This is from a cool app on Facebook that creates a circular map of all of your contacts…

kinda cool.

The U.S. military is the best in the world… for fighting intergalactic robots. Too bad it is not better equipped to handle the actual problems we face. Maybe we should stop firing translators and start rebuilding the trust and respect that we have so efficiently destroyed. Anyway, its a kick ass movie go check it out.

I haven’t had much time to read for the last few months so I was excited to get into some good books during my down time in Santa Cruz. I picked up Vonnegurt’s A Man Without a Country along with a couple thicker books. Though I purposely avoided buying anything that bore any relation to my work, Vonnegurt has a bunch to say about oil in the environment. I guess its not possible to escape work when you work on one of the most prescient issues of your time. Well I thought I’d share an expert of his thoughts on oil. Vonnegurt, as with every subject brings a perspective and style that is refreshing and effective…

I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license ~ look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut!And my car back then, a Studebaker as I recall, was powered, as almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, by the most abused, addictive, and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.

When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there wont be any left. Cold turkey.

Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t the TV news is it? Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts on fossil fuels in a state of denial.  And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.

- Kurt Vonnegurt, RIP

Flew in to Oakland yesterday, and spent the day working in the Energy Action Coalition SF office. I’m a little bitter about the digs out here, our office in DC is stuffy and a little claustrophobic. DC has some of the most expensive office space in the country, rivaling Manhattan. It has something to do with the fact that you cant build a building higher than the capitol or something like that. Anyway, check out the SF office…

I drove down the 1 this afternoon to Santa Cruz and am sitting on my boat having a beer now. Three weeks of this and im not sure anyones going to get me on a plane back to DC.

When I was 20 one of my best friends Ryan Heumann, died on the cliffs of Big Sur. He had just become a father only months before and left behind an amazing amount of love and inspiration. When ever I have something scary to do like public speaking, direct action or an important meeting (these are all scary because I have social anxiety), I think about Ryan and his fearless positivity. Anyway, there isn’t much on the web about Ryan so I thought I would post virtual memorial. Maybe I’ll re-connect with some of his old friends through the site. If you knew ryan send me any stories or pictures that you would like me to post.

Back when the internet was a wild frontier of scrolling banners, obnoxious tiled background images and seizure inducing neon text it made sense to go it alone.  Who better than you to manage your backend, backup your data, update your software and keep your site secure?  Today is a new day.  The software that manages your content and contacts is highly complex and updating ad securing an independent installation is not a good use of your time or resources.

What is fully hosted?  I define it as http and https access only and access only to the CRM or CMS.  Meaning you have no ftp, ssh, cPanel, phpAdmin or other  access to your site.

Why go hosted?

• Load Balancing (speed, scalability, unlimited bandwidth)
• Data Security
• Software Maintenance and Updates
• Cheap as Hell (compared to devoting your time or resources to maintaining a independent hosting environment)

Most people who go independent usually justify it by saying they need the flexibility and access of an independent environment.  I could go on and on about why this is a myth, but instead I challenge you to present some use cases that you don’t think could be achieved in a fully hosted environment.  Post them in the comments and I will respond with a hosted solution.

Below are a few of the fully hosted environments in which my projects dwell…

Bogging

•  WordPress.com

 CMS

• CivicspaceLabs

CRM

• CivicspaceLabs
  
• Democracy in Action
  

Email and Intranet

• Google Apps 

Despite a plummeting cost of entry, most aspiring new media participants have much bigger dreams than budgets to make them a reality. Ambition and talent can make up for lack of funds, but is also helps to have a cheap aesthetic. One can achieve huge impact with very low production values. In fact often an overproduced aesthetic is a liability on the web. Check out this PSA produced by a young MTV animator for the Break the Addiction campaign. Its a good example of how cheap can have impact. The illustrations are just enough to hold your attention and the music and simple messaging get the point across and get you curious. It works for broadcast but also has online potential. No actors, no video, no voice over, no animation; just some illustrations and some music.

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It is self-evident that in a democratic political system the short-term interests of the present generation can pose a threat to the long-term interests of their posterity. Without a systematic or constitutional means of balancing these potentially conflicting interests, posterity is represented only as a tenuous secondary interest of a handful of citizens who must balance and blend their representation of future interests with their own present interests.

In the modern era, these future interests have been represented primarily by what is referred to as the “environmental movement,” and have often been blended on the political stage with other interests related only incidentally, such as aesthetic/intrinsic valuation of natural objects and systems or the more immediate effects of regional pollution. Posterity is given rare mention in the political realm, even in the context of issues that threaten the livelihood of future generations.

The undeniable scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change demands an urgency of action that overshadows and often conflicts with many present interests, including some that permeate the environmental movement. This threat forces tough pragmatic decisions, and demands a scale of change beyond the scope or reach of interest politics alone. Climate change demands an examination of posterity’s representation in the government and society as a whole, and calls for a broad appeal that transcends political and ideological identity.

Climate change is a challenge to the prejudices of the environmentalist identity. To stop climate change, we must confront this challenge.

We must acknowledge, both in our speech and our actions, that climate disruption disproportionately impacts the poor and disempowered. The first to slip into poverty are those on the brink of poverty; the first to starve are those almost starving. Tomorrow, just as today, the bulk of human suffering will be born by the poor and under-represented — through no fault of their own. Future generations are connected to the disempowered of today, as both face the ill effects of under-representation.

The conservation movement’s evolution into the environmental movement, and now into the climate movement, has generally followed a thread of interest in natural systems rather than humanist principles. Groups organizing around social justice, human rights, poverty, and self-determination bear a more direct moral connection to the fight for our posterity. A movement that acknowledges this fact and engages these groups as leaders will empower the victims of climate change both present and future with a much stronger political voice.

Our own interest in the well-being of our posterity is a value we share with almost everyone, not just those we typically identify as allies. All thoughtful people care about the well being of their descendents. The divide between environmentalists and non-environmentalists is not created by environmentalists’ interest in posterity; it is created by divergences in self-identity, prejudices, and short-term interests. This must be acknowledged in order to make possible the necessary collaboration across traditional political, social, and ideological boundaries. With a discussion that centers on posterity rather than nature, the list of people and organizations ready to work to address climate change will become longer and more diverse. The greatest barriers to building this broader movement are the prejudices that divide us.

America’s founding fathers, having the forethought to see the value of government in protecting the interests of posterity, afforded for them protection under the Constitution. They declared, in the preamble, that the U.S. was founded to protect the rights and welfare of “us and our posterity.” We must continue to advance the interests of future generations in public debate, and affirm that they must be defended by government, as intended by our constitution. We must make such demands in the name of posterity, and not in an effort to advance our own interests. Such an approach has the potential to transcend political and social divisions and drive the scale of change necessary to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Climate change does not mean the death of environmentalism, but it exposes the limitations of the environmentalist identity. And when the tide shifts, as is happening now, environmentalists must confront this challenge and become partners in a larger and more diverse movement: for posterity and against climate change.