images they come up with on this blog.

Monday, January 02, 2006
Home Again Home Again Jiggety Jig

I arrived home to find a huge stack of mail. I did a quick analysis of what I need to do to improve the Home Energy Picture, and it looks like I will spend most of this summer labouring to increase the efficiency of this house.

What needs to be done in the first round:

1. We need a set of stairs from the kitchen to the back yard.
2. We need to insulate the garage (it is under the main living space and is not insulated at all.)
3. We need to change the cooking range top from gas to electric.
4. We need to get better laundry machines – frontloading hyper-efficient electric systems.
5. We have a pretty good refrigerator, so we don’t need a new one yet.
6. I would like to solarise the hot water system. Right now we have a classic NG water heater. That will be an interesting problem – we don’t have really good sun – our house is on the north side of a hill. That will take some arranging and planning. I was thinking that we really only need hot water for bathing, so we might get one of those miniature hot water heaters that are common in Europe.

Those are a few of the immediate concerns. I am *extremely* busy for the next two weeks- preparing for the next semester for my day job as Professor… I’m teaching 3 classes, 2 of which have no syllabi, bibliographies, or assignments developed. Uff da!

more later.