{"conf": "environment", "generated_at": "2026-04-26T08:00:02.954878Z", "threads": [{"num": 1, "subject": "introductions", "response_count": 19, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "McBruce", "date": "Tue, Dec 10, 1996 (20:29)", "body": "Alright, guess it's time to stop \"lurking\" and jump in. After browsing a few sites, it seem's most opinion voiced is based on feel-good, arms length experience. I once had a conversation concerning the merits of recycling aluminum, trying to point out the fallacies of transporting soft drinks hundreds of miles into the bush, then shipping it all back out again to be recycled. He agreed but summed up with \"but it feels like the right thing to do\". Had an interesting lecture today - appears that clear cut l gging is actually beneficial to fish stocks in Alaska. Sounds counter-intuitive, doesn't it? Well, sometimes that happens when science runs up against emotion. I'd like to see discussion that involves 101 things that aren't so easy to do to save the earth, but may actually make a difference. Seperate the wheat from the fluff. My background- working for a resource agency for 13 years, living an \"alternative\" lifestyle for ten. Now I'm back in the city, attempting to update my brain. Possible topics? State of the world's fisheries, everybodies \"green\" these days, fix the jalopy or buy new, anthropomorphism, us versus themism,what? your not happy living in your cardboard hut while we surf the web? Any other ideas?"}, {"response": 2, "author": "Creature", "date": "Thu, Apr 10, 1997 (16:48)", "body": "Reply to Bruce, I can't give you 101 suggestions to the issue, But I think that before we can start to say recyle this and that, don't use these product and so on until people start to wake up an realize that this place is on the way out. There is a good handful of people who are starting to do what needs to be done but when it comes done to it people arn't really prepared to make a change. I feel that the younger generation are realizing that they might well see the efects in their life time though many still don't seem to care or arn't prepared to make an effort. To cut a long story short I just feel people (not all) don't seem to give a damn. But just recycling isn't the answer but it's a start. Here in Australia I have noticed that quite a few company suppling things in recyclable containes do not make much of an effort to let the buyer know that he can recycle it. Heighten peoples awarness and hopefully we'll see a change."}, {"response": 3, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Apr 10, 1997 (22:29)", "body": "Read some of the things mentioned in the 'save the planet' topic in the cultures conference. It really fits in with this thread."}, {"response": 4, "author": "Pedrobot", "date": "Mon, May 19, 1997 (00:31)", "body": "Well, I suspect we don't need to worry about saving the Earth. The Earth has been here for billions of years (Carl Segan could say that better) and will no doubt continue for a good deal longer. Nothing as insignificant as the human race is going to destroy it, however, we might make it increasing difficult for that human race to survive. In the meantime, it's important not to jump to conclusions about what is or isn't good for the Earth or us. Scientifically unsound \"green\" practices may prove as devastating as anything so far observed. More often than not, \"The solution to pollution is dilution.\""}, {"response": 5, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, May 19, 1997 (00:34)", "body": "What are some environmental issues in your neck of the woods? We have our beloved salamander and our Barton Springs."}, {"response": 6, "author": "apihaka", "date": "Mon, Sep  1, 1997 (22:54)", "body": "I believe for the environmental movement to successfully protect the earth the art of open minded consultation has too be re-introduced and practised."}, {"response": 7, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Wed, Oct 22, 1997 (00:58)", "body": "Not to mention negative population growth. WER"}, {"response": 8, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Oct 22, 1997 (12:36)", "body": "amen."}, {"response": 9, "author": "TIM", "date": "Sun, Nov 15, 1998 (12:59)", "body": "I'm all for the preservation of nature. However, when nature interferes with my life or livelyhood, then I have to look at just how important is this owl, salamander, or cave dweller. The salamander in Barton Springs Pool is a case in point. Thus far, cleaning the pool has not made the salamander extinct. What figment of who's imagination led people to believe that, continuing to clean the pool, as was done in the past would suddenly cause the immediate extinction of it."}, {"response": 10, "author": "stacey", "date": "Mon, Nov 16, 1998 (16:07)", "body": "careful Tim, you're beginning to sound like one of your abhorred politicians (Austin conference)"}, {"response": 11, "author": "TIM", "date": "Mon, Nov 16, 1998 (21:04)", "body": "OOPS! I'll have to watch that. Then Again, if I'm the politician, it's not so bad, because then I get to take the money and run, instead of watching someone else do it."}, {"response": 12, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (17:57)", "body": "They don't make tons of money. Many come from already wealthy families And many use their wellknown names to start or front companies If they're getting personally rich off of politics alone, they are probably embezzling!"}, {"response": 13, "author": "TIM", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (20:59)", "body": "I only have one thing to say to that: L BBBBBBB J L B B J L B B J L BBBBBBB J L B B J L B B J L B B J L B B J J LLLLLLLLLL BBBBBBB JJJJJJ"}, {"response": 14, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Mon, Apr 19, 1999 (14:20)", "body": "I would like regulars of this conference invite to visit the International Conflicts conference here on the Spring: http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/InternationalConflicts/all This conference is dedicated to the disputes between groups all over the world, be that social, cultural, political or ethnical differences."}, {"response": 15, "author": "envactivist", "date": "Sun, Oct 10, 1999 (22:33)", "body": "After a 30 years chemical exposure I certainly believe that we are destroying the human race.The earth will recover. I have 3 suggestions after 18 years of environmental action. We need a moratorium on harmful technology, science and chemicals. We need a national and international office for nature. Also we need to reverse the damage done by the past 50 years chemical exposure. No research is being done on low-level, long-term Toxic Substance Exposure. Most people in this country are damaged and do not kn w it.\ufffdDoctors are not dealing with this problem. While these suggestions may seem drastic we watched 65 of our neighbors and their children die from chemical exposure at an average age of 45. The parents died in their 40s and 50s. The children died in their 30s and 40s. We see no change in recognizing this problem and until we recognize it we can not solve it. Please respond either here or at steve389@yahoo.com Teri Naugler, Activist for social and environmental justice, Humantarian"}, {"response": 16, "author": "terry", "date": "Sun, Oct 10, 1999 (23:46)", "body": "Welcome Teri, what region of the country are you located? Are these problems particularly more intense where you live?"}, {"response": 17, "author": "envactivist", "date": "Mon, Oct 18, 1999 (12:01)", "body": "Hi, We are originally from Massachusetts but left there 12 years ago to save our lives. We have been in the Southwest and Mexico. There are problems everywhere. We are activists and get involved in different areas. We spent a year (1990) doing an environmental tour around the country and speaking to environmental groups, professors at universities studying frogs and sick fish etc. We are not connected and are seldom near universities so it takes time for us to reply. We will be here until Wednesday. The problems are serious as those of us in the movement do not have the money or the power to solve these problems. We spent about 4 months recently sending out 4500 e-mails to reporters, congress, governors, universities, scientists etc. on our 30 years of chemical exposure. We had about 25 replies. In the US we received a few nasty replies from men scientists. From Europe just a few pleasant replies. One from Russia and one from Japan. Also a few pleasant replies from women. We see the situtation as hopeless as it will probably take 50 years to turn things around. We believe this exposure is damaging everyone in the USA, especially our children who are most at risk. The only thing left for us to do is educate the public. We have signs on our vehicle and give out info to people. The only people who pay attention to our signs are activists, people who have been damaged and the scientists who hate what we are doing. Teri e-mail Steve389 @yahoo.com"}, {"response": 18, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Tue, Oct 19, 1999 (16:52)", "body": "Welcome! And how many are we, and is we originally a family-turned-movement?"}, {"response": 19, "author": "admin", "date": "Mon, Jan  6, 2003 (15:50)", "body": "Wonder how Teri's life saving mission is progressing? environment conference Main Menu"}]}, {"num": 10, "subject": "global climate change", "response_count": 25, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "TIM", "date": "Sun, Nov 15, 1998 (13:07)", "body": "I keep hearing this balderdash about global warming, yet I've not seen one iota of evidence to back it up. In fact my research on the subject seems to indicate stasis, no trend toward warming or cooling. The draining of the everglades, however is no laughing matter. Every year, thousands of acres of habitat is destroyed. We'll pay for this. When the waters stop flowing, the ocean will take Florida back."}, {"response": 2, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Nov 16, 1998 (09:32)", "body": "Diatoms - lot's of 'em in our atmosphere! http://www.indiana.edu/~diatom/diatom.html They have a possibly major impact on climate. While they are blooming they a) take CO2 out of the system b) increase the oceans's albedo by 9% cooling! c) by trapping heat near the surface they COOL the lower part of the water column d) omit a sulphurous gas which allows more clouds to form more cooling! http://www.soc.soton.ac.uk/SUDO/tt/eh/biogeochemistry.html"}, {"response": 3, "author": "TIM", "date": "Mon, Nov 16, 1998 (21:13)", "body": "So in the last ten years how many more degrees had the average annual temperature gained than in the preceeding ten years. I want to see some hard undeniable facts not scientific doubletalk. Show me that the globe is in fact on a warming trend with just one clear long term indicator."}, {"response": 4, "author": "ratthing", "date": "Tue, Nov 17, 1998 (09:26)", "body": "what is your distinction between \"hard undeniable facts\" and \"scientific doubletalk?\""}, {"response": 5, "author": "TIM", "date": "Tue, Nov 17, 1998 (12:25)", "body": "Scientific doubletalk= anything that can be denied. Example: Cigarette smoking causes cancer. This is false. It is scientific doubletalk. Another example: I smoked cigarettes for 24 years. I have no cancer. These are hard undeniable facts."}, {"response": 6, "author": "ratthing", "date": "Tue, Nov 17, 1998 (13:35)", "body": "by definition, all scientific claims can be denied. scientifically, it cannot be said that cigarette smoking causes cancer. technically, cigarette smoking leads to a greater probablity that one will be diagnosed at some point with cancer. maybe if you would take the time to read the literature you would see that such claim are based on a lot of undeniable evidence. the fact that you smoked for 24 years and have not been diagnosed with cancer does not refute the hypothesis that smokers (as a group) get diagnosed with cancer more often than non-smokers."}, {"response": 7, "author": "TIM", "date": "Tue, Nov 17, 1998 (14:21)", "body": "One of my grandfathers smoked right up until a week before he died. The other never smoked. The one that never smoked died of cancer. His wife smokes, she is still smoking two packs a day, and she is rapidly closing on 100. She had cancer, she beat it and she is clear now. my other grandfather died of Pneumonia at 102. I have two sisters, one smokes, one never did. The one that has never smoked has a problem with recurring cancer. The one that smokes has never had cancer. My father smokes. he has never had cancer. Five smokers in the family, 1 incident of cancer cleared now. Among the nine non-smokers, there are two incidents of cancer, one fatal, one recurring. Looks to me like the non smokers as a group are significantly less healthy than the smokers. If what the government is saying were true, the health picture in my family would be reversed. Therefore it is a lie."}, {"response": 8, "author": "TIM", "date": "Tue, Nov 17, 1998 (14:35)", "body": "I went through all this balderdash with cyclamates in soft drinks. the government said that they caused cancer in laboratory rats, using the same kind of language they are now using for cigarettes. they subjected these rats to a large dose of cyclamates each day for six months, and they found that a significant number of the rats got cancer. None of the rats died but a large percentage of them had cancer. from this they concluded that cyclamates caused cancer. However, the dose they used was equivalen to the dose an adult human would get if he drank 250 sixteen ounce bottles of soda a day for six months. thats 31 and a quarter gallons of soda a day seven days a week for six months. Want to guess how long the stomach would last? the pancreas? six months? I doubt it."}, {"response": 9, "author": "ratthing", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (16:22)", "body": "your family may be lucky, or simply have a genetic predisposition to be better able to process the carcinogens in cigarette smoke. your small sample in no way negates what many years of research on many thousands of people indicates. your soft drink example is also poorly expressed. no one has everys said that \"cyclamates cause cancer.\" exposure to them may up the chances of getting cancer, but the issue of causation is too complex for anyone to make any strong claims straightout. same goes for smoking."}, {"response": 10, "author": "TIM", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (17:08)", "body": "Anyway you see my point. Unless you can definitely say that one thing causes another, every single time, no exceptions, then you are practicing deception. Smoking might increase your chances of getting cancer, but then again, so might sun tanning. Any statement stronger than the above is a lie. Anything that cannot be defended with cold hard evidence, is either a lie or a religion."}, {"response": 11, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (18:05)", "body": "then nothing is above 'scientific double speak' Tim. Everything can be refuted. THere is an exception to almost every rule. How about eating an excess of calories makes you fat? Works with many people but not me. Most of the time the difference is in the phrasing. If I said, exercise makes you live longer, you could surely refute that. However, if I said, exercise in daily activity is condusive to a longer life span, you might agree. But then those wouldn't be 'hard facts' then, now would they? Where are the 'hard facts' in your religion? It's seems to me it is a belief and you may or may not have information to back up those beliefs. Well isn't it the same with science. Beliefs, with information to back them up?"}, {"response": 12, "author": "TIM", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (21:05)", "body": "When science puts out information that leads to regulations that FORCE a change in lifestyle, That information better be nothing but irrefutable fact. Or the scientists should keep their mouth shut."}, {"response": 13, "author": "TIM", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (21:07)", "body": "If science is a religion it needs to be categorized as such. Otherwise the same rules don't apply,"}, {"response": 14, "author": "ratthing", "date": "Thu, Nov 19, 1998 (08:15)", "body": "no, i dont see your point at all. you should try and understand what science is and how it works before you criticize it. you should try and understand what the term \"irrefutable fact\" really means."}, {"response": 15, "author": "TIM", "date": "Thu, Nov 19, 1998 (13:07)", "body": "Scientists, by their irresponsible rantings, are messing with my life, indirectly, but still a pest. Part of the problem is that scientists refuse to take responsibility for the results of their actions."}, {"response": 16, "author": "TIM", "date": "Thu, Nov 19, 1998 (13:10)", "body": "I studied logic. I know what an irrefutable fact is, and the fact that irrefutable facts are completely unknown by most of the scientific community."}, {"response": 17, "author": "ratthing", "date": "Thu, Nov 19, 1998 (15:25)", "body": "so what is an irrefutable fact? and how much science have you studied? how many scientists have you known and queried about this stuff? how is basic logic different from the empirical methodologies of science (last i checked they were one and the same)? what specific \"irresponsible rantings \" do you refer to? scientists are not messing with your life, policies derived from scientific work are. i've been a scientist for 20 years and have never had the pleasure of being able to mess with anyone's life, except for mine and my ex-wife's. i am curious to know how you defend such a broad hatred and generalization of science as bad."}, {"response": 18, "author": "TIM", "date": "Fri, Nov 20, 1998 (02:20)", "body": "Eliminating cyclamates, eliminating smoking sections, the challenger disaster, air bags in cars, seat belts in gasoline tankers, electronic engine controls, radar traps, 61mph stall requirement, emp generators, agent orange, I could go on, but are you getting the picture?"}, {"response": 19, "author": "ratthing", "date": "Fri, Nov 20, 1998 (11:53)", "body": "Vaccines The microprocessor Longer lifespans Satellite commo Better weather prediction electricity tv remotes radio so what's your point? you still have not specified any good reason why you hate me and my kind so much. is it because science is not perfect? i challenge you to identify one human endeavor that is. in your post above, you present a mishmash of products, some are bad, some good, but why blame science for all of this? you are entitled to your opinion, of course. and you can pull a kaczynski if you want, withdraw from technology, and live in a shack in montana. i just dont think is is very polite to go spouting off about how bad and stupid a certain group of people are just because your life has been inconvenienced, especially since you seem to be ill-informed about the ways of science. your black and white view of things will not work here."}, {"response": 20, "author": "TIM", "date": "Fri, Nov 20, 1998 (12:59)", "body": "Well I may be wrong, but I don't think that it is right for a scientist, who is supposed to be an expert on whatever subject, to present his subject matter to the public, or to some governmental organization in such a way that the facts that run contrary to his personal bias are downplayed or not mentioned at all. By the way, my list was of things that science has visited on the general populace, that are all bad as far as I'm concerned. And they were force fed to those who have to put up with them. And that, I have a very strong objection to. to suggest that I am on a par with kaczynski is an insult, and I'm sure that, if you had thought it out, you would have realized how ridiculous it is. I just think that scientists need to accept accountability for every use that is made of their discoveries and inventions. If not, my revenge will not be to turn into an anti tech person, it will be to serve on the jury at the trial of one, and see that he is acquitted."}, {"response": 21, "author": "TIM", "date": "Fri, Nov 20, 1998 (13:03)", "body": "My point is simply this: science has become political. If your kind is going to persist in forcing change to fit your view of correct living, expect backlash."}, {"response": 22, "author": "ratthing", "date": "Fri, Nov 20, 1998 (17:47)", "body": "well i have been VERY insulted by your viewpoint as well. what evidence do you have of scientists presenting information contrary to their personal beliefs? what evidence do you have of scientists force feeding things on people? what evidence do you have of scientists forcing change to some view of correct living? you claim to have \"studied logic\" and to be an expert on \"irrefutable facts.\" thus, these questions should be readily answered. a deductive line of reasoning is what i think needs to be given as an answer, same as in a trial. by your reasoning, you would condemn Volta and Faraday for crimes against humanity regarding the distribution of pornography, just because they were instrumental in the discovery of electicity. by your reasoning, you would condemn Robert Goddard for the ultimate development of ICBMs and cruise missles (and the Challenger disaster). how is a scientist to be held accountable for all of the uses of his/her knowledge? science is a community activity, and one that is based on the buildup and growth of knowledge. if you know how science works, you know that having accountablity police would be impossible and would horribly impede the growth of knowledge. i apologize if you feel hurt by the Kaczynski reference, tim, but all of this is dead serious to me, and i am greatly offended by your comments made here. i am not saying you shouldnt have them (to each his own), but you also need to realize that there is a price to be paid for having such strange and extreme views."}, {"response": 23, "author": "TIM", "date": "Fri, Nov 20, 1998 (17:47)", "body": "And never the twain shall meet."}, {"response": 24, "author": "TIM", "date": "Fri, Nov 20, 1998 (17:47)", "body": "Every thing written is either truth or it is a lie. If it is not all truth or not all of the truth it is a lie. This is pure logic. You argue as if all your arguements are tautology."}, {"response": 25, "author": "ratthing", "date": "Fri, Nov 20, 1998 (17:47)", "body": "whatever. environment conference Main Menu"}]}, {"num": 11, "subject": "bioregion.com", "response_count": 2, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "terry", "date": "Sat, Jun 26, 1999 (19:50)", "body": "The Spring has just it's newest website, bioregion.com and this is a topic linked directly from the main page of this site. Your comments are welcome! If you don't yet have an account click on \"sign up\" and then \"login\"."}, {"response": 2, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Aug 26, 1999 (17:27)", "body": "This topic should be linked to Bioregions in Geo conference. environment conference Main Menu"}]}, {"num": 12, "subject": "Alcoa sucking water from Bastrop County, Texas", "response_count": 6, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "sprin5", "date": "Thu, Nov  2, 2000 (08:54)", "body": "To: Subject: Giddings Tomorrow Rage against the Alcoa Corporate Machine in Giddings, Lee County Texas November 2-3 WE THE PEOPLE CAN STOP ANOTHER 40 plus years of the WORST lignite burning grandfathered polluter in Texas. ALCOA has requested a permit to lignite strip mine 15,000 acres of farms, ranches, homes and wildlife habitat in Bastrop and Lee Counties, less than one hour's drive from the state capitol. Alcoa needs lignite to fuel the utility plants that in turn power its Rockdale, Texas, aluminum smelter, the largest in the U.S. Alcoa's operation is \"grandfathered,\" meaning the plant has never been required to comply with the 1971 Clean Air Act. Area citizens are waging a David-vs.-Goliath fight against the strip mine, and are calling on Alcoa -- which made a record $1 billion in profits last year -- to switch to a cleaner-burning fuel. A grassroots citizens group, Neighbors for Neighbors, has filled an unsuitability petition with the Railroad Commission of Texas asking for portions of the 15,000 acres of rolling ranch and farm land to be declared unsuitable for lignite strip mining. A hearing has been scheduled for November 2 and 3, in Giddings, Texas, at the county courthouse. Alcoa is expected to make a big showing in opposition to the petition. A number of individuals and groups, working independently of Neighbors, are organizing protests in support of the unsuitability petition. Come rage against the ALCOA corporate machine and demand that the Railroad Commission of Texas find the Pittsburgh plan of corporate greed and resource exploitation UNSUITABLE for our next generation of Texans, demand Alcoa leave behind 50's technology and put people ahead of profits. Every man, woman and child can join this effort and fight for the right to have the Democratic process work for WE the People, not WE the Corporation. Help our elected officials understand that they are responsible to the voter not the corporate campaign contributor. Texans have waited since 1971, we cannot afford to continue to sacrifice our clean air for high profit margins. This is the opportunity to demand an end to corporate loopholes at the taxpayer expense and our children's health, insist on compliance with laws already on the books that will protect our air quality. Texas and Texans do not need or want its ranking as the worst polluting state in the nation. Is it any wonder that more children in Texas visit the emergency room for asthma than for any other complaint? Come to Giddings and stop the machine, make and be a part of history. Pass this forward to anyone interested in regulatory agencies demonstrating protection of and responsibility to the people against those that deprive citizens of clean air while exploiting natural resources. The above is in no way produced by or a product of the NFN 501c(3) organization. This is in support of their efforts by those at Ground Zero. For event information [contact mustangwarhorse@juno.com Leave message ; 512-285-3845] or [bcgreens@io.com 512-303-4716] For NFN information visit http://www.neighborsforneighbors.com . ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Carl Manz & Christine Johnson Rt 3, Box 369 Bastrop, TX 78602-9505 e-mail: cbmanz@io.com telephone: 512-303-4716 \"The real object of all despotism is revenue.\" -Thomas Paine \"The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.\" - Thomas Jefferson \"Nothing can stop the power of an informed citizenry when it is empowered, organized, and motivated.\" - Ralph Nader ---------------"}, {"response": 2, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Fri, Nov 10, 2000 (00:00)", "body": "Terry, too bad this isnt tied to the two topics dealing with just the sort of problem - one of which you created a long time ago. Oh well... Topic 4 of 40: Gaia: Geological Ecology http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/Geo/4 Topic 12 of 40: bioregions - getting to know your unique niche on planet earth http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/Geo/12"}, {"response": 3, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Fri, Nov 10, 2000 (00:01)", "body": "..Oh yes, On Geo conference, of course..."}, {"response": 4, "author": "sprin5", "date": "Fri, Nov 10, 2000 (08:35)", "body": "... of course. Linked."}, {"response": 5, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Fri, Nov 10, 2000 (14:16)", "body": "Thank you!!!"}, {"response": 6, "author": "cfadm", "date": "Sun, Jul  2, 2006 (09:33)", "body": "from http://utwatch.com Residents urge Bastrop to can Alcoa road plan By Robert W. Gee AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Tuesday, January 28, 2003 BASTROP -- About 150 people, several wearing anti-Alcoa bumper stickers on their backs, filled a courtroom Monday night to oppose a plan by the aluminum manufacturer to move six roads in the northwest corner of Bastrop County to make way for a strip mine. Opponents of the proposed lignite coal mine, unpopular in this county of new subdivisions and ranchettes, urged county commissioners to vote against the road proposal. No residents spoke in favor of it. Alcoa officials said the plan would provide the county with new, wider roads outside the mine area. The Pennsylvania-based aluminum giant has offered to cover all construction expenses, estimated at million. \"Alcoa is asking you to put your stamp of approval on a plan not only to fix what isn't broken, but to actually increase our traffic and transportation headaches, all under the guise of free asphalt,\" said Michele Gangnes, a member of the board of directors of Neighbors for Neighbors, the principal opposition group to the proposed Three Oaks Mine. Company officials have said the new roads would improve traffic flow. \"There really isn't very significant changes,\" said Jim Hodson, a spokesman for Alcoa in Rockdale. \"But those changes will result in better roads than are there.\" But those who spoke at the hearing Monday night said they feared workers driving to and from the new mine would choke area roads and make them more dangerous. \"Tell Alcoa they can keep their asphalt, and we can keep our country roads, our countryside and our clean water,\" said Martha Boethel, who lives in McDade, near the proposed mine. After the hearing, commissioners voted unanimously to hire an independent engineering firm to investigate safety issues and hazards that could be associated with the potential project. Commissioners did not decide when they will take a final vote on the matter. Alcoa plans to mine 5,661 acres in northern Bastrop and southern Lee counties, a patchwork of tracts that it owns or controls about 25 miles east of Austin. The roads that criss-cross the proposed mine would complicate efforts to mine the coal. But if the county does not give permission to move the roads, Alcoa has said it intends to mine around them. Under a permit approved in September by the Texas Railroad Commission, Alcoa would mine for three years without touching the roads. But company officials have said they believe they are legally entitled to the coal under the roads and plan to mine it. Alcoa has estimated that the roads and their 100-foot buffer zones lie atop 12 million tons of coal worth 0 million. Lawyers representing Alcoa told County Judge Ronnie McDonald last summer that the company was willing to sue the county to win access, according to a county memo. Hodson has denied that company officials threatened to sue the county. Last fall, Bastrop County commissioners sent surveys to county agencies asking how services might be affected if the roads are moved. The results of those surveys have not been made public. Neighbors of the proposed mine -- those who live closest say they stand to lose the most, including a measure of their tranquil rural lifestyle -- say the plan to move the roads isn't in the county's best interest. \"We're not just talking about the roads, are we?\" said George Wright, 72, who lives adjacent to the proposed mine. \"We're talking about pollution. We're talking about wrecking the landscape.\" The room erupted in applause. At one point, mine opponents unrolled a list of signatures -- representing those opposed to moving the roads, they said -- across the length of the courtroom. The list fell on the laps of a handful of Alcoa representatives sitting in the front row. Mine opponents are also contesting Alcoa's pending permits with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the two remaining hurdles before mining can start. Those agencies are expected to decide about the permits later this year. Alcoa hopes to start mining in the second half of the year, Hodson said. For nearly two years, the question of moving the roads has been a hot-button issue in the fast-growing county, which prefers to envision its future as an attractive bedroom community for Austin rather than home to the state's newest strip mine. The first public hearing on the matter was in August 2001. Strong opposition led to a revised plan that would leave open one county road previously slated for closure. Commissioners stress that they cannot weigh the road proposal on the merits of the strip mine, but only as a transportation issue. The Texas Department of Transportation has said it will not give Alcoa approval to move two state roads in the mine area until the county gives approval to move the county roads. In Lee County, where roughly one-third of Three Oaks Mine would be, commissioners voted unanimously a year and"}]}, {"num": 13, "subject": "The Meadows in Takilma Oregon", "response_count": 12, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Aug 12, 2002 (09:06)", "body": "The only thing I could find on the net about the Meadows was this, a letter from Romain to Home Power Magazine. Dear Richard and Home Power Staff, A little get acquainted talk before I get to the heart of my letter. My name is Romain Cooper and I talked to Richard once over the phone about a used inverter and then about AE, the magazine etc. I live near Takilma, OR with 3 other families on a semi-remote, 200 acre piece of land. We inhabitants did without electricity for many years for the usual reasons: We didn't want to support those \"coal burning, river damming, nuke-reacting\" utilities, we wanted to remain somewhat self reliant and the price tag of a grid hookup was prohibitive. 9 years ago we first discovered hydro-generated electricity. Our initial installations were the simplest imaginable. Wheels from pulleys and stainless steel dessert spoons, surplus permanent magnet alternators, and Sears deep cycle 12V batteries. A voltmeter and switch to prevent back cycling rounded out the system. Two irrigation lines served as penstocks. They both had about 100' of head and were of 2.5\" or 3\" PVC. About 4 years ago we upgraded our \"electric company\". A new penstock was installed to provide irrigation for the 2.5 garden/orchard, to supply domestic water to 3 residences, and to supply electricity to the 3 residences and to misc. shops and work places. The pipeline is 2000' of 5\" PVC, mostly buried, with 200' of drop. The system was designed to eventually produce straight ac current during winter flows, hence the 6\" pipe. The present system utilizes a 4 jet Harris pelton wheel (4.5\"D), a Ford heavy duty truck alternator, 8 Trojan L-16 batteries (wired in series and parallel to store 1400 AH (700AH? RP) at 24V) and a Heart 24V, 2400W inverter. Jonny Klien, neighbor and friend, built for us a voltage regulator that measures battery voltage and relays a dummy load. (This is the JK who is a Takilma ham operator.) This system is removed from the residences that it services by 200 yards from the nearest residence to 600 yards to the farthest. The trenches that hold the AL transmission cables also hold the water yards from the nearest residence to 600 yards to the farthest. The trenches that hold the AL transmission cables also hold the water pipes for the domestic water and cables for phone service. Another system, for a single residence, utilizes the 3\" PVC, 110' head irrigation system that was designed to water a 4 acre meadow. It operates on a single jet Harris pelton identical to the other system's with a home-made housing, a surplus permanent magnet alternator, (2) 6V deep cycle forklift batteries wired in series for 12V and a Trace 2000W 12V inverter. The systems have performed well for several years. We run the usual devices: lights, audio (with inverter noise), juicers, blenders, and such, washing machines, power tools. Been running my IBM clone AT on the Heart inverter heavy for over a year with no problems. Though the alternator of the 3 family system can run 60 amps (for how long?), we get what we need for 3 households with 10 amps worth (25-27V) and still trip the shunt load daily. 24 gal./min. gives the 10 amps. The single residence system delivers 10 amps at 13-14V. For us, the catcher is summer time. From July into October we can use hydro only sporadically. Our stream flows are very low and use most of our hydro-power to push irrigation sprinklers rather than generate electricity. Last summer we increased our PV generating capacity of (4) 44W Kyocera panels with 10 bargain 36W Solavolt panels. We put the panels on a beam framework and used wooden mounts modeled after the metal ones described in issue 2. The wiring to the power/battery/inverter shed and components were sized to a 30 amp (at 24V) load to allow for expansion of the array. Unfortunately, the solar site chosen has only fair solar potential. Analysis showed it cheaper to purchase additional panels at reduced output due to shading than to purchase and install wire and components to bring the 24V current to the batteries and inverter from a sunnier location. Which finally brings me to the heart of the letter. Evaluating various sites for their PV outputs proved to be a lot of work and guess work. A few months later, while monitoring streams for the US Forest Service, I used a tool that seemed ideal for evaluating the solar capabilities of a site. The device is called a Solar Pathfinder and it is manufactured by Solar Pathways, Inc. of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. The pathfinder looks somewhat like an R2D2 robot. The Forest Service uses it to determine the amount of sun striking a stream at a particular place (which strongly influences stream water temperatures). The device is easy to use and portable. It measures, in one fast reading, the hours of sun hitting a site for the entire year. The reading can be taken anytime of day or year in clear or cloudy weather. A transparent, parabolic mirror shows reflections of all shade producing features inc"}, {"response": 2, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Aug 12, 2002 (09:07)", "body": "The only contact I could find! Romain Cooper Program Director Siskiyou Regional Education Project P.O. Box 220 Cave Junction, Oregon 97523 Phone (541) 592-4459 Fax (541) 592-2653 mailto://romain@siskiyou.org http://www.siskiyou.org"}, {"response": 3, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Aug 12, 2002 (09:09)", "body": "And here's the email from Eugene: From: Eugene Hill To: terry@www.spring.net Subject: (no subject) i was one of the founding members of \"the meadows\" commune in 1969-71 takilma oregon... does the commune still exist... is anyone online... do any of the original members still live there... i was thinking of coming for a visit... but did not want to waste my time if everyone is gone... thanks for taking the time to reply... if you do... eugene hill Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 22:37:09 -0600 From: Eugene Hill To: Paul Terry Walhus Subject: Re: (no subject) i live south of albuquerque, nm... i have 2 acres and a home... i left the meadows in 1972-73 right after janet silverman committed suicide... i built the wooden teepee next to the stream but don't know how long it stayed up after i left... i knew everyone you speak of (i think)... did you know susan, allen and reva and there kids... also there was bill (white rabbit) donny, abby... i just heard that allen was murdered and reva died of cancer... glad to hear from you... why don't you write to me and maybe i will collect stories and put up a web page about the meadows somewhere... also will fill you in how what i know since i was there from the beginning... how great is the music scene in austin??? i spent some time in san antonio a few years ago but did not get to spend any time in austin... thanks for writing..."}, {"response": 4, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Aug 12, 2002 (09:15)", "body": "FROM llucy...................May 2, 2000, 10:16 (EST) hmm my chariot calling. just got a REUNION invitation from the Meadows...in august, some of y'all should come full moon. had a question..did alan and reva weiss come from Newpaltz? does anyone know where their children are? sure it's three decades later and guns in schools but remember the behaviorist's wood have had the humanrats at their own throats already years ago and so it goes population pressures, but we wood not give up our nice, loving, intelligent well adapted kids and grandkids either hmmmmm? the delicate balance of globalization which i noticed THE POPE (god spare us) denounced in a speechcummass on mayday...is feeding and using and sparking the whole teetering mass of us in spite of all this. maybe giving us a chance to think of something better yet before we turn out to be no smarter than a one celled organism.. humans! ya got to be intrigued. must get to work carry on! love http://members.aol.com/tedibearxx/archive10.html"}, {"response": 5, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Aug 12, 2002 (09:18)", "body": "FROM llucy...................Apr 18, 2002, 09:15 (EST) <> checking back in....spent a little time in takilma last weekend..visted grace, mowed her lawn(had to repair the mower)young women still not hep to becoming their own mechanics as quick as possible. went out to t-town and rode a horse to hope mountain down to waldo and back thru allan gulch. the bycycle path,,,built with such care 20 years ago now growing neglected. someone has taken a cat and stirred up the queen of bronze tailing pond...bet that put toxic stew into the watershed.Pelliter hired Jim Dougherty to log that piece behind the community building. he selected out for all the big trees...some 2nd growth left. left the slash down on ground...now that is going to be a fuelload for a wildfire. dry there/even more dry that my desert home. most unsettling. http://members.aol.com/tedibearxx/archive26.html"}, {"response": 6, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Aug 12, 2002 (09:20)", "body": "FROM llucy...................Apr 25, 2000, 10:22 (EST) well..morning you guys. finding you just by random chance was sweet. it makes me feel like hanging a deer and inviting y'all over for music. sigh. what ya say? still in oregon even if a lonk way from holland. what about tom (m)? still about the planet you think? think i'll stop and burn one for him.. me honey convinced me to give up cigs..(but still sneak one or two a month) chuckle..but will go still smoking.. it's bizarre i found you cause just this last month have had series of dreams all dreams of trying to get to the crystal palace and never getting all the way there..and artichokes always bloom along the trail. hey..email i guess is safe 'nuf... mailto://llucy85@hotmail.com . love"}, {"response": 7, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Aug 12, 2002 (09:24)", "body": "FROM llucy...................May 5, 2002, 09:14 (EST) <> morning all!..the lovely news is that our children are holding a music camping festival on White School House Road, JUNE 1 and 2. That is Cave Junction folks. They have a website.. (www.SHININGSTARSFESTIVAL.com) and a phone number for tickets...541-592-5460. This is a fundraiser for the dome school. It just sounds like great fun and Allan and I will stop working like retirees and go have some fun...18 bands we have never heard of oh well we just are not hip to the new music out there. i am still stuck on danny hathaway and roberta flack.chuckle."}, {"response": 8, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Aug 12, 2002 (09:25)", "body": "FROM llucy...................May 5, 2002, 18:02 (EST) A Dome School & Takilma Community Benefit Mountain Meadows - Cave Junction, OR June 1 & 2, 2002 Confirmed Acts: Freedom Tribe, Jupiter Hollow, The Sasha Butterfly Band, Tina Malia, Shim Shai, Broadfunk, Americanistan, The Rhythm Pimps, Kawaida, School of Green, Trickle up Theory, Redwood Highway, I AM Crew, Day*Go*Bah, Cesar, MC Metric & Marv Ellis, DJ Zion, Isall & The Circle of Light, Scott Huckabay, and more to be announced\ufffd For even more fun, there will be The Illuminated Fools Giant Puppets, Fire dancers, Parades, Workshops, as well as many surprises included with your pass\ufffd Of course our show would not be complete without our Kids village \ufffd Children can do all kinds of arts & crafts projects, as well as free face painting, and snacks. Kid's Village will have sacred space available for resting children and nursing mommas\ufffd Any other questions? e-mail us or call! 541-592-5460 Shining Stars Festival PO Box 1225 Cave Junction, OR 97523 There will also be late night festivities for all of our beautiful campers\ufffd 2 Stages on 400 acres! Volunteers/Vending: Please send your request to our e-mail addy or call (541) 592-5460"}, {"response": 9, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Aug 12, 2002 (09:41)", "body": "So wither the Meadows? Does it still exist and who lives there now?"}, {"response": 10, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Aug 12, 2002 (09:53)", "body": "This guy would know: Jonathan D. Klein K7JK, Talsalsan Farm, 12330 Takilma Rd., Cave Junction, OR 97523. Here's what I wrote in my introduction in topic 1 in the Spring's Farm Conference. Topic 1 of 24 [farm]: introductions Response 29 of 33: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Fri, May 4, 2001 (00:43) * 1 lines There are some great communities in Southern Oregon, I lived there about 20 years and my wife at the time and I worked a little natural foods store (called affectionately the \"Wonder Dome\" by area folk) on the highway from Takilma to Grants Pass. There was (is?) a place there called the Meadows, it's about 200 acres of springfed woods and gardens and the Illinois River borders it. It's quite paradaisical, I remember some of the folks, Romaine, Bear, Beth and Michael. Joohnhnny the ham operator lived down the road and there were the sisters who lived at a Farm behind Talsalsan Farm, Laurie and, and ? , Apple's Larry Tessler lived at a commune in the neighborhood with a name that's on the tip of my tongue, Canaan I think it was, they had a huge lodge and ran the local peoples clinic. Crooks Creek and the Family of the Mystic Arts were other phenomenal communities, I could write a book about this era!"}, {"response": 11, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Aug 12, 2002 (11:30)", "body": "Highly recommended, the Siskiyou Newsletter to which Romain and Lori have made major contributions: http://www.siskiyou.org/newsletters/sp02.pdf"}, {"response": 12, "author": "terry", "date": "Tue, Aug 13, 2002 (07:41)", "body": "Wow, an email reply this morning from Romain! Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 21:33:25 -0700 From: Romain Cooper To: Paul Terry Walhus Cc: Eugene Hill Subject: Meadows Paul and (Eu)Gene, I do remember both of you and hope all is well with you. The Meadows does indeed still exist but not as a commune. We are a land trust (with a conservation easement to protect the ecology and natural beauty of the Meadows) but we operate as seperate households who live cooperatively. Mark and Beth are still here. I live with Christy (Paul probably met her but not Gene). Beth, Mark, Christy and I share a large garden that supplies much of our food (vegies and fruits) year round. Dog is still here with his wife, Linda (though they are often in Eugene, OR where Linda is presently employed. A third building is now occupied by renters. Kids are older and have \"flown the coop\". We had a 30 year reunion (Mark and I and Allen and Reva, etc. first arrived in 1970) in Aug., 1990. We tried to locate both of you w/o success. It was a great reunion though w/ many folk making it from all over the country. Much has transpired and I can't at this time give a real update. It's been a long time since I talked with or heard from you, Paul, and much longer for you, Gene. Reva did die of cancer but Allen wasn't murdered (suicide or drug overdose or both? Many years ago). The house I built in 1980 and still live in is over the site of the \"wooden teepee\". Looks like you now go by your full name, Eugene? My name is spelled w/o the \"e\". I am working (as director at this time) of a local enviro group ( www.siskiyou.org or www.siskiyourivers.org ). As perhaps you've heard, a huge fire (~380,000 acres) is now burning just to the west of here in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness and surrounding wildlands. This is a rough situation that has kept me, and all the staff, busier than usual. Beth and Mark are basket makers (of course they do all kinds of other things). The baskets are made from local materials and have to be seen to be believed. Donnalee is still here in Takilma. Gemini Bill is in Cave Jct. Donny died about 8 years ago in a freak canoe accident / drowning (he hadn't lived in this area for a number of years) - so sad. Keep in touch, guys. Once again, hope all is well on your end of the world. Romain environment conference Main Menu"}]}, {"num": 2, "subject": "Save Our Springs", "response_count": 27, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "terry", "date": "Wed, Jan 29, 1997 (23:27)", "body": "What is the latest on the endangered salamander?"}, {"response": 2, "author": "terry", "date": "Wed, Jun  4, 1997 (19:16)", "body": "To: laura.pierce@mail.utexas.edu Subject: Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Shawn Colvin this Friday! ***** SOUL OF THE CITY CELEBRATION ********** ********** THIS FRIDAY! ********************* GET YOUR TICKETS NOW! This Friday, June 6th, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Shawn Colvin (plus some very special guests) will headline a benefit concert - the Soul of the City Celebration - to celebrate the 7th anniversary of the all-night council meeting that spawned the SOS movement. When: 8:30 p.m. Friday, June 6th, 1997 Where: La Zona Rosa, 612 West 4th Street, Austin, Texas The event will also feature a multimedia exhibit which will include videotaped testimonials from the Council meeting. Also, a new SOS t-shirt designed by GUY JUKE will be available at the event. TICKETS ARE NOW ON SALE AT STAR TICKET OUTLETS OR BY CALLING 469-SHOW. ADVANCE TICKETS ARE $12 FOR GENERAL ADMISSION SEATING AND $25 FOR TABLE SEATING PLUS A SERVICE CHARGE. IF AVAILABLE, TICKETS WILL BE SOLD AT THE DOOR. If you have any questions, feel free to call the SOS Alliance office at 477-2320, ext. 41."}, {"response": 3, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Sep  1, 1997 (09:42)", "body": "From Brigid Shea: Subject: Urgent council message: don't amend SOS Dear Friends of Barton Springs: The City Council has called a special meeting for this Tuesday Afternoon at 4:00 pm at the Council Chambers, on Second Street between Guadalupe and Lavaca. The sole purpose of the hearing is to adopt a City \"grandfathering\" ordinance to substitute for the state grandfathering statute that was repealed this last session of the Texas Legsilature. AS CURRENTLY PROPOSED THE NEW ORDINANCE WOULD AMEND THE SOS ORDINANCE TO DELAY COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS FOR ANOTHER ONE TO FOUR YEARS !!!! Please attend this public hearing, bringing friends and family along if possible. If you cannot attend, please phone, fax or email the Councilmembers (esp. Mayor Watson, Daryl Slusher, Gus Garcia, Beverly Griffith, and Bill Spelman). Phone and fax information for the Council is set out below. Here's how I see it. You may feel differently. I urge you to convey your opinion to council whatever it is. This issue is too important for the Council to only hear from a few of us. They are hearing plenty from the developers and their lenders--the same ones who have ignored the wishes of Austin citizens who have been working hard to protect Barton Springs since the 1970s. Remember how offended we all were when the RULE Council delayed SOS only 3 months in 1992?? Now, after 5 years of nefarious delay by the previous council, and collusion between the City Manager, Mayor Todd, the City Attorney and developer lobbyists, our new \"pro-SOS\" council is considering an ordinance that would give up to four more years to \"begin construction\" outside compliance with the SOS requirements. In my view this proposal is wholly unacceptable. The only reason given for such a delay is to \"show the Legislature we The only reason given for such a delay is to \"show the Legislature we are reasonable.\" This has never worked in the past and will not work this time unless we give Jim Bob Moffett, Gary Bradley and a few others everything they want. That means many millions of square feet of commercial and industrial development, many thousands of apartments, traffic nightmares on Mopac, Brodie and other arterials, and tons more pollution for the aquifer and Barton Springs. SOS was reasonable in 1992 and is reasonable today. In my view there are simply no good reasons for further delay in enforcing SOS, and numerous good reasons to implement SOS now!! In summary, these reasons are as follows: 1. Voter Mandate: SOS was passed under the City Charter by two-thirds of Austin voters. Because of the high turnout in the SOS election, SOS received anywhere from 50 percent to 100 percent more votes than any sitting council member. All of the current councilmembers were supported because of their support for, not opposition to, implementing SOS. SOS should not be amended unless (1) it is publicly posted as an SOS amendment, (2) there is ample time and opportunity for informed public input, and (3) the proposed amendments provide superior protection for Barton Springs. The proposed ordinance flunks all 3 of these criteria. 2. Science Mandate: The science is now clear that SOS requirements are absolutely necessary to prevent further pollution. The science also tells us that the aquifer and springs are already damaged, and that we must begin now to repair the damage and not continue allowing more damage to be done to the watershed. 3. Federal Mandate: The Endangered Species Act requires the City to avoid further jeopardizing the survival of the Salamander. We worked extremely hard to make this listing happen. The City should be helping us implement this federal mandate, not lead the charge to undermine it. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service stated in the listing of the Barton Springs Salamander that development should comply with current regulations. While it did not name the SOS ordinance, it is clearly understood. Backing away from SOS requirements is in direct conflict with these guidelines. The federal Clean Water Act also requires the City's stormwater management programs, which includes its implementation of water quality ordinances, to acheive nondegradation. Allowing more time for more polluting development violates the Clean Water Act. 4. Fairness Mandate: SOS is fair; those persons already lined up to build in very short order can do so under SOS. What is most unfair it to allow more polluting development that cannot be cleaned-up. Further delay of SOS implementation is not fair to the citizens of Austin. It is also not fair to attack the RULE council for a 3 month SOS delay but somehow give the okay to our \"pro-SOS\" council to approve even more delay, following five years of delay. This is especially true given that the information developed in the last 5 years makes it even more clear how important it is to stop excessive development in the Barton Springs Zone. SOS was carefully drafted to be not only effective in protecting water quality, but fair to landowners. Now is not t"}, {"response": 4, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Sep 18, 1997 (09:26)", "body": "There's an open house at the new sos offices tonight. Thursday that is, 9/18/97. Call 477-2320 for directions."}, {"response": 5, "author": "terry", "date": "Sun, May  3, 1998 (05:34)", "body": "SOS just won a major victory with the Bond Election that Austin voters approved, including a 15,000 acre buffer of green space, a flood tunnel for Waller Creek, and a larger Austin Convention Center. It raises the hotel tax and the water rates to pay for it. SOS is strong, and well organized thanks to the efforts of Brigid Shea and Robin Rather (daughter of Dan Rather), who head up SOS. I'm expecting an email any day from Brigid on the place, time of the victory party."}, {"response": 6, "author": "stacey", "date": "Tue, May  5, 1998 (10:04)", "body": "that's a victory years in the making! Yea!!!!"}, {"response": 7, "author": "TIM", "date": "Wed, Nov 11, 1998 (12:28)", "body": "Personally, I'm against any new taxes, in any form, for any reason. If there aren't enough people for an idea to fund it, without taxes, it ought not come to pass."}, {"response": 8, "author": "ratthing", "date": "Wed, Nov 11, 1998 (18:57)", "body": "good news for the springs!"}, {"response": 9, "author": "TIM", "date": "Sun, Nov 15, 1998 (11:20)", "body": "Frankly, It's all about quality of life. I like the springs, I dislike giving money to politicians. If you give politicians money to accomplish something, sooner or later they will steal the money, and come back saying that they need more. Austin has more than it's share of crooked politicians."}, {"response": 10, "author": "stacey", "date": "Mon, Nov 16, 1998 (15:55)", "body": "wow, that's quite a pessimistic view. Do you believe in government of any kind? Believe that any of it is worthwhile, that is?"}, {"response": 11, "author": "TIM", "date": "Mon, Nov 16, 1998 (21:31)", "body": "On the side of the courthouse in my hometown, in letters eight feet high, carved into solid granite, there is a saying, \"VOX POPULI VOX DEI\", that is the extent of the government I believe in. Translation: the voice of the people is the voice of god. Says nothing about any politicians. Personally, I believe, if you lined all the lawyers and politicians up, and shot them, tomorrow, the world would be a better place."}, {"response": 12, "author": "ratthing", "date": "Tue, Nov 17, 1998 (10:23)", "body": "that is an unfortunate majority opinion nowadays. we live in the greates country ever in the history of the earth, and people fail to realize that its greatness is due to the way it governs itself. it is easy to criticize the government and wish it was mimized when one is living the benefits of that government. of course it is not perfect, no human endeavor is. but government can work, particularly to protect the interests of the disenfrachised have nots."}, {"response": 13, "author": "stacey", "date": "Tue, Nov 17, 1998 (10:26)", "body": "wow, shoot them all huh? Can politicians ever distance themselves from their positions in your opinion or do you consider them a race all of their own?"}, {"response": 14, "author": "TIM", "date": "Tue, Nov 17, 1998 (13:10)", "body": "Actually, I did not mean that literally. I do, however believe that the only honest politician, is a dead politician, because a dead politician cannot lie. Instead of shooting them, I would like to see a vote of, \"No Confidence\", instituted in this country. If you don't like the choices on the ballot, you vote, \"No Confidence\", and everyone on the ballot for that office is barred from running for that office for life, and a new election is held. Three no confidence votes and you are barred from politics for life. All political contributions including personal expenditures by the candidate should be limited to 1 dollar. Same as shooting them, but not as blood ."}, {"response": 15, "author": "stacey", "date": "Tue, Nov 17, 1998 (15:13)", "body": "So was the student government you were involved in not politics?!?!? How were you so different or should you be lined up with the rest of them?"}, {"response": 16, "author": "TIM", "date": "Tue, Nov 17, 1998 (16:28)", "body": "Student Association was not political like the government is. One major difference was that anyone could form a party and get on the ballot on a party ticket. we had something like 18 parties running in each election, something which the power structure in this country is set up to prevent. It is extremely difficult to get a new party on the ballot. in most states it is nearly impossible. the democrats and republicans get to play by one set of rules. everyone else plays by a much stricter set of rules. T e other major difference is that the nine of us that ran things, weren't elected, or appointed by anybody but ourselves. We were not even officially a part of Student Association although we were the executive officers of the student union. From time to time one of us would run for senate and get elected, but just until someone else could be appointed to the office. Officially we were the executive board of the freshman orientation committee of FOCUS which was the most powerful student organization on campus, and by charter and bylaws FOCUS was totally apolitical. There were nine students on the board, but we also had a faculty advisor. He did not have a vote, but he told us when we were considering something that was a bad idea. Usually he kept us from stepping on the wrong toes, sometimes we had to do it anyway. He was Dr. Barry White, the Dean of Students."}, {"response": 17, "author": "TIM", "date": "Tue, Nov 17, 1998 (16:50)", "body": "so you see, it really wasn't the same thing as national politics. When was the last time you heard of someone joining a political party to run for the senate, getting elected, and stepping down so that someone else could be appointed to fill his seat? most of the students at the university did not know that our executive board existed. and only a handful knew who was on the board. out of a student population of 45000 less than 300 students knew that the executive board was any more than an administrative function of FOCUS. Only about 50 students knew who was on the executive board. How many politicians could function with that degree of anonominity. Of course, every administrator knew exactly who we were, because, if they were not in an academic function, we could eliminate their job, we never did or even thought about doing anything of the sort. It was never necessary."}, {"response": 18, "author": "stacey", "date": "Tue, Nov 17, 1998 (18:16)", "body": "the mayor of Podunk, LA sure functions with 'that degree' on anonymnity."}, {"response": 19, "author": "TIM", "date": "Tue, Nov 17, 1998 (20:35)", "body": "Really? Less than one percent of the residents know who he is? This I gotta see. a town of 45000 people Where less than one percent of the people know there is a mayor, let alone know his name. And This guy has absolute control over the police department, the movie theaters, concerts, allocates all the office space in town, runs all the restaraunts, operates three bars, a bowling alley, and a pool hall, not to mention the only disco in town."}, {"response": 20, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (06:14)", "body": "*ouch* good point how bout sonny bono who sure as hell didn't need mayoralness to make him a public figure? Or Clint Eastwood?"}, {"response": 21, "author": "TIM", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (06:46)", "body": "Sonny Bono was mayor of Palm Springs and Clint Eastwood mayor of Carmel. I don't know about Sonny Bono, But Clint Eastwood was elected by acclaim. at least the first time. When I was stationed out there, my friends and I used to eat lunch with Clint Eastwood. If you were in the military he would join you for lunch if you were at the restaraunt at the same time. He usually eats at the boars head."}, {"response": 22, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (16:57)", "body": "we're not talking about why he was elected, we're talking about why he ran... the whole political evil you keep referring to. So... is he an exception to the rule for politicians then?"}, {"response": 23, "author": "TIM", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (17:30)", "body": "Career Politicians, O K ? If you open the hood on your car and do some mechanic's work, does that make you a mechanic?"}, {"response": 24, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (18:22)", "body": "so what about Ross Perot? On the off chance he were elected, would he be exempt from your abhorrance of politicians?"}, {"response": 25, "author": "TIM", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (21:46)", "body": "If Ross Perot was a politician, he'd be president right now. One thing about Ross Perot, he means what he says."}, {"response": 26, "author": "sprin5", "date": "Wed, Feb 16, 2000 (20:32)", "body": "As you may know, the City of Austin is proposing a \"peace treaty\" deal with Gary Bradley, developer of Circle C. The legal and strategic implications of this deal and its impact on the Barton Springs Zone are extremely complex. As a result, SOS has a formal review team made up of lawyers, planners and scientists evaluating every single detail. So far, SOS Alliance is not ready to support or reject the deal. We do have one major message for the City: the deal MUST BE MORE ENFORCEABLE than it currently is. Specifically, we are asking that an independent third party ( besides the City and Bradley) be added to the contract. This third party would have legal standing and the right to sue, thus making the contract more sustainable over time and less vulnerable to the legislature or future city councils overturning it unfairly. SOS will be delivering this message to the Council tomorrow night, while reserving the right to endorse or reject the deal later after the review team has completed its evaluation. The full SOS board will meet in late February to make its final decision before the Council votes on March 9th. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments regarding this matter and thank you for your continued support of Barton Springs!! from the SOS Alliance dated 2/16/2000 (today)"}, {"response": 27, "author": "cfadm", "date": "Sun, Jul  2, 2006 (09:24)", "body": "TAOIST MONKS FROM CHINA TO BLESS BARTON SPRINGS Taoist monks from the Wudang Monastery in China will bless Barton Springs and her defenders on Tuesday, July 11th at 10AM. All are welcome to watch and participate in this historic event on the Wudang monks' first ever trip to the United States. The monks will also be teaching classes and giving demonstrations during their week in Austin. For more information, click here. FIX 290 AND CAMPO UPDATE CAMPO has - according to news reports - decided to delay voting on approval and funding of the next round of toll roads in Austin, including many in the Barton Springs watershed, until perhaps November. The Fix 290 Coalition continues to advocate for a context-sensitive transportation solution for the \"Y\" in Oak Hill. Learn more at www.Fix290.com. REGIONAL AQUIFER NEWS Hays County neighbors have recently demonstrated outside a burgeoning subdivision in the Barton Springs Contributing Zone known as Belterra. Neighbors downstream of Belterra on Bear Creek, along with the conservation groups and government entities, are opposed to the developers' plans to discharge sewage effluent into Bear Creek, which flows into the Edwards Aquifer and recharges Barton Springs. Learn more here. www.SOSAlliance.org 221 E. 9th Street, Suite 300, Austin, TX 78701 512-477-2320 \u2022 sosinfo@sosalliance.org [7x7white.gif] Hike on City of Austin Watershed Preserve Lands This Saturday Morning! Sign up is limited, so if you're interested, click here and follow the instructions. Hike and Swim with the Austin Sierra Club on July 15th. Join the Austin Sierra Club for a hike on the Barton Creek Greenbelt and a swim at Barton Springs on Saturday, July 15th. Click here for more info. Meet at the front entrace to the Springs at 8:30AM. Donate here and become a member of Save Our Springs! Volunteer with us this summer! Contact Colin at 477-2320 or by email. \ufffd \ufffd[7x7white.gif] UPCOMING EVENTS City of Austin Neighborhood Plan Process for Oak Hill Thursday, July 13, 2006 - Northeast Oak Hill Land Use Meeting at Regents School of Austin 3230 Travis Country Circle 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Introduction to Land Use and Zoning; Land Use, Zoning, and Transportation in Northeastern Oak Hill (includes Lantana, Oaks Acres, Oakpark, and Travis Country) For more info on the Oak Hill Neighborhood Planning Process, click here. \ufffd environment conference Main Menu"}]}, {"num": 3, "subject": "Environmental groups in the Austin area", "response_count": 1, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "terry", "date": "Sun, Dec 28, 1997 (19:07)", "body": "Texas Area Resources Alternative Resource Listings of Texas Sustainable Agriculture Texas Sustainable Agriculture Working Group Care of Sustainable Food Center; 1715 East 6th Street, Suite 200: Austin, TX 78702. Phone: 512-472-2073. Contact Kate Fitzgerald. Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture Resources for sustainable agriculture and alternative enterprises in eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas P.O. Box 588;Poteau, OK 74953. Phone: 918-647-9123; fax: 918-647-8712. Contact Heidi Carter or Lara Ervin. Approriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas (ATTRA) P.O. Box 3657; Fayaatteville, AR 72455-2899. Phone: 800-346-9140. ATTRA News - published quarterly. Trees for Life 1103 Jefferson; Wichita, KS 67203. Phone: 316-263-7294; Fax: 316-263-5293. Useful Wild Plants of Texas, Inc. 2612 Sweeney Lane; Austin, TX 78723; Contact Scooter Cheatham; 512-928-4441. Organic Seed and Crop Production Texas Organic Growers Association PO Box 15211; Austin, Texas 78761. Phone: 512-454-5467. TOGA is helping to make organic agriculture viable in Texas and offers a quarterly periodical. Peacable Kingdom School PO Box 313; Washington, TX 77880-0313. Contact Pauline Mullins or Jack Rowe; 409-878-2353. Organic display gardens and on-site low input/sustainable seed production. Native American Seed 610 Main Street; Junction, TX 76849. Phone: 800-728-76849. Bill Nieman J. Howard Garretts book, _The Natural Way_; PO Box 140650; Dallas, TX Phone: 817-695-0817. This book offers a monthly calendar of what to plant and many illustrations for identifying insects and reducing pests damage to food plants. Bob Randall Houston Texas Ecosystem Restoration and Wildlife Enhancement Hill Country and Colorado River Watershed Bioregional Congress ; 1301 E. St. John's Ave, #8; Austin, TX 78752. Contact Lyndon Felps: 512-228-1287. Texas Parks and Wildlife Nongame and Urban Wildlife Program; 4200 Smith School Road; Austin Texas, 78744. Contact Elena Cano at 1-800-792-1112 Wild Basin Holistic Resource Management of Texas, Inc. 6060 N Central Expressway, Suite 305; Dallas, TX 75206. Phone: 214-691-8994. HRM Texas, Inc. Newsletter - published quarterly. Contact, Janet Samford. The Dallas Nature Center 7171 Mountain Creek Parkway; Dallas, TX 75249. Contact Dr. Geofrey Stanford; 214-296-1955. National Wildflower Research Center ; 2600 FM 973 North; Austin, TX 78725-4201. Green Building The Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems Austin TX. Contact, Pliny Fisk. Sustainable Building Sourcebook Sustainable Building Coallition R.C. Smoot Construction ; PO Box 92993; Austin, TX 78709. Phone: 512-288-1001. environment conference Main Menu"}]}, {"num": 4, "subject": "genetically engineered products", "response_count": 30, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "terry", "date": "Wed, Sep 25, 1996 (10:53)", "body": "Here's the rest of Judy Kew's email: In the meantime, please note that some of our best champions for this cause are the candidates for the Natural Law Party. One of their major platforms is a stand against GEO's . They are calling for mandatory labeling and a moratorium until they are proven safe. This Wednesday we can join in a Conference Call with Dr. John Hagelin, the presidential candidate. Dr. Hagelin is a 42-year-old award-winning physicist who received his Ph.D. in particle physics from Harvard. He is the founder the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy, a think tank of scientists, scholars and social policy makers to \"offer practical solutions to the problems we face as a nation.\" He is a whole, compassionate person who, along with his party, has already done much for us, such as, help derail a U.N. level effort to get genetically engineered foods labeled as \"organic.\" The Natural Law Party National Conference Call will be at 8 p.m. Eastern, Central & Pacific Time. Call 412-858-4600 to join in. (This is a change from the previously scheduled date of Sept. 26 due to the rescheduling of the presidential debates to that evening.) OR If you live in Austin you can listen to the call and join in the the plans for Dr. Hagelin and Dr. John Fagan\"s visit to Texas, including Austin, Oct. 13-17 come this Wednesday, Sept. 25, (tomorrow ) at Sandie BonSell's at 8 p.m. -- 2000 Key West cove in Lost Creek in Austin. All are welcome. (Dr. Fagan is a molecular biologist who used to be a genetic engineer and returned $600,000 award money (given him by the NIH to do g. e. research) because he prefers to use his knowledge for life-supporting purposes.) This Wed: Conference call with Dr. John Hagelin, Dr. Mike Thompkins and Kingsley Brooks. We will be planning the National Tour and brainstorming venues for when they come through Texas. October 13-17 Dr. John Fagan and Dr. Thompkins tour Texas. Austin dates TBA. Other news from the Natural Law Party: October 17 Thurs. at 7PM Dr. Ed Fasanella, NLP Candidate,has been invited to the SouthWest Texas University political debates for District 14, Hays County. We are carpooling to the event to show our support and ask questions. Call Carol for carpool info. October 28 & 29 Dr. Hagelin to tour Texas. Austin dates TBA. Larry King has committed to have third party candidates on his show for 3 nights following the scheduled pres. debates. He offered to do this because we have been denied participation by the FCC- their reasoning is such that anyone who doesn't really have a chance to win shouldn't take up our time. Since when are they predictors of election outcomes? Who gave them the power to deny the voters information to make their own choices and hear other ideas and solutions to our nation's problems? If this makes you want to let your voice be heard you can do the following: e-mail debates 96@USA. pipeline. com. and tell them you support Dr. John Hagelin and Dr. Mike Thompkins to be included in all debates since we are on the ballot in 47 states and the D.C. and are the fastest growing political party in the nation. You can also sign a petition which will be delivered to the commission - go to www.hagelin.org then on to Politics now and they have the petition posted for anyone who wants to add their name. Call the FCC at 202-872-1020 directly and voice your support for third party candidates to be included in the nation's dialog and especially for NLP. Green Building Conference Nov. 7-10, 1996 http://www.greenbuilder.com/conference/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Texas InfiNet - an online community for progressive information BBS 512.462.0633 Telnet shakti.txinfinet.com:3000 WWW http://www.greenbuider.com"}, {"response": 2, "author": "stacey", "date": "Tue, Sep 23, 1997 (13:32)", "body": "Did you know: There are no regulations on bottled water at the present time. Bottled water can be packaged in plastic containers (the 2nd largest landfill problem) straight from a municipal water source that may be contaminated with pesticides, herbicides, lead, chlorine (turns into gas in a hot shower), feces and several hundred other chemicals deemed \"within acceptable limits\" by the powers that be. I don't care what anybody says -- levels of these ANY levels of these are not acceptable to me."}, {"response": 3, "author": "boyce2", "date": "Mon, Oct 27, 1997 (15:36)", "body": "Then you prolly shouldn't drink *anything*, Stacey... 100% pure water is only theoretically possible, never actually existed, even before life arose on the planet. The reality is that ppm and ppb concentrations of all kinds of nasties are present in water from all sources. But if there's not enough to damage you, what's the difference? The powers that be (usually the EPA or health department) have tons of info on the concentrations of most of the bad actors that have a measurable impact on human health, and they base their limits on that data (usually making the limit 100 or so times less than the measurable effect range). Got to tell you though, water with chlorine is going to be much better for you than water without. I like my bacteria dead, thank you very much. :)"}, {"response": 4, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Oct 29, 1997 (10:07)", "body": "Yes, the EPA has come up with \"acceptable levels\" of poisons in the drinking water but, what few people realize, is those levels are determined on a toxin by toxin basis w/o taking into consideration the AMA and independent research who have determined that the toxicity increases dramatically when the toxins are found in conjunction with others. Kinda like bleach and ammonia, eh?!?"}, {"response": 5, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Fri, Oct 31, 1997 (01:36)", "body": "Everybody vote for Synergy! Keep this in mind when self medicating, kiddies... WER"}, {"response": 6, "author": "terry", "date": "Sat, Mar 14, 1998 (08:24)", "body": "Genetic engineering of food is not almost here. Dolly the clone sheep presages herds of identical animals. Genetically engineered corn with pesticide resistance and insect resistance as well as potentially a different nutritional make up is on the way. Would you eat foods from these crops? Would you raise these crops?"}, {"response": 8, "author": "terry", "date": "Sun, Mar 15, 1998 (11:02)", "body": "Whenever I address this topic, I think of my friend Judy Kew, who is a tireless campaigner for safe foods. I hope she jumps in here at some point. I irradiate foods every day. I have a microwave oven. Admission. I wish I knew what was actually bad for me, in the way of treated, irradiated, and genetically engineered foods. Where do you draw the line between hype and fact?"}, {"response": 10, "author": "stacey", "date": "Mon, Mar 16, 1998 (11:24)", "body": "and sometimes you just have to guess..."}, {"response": 11, "author": "boyce2", "date": "Mon, Mar 16, 1998 (16:43)", "body": "IMHO, a little loss of nutrient value (on par with cooking) from irradiation (ionizing gammas, not microwaves) is worth it to save the literally hundreds of lives and hundred of thousands of illnesses caused annually by biologically contaminated food. The doubling of the shelf-life of produce is icing on the cake."}, {"response": 12, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Mar 16, 1998 (16:59)", "body": "Man, talk about timing. I post on irradiation in foods and we get a rocket scientist checking in. So, Steve, would *you* eat irradiated foods (I think I know the answer) and what about genetically engineered foods?"}, {"response": 13, "author": "stacey", "date": "Mon, Mar 16, 1998 (17:59)", "body": "i think i'd enjoy a five pound mushroom, how 'bout you?!?!"}, {"response": 15, "author": "stacey", "date": "Tue, Mar 17, 1998 (09:07)", "body": "if it's your Marsala, I want lots and lots!!"}, {"response": 17, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Mar 18, 1998 (17:16)", "body": "*grin* whatcha offering?!?"}, {"response": 19, "author": "stacey", "date": "Thu, Mar 19, 1998 (09:36)", "body": "(in keeping with the topic) got anything genetically engineered?!?!"}, {"response": 21, "author": "stacey", "date": "Thu, Mar 19, 1998 (17:20)", "body": "well, before you work too hard... maybe we should do some early studies ( before and after type thing!)"}, {"response": 22, "author": "stacey", "date": "Thu, Mar 19, 1998 (17:55)", "body": "oops! just discovered this topic was linked to the environment conference... poor unsuspecting tree huggers!!!"}, {"response": 24, "author": "stacey", "date": "Fri, Mar 20, 1998 (09:41)", "body": "mine is sooner!"}, {"response": 26, "author": "stacey", "date": "Fri, Mar 20, 1998 (10:15)", "body": "(just thought we could move the date up. i mean, why wait 'til June?) (unless you're shy)"}, {"response": 28, "author": "stacey", "date": "Mon, Mar 23, 1998 (09:52)", "body": "April 16"}, {"response": 29, "author": "stacey", "date": "Mon, Mar 23, 1998 (17:42)", "body": "wanna pre-party?"}, {"response": 31, "author": "stacey", "date": "Tue, Mar 24, 1998 (09:16)", "body": "well, if we can't fly to Bali... I suppose we will have to meet on some virtual plane"}, {"response": 33, "author": "stacey", "date": "Tue, Mar 24, 1998 (09:34)", "body": "GOOD MORNING! (what category does birthday 'suit' fit into?"}, {"response": 35, "author": "stacey", "date": "Tue, Mar 24, 1998 (09:41)", "body": "good point. besides, you don't want to start with nothing, when it's more fun to work your way there."}, {"response": 37, "author": "stacey", "date": "Tue, Mar 24, 1998 (09:45)", "body": "sleeping off last night, will I do for now? (only problem with Telnet is there is no handy little \"latest posts\" at the bottom, so I have to quickly run through the 10 or 15 most likely places!)"}, {"response": 39, "author": "stacey", "date": "Tue, Mar 24, 1998 (09:53)", "body": "got UNIX on my side!"}, {"response": 42, "author": "stacey", "date": "Mon, Apr  6, 1998 (15:23)", "body": "heh heh heh! left brained, right handed and an innie for a belly button. was that the question?"}, {"response": 44, "author": "mikeg", "date": "Wed, Jul 15, 1998 (10:58)", "body": "There's a jolly good reason why nature is the way it is: because it works. When not-very-clever little Johnny-Biologist goes around tinkering, he's going to screw it all up. Mark my words :)"}, {"response": 45, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Mon, Aug 17, 1998 (15:13)", "body": "GENITICALLY ENGINEERED FOODS! There is growing consumer concern over the growth of Genetically Engineered Foods and potential health risks we face. You can obtain detailed information on this subject at the following web site: http://www.safe-food.org/"}, {"response": 46, "author": "sprin5", "date": "Tue, Oct 17, 2000 (07:53)", "body": "UK to approve use of \"terminator\" technology: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/UK/Environment/2000-10/gm141000.shtml Also from The Independent. Secrecy in UK GM field tests: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/UK/Environment/2000-10/gm151000.shtml"}, {"response": 47, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, May  5, 2003 (11:44)", "body": "Greenery on alert By Lakshmi Sandhana | Special to The Christian Science Monitor Combating bioterrorism is no longer the domain of high-tech gadgets alone. A new breed of genetically engineered plants will soon be capable of functioning as \"sentinels,\" detecting harmful chemical and biological agents in the atmosphere. Designed to turn fluorescent green or a sickly brown within minutes or hours of exposure, the plants could be used along airport runways or around military or industrial sites. \"Plants make good sentinels because they can't run away,\" says Jack Schultz, a chemical ecologist and professor of entomology at Pennsylvania State University. \"Because they are rooted in their environment, they must respond dynamically to environmental changes.\" Some of the plants being developed will be able to signal the presence of chemical agents and animal pathogens such as anthrax. Others are being designed to fluoresce upon detecting TNT residues in the soil, aiding in land mine detection. If enough plants are gathered in one place, and if their glow is bright enough, researchers say satellites may be able to detect minefields from space. http://search.csmonitor.com/2003/0501/p12s01-stct.html environment conference Main Menu"}]}, {"num": 5, "subject": "fix the jalopy or buy new?", "response_count": 12, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "terry", "date": "Wed, Dec 11, 1996 (08:00)", "body": "I bought an 89 Dodge Caravan for $700 and had the engine rebuilt for $1200. It's been pretty reliable and it's very comfortable. I have no new car envy."}, {"response": 2, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Fri, Feb 26, 1999 (13:36)", "body": "Rebuilt. Restore. Repaint. Reuse. Any day of the week, it's preferable to new buys. On the other hand, new stuff is flashy and often sexier. It comes down to economical, environmental and senible facts against good looks. It's not what you need, but how you want to be seen. E.G.: Can you take it to be seen by your boss or someone you've got a crush on in an 1989 car? Are you man (or woman) enough? Is \"carowner\" who you are? I got enough guts for an 1981 make, hardly a car, but it moves like one. My boss is cool, I'm not seventeen anymore, and I'm not \"carowner\". I'm lots of things, not just one, and I surely don't feel like pouring all my cash into just one thing. There are more fun ways to get broke on."}, {"response": 3, "author": "stacey", "date": "Fri, Feb 26, 1999 (14:15)", "body": "woo woo! I personally view it as buying a car that is 'broken in' already... 100,000 miles plus!"}, {"response": 4, "author": "terry", "date": "Fri, Feb 26, 1999 (14:24)", "body": "I'm with you, Alexander. '89 to '90 seem to be my years: 89 Dodge Caravan 91 Buick 88 Ford Econoline My biggest expense is insurance!"}, {"response": 5, "author": "stacey", "date": "Fri, Feb 26, 1999 (15:37)", "body": "and fuel!"}, {"response": 6, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Mon, Mar  1, 1999 (15:07)", "body": "Well, I got lucky - I got a buddy who helps me with repairs (there are less and less, as we replace all the stuff that previous owners didn't look after for better pieces from the junk yard). Our big project will be disassembling the whole thing, and rebuilt it (some body-work necessary). Maybe in summer."}, {"response": 7, "author": "terry", "date": "Tue, Mar  2, 1999 (01:58)", "body": "What makes, models of cars are you working on?"}, {"response": 8, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Thu, Mar  4, 1999 (12:39)", "body": "You don't really wanna know, do you? ;=}"}, {"response": 9, "author": "stacey", "date": "Thu, Mar  4, 1999 (13:04)", "body": "uh oh..."}, {"response": 10, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Thu, Mar  4, 1999 (14:53)", "body": "Well, OK, I might tell Stacey, but only after I got that paint job done, etc. ;=}"}, {"response": 11, "author": "stacey", "date": "Thu, Mar  4, 1999 (14:56)", "body": "*grin*"}, {"response": 12, "author": "cfadm", "date": "Sun, Jul  2, 2006 (09:26)", "body": "I need to fire up my Buick today, it's been about 6 months. You need to start a car more often. environment conference Main Menu"}]}, {"num": 6, "subject": "water", "response_count": 10, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Oct 20, 1997 (21:56)", "body": "Harvard Divinity School's Seminar on Environmental Values is concentrating on water this year. First lecture is Tuesday, October 28 on the science and theology of water. Website is at http://divweb.harvard.edu/csvpl/ee/hsev"}, {"response": 2, "author": "stacey", "date": "Tue, Oct 21, 1997 (10:48)", "body": "Tap water is scary. That's why I started selling water filters."}, {"response": 3, "author": "terry", "date": "Wed, Oct 22, 1997 (00:58)", "body": "Interesting, my friend Victoria just started selling tap water filters too, her outfit is called Equinox and she's *very* gung ho about it. She really believes they have a good solution and she's even doing some whole house filters. We did a little web search one day and found there a lot of people out there doing this on different levels. How did you come up with the brand you're selling and what brand is it? Did you do much research on this?"}, {"response": 4, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Oct 22, 1997 (12:39)", "body": "Equinox just had a huge split up. In 1996 they were named the fastest growing company in the US (privately held) but their profits have dropped off drastically in the past 2 years. The company also just lost 26 of its top money earners! They are in trouble, so to speak. Their water filter still does not have an NSF rating and they've been after one for 4 years."}, {"response": 5, "author": "terry", "date": "Wed, Oct 22, 1997 (18:44)", "body": "Hmm. I'll have to let Victoria know about this, if she doesn't already know."}, {"response": 6, "author": "terry", "date": "Wed, Oct 22, 1997 (19:05)", "body": "Where did you see this? Victoria would like to know. She says the people they lost are putting \"hate stuff\" on the Internet."}, {"response": 7, "author": "stacey", "date": "Thu, Oct 23, 1997 (09:34)", "body": "Austin is one of the few offices that remain. I'll get you more information later."}, {"response": 8, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Oct 23, 1997 (11:10)", "body": "I would be real interested in getting a reality check on water filters, there's way too much smoke around this now and I hope Victoria isn't being lead down the garden path. She's put way too much in to Equinox to have it be a bust. Can we separate fact from fiction? I wouldn't mind having a water filter on my home, but I'm very confused about who's got the best solution. Perhaps, Stacey, you can clear the air."}, {"response": 9, "author": "stacey", "date": "Thu, Oct 23, 1997 (13:10)", "body": "You want one that eliminates chlorine (biggest offender), and then if you've an older home or older pipes... lead. Right now the big hype is on bateria and there are a few water filters who take care of that. more later."}, {"response": 10, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Oct 23, 1997 (20:38)", "body": "More, more! Please. environment conference Main Menu"}]}, {"num": 7, "subject": "air Austin", "response_count": 12, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "terry", "date": "Sat, May 16, 1998 (12:55)", "body": "Austin is *smokin'*! Literally. Smoke clogs the air form fires burning away in Mexico. The worsening smoke has triggered a statewide health alert. And Mexico has belatedly accepted US aid to put out the fires. They're sending a US team to \"assess\" the best way to fight the fires. Translated, that means another week of delays. Hire me as an \"expert\". I would tell them to send planes with water and lots of firefighters. Meanwhile, Texas officials pronounced Austin the worst spot in Texas on Friday afternoon. But they added that the situation is dynamic, \"changing literally by the hour,'' according to state environmental chief Barry McBee. \"We have seen conditions change from the highest incidences of smoke in the (Rio Grande) Valley now to the highest . . . here in the Austin area,'' said McBee, chairman of the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. Mexican Embassy spokesman Jose Antonio Zabalgoitia. \"We are not to blame because of the direction the wind blows.'' But they are to blame for waiting a week before asking for aid. And the US and Texas to blame for waiting another week while they do a \"study\". Step outside in Austin that study that."}, {"response": 2, "author": "terry", "date": "Sat, May 16, 1998 (19:31)", "body": "TRANSLATION FROM THE SPANISH BY MARIA ELENA HOPE, FOR NUEVO AMANECEER PRESS-USA/MEXICO La Jornada, May 13, 1998 Without precedent, the proliferation of fires in the area of conflict Hermann Bellinghausen, envoy, Altamirano, Chiapas, May 12. \"Fiiire, fiiire\" voice the men of the communities calling each other to take up machetes, shovels and pails; the hill is on fire. An epidemic of fires, beyond all precedent, is sweeping away the forests as well as the vegetable plots, the coffee plantations, the milpas and animals of the communities. Mostly they seem provoked. They start at places where no one burns for agriculture. They destroys forests that no one dared cut down, that were part of the communities' patromony. They do not respect ditches nor protections, because the hands that fire them do not rest, they are ubiquitous, invisible, unpunished, they have bared the surface. To see each other's faces; so that no one can hide. Never before a layer of smoke had covered such a large extension of the Chiapas territory. The peasants are astounded, indignant, sad and worried. Although government officials are trying all kinds of somersaults to blame the peasants (see the case of the coffee plantations set on fire in Taniperlas), they are accusations no one believes. In the Altamirano canada there are places where, at noon, one cannot distinguish another person two meters away, as it happens in the communities 10 de Abril and San Miguel Chiptic. But there is worse: the Sierra of Corralon is ablaze, from Morelia to La Garrucha at the canada of Patihuitz. Smoke shoots up from everywhere. Officially, up to now there are 46 thousand hectares burnt down in Chiapas. Also officially, at this moment 35 fires are being fought against. The largest at the selva and frontier regions. In the area of the Montebello lakes, between La Trinitaria and La Independencia, three thousand hectares are burning, and one thgousand two hundred at the Taniperla ejido. Between Pueblo Nuevo and Sitala, at Tila, in the northern region, the Capalna hill is ablaze. The fires have affected the Palenque National Park and large forested areas at Las Margaritas, Chanal and Comitan. At the El Bosque and Bochil, between Los Altos and the North, fires spring up when it is less expected. And in Chenalho. These are not the traditional burnings of the agricultural cycle, it is not that the peasants have become more careless nor that they harbor evil intentions. For the communities, the fires are an omen of hunger. Putting aside the great fires of Copainala and Cintalapa, and the fires that can be associated with urban speculation, as in Ocozocuautla, the largest concentration of fires coincides with the \"conflict zone\", that is, where the indigenous population lives, where there exist autonomous municipalities, where the EZLN and their suupporting bases move; hundreds of resisting communities. Although there are no existing proofs (which is typical) the incendiary proliferation in zones of conflict is \"normal\" during contra-insurgency campaigns. It has been seen in Central America, in Vietnam and in Cambodia; it can be seen in Colombia and Indonesia. Why should it not be seen in Chiapas, if the mannuals are the same? And besides, there are so many fires in the Republic, there's no reason why a few more should be noticed. The moors of tomorrow The roads that lead to Morelia, to Belisario Dominguez, to the mountains, show their desolation. The inhabitants of Morelia speak with sadness of the scenery lost. Coughing, injected conjunctivitis, children's runny noses, lung pains, spitting, hurting noses. The permanent smell of bonfire on the clothes. \"The blaze appears as distributed\" says a peasant. \"below the trees and in bonfires near the coffee plantations. Everything is dry and as soon as the wind blows it sets all evenly afire\". \"People from here it is not\"', he says,\"how can it be. But who does it, we don't know.\". At the environs of La Laguna, near Altamirano, there are almost no forests. At La Laguna a new air strip of the armed forces is being set up, that the peasants fear can be turned into an air base. At the autonomous municipality 17 de Noviembre, many recently founded towns (\"New Population Centers\") are being affected by the absurd burnings. When the smoke disperses, the moors will remain. And if the rains, as it is feared, are delayed, the moors will last. __________________________________________________ Translated from Spanish by Maria Elena Hope ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ NUEVO AMANECER PRESS- N.A.P. _________________________________ Registered as a Non Profit Corporation in USA,N.A.P. translates and distributes information in support of human rights in Mexico. Advisory team: Mexico. General Director:Roger Maldonado-Mexico Darrin Wood: Director NAP-Spain office. Susana Saravia: Coordinator NAP: Mexico/USA/Spain Our web page in spanish: http://www.nap.cuhm.mx/nap0.htm"}, {"response": 3, "author": "terry", "date": "Wed, May 20, 1998 (08:47)", "body": "We're still experiencing smoky conditions, you can see the sun clearly outlined in the smoky sky hours earlier that you would see it as it would be on the horizon. Wow, what a garbled sentence. Let me try again. You can see the sun's disk clearly many hours before sunset. The US government is still \"studying\" the situation. Time to put some guys in planes with water and wrap up the study, we're choking on this stuff!"}, {"response": 4, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, May 20, 1998 (19:36)", "body": "what is the stuff??? (best guess?)"}, {"response": 5, "author": "terry", "date": "Sun, May 24, 1998 (01:07)", "body": "Mostly smoke containing who knows what pesticides, etc."}, {"response": 6, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Aug 26, 1998 (15:54)", "body": "check out http:\\\\www.scorecard.org kinda scary depending on your zip code"}, {"response": 7, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Wed, Aug 26, 1998 (16:15)", "body": "http://www.scorecard.org (your slashes running the wrong way...)"}, {"response": 8, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Aug 26, 1998 (16:22)", "body": "I prefer them that way! (thanks, I am a dweeb!)"}, {"response": 9, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Fri, Dec 18, 1998 (01:00)", "body": "You're welcome... (even if it is December now...)"}, {"response": 10, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Thu, Apr 22, 1999 (14:05)", "body": ""}, {"response": 11, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Thu, Apr 22, 1999 (14:08)", "body": "(previous response scribbled...) \"Three out of every four Americans want strong clean air.\" --Max Baucus, Montana state representative"}, {"response": 12, "author": "cfadm", "date": "Sun, Jul  2, 2006 (09:27)", "body": "1 in 4 don't ??? environment conference Main Menu"}]}, {"num": 8, "subject": "nuclear dump in Sierra Blanca Texas", "response_count": 0, "posts": []}, {"num": 9, "subject": "Viridian List", "response_count": 137, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Oct 29, 1998 (07:48)", "body": "Earlier this month, science fiction author Bruce Sterling announced the creation of Viridian, a new technocultural art movement. Sterling's goal? Nothing less than saving the world from environmental Armageddon. Sterling says he won't actually launch Viridian until Jan. 3, 2000. The new millennium, he believes, will be eagerly receptive to new ideas. (Why Jan. 3? Well, on Jan. 1, everyone will be hung over, and on Jan. 2, nobody's computer will work.) In the meantime, Sterling is working out the basic principles of the movement, and has set up a moderated mailing list for the \"Viridian Greens\" to hash out the details. What's it all about? Greenhouse warming, says Sterling, is undeniable to all save fools and fat cats, but previous \"green\" environmental attempts to change the world have failed. Sterling's answer is to concoct a new esthetic -- one that values healthy design, eschews 20th century-style waste and flourishes through distributed, collective, networked development. Sterling has dubbed himself the movement's \"mad Pope-Emperor.\" The whole scheme sounds suspiciously similar to the plot of a Sterling novel -- but like Sterling's works, it's audacious, funny and eloquent. Interested mailing list subscribers can e-mail the man himself, at bruces@well.com. -- Andrew Leonard SALON | Oct. 27, 1998"}, {"response": 2, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Oct 29, 1998 (08:05)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Mon Oct 26 12:42:15 1998 Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 12:42:15 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00005 X-UIDL: 1e200ae03c3852d34df65709e47a5514 Key concepts: Viridian aesthetic; distributed networks; mobiles; Alexander Calder (1898-1976) Attention Conservation Notice: This is art criticism. There are over 900 words of it. Sources: an original composition Links: www.sfmoma.org/EXHIB/calder.index.html www.nga.gov/exhibitions/caldwel.htm There are two approaches to the problem of establishing a Viridian aesthetic: the top-down approach, and the bottom-up. The top-down method consists of issuing historical analogies, broad statements of principle, sweeping aphorisms, and so forth, and trawling these verbal devices over the landscape in the hope that they will net something useful. The bottom-up approach relies on assembling specific examples, whose aggregate might suggest an emergent future sensibility. Since we Viridians have an expiration date looming, we will try both approaches at once. Our first candidate for specific analysis, the first tree in our Viridian forest as it were, is the \"mobile,\" invented by twentieth- century artist Alexander Calder. Following our \"underside-first\" principle, we will start by listing the aspects of Calder's mobiles which are NOT of a Viridian sensibility. Only then will we relate the aspects which seem to have promise for the early 21st century. NON-VIRIDIAN ASPECTS OF CALDER'S MOBILES Alexander Calder is by no means a contemporary artist. He was born a full one hundred years ago and died in the 1970s. Mobiles have two basic elements: colored cut-out shapes, and the jointed network of stiff wires that attach them. Calder's shapes are flat and metallic, and generally painted in Mondrian-like, industrial, primary colors. Calder sometimes employed gimmicky, dated shapes reminiscent of bad Space Age coffee-tables. Calder sometimes attached mobile elements to representational objects, such as wire-framed fish and performing seals. Compared to the eerie majesty of the best abstract mobiles, this overly cute, toylike practice gives one a cloying sensation. Desktop and floor-mounted \"stabiles\" are much less visually effective than air-swarming, ceiling-hung mobiles. Unless that is, the stabiles are built on a monumental scale, so that they can loom astoundingly over the viewer. The movements of mobiles are determined by laws of gravity and local air currents, rather than some more sophisticated interchange among the moving elements. As art objects, mobiles are somewhat difficult to assess, because they are both sculpture and performance. They present different visual experiences under different environmental circumstances. VIRIDIAN ASPECTS OF CALDER MOBILES They were invented and built by a world-class avant-garde artist with a degree in mechanical engineering. Calder mobiles are strongly biomorphic in both shape and motion. They are thriftily built of cheap, recycled materials. Mobiles move silently and tirelessly through the use of ambient, renewable energy. Mobiles are sensitive indicators of local environmental conditions. Mobiles scale up well, although the truly colossal mobiles require some modest aid from electric motors. The term \"mobile\" was coined by Marcel Duchamp, a rather sphinxlike, timeless figure. Thanks to Calder's iterative balancing technique, a mobile's simple network contains a great deal of subtle embedded judgement. Thanks to this, the movement of a mobile is not mechanically repetitive, but pleasantly lifelike and unpredictable. Calder mobiles are distributed, collaborative networks in action. Although mobiles can be quite large in volume, even monumental, they are very sparing in their use of materials. They are dependent on open space, voids, and transparency; less mass, more data. Mobiles have a life-affirming sense of humor. It's hard to imagine a grim, fanatical mobile. CONCLUSION. There has been little formal innovation in Calder mobiles in recent decades. They remain well-known as one of the few art forms invented by an American artist (though he had to go to Paris to do it). Mobiles have always enjoyed a cult following, but in terms of technique they have become a Modernist backwater. However, there exists the possibility of profound advancement in the design and construction of mobiles. Calder himself built his mobiles with string and tinsnips, snipping a bit here and there and shortening the wire until he felt he had the balance right. It would not seem difficult to automate this hands-on process through computer-based balancing algorithms. This offers the attractive prospect of monumental CAD-CAM mobiles containing hundreds or thousands of perfectly balanced, interacting elements. Mobiles could become vastly more sensitive and responsive if they abandoned the wire and sheet-iron of the 1930s. Thermosensitive wire and polymer might change color and movement with temperature"}, {"response": 3, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Nov  2, 1998 (09:10)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Fri Oct 30 13:29:22 1998 Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 13:29:22 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00007 X-UIDL: 8bce68de3a736cc31614e2890cb127ed Key concepts: Floods; unnatural disasters; safety checklists; recovery procedures; literary criticism Attention Conservation Notice: A continuation of Note 00006; grimly accurate; bureaucratically thorough; contains tedious, gritty minutiae about one of life's worst experiences Sources: University of Minnesota Extension Service Home Page Links: http://www.extension.umn.edu/Documents/K/A/afterflood.html (((My comments are in triple parentheses == bruces))) Safety Rules and Recovery Procedures After a Natural Disaster 1. See that your family is safe from flood crests, fire, or falling buildings. 2. Cooperate fully with local authorities, rescue squads, and local Red Cross chapters. 3. Help locate shelter, food, clothing, transportation, medical supplies, and medical help for victims. 4. Obey health regulations for personal and community protection against disease epidemics. Report any violations. (((The problem of looters rarely receives mention, even though looters are omnipresent in post-disaster situations. (The most eager and immediate looters are children.) It is simply *assumed* that all citizens are cooperative, fully socialized, responsible Samaritans. Until #4 that is, when they are suddenly urged to become vigilant informants against health violators. Such is life when authority breaks down == full of upbeat pretense.))) 5. If premises have been flooded, flush plumbing fixtures with buckets of water to be sure they are open. Have health authorities inspect sanitary disposal systems. Water may have backed up into the septic tank, which in turn backs up into the plumbing system. This could be a health hazard. (((The gush of one's own sewage is one of many small humiliations; but fail to deal with this, and you risk dysentery or worse.))) 6. Do not use water from private supply until health authorities have tested it. Boil drinking water 10 minutes or chlorinate by adding 1 teaspoon chlorine bleach per gallon of water. 7. Do not use food that has come in to contact with flood waters. Some foods can be salvaged if properly packaged. Consult local health officials if in doubt. (((Good advice. Now imagine yourself in a situation where these \"health authorities\" and \"local health officials\" are corrupt, absent, drowned, or simply nonexistent. Though CO2 is mostly an industrial G7 emanation, the effects are worst in areas where the world remains most nearly natural.))) 8. Sanitize dishes, cooking utensils, and food preparation areas before using them. (((A Belle Epoque sees no difficulty in *finding* food after a disaster.))) 9. When entering damaged buildings, use flashlights only, not matches, torches, or any open flame. Watch for nails, splinters, holes in walls or floors, wet or falling plaster, undermined foundations, and gas leaks. 10. Do not use electrical system until it has been checked by an electrician. (((Presumably electricians are thick on the ground in your area.))) 11. Wait until any flood waters are below basement level before trying to drain or pump the basement. (((Health hazards, bad water and personal ruination don't make people any brighter.))) 12. Start clean-up as soon as possible. Thoroughly dry and clean house before trying to live in it. Delay permanent repairs until buildings are thoroughly dry. (((\"Demand the Impossible\" == Situationist International))) 13. Control rodents and insects. (((Before they control you.))) 14. Remove sediment from heaters, flues, and motors before using them. To speed drying, start stoves and furnaces as soon as they have been checked for safety. (((Removing sediment from a motor must be an interesting process, especially in a design world where more and more big- ticket items are impossible to open or service.))) 15. Take all furniture and rugs outdoors to dry. ((( A handy practice for those nonexistent looters.))) 16. Dry and air bedding, clothing, and rugs as soon as possible to prevent mildew. 17. Set priorities. Accomplish most important tasks first, and avoid physical over-exertion. (((It's very human to \"set priorities\" as task number 17, when you're already worn out from labor.))) 18. Be sure children are safe and are being cared for at all times. Never leave young children alone or allow than to play in damaged buildings or areas that might be unsafe. (((The rain falls on young and old alike, but surely the author of this superior injunction has never taken charge of young children. A wrecked house is the very definition of attractive nuisance, and there's no better time to escape your parents than when they're losing everything they own.))) 19. Give special attention to cleaning children's toys, cribs, playpens, and play equipment. Boil any items, for 10 minutes, that a toddler or baby might put in his mouth. Discard stuffed t"}, {"response": 4, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Nov  5, 1998 (14:21)", "body": "Topic 189 [mirrorshades]: Viridian List Archive #17 of 17: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed Nov 4 '98 (09:18) 329 lines From bruces@well.com Wed Nov 4 10:48:45 1998 Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 10:48:45 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Note 00010 X-UIDL: 586e4db759e130de0dc8554824217fc4 Key concepts: Viridian Commentary: Viridian cuisine; Viridian domain name; propaganda tactics; Viridian Principles of Design; flood recovery; PEM fuel cells; Viridian ranking Attention Conservation Notice: Comments to the Viridian moderator are ruthlessly edited. I question whether you should read these comments from your fellow Viridians. Can these sources be trusted? Who knows their real agenda? These people could be anybody, even you. From: jon@lasser.org (J. Lasser) I was just picking up another computer book (*The Perl Cookbook* from O'Reilly and Associates, written by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington). Imagine my surprise when I read Larry Wall's introduction: \"Cooking is also one of the oldest of the arts. Some modern artists would have you believe that so-called ephemeral art is a recent invention, but cooking has always been an ephemeral art. We can try to preserve our art, make it last a little longer, but even the food we bury with our pharoahs gets dug up eventually.\" (p. xxi) This fulfills (literally!) the \"Eat What You Kill\" dictum, the \"embrace of decay\" (what else would blue cheese be?), \"Planned Evanescence\", and \"Viridian Inactivism.\" Depending on tastes, cooking can also be compatible with the following Viridian principles: \"The Future Is History,\" \"History Accumulates,\" \"Look at the Underside First\" (look at the growth of organic foods for a cautionary tale), \"Design for the Old,\" \"Superstition Isn't Inspiration,\" \"Do Less With Less,\" \"There's No One So Green as the Dead,\" \"Make the Invisible Visible,\" \"Less Mass, More Data\" (try nouvelle cuisine), \"Seek the Biomorphic and the Transorganic,\" and \"Datamine Nature.\" Cooking is not clearly incompatible with any thus-far stated Viridian principle. Of course, it's not hard to imagine an anti-Viridian meal == for example, a steak raised in a burned-over rainforest. From: weasel@gothic.net (Darren Mckeeman) If you're going to have a movement, it's not going to do to have your URL on someone else's server. We need our own domain name to go with the Viridian image. Based on my own experiences, I'll go so far as to suggest a 'presence' package: 1) A domain name (www.viridian.org) 2) An image package (I can't help you there -- I'm all thumbs) 3) a propaganda campaign to get 'Viridian' into the public eye 4) a document storage method (otherwise known as designing a useful website). The first two items are easy. First, find a graphic designer. You can trip over them in doorways here in San Francisco. Then you get someone to donate web space. This, too, is easy here in San Francisco. The second half of my list will take some work and a small investment -- maybe $20 per flunkey. Yes, it takes volunteers to properly lead a propaganda campaign. The Viridian Movement needs some memetic form of propaganda, such as peel-off stickers. I suggest brilliant neon-green stickers with our web address. We can send a roll to each person on this list for them to start plastering bus stops, cars, bathroom stalls, garbage cans, personal computers, street signs, etc. Human beings love to deface property -- let's give in to our own inner nature! Of course, this might appeal more to kids than to old people. From: richardd@reeseco.com (Richard Dorsett) Viridian Publishing: I believe one of the most important things we should strive to change is the nature of publishing. Whole forests die so the lumpenproletariat can read about Rosie O'Donnell's new diet. The notion of chopping down trees to produce romance novels, wrestling magazines and tabloid newspapers is especially repugnant. This idea is, of course, openly elitist. I propose a ban on the use of physical paper to produce any document that does not meet the strict aesthetic standards of the Viridian Council. Of course, I realize that our sublime edicts will have no authority whatsoever in the \"real\" world, but by issuing press releases (on-line, of course), and calling into play \"reputation economics,\" we can focus painful attention on publications that are absolute wastes of paper. As the Viridian Greens gain respect for our many fresh ideas and futurist design scenarios, people will heed our edicts. \"Books\" will once again become precious art objects, designed to appeal to the eye, the hand, and the mind. Magazines, perhaps printed on pure hemp rag paper, will once again become things of beauty, following the lead of the artists and designers of the Belle Epoque. We can start by creating an award to give to publishers outstanding in their greed and bad taste. I suggest a fine parchment with a photograph of the Tunguska blast site or Mount St. Helens, showing disaster areas with trees laid flat"}, {"response": 5, "author": "tami", "date": "Fri, Nov  6, 1998 (04:43)", "body": "most interesting. I came back to Texas expecting my house to be flooded away. It wasn't so I am now following a different path than the one I anticipated. I have decided to set priorities now. Belongings stay in storage, trade in floodable house for a travel-type trailer that has a better chance of aver. I like the fuel cell idea. Alot. I need to live more simply. If I accumulate less, I have less to lose. Always carry Lysol, bleach and detergent. It's a start?"}, {"response": 6, "author": "terry", "date": "Fri, Nov  6, 1998 (08:18)", "body": "What's your favorite bleach?"}, {"response": 7, "author": "terry", "date": "Sun, Nov  8, 1998 (10:47)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Fri Nov 6 17:56:19 1998 Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1998 17:56:19 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00011 X-UIDL: 2d652495059a63eb444b7afaa26758b8 Key concepts: Viridian mascot; design contest Attention Conservation Notice: A Viridian design contest is proposed. If you choose to take part, it may soak up considerable attention and even physical labor. Viridian Notes 1-10 have established our basic Viridian interests. We will remain preoccupied with general design principles, near-term trend-spotting, and specific critical assessment of artifacts in the arts/technology/sciences. We want to collate our findings in some coherent statement for January 3, 2000. But mere words in a row can't be the be-all and end- all of a design movement. We also need to design. Mailing lists are well-designed for zapping sermons. But the net's wiring lacks tensile strength. It's hard to tug the net so deftly that people will stand up in response, leave their monitors, and do something creative. Especially when they're not being paid. This is an interesting challenge in net-culture. It is no doubt fraught with all manner of unseen potholes and troubling downsides. But we must start somewhere. So, we will start small. Very small. Microscopic, even. The first Viridian design project is a graphic logo, the first official portrait of our own lovable Viridian mascot: \"Big Mike, the Viridian Bug.\" Big Mike is a micro-organism, probably a decay and recycling agent of some kind, who has the word \"viridian\" written across his back. \"Big Mike\" is meant to feature on Viridian coffee- cups, mouse-pads, websites, aristo-digital jewelled cuff- links, teenage cyber-vandal adhesive stickers, and so on. While we don't plan to go directly into multinational manufacturing, we Viridians can manage some modest, nonprofit, hobbyist efforts along this line. It's not for nothing that the Viridian list emanates from fringeware.com, a retail outlet for cyber-slacker gizmos and tchatchkes. REASONS WHY \"BIG MIKE\" IS NOT VIRIDIAN A designed logo is a piece of intellectual property, meant for purposes of corporate identity. There is something inherently troublesome and contradictory in using a logo in a not-for-profit, non-incorporated, private context. Especially when you have no intention of making a profit through use of the logo, and *no intention whatsoever of ever paying its creator any royalties for the use of the image,* no matter how many times it gets used or what weird places it ends up in. Ever since the human race first discovered micro-organisms through improved scientific sensors, we have been carefully trained to regard them as dangerous, unglamorous and icky. Though they are very responsive and do a lot of highly sophisticated \"processing,\" microbes aren't real big on thought processes of any kind. Given the chance, certain species of microbes have repeatedly wreaked unparalleled genocidal havoc. Microbes sadly lack a dashing Pope-Emperor figure. REASONS WHY \"BIG MIKE\" IS VIRIDIAN Cloned sheep may grab all the headlines, but the real workhorses of the coming biorevolution will probably be genetically warped microbes. A microbe is an invisible entity made visible through sensor technology. Microbes do most of the heavy lifting in the ecosystem. Microbes are the world's most senior form of life, but they don't get old. They just keep refreshing themselves by splitting in half. Microbes seem to enjoy swapping packets of genetic information among themselves, rarely bothering to undergo any of the tiresome organizational formalities of actual sex. When times are right, microbes seethe forth suddenly in untold numbers and transform everything they touch. When that's over, they dry up and go to sleep, practicing \"Viridian inactivism\" for centuries on end. Microbes don't require budgets. Microbes travel freely on dust specks and patches of damp, and are notoriously indifferent to national borders, religion, ethnic background, language barriers and other annoyances. As for gender, microbes don't have any. Human beings are seething with large, variegated microbe populations inside and out, and they strongly effect our metabolism and our daily lives whether we realize it or not. Microbes \"Eat What They Kill\" and are largely responsible for the fact that \"There Is No One So Green As the Dead.\" Microbes spin out a lot of variants, make repeated iterative mistakes, and evolve rapidly in response to environmental challenges. Genetically engineered microbes are transorganic, biomorphic and their industrial use requires one to datamine nature. Germs are the glamorous coming thing in the way-new, gooey, squishy, seething, wriggling, wetware revolution. ******************************* \"Big Mike's\" Design Parameters ******************************* Big Mike has a flat black and white 2-D version, suitable for ink and paper, and a color 3-D version suitable for websites and video. You can desi"}, {"response": 8, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Nov  9, 1998 (12:12)", "body": "Mitchell Porter has created an html Viridian index at http://www.thehub.com.au/~mitch/V-Notes/ViridianIndex.html"}, {"response": 9, "author": "terry", "date": "Tue, Nov 10, 1998 (07:48)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Mon Nov 9 21:20:25 1998 Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 21:20:25 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00012 X-UIDL: 68fa937c1b6526302ac433955cf07628 Key concepts: Web links, Viridian ranking Attention Conservation Notice: There is very little content in this Note. It consists of a long list of links that may or may not be of interest, plus the second Viridian Ranking. Links: it's mostly links Someday it may be useful and constructive to have a list of official Viridian-approved links. Or will it? People on the Internet link with such carefree abandon that it makes one wonder. Links are perceived somehow as an unalloyed good. This is a sign of danger in any technological development. A link unaccompanied by critical assessment is a little attention-bomb. For our successors, the novelty of links may fade; the kudzu-like mess of links may seem stale or even poisonous. Giving someone a list of hotlinks might be seen as vaguely passive-aggressive, as if you had crammed his doors and windows with endless stacks of free encyclopedias and giveaway floppy disks. Thanks to the kindness of alert correspondents, we have accumulated many Viridian-associated links. But what do they all mean? And how do they feel? And what is their real context? Are they really worth our while? What do they promise for the future? Who will tell us about all this? Investigate these links, if you will. Think about these questions. Write us a careful and heartfelt assessment. Be frank! If your criticism makes the list, you will earn a star >* the top of the Viridian ranks. http://www.02.org http://www.oecd.org/subject/sustdev/oecdwork.htm www.carfree.com www.biothinking.com www.agewave.com www.bridgedesign.com http://www.hoechst-forum.uni-muenchen.de http://www.va.com.au/photobots/PhotoBots.htm http://environment.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa110198.htm www.millennium.ru www.gadget.co.za www.media.mit.edu/~rhodes/RA www.well.com/~mgoldh http://slashdot.org www.rprogress.org http://www.users.interport.net/~jam/sld001.htm http://www.sirius.com/~schizo/demo/start.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/10/981030082447 . htm http://www.nyu.edu/publicaffairs/newsreleases/b_NYU_S4.sht ml http://www.sunday - times.co.uk:80/news/pages/Times/frontpage.html?1029057 http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/110198america - energy-review.html http://www.pnl.gov/news/1998/98mthf.htm http://www.scientificsales.com/balloons.htm http://www.zamg.ac.at/~map-pbl/home.htm http://www.fooledya.com/balloon/ http://www.af.mil/news/airman/0298/bombsb.htm http://www.loe.org/html/headlines/coffins.html www.realgoods.com http://arch.virginia.edu/Dean/ http://www.virginia.edu/~sustain/ http://www.arsdigita.com/services.html www.europeangreens.org http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/wr/story.html?s=v/nm/ 19981104/wr/paper__1.html www.seedsource.com http://www.energy.rochester.edu/cogen_europe/ http://www.ad.ic.ac.uk/estates/projects/chp/descrip.htm http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/msad26oct98_1.ht m http://www.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/global/global.html The Viridian Ranking System has been hand-created with a vintage fountain pen and fine art paper. Scars, flaws, and imperfections add character and are an inherent part of the product. jim@smallworks.com^^^^^^^^* jon@lasser.org^^^* rsewell@cix.compulink.co.uk^^^* rinesi@espacio.com.ar^^* LangiG@parl.gc.ca^* weasel@gothic.net^* richardd@reeseco.com* jonl@well.com^^^^^ dhlight@mcs.net^^^^ cthomas@10fold.com^^^ Ian.Griffin@Corp.Sun.COM^^^ Cooper409@aol.com^^ geert@xs4all.nl^^ pacoid@fringeware.com^^ rdm@test.legislate.com^^ robot@ultimax.com^^ SeJ@aol.com^^ tbyfield@panix.com^^ thack@design-inst.nl^^ TuckerV@frogdesign.com^^ ASKornheiser@prodigy.net^ Basilisk@mcione.com^ bobmorris@mediaone.net^ ccraig@ucsd.edu^ c.ted.ballou@intel.com^ dave@va.com.au^ dc@technomedia.com^ dlandry@rohan.sdsu.edu^ gagin@inter.net.ru^ gail@well.com^ ggg@well.com^ gordy@nytimes.com^ infinite@beaming.com^ jrc@well.com^ kallen@physics.ucsd.edu^ kaiser@acm.org^ klilly@neog.com^ mann@cse.unsw.edu.au^ melcher@unix.nets.com^ merlan@visa.com^ nehrlich@sfis.com^ philg@martigny.ai.mit.edu^ quest@inetarena.com^ roger@bayarea.net^ sblack@library.berkeley.edu^ steffen@eskimo.com^ steven@iisl.co.uk^ sdhurley@ican.net^ udhay@pobox.com^ WarrenE@aol.com^ wex@media.mit.edu^ whh@uclink4.berkeley.edu^ whiz@ricochet.net^ Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com) Type links and press at the OK prompt and you'll get those links in hypertext. It's at http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/links.html"}, {"response": 10, "author": "terry", "date": "Tue, Nov 10, 1998 (09:46)", "body": "I emailed bruces about adding this url to the list."}, {"response": 11, "author": "terry", "date": "Wed, Nov 11, 1998 (06:37)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Tue Nov 10 18:45:34 1998 Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 18:45:34 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List mailto://viridian@fringeware.com From: Bruce Sterling mailto://bruces@well.com Key concepts: Web links, link criticism, automoderating groupware Attention Conservation Notice: Although it is rather long, this Note may save some of your attention if you were bravely preparing to examine the long list of links in yesterday's Note 00012. Links: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/ http://www.thehub.com.au/~mitch/V-Notes/ViridianIndex.html http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/links.html http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/public/read/cultures/18 Entries in the \"Big Mike\" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif From: steffen@eskimo.com^* (Alex Steffen) Re: Viridian Note 00012 Bruce-- I took a quick stroll through the links you sent, and while many of them are of potential interest, I would personally find it much more useful if links were used to provide material to fuel conversations directly. For instance: \"Check out this OECD site. They're doing amazing things with taxes and resource pricing. Is there a way in which Viridian design could influence the way people think about taxes (on the principle of 'Make the Invisible Visible')?\" Then I could know better how (or if) I wanted to absorb this link into my info flow, which is already eating away at the thin levees of organization I've built to contain it. \"No Info-Dumping\" should be a Viridian principle. Let's have less information, elegant information, useful information, passionate information... not just more of it. I'd rather get a haiku than a dissertation any day. (((bruces remarks: I couldn't agree with you more, Alex, but who exactly is supposed to be \"mining the haikus\" out of all those info-dumps? Meaning and passion are not invisible goods. Your info-levees merely export your flood of data downstream to the rest of us.))) From: SeJ@aol.com^^* (Stefan Jones) It might be of benefit to give links various Viridian ratings: Import (5 - Astounding, of immense interest; 0 - Not worthless, but certainly not a priority). For instance, a RealTime archive of Rush Limbaugh, shaken by news of Honduran disaster, losing it and turning into a Green on-air, would rate a 5. Technical reports on a fuel cell, when other more accessible articles have already been listed, might rate a 1 or 0. Timeliness (5 - Ephemeral, read IMMEDIATELY, 0 - Will be there forever) For instance, http://www.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/global/global.h tml is a series of daily entries about the Buenos Aires global warming conference. It's rated a 4 because it will be around only a week or so. Aproposity (5 - Dead-on related to Viridian interests, 2 - Tangentially related, 0 - No direct relation to Viridianism) For instance http://slashdot.org rates a 0; it's a great site, but not apropos. On the other hand, if slashdot.org ran an article on mailing list \"automoderating groupware,\" you might mention it in a Viridian post. Commercial intent (5 - It's an unabashed plug, and perhaps suspect; 4 - It's got a good description of the product, plus a way to buy it; 0 - It's a fair and unbiased review.) Realgood.org might rate 4; old-time Whole Earth Reviews a 2. (((bruces remarks: this puts a cheering facade of mathematical rigor onto our problem, but we still require invisible munchkins to do our critical assessment work and supply us with passion and meaning. Viridians can expect to hear a great deal more in future about the concept of \"automoderating groupware.\" If \"automoderating groupware\" worked, the Pope-Emperor could put his feet up and save the world by remote control.))) From: jon@lasser.org^^^** (J Lasser) Re Note 00012: \"Someday it may be useful and constructive to have a list of official Viridian-approved links. Or will it?\" Of course it won't. Rather than Viridian-approved links, we need an annotated Viridian bibliography. Consider my friend Ed's site. http://homepage.usr.com/c/critconst/ \"The Critical Constant\" is a weekly net-based science publication different from most others. While most of its articles are summaries from _Science_News_ and _Science_, they're written for an intelligent audience which understands scientific concepts and methods, but has no time for the inner workings of the scientific community. Short, well-written, and with humorous headlines, \"The Critical Constant\" tells readers what they should know about the world of science. A sample, from issue 12 (archived at http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/4942/i ssue12.html): \"Scars on the sky may burn us alive! \"Jet airplanes leave contrails, those fluffy mini-clouds of unspeakable smoke and oxidized filth. These hang in the sky, either until they unite with water droplets and fall, or until they spark the formation of cirrus clouds. Cirrus clouds, for their part, warm the Earth. A preliminary estimate suggests that 0.1C to 0.3C of the last 30-odd years' warming might be du"}, {"response": 12, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Nov 12, 1998 (08:45)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Wed Nov 11 17:45:37 1998 Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 17:45:37 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00014 X-UIDL: 9f257fe7e8ce0551ad5cc12117ed79ff Key concepts: MIT Media Lab, Remembrance Agents, just-in- time information; context-aware applications; history-rich digital objects; link criticism Attention Conservation Notice: it's a way-cool, thought- provoking rap about some digital vaporware that doesn't actually exist in the marketplace Links: http://www.media.mit.edu/~rhodes/RA http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/ http://www.thehub.com.au/~mitch/V-Notes/ViridianIndex.html http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/links.html Entries in the \"Big Mike\" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html From: wex@media.mit.edu^* (Alan Wexelblat) X-NSA: radar terrorist supercomputer Qaddafi SEAL Team 6 Regarding Note 00012 and the link to: http://www.media.mit.edu/~rhodes/RA I figure I should comment on this one, since Brad Rhodes works in the office next to me. RA is the Remembrance Agent, an implementation of a class of software agents with interesting ideas/properties. The Remembrance Agent works as a form of computerized associative memory, a non-conventional information retrieval agent. The Remembrance Agent is long-lived, background-operating, and watches your current context. One of our Media Lab sponsors, British Telecom, has adapted it to work on PCs with Microsoft Word. In the version on the Web, it's an Emacs editor buffer in which you might be reading email, writing a paper, or whatever. The principle is the same. As you work, the Remembrace Agent watches your context and uses keywords extracted from that context (the current paragraph, the last page you read, etc.) to make queries against a database of information you've given it. This database could be your personal email files, the Science Citation Index, the CIA World Fact Book, etc. If there are any interesting hits from these queries, a small summary of them (usually 1 line) is shown in a separate window. You can ignore this window and keep working, or if something catches your eye, you can click on it to get the full text of the Remembrance hit. Another Remembrance Agent (not yet publicly released) is called Margin Notes. It operates as a Web proxy server. It annotates Web pages for you on the fly with potentially appropriate hits from your databases. These annotations are contained in small boxes placed on the right of the Web page, simulating the effect of \"notes in the margin\" of a paper-based book. Key phrases to remember for this work and other work in our group (including my own Footprints tools) are: just-in-time information; context-aware applications; history-rich digital objects. My own work on digital interaction history relates to the \"Avoid the Timeless, Embrace Decay\" idea. In a digital context, I believe it's erroneous to state that \"History Accumulates.\" Draw your own connections. (((bruces remarks: thank you, I will. In the next century it will be a self-evident truism that cyberspace rots. Software decays in an unconventional, nonphysical way, but it definitely decays and the social, commercial and technical consequences will become more and more painful and obvious with each passing year. Tools that emphasize software decay and digital historicality are of intense Viridian interest. A software agent that partially automates human historical awareness would be a particular Viridian darling == if it were ever out of beta.))) Alan Wexelblat MIT Media Lab - Intelligent Agents Group http://wex.www.media.mit.edu/people/wex/"}, {"response": 13, "author": "stacey", "date": "Mon, Nov 16, 1998 (16:09)", "body": "man, that is an impossible amount to scroll through while telnetting. (I mean physically imposible)"}, {"response": 14, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Nov 16, 1998 (21:06)", "body": "have you read read | more ?"}, {"response": 15, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Nov 16, 1998 (21:07)", "body": "Or r | more That will pause every screen."}, {"response": 16, "author": "terry", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (10:59)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Thu Nov 12 08:12:29 1998 Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 08:12:29 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00015 X-UIDL: 4e34d4cc61a1d77f6bc2483a49033e88 Key concepts: Weather Violence, permanent corporate brands, air conditioned clothes, genetic bamboo, reflective algae, orbiting solar mirrors, floating aircraft hubs Attention Conservation Notice: This is highly imaginative, wacky sci-fi speculation. It serenely ignores real-world problems in technical development, such as start-up costs, return on investment, technological lock-in, lawsuits, labor unions, and corporate dominance of the political process. It offers no hard evidence to back its wild claims; there's not so much as a single cocktail-napkin calculation here. Maybe it's irresponsible, but I dote on this kind of thinking, I find it spiritually refreshing. Links: http://www.well.com/user/mgoldh/ Entries in the \"Big Mike\" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html From: mgoldh@well.com* (Michael Goldhaber) Dear Viridian CEO Bruce, The whole thing is a terrific idea, I certainly hope it keeps going. A few points. The term \"Global Warming\" needs improvement. \"Global warming\" sounds much too comfortable. The core demographic of Viridian old people might imagine themselves spared the need to move to Florida. It's not mere \"warming.\" It would be better described as \"Global Storming\" or perhaps \"Violent Weather Crime.\" In this vein, explicit examples of \"Criminal Weather Violence\" might help. One small item from the 11/03/98 New York Times: the dense atmospheric smoke from burning rain forests causes more powerful, positively charged lightning, instead of the usual negatively charged variety. This violent lightning can result in more forest fires, hence more smoke. This might create a chain reaction of accelerating Weather Violence. Why get all excited about phantoms like the failure of Social Security in 2030, when all us 30-60 year olds have the exciting prospect of genuine calamity? Why favor evanescent design instead of Permanent Good Things? Corporations believe their brands to be eternal, and like nothing better than the idea of having their brand-name in the landscape forever. Permanent Good Things would definitely have cachet. A diamond is forever, as is a Coach bag, and a Brand X something-or- other. You could count on leaving this brand-named gizmo to your grandchildren because it will keep working so well and use such a tiny amount of energy! Evanescent things require energy to make, and then are gone. Not so cool! Banning the production of dumb books, as an earlier comment suggested, has zero appeal. Converting forest biomass to books is a damn sight better than burning the forest, because it sequesters CO2. Burning books, even ones you don't like, would be very bad. Likewise, plastics are a better use of fossil hydrocarbons than fuel. Here are some suitably far-out Viridian tech suggestions. Genetically engineer bamboo and grow it on-site as walls and supports. Fast-growing vines for roofs. Bioluminescent leaves for light at night. Direct photosynthetic conversion of sunlight into usable energy Sunlight is converted into infrared that is then trapped on our overheating planet. Increasing the earth's reflectance can diminish that problem. Engineer a fast-growing floating alga that would produce white foam over large sections of ocean, for instance. This alga would likely block life-giving light from the ocean depths and starve many surface seabirds, but those might be the least of our problems. You might filter the sun's rays somewhere between earth and sun. A number of sun-shields, each a mere hundred miles in circumference, placed in solar orbit might do the trick. The eventual goal is human ability to control global climate deliberately. Climate control may seen absurd, but climate control is also of course the implicit goal of the Kyoto Accord and Rio treaties. It's probably easier to award government contracts for giant orbital mirrorshades than it is to get everyone to burn less. The most fecund Viridian approaches find ways to gratify our desires with less fuel use. As we are now delighted to carry phones with us, walkman gadgets, portable computers and all the rest, let us go one simple step further and air-condition our clothes. This obviates the need for fuel to heat and cool large volumes of space. Furthermore, everyone can enjoy their favorite temperature without conflict. That leaves lighting and especially transportation as our fuel hogs. The former principle of \"Just-in-time production\" must be augmented by the proposed Viridian principle of \"Where-You-Are production.\" Make what you want, on the fly, from cheap materials at hand, using general-purpose tools powered by imported recipes and software. We want efficient, elegant means of travel. A"}, {"response": 17, "author": "terry", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (11:01)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Tue Nov 17 21:49:29 1998 Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 21:49:29 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00016: Bio-Refineries X-UIDL: 4d65d811e93d7dd67d981dca5310f761 Key concepts: bio-refineries, ethanol fuel, genetic technology, microorganisms, cellulose, garbage, CO2 Attention Conservation Notice: it's somewhat technical; there are speculative elements added; it's hard to prettify a report about big rusty factories eating garbage Links: none Entries in the \"Big Mike\" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike From: dhlight@mcs.net^^^* (David Light) David Light remarks: I thought a reminder of cheerful biotech trends was in order. The interesting thing about this recent New York Times ethanol article (as opposed to the 100 others I've skimmed over the last 20 years) is that serious things are being financed with (mostly) private capital at a time when oil prices are in the basement. \"Plant Will Make Fuel Oil From Agricultural Garbage\" By MATTHEW L. WALD (((bruces remarks: I have cut the living daylights out of Mr Wald's fine article and added a number of comments of my own.))) \"ENNINGS, Louisiana. The plant was opened in 1977 to refine crude oil into gasoline, but when that proved unprofitable, it was converted in 1981 to run on molasses, and then in 1987, on grain. Bankruptcy followed.\" (((The bankruptcy of *all* oil refineries is on the 21st century's agenda. We might replace them through clever design, or we might simply run out of oil, but oil refineries are goners either way. It's wise to consider alternative uses for all this refinery hardware.))) \"Now, with rust on its tanks and pipes and grass growing through the gravel on its paths, construction workers are converting it yet again, to make fuel alcohol from agricultural garbage. (...) The new owners of the plant here, BC International Corp., with a subsidy from the U.S. Energy Department and help from a genetically engineered, patented bacterium, hope they are on the cusp of a new era.\" (((Staggering back from the brink of the grave, a rust-eaten, Gothic, Cajun oil refinery becomes home of gene-spliced voodoo gumbo. It's a new era all right -- the Dawn of the Dead.))) \"'It is a bio-refinery,' said Stephen Gatto, president and chief executive of the company. (...) \"'The input costs are close to zero,' said Dan Reicher, assistant secretary of energy. 'In some cases they are less than zero, because people are paying to get rid of these materials.'\" (((The economics of \"less than zero\" costs have a nice Internet IPO feel to them == \"We're selling dollars for ninety cents each, and making it up on market share!\"))) \"And if it works, he said, the technology could also reduce the accumulation of gases in the atmosphere that are thought to cause climate change, and could lower smog. (((It'll be a sign of intellectual life in American journalism when this \"thought to cause\" phraseology finally vanishes. Yes, the climate is changing, and yes, gases are doing it. Cigarettes cause cancer. Politicians have sex. Let's move on.))) \"The plant here in this south-central Louisiana town will run on bagasse, a part of the sugar cane plant usually considered useless, as well as on rice hulls, a currently useless part of the rice plant. Later, it may digest sawdust as well.\" (((The American sugar industry is notorious for its price supports. Rice hulls and sawdust, however... as feedstock for a value-adding process, those are hard to beat. There are few nations on earth untroubled by rice hulls or sawdust. Or both.))) \"Around the country, energy experts have their eyes on clippings from suburban lawns, prairie grasses and other woody materials, as fuel for the new process. (...) In the current generation of ethanol plants, the fuel is the corn kernel; plants using the new technology could digest the cob and the stalk as well. (...)\" (((We should definitely keep a wary eye out for any entity that digests corn, plus its cobs, plus its stalks.))) \"These materials are made of cellulose, which contains large amounts of sugar, the basic ingredient required for alcohol production. But the sugar in cellulose is in a chemical form that traditional fermentation processes, which use yeast, cannot digest. (...) BC's plant uses a bacterium, KO11, also used in the pharmaceutical industry, to break down the sugars. \"The natural bacterium on which KO11 is based likes to eat sugars and produces a chemical called acetic acid. But then came gene splicing. Dr. Lonnie Ingram, a microbiologist at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, borrowed four genes from another organism, Zymomonas mobilis, to make the bacterium produce alcohol instead. \"Around the country, researchers are working with Z. mobilis to find other approaches, but BC I"}, {"response": 18, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Nov 18, 1998 (17:58)", "body": "arrggh! stop posting the huge ones Paul! just gimme the URL! (Thanks for the info though!)"}, {"response": 19, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Nov 19, 1998 (08:56)", "body": "Since when can't you handle a huge one?"}, {"response": 20, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Nov 19, 1998 (12:58)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Wed Nov 18 15:32:29 1998 Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 15:32:29 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00017: Viridian Aphorisms X-UIDL: e267adef767aa80bbc2df207633fec85 Key concepts: aphorisms, slogans; Viridian Ranking Attention Conservation Notice: Though aphorisms are laudably small in bandwidth, they can occupy shocking amounts of attention, perhaps haunting you for life. Links: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/ (See Note 00011 for details on the\"Big Mike\" Viridian Design Contest. See Note 00002 for details on the Viridian Ranking System.) Source: Most of these aphorisms come from THE VIKING BOOK OF APHORISMS by W. H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger, first assembled in 1962. Entries in the \"Big Mike\" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/ http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades http://www.57thstreet.com/viridian/ ****************** VIRIDIAN APHORISMS ****************** (((bruces remarks: we Viridians won't have time to accumulate our own wisdom of the ages, but we can certainly take the wisdom already to hand and put our own vivifying spin on it. \"An epoch doesn't so much reinvent itself as reimagine its heritage\" -- STERLING))) It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes. FONTENELLE A historian is a prophet in reverse. SCHEGEL Persistent prophesy is a familiar way of assuring the event. GISSING Our ignorance of history makes us vilify our own age. FLAUBERT Historical textbooks always seem to make three claims about the era they are dealing with: it was a period of change; it was essentially a transitional epoch; and the middle classes went on rising. EAGLETON Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parents. It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the open. WHITEHEAD The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. FORSTER Progress is the mother of problems. CHESTERTON The obscurest epoch is today. STEVENSON >From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned. KANT Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in the world. PAVESE Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh. VALERY To know oneself is to foresee oneself; to foresee oneself amounts to playing a part. VALERY How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there any danger of their coming true. LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH Among all human constructions the only ones that avoid the dissolving hands of time are castles in the air. DE ROBERTO (((More to come. People who send us a good Viridian aphorism will earn a chevron. bruces))) **************** VIRIDIAN RANKING **************** The Viridian Ranking System has been hand-created with a vintage fountain pen and fine art paper. Scars, flaws, and imperfections add character and are an inherent part of the product. jon@lasser.org^^^** rsewell@cix.compulink.co.uk^^^** jim@smallworks.com^^^^^^^^* dhlight@mcs.net^^^^^* rinesi@espacio.com.ar^^* SeJ@aol.com^^* steffen@eskimo.com^^* wex@media.mit.edu^^* whiz@ricochet.net^^* LangiG@parl.gc.ca^* weasel@gothic.net^* hinne@spaceways.de* jzero@onramp.net* mgoldh@well.com* pinknoiz@pinknoiz.com* r1ddl3r@bp13.u.washington.edu* richardd@reeseco.com* tux@powerbase-alpha.com* jonl@well.com^^^^^ Ian.Griffin@Corp.Sun.COM^^^^ Cooper409@aol.com^^^ cthomas@10fold.com^^^ tor@araneum.dk^^^ bobmorris@mediaone.net^^ bperry@shore.net^^ geert@xs4all.nl^^ pacoid@fringeware.com^^ pjd@cne.gmu.edu^^ rdm@test.legislate.com^^ robot@ultimax.com^^ tbyfield@panix.com^^ thack@design-inst.nl^^ TuckerV@frogdesign.com^^ ASKornheiser@prodigy.net^ Basilisk@mcione.com^ ccraig@ucsd.edu^ c.ted.ballou@intel.com^ dave@va.com.au^ dc@technomedia.com^ dlandry@rohan.sdsu.edu^ gagin@inter.net.ru^ gail@well.com^ ggg@well.com^ gordy@nytimes.com^ infinite@beaming.com^ jrc@well.com^ kallen@physics.ucsd.edu^ kaiser@acm.org^ katie@wtp.net^ kirk@mcelhearn.com^ klilly@neog.com^ Matt@MediaServ.com^ mann@cse.unsw.edu.au^ melcher@unix.nets.com^ merlan@visa.com^ mwiik@brysonweb.com^ nehrlich@sfis.com^ philg@martigny.ai.mit.edu^ quest@inetarena.com^ roger@bayarea.net^ rthieme@thiemeworks.com^ sblack@library.berkeley.edu^ shassinger@dev.tivoli.com^ steven@iisl.co.uk^ sdhurley@ican.net^ StJude@aol.com^ tdav@wam.umd.edu^ tenev@digbody.dux.ru^ udhay@pobox.com^ viridian@access.spring.net^ WarrenE@aol.com^ whh@uclink4.berkeley.edu^"}, {"response": 21, "author": "TIM", "date": "Thu, Nov 19, 1998 (13:01)", "body": "I think that you ought to open a new conference for this viridian list stuff. It's taking this one over."}, {"response": 22, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Nov 19, 1998 (13:02)", "body": "Well we could unlink it from cultures, where it now lives."}, {"response": 23, "author": "terry", "date": "Sun, Nov 22, 1998 (08:06)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Sat Nov 21 17:27:19 1998 Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 17:27:19 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00018: the Viridian Model Family X-UIDL: 3ffe4a80ccfc9ea6f689e63e3b526b0f Key concepts: propaganda, self-referentiality, model family Attention Conservation Notice: Propaganda theory, and pretty good theory, too. Lacks specifics. Links: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/ Entries in the \"Big Mike\" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/ http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades http://www.57thstreet.com/viridian/ http://www.ioc.net/~bini/bigmike.htm From: steffen@eskimo.com^^^** (Alex Steffen) Bruce: Big Mike is cool. I'm personally eager to have a microbe mascot gracing the many consumer products of which I have need. However, to be serious about propaganda, we need an Everyman-Hero figure, and, especially, a Model Family. I once did a college paper analyzing common propaganda motifs regarding lifestyle and culture. The \"model family\" is a major propaganda motif because it works. People are absolutely dying to be told what their lives ought to be like. This comment is not meant to asset my own moral or intellectual superiority. It's human nature. We learn by modeling the behavior of others, not just in childhood, but throughout our lives. In the absence of strong models in our direct experience, media supplies them. There's an interesting intensification of this process going on in contemporary culture, for three reasons. First, we have many more fundamental choices than our recent ancestors, in the cultural, career and consumer worlds. It's harder to make up our minds. Second, our systems of aesthetic judgement and moral instruction have broken down. Who sets the standards for artistic beauty? In 1900 you probably could have named ten people in charge of the job. Third, there is intense propaganda competition between companies providing lifestyle accoutrements. They compete so intensely to advertise their way into our worldview that the concept of a noncommercialized human life has disappeared completely. In short, people are starved for a vision of the good life. Viridianism could give this to them, flat out. However, we live in an age of irony. A frontal, 20th- century-style propaganda assault (like those used by the Nazis, Stalin and Henry Ford) won't work. We can't simply proclaim products to be cool. People have to be let in on the joke, allowed to realize that they are participating in a social mores change movement. What's cool about Viridian luxury is not just that it's more beautiful, fun and classy than the way that mere proles live. Not is it about the heady rush of self-love you get by being a good eco-citizen Earthling. Viridianism about understanding sustainable design, fashion trends, and propaganda as a participant as well as a consumer. You become both subject and observer, in a healthily ironic and self-referential way. So the Viridian Model Family, unlike the model family of the New Deal agricultural agitprop films, is not merely the symbolic vanguard of a better way of life. They understand how odd and amusing this concept must be. They crack jokes to the camera as we learn how to live our self-aware, hedonistic eco-lifestyle. We respond in real time and craft the script as we go. Alex Steffen (steffen@eskimo.com) (((bruces remarks: Point taken. So who are these people, and what do they look like? How do they feel, and what do they mean?)))"}, {"response": 24, "author": "terry", "date": "Wed, Nov 25, 1998 (06:54)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Tue Nov 24 11:55:28 1998 Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 11:55:28 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00019: Viridian Domains of X-UIDL: fb4db095c088336c75e3174e33235b90 Interest Key concepts: Viridian categories, Viridian internal politics, automoderating groupware, anarchy, symbols, Burning Man, Los Alamos National Laboratory Urban Security Project, disaster response, art projects Attention Conservation Notice: Mark Beam, who was the host for the first Viridian speech at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, is getting a few various matters off his chest here. Some knowledge of the San Francisco art scene might aid reader comprehension. >From infinite@beaming.com^* (Mark Beam) Links: http:www.burningman.com http://geont1.langov/urbansecurity.htm http://www.wired.com/news/technology/story/16077.html http://www.beaming.com Entries in the \"Big Mike\" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/ http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades http://www.57thstreet.com/viridian/ http://www.ioc.net/~bini/bigmike.htm Mark Beam writes: ((and bruces comments in triple parentheses))): As the proud host for the formal physical launch of the Viridian Movement and the eloquent proclamation documented in Note 00001, I offer these first observations. Viridian postings should be categorized for future reference. Viridians with certain disciplinary expertise should gather items of wisdom within a particular domain. A disciple of economics, of energy, of networks, a minister of propaganda, etc., could supplement the ideas arising from the list by adding a more comprehensive approach.. Here design becomes crucial, political and dangerous. (((Absolutely, brother.))) Key junctures that link Viridians together could grow future self-organizing limbs. To do so without some form of human delegation may be possible, but would seem to require initial filtering, sophisticated object oriented databases and search engines. (((Even more absolutely! Bring on the all-wise automoderating robot! While you're at it, let's run it for public office.))) Disciples or ministers, recorders etc. would not entitled to any political capital within the movement, other than true Viridian currency == Viridian reputation capital. This top down approach would be balanced by having Viridians assigning emphasis/aesthetic guidance in the particular areas both in the formation of categories and in discovery by example (bottom-up). (((It sounds so plausible, poetic, and beautiful, doesn't it? ))) Regarding visually effective design principles criticized in Note 00005, I am reminded of Larry Harvey's two basic principles of spontaneous human organizationm established over years of experiments in the Nevada desert. 1) Distribute people randomly, and they will spontaneously generate some order, first by forming circles...not squares or triangles... but circles around a point of interest. 2) Points of interest (attention) are created by a) Movement of axis in space- i.e. hold something up high, (a mobile?), or b) Movement of space around axis- (i.e. a mobile?). What Viridian icon do we hold up high or put in motion? (((How about Larry Harvey himself? But wait a minute == I've actually met this \"self-organizing anarchist\" Larry Harvey, and as the Pope-Emperor of the Burning Man festival, Larry works harder at organization than anybody I've ever met.))) What does it mean to hold something up high, or to put something in motion in Viridian terms? What does this mean in other less networked, but high CO2 emitting countries? Our visual icon should have global appeal. Existing infrastructure to leverage: The Los Alamos National Laboratory has created the Urban Security Project, using centralized computer systems to help cities respond to earthquakes, chemical or biological attacks, and other unforeseen disasters. (((Now you're talking! We need to rent one of those Urban Security babies and put it in charge of the mailing list.))) The researchers are currently looking at what happens in these emergency situations to transportation, energy distribution, weather, infrastructure, water distribution, ecosystems, economy, geology and demographics. (((See, it's got the problem all broken-down into convenient Viridian categories already!))) The program is designed to help cities anticipate problems in their emergency response systems and make changes to improve their overall readiness. (((Security systems like this are of intense Viridian interest. What are \"cities,\" if not the people in the cities? Systems of this sort should be promulgated worldwide and made publicly available as a matter of course. Every environmental hazard in one's own environment should be made visible to you at the click of a web button. Not "}, {"response": 25, "author": "udhay", "date": "Thu, Nov 26, 1998 (03:07)", "body": "Are all the people on the list at fringeware here as well ?"}, {"response": 26, "author": "terry", "date": "Sat, Nov 28, 1998 (17:19)", "body": "No, Uday, I think they are spread around the country. Thanks for checking in, hope you check back!"}, {"response": 27, "author": "terry", "date": "Tue, Dec  1, 1998 (00:49)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Mon Nov 30 21:35:30 1998 Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 21:35:30 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00021: The World Is Becoming X-UIDL: 644167522b02ca5741290a1ca28b0c2f Uninsurable, Part 1 Key concepts: Weather violence, insurance costs Attention Conservation Notice: Grimly accurate, can cause feelings of despair; comes in multiple parts; is mostly about insurance, one of the world's dullest topics Links: http://www.munichre.com/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/warnings/waterworld Entries in the \"Big Mike\" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/ http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades http://www.57thstreet.com/viridian/ http://www.ioc.net/~bini/bigmike.htm http://www.pcnet.com/~thallad/mike.htm The \"Big Mike\" contest will end in one week. Source: Associated Press wire service, Austin American Statesman page A7. Saturday, November 28, 1998 \"World's Weather Losses Will Set Record This Year\" \"Much damage is human-inflicted, report says, citing deforestation as key factor\" by Donna Abu-Nasr, Associated Press \"WASHINGTON == Violent weather has cost the world a record $89 billion this year, more money than was lost from weather-related disasters in all of the 1980s, and researchers in a study released Friday blame human meddling for much of it. \"Preliminary estimates put losses from storms, floods, droughts and fires for the first 11 months of the year 48 percent higher than the previous one-year record of more than $60 billion in 1996. \"This year's damage was also far ahead of the $55 billion in losses for the entire decade of the 1980s. Even when adjusted for inflation, that decade's losses, at $82.7 billion, still fall short of the first 11 months of this year. \"In addition to the material losses, the report said, the disasters have killed an estimated 32,000 people and displaced 300 million == more than the population of the United States. \"The study is based on estimates from the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research group, and Munich Re, a reinsurer based in Frankfurt, Germany, that writes policies to protect insurance companies from the risk of massive claims that might put them out of business. \"The report says a combination of deforestation and climate change has caused this year's most severe disasters, among them Hurricane Mitch, the flooding of China's Yangtze River and Bangladesh's most extensive flood of the century. (...) The most severe 1998 disasters listed in the report include Hurricane Mitch, the deadliest Atlantic storm in 200 years, which has caused more than 10,000 deaths in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador, and caused damage estimated at $4 billion in Honduras and $1 billion in Nicaragua. (...) Central American nations have experienced some of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, losing from 2 percent to 4 percent of their remaining forest cover each year, said the study. \"The costliest disaster of 1998, according to the report, was the flooding of the Yangtze River in the summer. It killed more than 3,000 people, dislocated about 230 million people, and incurred $30 billion in losses. (...) \"Figures include infrastructure losses and crops but not long-term effects such as increased health costs and environmental damage. Prices in 1998 dollars.\" Bruce Sterling remarks: This is, needless to say, a remarkably grim report. The year is not yet over, but the evil weather of 1998 has already caused more global havoc than was created in the entire 1980s. Worse yet, it's a fifty percent jump from a mere two years ago. The trend for two years hence, and ten years hence, is anything but reassuring. Still, it's pleasant to have some stark facts and figures on the subject of just how badly off we are. \"A decade's worth of weather damage in a single year\" -- that is a useful and provocative soundbite. This is not armageddon. We will not be suddenly rendered extinct because of our misdeeds with C02. Thirty- two thousand dead people are a remarkably modest number of dead, considering that the planet boasts about 6 billion people now. Even a country with the limited organizational resources of China lost a mere 3,000 lives when floods displaced a full 230,000,000. Even $89 billion dollars is a modest sum compared to the wealth destruction entailed in the Asian financial crisis. But flooding is expensive. Hence the concentrated interest of Munich Re, the German insurance group. Munich Re were first brought to my attention by David Light (dhlight@mcs.net^^^^^*). Munich Re, also known as Munchener Ruck, would seem to be a remarkably interesting enterprise, for an insurance firm. In the next Viridian Note, we will examine some of Munich Re's analytical tools, and the company's expert conclusions on the subject of gl"}, {"response": 28, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Dec  3, 1998 (07:06)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Wed Dec 2 21:39:25 1998 Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 21:39:25 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00022: The World Is Becoming X-UIDL: 74334706074459f5132b0d56c78f5e99 Uninsurable, Part 2 Key concepts: Weather violence, insurance costs Attention Conservation Notice: Highly speculative; is over 1,600 words long; is still about insurance, which is still one of the dullest topics in the world Links: http://www.munichre.com/ Entries in the \"Big Mike\" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/viridian/logos.html http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/ http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades http://www.57thstreet.com/viridian/ http://www.ioc.net/~bini/bigmike.htm http://www.pcnet.com/~thallad/mike.htm As we were stating earlier in Viridian Note 00021, the German insurance company \"Munich Re\" is in the business of assessing weather violence. I'll let The Times of London address some of MunichRe's financial conclusions: Source: The Times of London, November 9, 1998 \"Climate disaster map pinpoints 'no-go' areas for insurers By Nick Nuttall, Environment Correspondent in Buenos Aires \"Vast areas of the world are becoming uninsurable as global warming triggers devastating and costly rises in sea levels, as well as droughts, floods and increasingly violent storms. \"Experts fear that some nations, especially those in the Caribbean, parts of Asia and the Pacific, face greater economic hardship. They believe insurance cover, vital for attracting inward investment to develop tourist resorts and protect homes and businesses, will become prohibitively high. In some areas it may disappear entirely as insurers protect themselves from multibillion- pound claims. \"The increasing concern (...) has been heightened by the first map to pinpoint regions where natural and man- made climate change will hit hardest. \"The climate disaster map, which is circulating among the world's major insurance firms, has been compiled by scientists and researchers at Munich Re, one of the world's largest re-insurance companies. \"Dr Anselm Smolka, of Munich Re, said the map, which couples the impacts of climatic events caused by El Nino with those predicted to result from more atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, was plotted using information from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and centres such as the Max Planck Institute. \"Dr Julian Salt, a disaster assessment expert with the Loss Prevention Council, which advises the Association of British Insurers, said yesterday that the new research was 'concentrating the minds' of insurers worldwide. \"'It shows where there is increased risk on top of all the natural hazards. We are fast approaching the situation where some parts of the world are becoming uninsurable,' he said. The map shows where rising sea levels and more frequent storms may swamp islands in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and the Pacific and where reductions in rainfall, such as over the grain-growing areas of the US, can be expected. (...) \"Dr Salt said that publicly insurers will reject suggestions that insurance may be removed or premiums will rise. Privately, however, these 'politically charged' options are being considered, he said. \"He said that in countries such as the Maldives, vulnerable to increased storms and rising sea levels, global warming could affect tourism, the primary industry. \"Andrew Dlugolecki, a key member of a UN Environment Programmes insurers' initiative, said there was an urgent need for new, imaginative ways of covering vulnerable regions and nations. \"'I am quite certain that there are some areas which will be unprotectable and may disappear. A major problem is brewing,' he said.\" ********** Bruce Sterling remarks: I hope the august Times will forgive me for quoting their remarkable article at some length. We Viridians need not be overly concerned as to exactly how many billions of dollars are \"lost.\" Financial projections are very soft and elastic, basically irrelevant to our interests. Furthermore, we don't know how quickly the seas will rise. Nobody does. Viridian central interests are different: what does this mean, and how will it feel? How will this experience change the twentieth century's outdated vision of human life on Earth? It would presumably help to have a good long look at the disaster maps. Since they are designed for insurance agents, they are almost certain to be ugly graphic disasters, but I've ordered one anyway. I'm eager for a personal view. For those who would like to join me, here is a Teutonically thorough price list, direct from Munich Re. \"If you are interested in our publication 'World Map of Natural Hazards' we can provide you several products: \"Special publication with catastrophe catalogue and folding map, Price DM 20 \"Wall map (122 cm x 86 cm) with specia"}, {"response": 29, "author": "terry", "date": "Tue, Dec  8, 1998 (12:03)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Mon Dec 7 19:48:57 1998 Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 19:48:57 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00025 X-UIDL: 7e2174b69e51c1e8e6c74577abcb39fc Key concepts: energy policy, German Greens, Munich futurism, Soviet nuclear plants Attention Conservation Notice: It's about German politics. It might use terms such as \"Forschungsgruppe Zukunftsfragen.\" Links: http://www.gruene.de/ Entries in the \"Big Mike\" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/viridian/logos.html http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/ http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades http://www.57thstreet.com/viridian/ http://www.ioc.net/~bini/bigmike.htm http://www.pcnet.com/~thallad/mike.htm http://www.golden.net/~eli/viridian/ http://ucsub.colorado.edu/~smcginni/big-mike/big-mike.html and http://www.karmanaut.com/viridian/big.mike/ Attention warning: 3D \"Big Mike\" animation may confuse some browsers. From: hoechst.forum@lrz.uni-muenchen.de* (Doug Merrill) Doug Merrill remarks: How Viridian are the German Greens? The short answer is, unfortunately, not very. The German Greens, while certainly enjoying a taste of power, and providing Europe with its only interesting foreign minister, are coming face to face with real power, as your remarks on the non-phaseout of Swedish nuclear plants point out (Note 00020). So far, real power is winning. Real power is winning in some cases because it represents responsibility, common sense and the will of the people. Example: keeping Germany in NATO. Real power also wins where it merely represents common sense and the will of the people. Example: not making gasoline in Germany cost three times as much as any other country in Europe. And in some cases, real power is winning from the will of the people alone. Example: no speed limits on the autobahn. One of the reasons that the Greens are not very Viridian is that large chunks of them are still quite technophobic. At the grass roots level, many German Greens believe that technology is inherently dehumanizing, and they pretend that they can just say 'nein danke' to the whole thing. Greens are good at picket signs, and they're getting better at parliaments, but they're not going to invent anything that changes the world. Furthermore, after so many years in opposition, they're much better at stopping things than advancing them. A Viridian era needs more. There are, however, some good signs. The Greens are showing more discipline than their industrial-era coalition partners. The Greens are willing to take on sacred cows. And the Greens are showing more signs of learning than the other parties. All of these traits give them Viridian potential. At the level of specific policies, however, expect progress to be slow. Changing a third of Germany's energy sources in eight years is ambitious, headline-grabbing, and almost certainly impossible. This is a country that took the better part of ten years to extend permissible shopping hours by ninety minutes. Germany has just significantly modified its citizenship laws for the first time since a Kaiser ruled in Berlin. Besides, the only thing Germany would replace nuclear power with right now is more carbon-based fuel. (It's one thing for the Swedes to buy wind power from the Danes; it's quite another trying to run the world's third largest economy on windmills.) Another test of Green strength would be phasing out subsidies to coal miners. German taxpayers support a tidy living for German miners, paying lots of marks to keep up an industry that's both loss-making and polluting. But miners are heroes to social democrats, so the Greens probably lose this one as well. Germany will probably introduce some form of 'eco- tax' this coming year, probably a consumption tax on fuels somewhat like the BTU tax that died such a painful death in the US. An eco-tax has become fashionable in the very German duty- and guilt-ridden sense. It's not attractive, it's simply understood in the orthodoxy that this is something you have to do. This may be politically effective, but I find it unappealing. (I'm also already paying 45% taxes on a researcher's salary, so the notion of any further taxation offends me terribly.) Guilt doesn't strike me as very Viridian. Those are the key points. I'll see if I can get a digital picture of Munich Re for you, to go along with those sexy articles on insurance. best, Doug Merrill Research Group on the Global Future Center for Applied Policy Research University of Munich hoechst.forum@lrz.uni-muenchen.de Bruce Sterling remarks: How very useful and interesting. Thank you very much. Now, for further insight on the European energy policy scene, we quote a recent installment of the column \"Europe This Week\" by veteran British journalist Martin Walker. Source: Manchester Guardian Weekly. November 29, 1998, page 6. \"To begin wi"}, {"response": 30, "author": "terry", "date": "Sun, Dec 13, 1998 (21:02)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Sat Dec 12 12:17:16 1998 Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 12:17:16 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00028: Viridian Gardening X-UIDL: ca936c2890a92a1b6459f50ec175df9f Key concepts: Gardens; aging populations; Viridian Inactivism; horticulture; allotment movement; urban decay; xeriscaping Attention Conservation Notice: The term \"Gardening\" may be too dull to engage anyone's interests. Presumptuous and patronising assumptions regarding the tastes of the elderly. Elements of fiddling while Rome burns. Links: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/xpz05/ http://www.the-hastings.demon.co.uk/herenow/here20/5.html http://www.slug-sf.org/ http://www.gn.apc.org/rts/sp'96/newsp.htm#G15.7.96 Danny O'Brien remarks: Gardening is an obvious Viridian pursuit. It's ephemeral; it is a labour-intensive act that somehow manages to convince its practicers that they are relaxing; and anyone who has lovingly tended a compost heap has truly grasped the principle of \"Embrace Decay.\" For sundry reasons, gardening is also a massive attention sink for retirees. Could gardening be tuned even further to comply with Viridian principles? The ALLOTMENT MOVEMENT in the UK is a political tradition dating back to the enclosure acts of the 19th century. After protests by the suffering working class, concerned politicians allocated small patches of land that could be rented cheaply by dispossessed commoners. These smallholdings still exist today == they're generally hidden away in urban areas, are around 30- 300 square yards per plot, and are supplied with water and supplies for growing foodstuffs. They've recently enjoyed a boom that tracks the ageing of the British population. http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/xpz05/ http://www.the-hastings.demon.co.uk/herenow/here20/5.html (good Viridian URL, that) Encouraging gardening to spill out from the private gardens of the gated aged, and into small micro-plots scattered across urban environments, would provide a number of advantages: * Conspicuous conservation * Personal stewardship of public space, which looks to be a Viridian meme * Prevents the isolation of the affluent, powerful older age groups * Useful as a reinforcer of climate indicators: a sparse network of small plots, provided with enough amateur sensors (human eyes and ears, even), would provide a useful set of local pollution sensors as well as re-enforcing climate change indicators to its patrons. As it is, both the allotment movement and the nearest equivalent I can discover in the US, the Urban Gardening movement ( http://www.slug-sf.org/) , suffer from one major limitation. They're both, currently, chokingly dull. The whole topic stinks of granola. May I suggest an investigation into the possibilities of a mutated Allotment movement: namely, Guerrilla Gardening (alternate titles: Biosquatting, Random Acts of Forestation). This would involve small groups of Viridian non-activists selecting a disused location, and targetting it as their \"allotment.\" The organisation of the gardeners would be as a paramilitary cell: individual members of the cell would not necessarily know the identities of other members, nor how many plots were in existence. Tasks would be minimal: work would be shared between enough inactivists for it to demand little, and degrade gracefully if apathy killed off a chunk of the participants. All they would see is that, for minimal involvement, an area of the public landscape would go from a barren lot to blooming greenery. And, of course, with some suitable appearance of \"Big Mike,\" the area would also become an advertisement for the Viridian movement. The unofficial tending of a public space may well lend itself to decentralised management, with limited involvement by the forces of law-enforcement, while nonetheless carrying the cachet of an illicit prank. ********************************* Why \"Guerrilla Gardening\" is Not Viridian ********************************* The gardening instinct among senior citizens is already super-served by their own fine gardens. \"Guerrilla\" element unashamedly stolen from youth movements ( http://www.gn.apc.org/rts/sp'96/newsp.htm#G15.7.96) . The tacit encouragement of unrestricted bioengineering may be contrary to Viridian precepts. Recreational fiddling with fringes of urban ecology may be poor use of time and attention. The revitalisation of the urban center is a \"problem\" that may have already bottomed-out in developed countries. Developing countries may lack the necessary affluent, aged, middle class. It might be better to explore other potential horticultural extensions. (((Bruce Sterling remarks: I concur that gardening sounds mighty dull, but trying to jazz it up by making gardening illegal merely attracts the kind of sad yahoo who is reflexively fascinated by anything illegal. If anyone is going to form militarized cells and throw weed seeds around, it ought to be *cops and soldiers.* Cops in partic"}, {"response": 31, "author": "terry", "date": "Tue, Dec 15, 1998 (21:03)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Mon Dec 14 22:59:27 1998 Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 22:59:27 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00029: The Interfund X-UIDL: f29b7f334149a7b5bbd38b60a646d8fe Key concepts: art movements, Internet, reputation economics, arts grants, Europe, Interfund Attention Conservation Notice: It's not about Viridians. It's about a group of European digital artists with a strange entrepreneurial scheme. Writers' original language not English. Written in postmodernese. Of interest mostly to net.organizational specialists. There's a manifesto tacked on at the end. Entries in the Viridian \"Fungal Typography\" Contest: http://members.aol.com/stjude/ (((Parenthetical comments by bruces@well.com))) Source: Syndicate list; Xchange list; nettime list; Rasa Smite Diana McCarty Eric Kluitenberg [Interfund] - Create Your Own Solutions Interfund meeting @ Xchange Unlimited, Riga November 29, 1998. During the Xchange Unlimited Baltic New Media Culture Festival in Riga, a meeting was held to discuss the creation of the Interfund. The participants were Diana McCarty, Rasa Smite, Manu Luksch, Pit Schultz, Eric Kluitenberg, and others. * What is the Interfund? The Interfund does not actually exist yet. (((Beta pre-release! I love it already!))) The Interfund should be many things at the same time, a self funding project, a tool to create open spaces for sovereign experimentation in the digital networks. Neither a network nor a community, it should be a means for collaboration and exchange. (((Fabulous! It sounds divine!))) The Interfund was envisioned in Riga as a co-operative, decentralised, non-located, virtual but real, self-support structure for small and independent initiatives in the field of culture and digital media. (((Sheer poetry! I couldn't have said this better myself!))) What follows is a summary of the ideas that were discussed and the problems raised in connection with the possible shape of the Interfund. (((Uh-oh...))) First of all, the Interfund is an idea to create better ways to access funding and create funding possibilities of itself. The Interfund can also act as a redistributor of financial resources from the affluent enclaves to the impecunious. Funding and financing, however, is only one of the tools the Interfund will employ to achieve its aims. (((Wait a minute -- you're giving away *free money* in your movement, and you expect this to be just *one* of your problems?))) The Interfund should rather act as a \"Resource Pool\", shared by each of its members. These resources encompass a wide range of tools: * knowledge & know-how * skills (a.o. translations in local languages) * software * open source development * access to servers, especially for streaming media in the net * reserving bandwidth and protocols (for example the registration for web multicasting, domain names, etc.) * support in dealing with official structures; = finding appropriate funding for projects = visa requirements = official letters of support, both in English and the local language = official invitations = official endorsements; * access to surveys and information sources about activities in the field of culture and digital media. One practical way in which actual funding might work is that the Interfund creates its own capital to give micro-funding to individual projects. The organiser can then claim that the project in question is supported financially by the Interfund (complete with a letter of acceptance by the \"board\" of the fund). Funding may be as little as US$ 10 for a project, but can help to create interest from official institutions and structures. (((A really clever idea here. They want to game the international art world by using a tiny amount of actual capital to create impressive, net-based, Interfund-conveyed, reputation capital. \"Hi, I'm from Riga and I was sent here by Interfund! Look at this gold-plated, 256-color *Letter of Acceptance!*\" \"Really?! Wow! Let me see what the conference can do for you in the way of picking up that hotel tab!\"))) Moreover the actual amount of funding by the Interfund need not be specified in all cases. (((The tactic's even more effective when you boldly lie about it!))) The possibilities for acquiring donations (not sponsorship) to extend the financial basis of the Interfund will be an area of attention. (((Boy, I bet it will! Attention galore! We call that stuff \"accounting\" here in the USA.... So, are you bold pirates taking Yankee funds? The Pope-Emperor is totally down with your daring scheme! I got one of our goofy new 20- dollar bills for you, right here!))) (...) (((considerable pious Euro arts/culture jabber deleted))) * Form: Though the Interfund will not have a fixed physical location, it should become a real virtual organisation (it is not a simulation). For this purpose a letterhead and design for the Interfund will be developed, as well as a web-site, e-mail address, a logo.... and... (a local Latvian spe"}, {"response": 32, "author": "terry", "date": "Wed, Dec 16, 1998 (19:52)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Wed Dec 16 15:19:37 1998 Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 15:19:37 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00030: The View From Ecotopia X-UIDL: e5c06c0962b15a07fe19ed8e2abbca0a Key concepts: Weather violence, clean energy, industrial policy, Washington State, media coverage Attention Conservation Notice: It's about regional American politics and state-centered industrial policy. Grim assessment, can cause feelings of despair. Direct from Wonkville. Entries in the Viridian \"Fungal Typography\" Contest: http://members.aol.com/stjude/ http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/ Sources: Seattle Times, Thursday, December 3, 1998; patmazza@teleport.com^^^* (Patrick Mazza) Patrick Mazza is senior writer-researcher for Atmosphere Alliance, an environmental/industrial policy group based in Olympia, Washington. The book NINE NATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, by journalist and urban theorist Joel Garreau, once described Mr. Mazza's area of the continent as \"Ecotopia.\" Green political sentiment is powerful in the Pacific Northwest, and better yet, they have big, sophisticated, cybernetic industries that aren't tied at the wrists and ankles to smokestacks. Mr. Mazza has some interesting insights and approaches to offer us. (((Parenthetical comments by bruces@well.com.))) Patrick Mazza remarks: The European insurance companies have been out in front on climate change, while we have not heard much from U.S. companies. Reason? Federal flood insurance. Here, we socialize the losses, insure the uninsurable, so they can build again on their floodplains. (((\"America: More Socialist Than Europe.\" Call the newspapers.))) Here, in the heart of the problem, the USA, the source of 1/4 of the world's greenhouse gases, our wealth masks the consequences. The feedback loop does not connect. It does in places such as Bangladesh and Central America, where the perception that this is a stable, safe world is long gone, if it ever was there in the first place. But it is not the perceptions of those people that count. It is the perceptions of the people here, in the insulated rich world. (((Well put, though it's not our \"perceptions\" that are emitting the carbon dioxide. Mostly, it's our wall-plugs and gas pedals.))) So what will break the spell? Perhaps an Andrew, Hugo, Mitch and Camille hitting the US mainland in one year. Perhaps a several year drought in the Midwest that, as it did in the late '80s, reduces US grain production below consumption. Grain reserves around 1995 were at a record low, and accelerating global population keeps pressuring them. (((Last time the carbon-dioxide spell was broken was during the Great Depression, when there was a sustained dip in CO2 emissions because everybody was broke and in the streets. If we are enduring biblical catastrophes and famines of the kind you are suggesting here, we're not going to be sustaining today's booming consumer economy. That will be over. We'll be living in a post-catastrophe emergency regime. Paradise for eco-regulators maybe, but no picnic for the rest of us.))) The new stats for the 97-98 El Nino are $33 billion in losses (something like 1.3 percent of Gross World Product), 20,000 deaths, 120,000 injuries and 5 million displaced. It caused apocalyptic fires in Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico and Florida, droughts and killer heat waves in Texas and Africa, monstrous flooding in Peru. Sometimes in the media reports the El Nino connection was made. Sometimes it wasn't. But only rarely was the possible connection between El Nino and global warming drawn. There is a crucial disconnect, a place the feedback loop is being broken. The media holds a critical responsibility for alerting the public to the connection between the weather disruptions it reports and the probable connection of the overall pattern to greenhouse gas emissions. It is failing. A movement of artists and communicators must fill that gap. (((This connection isn't hard to find in the media. It's all over the place (though I can't help but notice that the various media-cited 1998 catastrophe statistics vary by whole orders of magnitude). I suspect that the tactics of the GCC will shift soon, from their current bland denial of global warming, to the vigorous assertion that global warming is real and is *good for us.* Farfetched? Wait and see. (((Speaking as an \"artist and communicator,\" I would like to take this moment to formally declare myself \"the media.\" We've all got modems, there's a new century at hand, so let's put our cards on the table and all be \"media\" from now on. Every attack I've ever seen against \"the media\" involves people who are already \"media\" by any sane definition, and who are anxious to seize more attention and bandwidth at the expense of rival users of \"media.\" Louche, irresponsible, scandal-hungry, trivial, stumbling blindly toward catastrophe, firmly in the pockets of corporate interests == that's not \"the media\", that's an honest portrait of"}, {"response": 33, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Dec 17, 1998 (17:34)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Thu Dec 17 16:41:16 1998 Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 16:41:16 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00031: Self-destructive Jungles X-UIDL: 40cc4519cfe3966095137656592114f2 Key concepts: drought, dying forests, burning forests, El Nino, CO2 load in biosphere, Chiapas Smoke Plume Attention Conservation Notice: Confuses the issue. Oxymoronic. Paradoxical. Terrifying. Hopefully, rather farfetched. Links: http://www.goes.noaa.gov/mexicofires.html http://pooh.esrin.esa.it:8080/ew/mexico.htm Entries in the Viridian \"Fungal Typography\" Contest: http://members.aol.com/stjude/ http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/ http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/Viridian/viridiantext.html Sources: Hanqin Tian, NATURE magazine ( http://www.nature.com) ; Article by Joseph B. Verrengia, Associated Press Austin American Statesman, Dec. 17, 1998 \"Forests add greenhouse gases during El Nino, scientists say\" By Joseph B. Verrengia \"Instead of inhaling extra carbon dioxide, Brazil's rain forest does the opposite in an El Nino year, exhaling millions of tons of the heat-trapping gas and potentially adding to global warming, scientists say. \"The rain forest, under normal conditions, acts as the 'lungs' of the planet. Its thousands of square miles of trees release oxygen and absorb as much as 700 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. \"But when global climate conditions are scrambled by El Nino and the rain forest becomes parched, scientists from the Woods Hole Research Laboratory in Massachusetts determined, the Amazon Basin produces as much as 200 million tons of excess carbon dioxide a year. The calculation by Hanqin Tian and others are published in today's issue of the journal NATURE.\" (...) \"In the Amazon, it (((El Nino))) causes severe droughts. Under such drought stress, the rain forest can't adequately photosynthesize and store carbon dioxide, Tian said.\" (((This grim discovery makes perfect sense, once you think about it. No water, no photosynthesis. No rain, no green. Simple as that. And what does the Amazon jungle do then? It coughs up a couple of hundred million tons. (((So much for the divine wisdom of Mother Nature. Could it be that Gaia is even more wacky and shortsighted than we are? Is she blindly willing to choke on her own spew just like the G-7 Advanced Industrial Nations? Well, why not? All the inhabitants of the biosphere have a perfect moral right to pitch right in and screw things up with us hominids. (((Upon digesting this appalling news, I suppose we could swiftly muster the Kevin Kelly Memorial Bulldozer Brigade (see Viridian Note 00024) and dash out there to saw the jungle down before it does us even more harm than Exxon-Mobil. But (a) we'll lose the benefit we get if we ever get another year that isn't an El Nino, (b) we probably need the oxygen even more urgently than we don't need the carbon dioxide, and (c) we needn't bother, because a parched rain forest will spontaneously *burn.* Combustion is when forests really spew the soot, and they do themselves a level of harm that lumberjacks can only envy. This blazing activity does not require any surprise discoveries by Woods Hole, and in fact it couldn't be more obvious, as the links in this Note suggest. (((These links, http://www.goes.noaa.gov/mexicofires.html http://pooh.esrin.esa.it:8080/ew/mexico.htm show writhing Mexican jungle smoke covering my home town, as revealed by both American and European satellite sensors. I am looking for the *prettiest* and *most graphically compelling* online picture of the 1998 Chiapas smoke plume. This is defininitely one of those core Viridian graphic documents that we Viridians need to be meditating upon, in our ivied, lingering, contemplative fashion. Please send me the address of the \"most Viridian-looking\" plume map or photo you can find on the web, and you will receive a chevron. (((What does this news mean? Well, perhaps nothing much; it may be news to us humans, but El Nino is not an entirely new phenomenon, and presumably Brazil has been belching up natural carbon for millennia. But not, perhaps, with today's unprecedented levels of psychotic enthusiasm, where vast swathes of dying jungle might conceivably auto-alter the planet climate, in a shrieking biofeedback, in a dysfunctional Gaian auto-da-fe'. Let's just bookmark this one as a small but distinct possibility: we could cease all human C02 emission tomorrow, and still find ourselves forced to spend the next thousand years trying to keep Mother Nature from ripping her hair out and immolating herself.)))"}, {"response": 34, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Dec 21, 1998 (10:10)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Sat Dec 19 10:37:36 1998 Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 10:37:36 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00032: The Viridian Refueling X-UIDL: 559e2642910641265bde1e194cecc5cd Project Key concepts: fuel cells, Proton Exchange Membranes, decentralized energy networks Attention Conservation Notice: Of interest mostly to technical specialists. Written in engineering jargon. Contains even more black humor than Note 00031. Links: http://www.thehub.com.au/~mitch/V - Notes/ViridianNote00010.html http://www.plugpower.com/ http://www.gate.net/~h2_ep/10kw_pem.htm http://www.anl.gov:80/OPA/news95/news950808.html http://mhv.net/~hfcletter/letter/december98/feature.html Entries in the Viridian \"Fungal Typography\" Contest: http://members.aol.com/stjude/ http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/ http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/Viridian/viridiantext.html From: eric@sac.net* (Eric Hughes) In Viridian Note 00010, Jim Thompson wrote about fuel cells. Here's his two-sentence description: \"Basically, a fuel cell is like a battery where you put in some low-grade hydrocarbon (ethanol, methanol, kerosene, LP Gas, Natural Gas, diesel, methane). You get DC power out, with pure water and heat as the by-products.\" So far, so good. But then I wondered. Carbon goes in, but no carbon seems to come out of the cell. Something's missing. Here are some results of my looking around for it. 1) The Proton Exchange Membrane fuel cell uses hydrogen (or hydrogen rich gas) as a primary fuel. There's no carbon in, so no carbon out. That's good, but there's no hydrogen fuel infrastructure today. 2) More practical fuel cell packages (Plug Power's for instance) generate hydrogen by converting it from a hydrocarbon fuel. These conversion devices are generally called \"fuel reformers.\" Unfortunately, fuel reformers do pollute. They appear to pollute in a less noxious way than combustion pollutes, but they still make carbon dioxide. These points are not at all obvious on websites attempting to sell fuel cells. A cell with a fuel reformer is a combustion process after all. Combustion in the presence of a catalyst is cleaner than combustion inside an engine cylinder, but in terms of carbon loading of the atmosphere, it's identical. The eventual output is oxides of carbon. And what about possible nitrogen oxide emissions? And what about impurities in the fuel? You can bet that the CO -> CO2 converter is not 100% efficient; and carbon monoxide happens to be a potent greenhouse gas. Answers are by no means easy to find in a first-pass investigation of various fuel-cell websites. Here are some tentative conclusions. (1) Until we somehow build a hydrogen infrastructure, fuel cells will be a marginal improvement on internal combustion. However, fuel cells might finesse the system- bootstrap problem toward a true hydrogen economy, by creating an installed base of hydrogen demand, which also works on fossil hydrocarbons. Once the fossil fuels go, someone can figure out better sources of hydrogen supply. (2) Spreading out energy generation through use of fuel cells is a big systemic win. It greatly reduces energy distribution cost and lost efficiency. Fuel cells may have certain long-term problems, but they spread the network's power away from the center, and toward distributed endpoints. This is good. We can make the analogy: new power is to old power, as internet is to telephone. In my self-appointed capacity as pro tem. Viridian Minister of Science (duration: 1 message), I now suggest the possible development of a Viridian Fuel Reformer. This device would have the following characteristics. Like oxidizing fuel reformers, the Viridian Fuel Reformer will accept low grade hydrocarbon inputs, typically biomass. However, the VFR does not produce carbon dioxide gas. Catalytic oxidation reformers strip hydrogen ions (i.e. protons) off carbon by binding the carbon to oxygen. The Viridian Fuel Reformer will strip off hydrogen by binding carbon atoms *to each other.* Now this requires energy, so the fuel conversion ratio for Viridian converters will be lower. We admit this problem; but we have a higher aim. When you bind two hydrocarbon chains to each other, a hydrogen atom and a single longer hydrocarbon results. This is the reverse of the standard \"cracking\" reactions used in oil refineries. The Viridian Fuel Reformer is a relentless fuel *fossilizer.* The Stage One VFR outputs heavy hydrocarbons and leftover fuel impurities. In other words, it exudes a heavy, viscous black gunk that looks and acts very much like crude oil. The Stage Two VFR strips even more hydrogen from this goo, and leaves big dirty lumps of congealed carbon, in a solid form much like coal. In the fine tradition of satirical mimicry, the future Viridian Hydrogen Economy will dispose of its waste products by *dumping them back into the earth.* Waste \"oil\" will be carefully pumped into many convenient underground reservoirs, already forme"}, {"response": 35, "author": "terry", "date": "Tue, Dec 22, 1998 (09:08)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Mon Dec 21 21:04:38 1998 Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 21:04:38 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00033: Viridian Aesthetics: Andy X-UIDL: d5a3d83f35245e7ee7a966e8cf4ea931 Goldworthy Key concepts: Viridian aesthetics, Andy Goldsworthy Attention Conservation Notice: It's art criticism. Links: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian/issues97/feb97/g olds.html http://www.artsednet.getty.edu/ArtsEdNet/Images/I/knotweed ..html http://cgee.hamline.edu/see/Goldsworthy/see_an_andy.html Entries in the Viridian \"Fungal Typography\" Contest http://members.aol.com/stjude/ http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/ http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/Viridian/viridiantext.html (((See Note 00027 for instructions on this contest.))) Our newly-coined Viridian Motto: \"Gimme Chevron\" Bruce Sterling remarks: The difficult question of \"what looks Viridian\" is central to our interests. We now examine the work of British artist Andy Goldsworthy. Andy Goldworthy (1956 -- ) is a British artist resident in Scotland. His artwork occupies a rather ill- defined and unique area, uniting sculpture, performance art, gardening, nature studies, and photography. He has done installations in a museum context, large-scale landscape engineering, and sculptures. He also does posters and books. Most of his work, however, is site-specific. Goldsworthy wanders barehanded into some chosen site out- of-doors (including France, Australia, Japan, the USA and even the North Pole) and artfully rearranges whatever he finds at hand. Goldsworthy's \"media\" have included mud, sand, sticks, thorns, rocks, boulders, leaves, flowers, feathers, bones, reeds, bark, branches, snow, rain, ice, and his own spit. After assembling the temporary sculpture and waiting for proper lighting conditions, he carefully photographs the ensemble, and then leaves it to decay. ************************************* Why Andy Goldsworthy Is Not Viridian ************************************* He doesn't loudly and publicly complain about carbon dioxide. His work is not \"transorganic;\" it looks very pastoral and edenic, until you realize he's done something extremely remarkable to the landscape through rearranging stray flowers and twigs by using his hands and teeth. His art is biological rather than biomorphic (except for that memorable episode when he artfully stacked up those rusting steel plates in the deserted, weed-grown foundry). ******************************* Why Andy Goldsworth is Viridian ******************************* He has enormous artistic talent that commands awestruck attention. His feeling for coloration and graphic composition are especially impressive. Though his approach might sound odd or gimmicky in mere description, his work is always striking, often dramatic and sometimes majestic. His art doesn't appear \"technological,\" but would be impossible without the mediation of cameras. Most of his work is temporary; the usual aim is photographic documentation of some crucial instant, not a permanent transformation of the landscape. His art embraces decay. He is particularly insistent about this. He datamines nature. He makes the invisible visible. He is very aware of historical process and refers to it repeatedly in his writings. He \"walks through walls of knowledge guilds\" by combining approaches of several art genres in a unique, historically rooted, but strangely timeless art practice. His work is biological, not logical. Through iterative actions, and an intuitive, interactive, hands-on approach, he creates a tableau that could not be pre-designed from a standing start. A Goldsworthy photograph displays human will, great persistence, great beauty, and intentionality, but not rational planning. The result does not resemble engineering, the imposition of human plans on raw materials. Instead, it resembles teleology: twigs and branches suddenly become dramatic actors, boulders find themselves clad in finery, pebbles somehow look the way that pebbles have \"always wanted to look.\" Rational analysis can't follow him, but he is going to some very interesting and effective places: this is genuine and powerful art practice. His work is not confrontational, deconstructive or subversive. It is innovative and serene. In his books and writings, Goldworthy has many interesting things to say about his sensibility and approach. Andy Goldsworthy: \"I am not playing the primitive. I use my hands because this is the best way to do most of my work. If I need tools then I will use them. Technology, travel and tools are part of my life and if needed should be part of my work also. A camera is used to document, an excavator to move earth, snowballs are carried cross country by articulated truck.\" Goldsworthy is not a decorative artist or nature sentimentalist: \"It is easy to make a mess. I want my work to be taut and am not interested in making weak arrangements of nature in the pretence of being sensitive.\" He is inter"}, {"response": 36, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Jan 25, 1999 (10:04)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Sat Jan 23 19:20:22 1999 Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 19:20:22 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00043: the Viridian Electrical X-UIDL: c0cb991f59d314c94c2397ed9d50ea5a Meter Key concepts: imaginary products, electrical meters Attention Conservation Notice: It's another whimsical \"product\" that doesn't yet exist, but might end up in a Viridian catalog someday. Entries in the Viridian \"Fungal Typography\" Contest: http://members.aol.com/stjude/ http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/ http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/Viridian/viridiantext.html http://www.erols.com/ljaurbach/ http://www.empathy.com/viridian/ http://www.spaceways.de/Viridian/Viridiantype.html http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/viridian.html http://way.nu/greens/typography.html http://abe.burmeister.com/viridian2dot1.html http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/viridian/ http://www.msys.net/reid/main.html This contest embraces decay on January 31, 01999. For contest instructions see Note 00027. \"The Viridian Electrical Meter\" Concept: SeJ@aol.com^^^^** (Stefan Jones) Ad copy: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) \"One of the most offensive artifacts of the twentieth century is the standard household energy meter. This ugly gizmo clings like a barnacle to the outside of your home, readable only by functionaries. Clumsily painted in battleship gray, this network spy device features creepy, illegible little clock-dials, under an ungainly glass dome. Look a bit closer, and this user- hostile interface deliberately insults you, with a hateful anti-theft warning, and a foul little lockbox. \"This crass device is designed to leave you in stellar ignorance of your own energy usage. It publicly brands you as a helpless peon, a technically-illiterate source of cash for remote, uncaring utility lords. \"But today, thanks to the Viridian Electrical Meter, the tables are turned. The Viridian Meter is not some utility spy device, but a user-owned art object! Based on the popular 'plasma globe,' this interactive meter/installation will grace any 21st-century living room. The attractively sizzling 'Magic Sphere' perches on a beautiful, visionary plant-stand, inspired by noted designers Hector Guimard and Albert Paley! \"The Viridian Meter is pre-set with the standard demographic energy consumption of your biome and climatic area. Network brownouts and spikes produce visible, spitting anomolies, quickly warning you to protect your valuable household gizmos from the incompetent vagaries of the local utility. When your home's energy use grows excessive, the plasma-globe arcs up with a warning red crackle. Best of all, feeding energy from your home into the grid causes the Viridian Meter to reverse its polarity, displaying its internal aurora in a cool, lovely green! Guests in your home will soon see that your solar panels (and/or fuel cells and windmills) free our planet from the nasty burdens of fossil-fuel. When your child comes home from school, all long-faced about environmental decline and horrific weather anomalies, your conscience will be certifiably clear! 'See our Meter, honey? Look! It runs green!'\" Stefan Jones (SeJ@aol.com) Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com)"}, {"response": 37, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Tue, Jan 26, 1999 (18:41)", "body": "I want one!"}, {"response": 38, "author": "terry", "date": "Fri, Jan 29, 1999 (10:06)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Thu Jan 28 18:32:01 1999 Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 18:32:01 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00044: The Viridian Service X-UIDL: 06b7871e52d457994b7db7c37d004a9a Station Key concepts: imaginary products, electric cars, gas stations, electric vehicles, upscale consumption patterns Attention Conservation Notice: It's yet another whimsical \"product\" that doesn't exist. We may fill a catalog yet. Even though they're not real products, this is *still* going to end up being a lot of work for somebody. Entries in the Viridian \"Fungal Typography\" Contest: http://members.aol.com/stjude/ http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/ http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/Viridian/viridiantext.html http://www.erols.com/ljaurbach/ http://www.empathy.com/viridian/ http://www.spaceways.de/Viridian/Viridiantype.html http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/viridian.html http://way.nu/greens/typography.html http://abe.burmeister.com/viridian2dot1.html http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/viridian/ http://www.msys.net/reid/main.html This contest embraces decay on January 31, 01999. For contest instructions see Note 00027. Concept: SeJ@aol.com^^^^*** (Stefan Jones) Ad copy: SeJ@aol.com^^^^*** (Stefan Jones) Viridian Service Station: \"Get Charged!\" Starting at a single location in a former Blockbuster Video store, the \"Get Charged!\" chain of upscale electrical car charging stations have spread across the nation in the span of a few years. Besides providing fast, convenient charging and routine maintenance of electrical vehicles, \"Get Charged!\" locations feature lounge areas whose decor, cuisine and beverage offerings are aggressively targeted at an upscale consumer who is environmentally conscious, yet unwilling to accept a diminished quality of life. The first \"Get Charged!\" location in East Palo Alto, California was chosen to service both the local market of upscale consumers and environmentally hip Bay Area residents commuting between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Using clean electricity from a windmill farm in the Altamont Pass, and providing shuttle service to nearby major employers in its own fleet of electric minivans, the station quickly won good grades from the area's vocal environmentalist contingent. However, the location did not \"come alive\" until the opening of its signature Greenhouse Lounge(TM). Part indoor nursery, part art gallery, part cyber- espresso bar, the Greenhouse Lounge quickly attracted a regular clientele. Indeed, the bistro was soon overrun by people arriving at \"Get Charged!\" Franchise #1 in cheap, ugly, gasoline powered vehicles. Thereafter, patronage was strictly limited to the owners and passengers of electric cars. When a major venture capital firm made the location its preferred lunch spot, sales of electric vehicles in San Mateo county doubled in the space of a month.... (((Our story continues with a stirring sidebar concerning a legendary tech discovery taking place in the Greenhouse Lounge; Stamford geeks show off solar energy / biomass hack; VCs at next table immediately buy into it)))) (((Readings, signings by authors take place at Lounges))) ((((Lounge as multimedia showplace for video display, imaging hacks)))) ((((Showrooms become upscale version of Greek diners that sell \"starving artist\" paintings right off the wall.... At other \"Get Charged!\" franchises: Solar, biomass, hydrocarbon fuel cells.... I'd like to write more about this, but I'm getting into a creepy, enthusiastic, MBA student sort of mood... I'll just have to stop now... You'll have to spin it for yourselves.))) Stefan Jones (SeJ@aol.com)"}, {"response": 39, "author": "terry", "date": "Sat, Feb  6, 1999 (10:05)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Fri Feb 5 19:12:04 1999 Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 19:12:04 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00047: Viridian Imaginary X-UIDL: 0492c31693795a40d8d304a6d9cbf4c3 Products Exhibition Key concepts: Viridian Imaginary Products Exhibition, Viridian Teakettle Contest Attention Conservation Notice: This proposed scheme is particularly ambitious and time-consuming. Entries in the Viridian \"Fungal Typography\" Contest: http://members.aol.com/stjude/ http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/ http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/Viridian/viridiantext.html http://www.erols.com/ljaurbach/ http://www.empathy.com/viridian/ http://www.spaceways.de/Viridian/Viridiantype.html http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/viridian.html http://way.nu/greens/typography.html http://abe.burmeister.com/viridian2dot1.html http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/viridian/ http://www.msys.net/reid/main.html http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/nancy.html http://www.netaxs.com/~morgana/fungus.html http://www.golden.net/~eli/viridian/ http://ucsub.Colorado.EDU/~smcginni/viridian/vfont.html The winner of the Viridian Fungal Typography Contest is: Hinne Burmeister (hinne@spaceways.de^^^^*) AKA: DJB, Django Blades, Denon Kleo, THE Sound! Inhabitant of Projekt Kochstrasse Member of Comite de Musique Deluxe (CMD) Co-founder of SPACEWAYS Management & Production On mature consideration, Hinne Burmeister's entry at: http://www.spaceways.de/Viridian/Viridiantype.html was judged \"Most Fungal.\" Hinne Burmeister has been sent a well-deserved copy of the contest prize book, *Hot Designers Make Cool Fonts.* And now, for the details of our third Viridian design contest, which is our most ambitious yet. As we all know, the Viridian Design Movement does not in fact exist. The long torrent of rhetoric consuming your attention to date is a mere *beta pre-release* of a *possible* 21st century design movement. Real design movements ship. They create actual designed products. A real-world Viridian product design company would be a very fine thing. I even understand how one goes about founding and running such an enterprise. It has a lot to do with tedious minutiae such as \"prototyping,\" \"licensing,\" \"sourcing,\" \"pricing,\" \"distribution,\" and \"advertising,\" not to mention employee relations, taxes, incorporation, trademarks, patents, and return-on-investment. Running a commercial manufacturing firm is an attention-vampire of the first order. Becoming the CEO of a design firm is just not within the Pope-Emperor's realm of possible activity. However. Real designers also throw public exhibits where they gallantly show off their wares. Here we perceive some interesting Viridian potential. While we can't manufacture and sell commercial products, creating fake *mockups* of *imaginary Viridian products* might well be within our grasp. Sometime in the year 02000 (assuming we make our ideological deliverables on January 3), we might conceivably create and throw a public Viridian exhibit, a futurist conceptual-art parody of a real design show. This \"Viridian Imaginary Products Exhibit\" would be open to the public. It might be rather similar in spirit to the \"Art of Star Wars\" show, where everyone knows that the rayguns and blast-shields aren't real or functional, but they all go anyway, just because everything looks so cool. Finding a friendly gallerist and a suitable display space is not beyond our ability. This effort would be time-consuming; it would require funding, budgeting, coordination and a lot of organizational overhead; but not crushing amounts. Best of all, the project would be swiftly over with. The central challenge here is finding Viridian product designers, and, especially, some hands-on Viridian model- makers. People, in other words, who can dream this stuff up, and successfully fake it for us, so that physical Viridian objets d'conceptual art can be shipped to some central locale for public display. To manage this proposed event, we would have to assemble a core \"Star Chamber\" of inner-circle Viridian volunteers. This means investing large amounts of creative effort and attention. We would endeavour to supply some glory and prestige to volunteers. Your name would prominently pasted on the vitrine, you'd receive some groovy citation in the accompanying glossy catalog.... And, who knows, there might be weird and the designer/builder team could sell the model afterwards for a hefty sum to some crazed sci-fi collector. There might be some modest sums of expense money involved in throwing this event, but I can almost guarantee you that the money would not make it worth your while. Is such an event in fact possible for us? Well, we'll never find out without experimenting. The third Viridian Contest is meant to winkle out public-spirited people who might have what it takes to put such an effort together. Hence, the Viridian Teakettle Contest. Teakettles are, of course, highly cliched designer objects"}, {"response": 40, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Sun, Feb  7, 1999 (22:51)", "body": "hey, Terry, how do I get on this list?"}, {"response": 41, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Feb  8, 1999 (06:02)", "body": "Email bruces@well.com and ask him to put you on the list."}, {"response": 42, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Feb  8, 1999 (06:53)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Sat Feb 6 21:27:37 1999 Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 21:27:37 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00048: Viridian Aphorisms X-UIDL: 11ac57c85ba2fb5a007870f552af9006 Key concepts: Viridian Aphorisms, Viridian Ranking System Attention Conservation Notice: it's mostly the moderator's housekeeping, except for the customary attention-grabbing wit and wisdom that we swiped from famous people. Links: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian The proudly Danish website adding new functionality and rumbling toward a digital-art launch http://www.thehub.com.au/~mitch/V-Notes/ViridianIndex.html Mitchell Porter's Australian archive kept impressively up- to-date http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades Antediluvian Sterling homepage undergoing dusting and cleaning. Now in the automated business of selling various books. Increasingly infested with Viridian graphics, takes forever to load. Massive Improvements Real Soon Now. MODERATOR'S NOTE. My travel schedule is very heavy this month and through early March. Expect Viridian traffic to slow drastically. This is not a malfunction; do not adjust your set. I am in possession of some excellent Viridian material, and will likely set a blistering pace of editing and distribution, when and if I return. Viridian Aphorisms Contribute a useful Viridian aphorism, and you will receive an attractive chevron > \"Even the voice of conscience undergoes mutation.\" Stanislaus Lec \"That which we call sin in others is experiment for us.\" Ralph Waldo Emerson \"Think. It ain't illegal yet.\" George Clinton \"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.\" E. F. Schumacher \"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.\" Bertrand Russell \"Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room.\" Blaise Pascal \"The natural environment is doctored up continuously and warped by the acts of the human brain.\" Richard Neutra \"Those who will not labor mightily on their own behalf shall be given other masters.\" Xenophon \"If you can talk brilliantly enough about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.\" Stanley Kubrick \"It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.\" Winston Churchill \"Nothing has an uglier look to us than reason, when it is not of our side.\" Lord Halifax \"If we were not all so excessively interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.\" Schopenhauer \"Man does not live long enough to profit from his faults.\" Jean de La Bruyere (((Since I have often been asked, allow me to reiterate the difference between a \"star\" and a \"chevron.\" You receive a star when some personal work of your own is published before the entire Viridian list. You are on public display and courting a public reaction; therefore, you \"star.\" A chevron acknowledges some helpful Viridian act which does not appear publicly.))) VIRIDIAN RANKING SYSTEM The Viridian Ranking System has been hand-created with a vintage fountain pen and fine art paper. Scars, flaws, and imperfections add character and are an inherent part of the product. SeJ@aol.com steffen@ems.org jon@lasser.org whiz@ricochet.net ljaurbach@erols.com rsewell@cix.compulink.co.uk eli@golden.net jzero@onramp.net morgana@netaxs.com sethmc@turcotte.colorado.edu tor@araneum.dk dhlight@mcs.net jim@smallworks.com patmazza@teleport.com wex@media.mit.edu tbyfield@panix.com WarrenE@aol.com hinne@spaceways.de lstinson@empathy.com rinesi@espacio.com.ar cisler@pobox.com mgoldh@well.com pinknoiz@pinknoiz.com dlandry@rohan.sdsu.edu danny@spesh.com hoechst.forum@lrz.uni-muenchen.de infinite@beaming.com jonny@way.nu me@karmanaut.com tux@powerbase-alpha.com abeb@erols.com eric@sac.net LangiG@parl.gc.ca r1ddl3r@bp13.u.washington.edu StJude@aol.com weasel@gothic.net acotter@nonsensical.com jeffk@well.com jtlin@saunalahti.fi MICHAEL.HARTLEY@one2one.co.uk redbird@jump.net reid@well.com richardd@reeseco.com scoville@hooked.net stewarts@stewarts.org thallad@pcnet.com jonl@well.com Ian.Griffin@Corp.Sun.COM pjd@cne.gmu.edu rdm@test.legislate.com shassinger@dev.tivoli.com TuckerV@frogdesign.com xiane@entech.com bobmorris@mediaone.net Cooper409@aol.com mitch@thehub.com.au shalizi@santafe.edu bperry@shore.net bsiano@cceb.med.upenn.edu cthomas@10fold.com jrc@well.com kallen@physics.ucsd.edu kirk@mcelhearn.com mheat@mha-net.org rnedal@olimpo.com.br richyoung@hotbot.com robot@ultimax.com sbweintraub@lbl.gov yzl@ucdavis.edu ab006@chebucto.ns.ca alexander_schuth@yahoo.com ASKornheiser@prodigy.net AtKisson@aol.com bonkydog@sirius.com dave@va.com.au dsenft@bcj.com geert@xs4all.nl gordy@nytimes.com kamenr@river.org katie@wtp.net Matt@MediaServ.com nehrlich@sfis.com pacoid@fringeware.com roger@bayarea.net rthieme@thiemeworks.com SpitzleyD@state.mi.us thack@design-inst.nl tick@sidehack.sat.gweep.net Adam@e-ga"}, {"response": 43, "author": "MikeLynn", "date": "Tue, Feb  9, 1999 (02:21)", "body": "Anyone seen the listing of the Viridian Greens in the 'Wired' column of Wired Magazine's latest issue's Tired/Wired list ?"}, {"response": 44, "author": "terry", "date": "Tue, Feb  9, 1999 (07:05)", "body": "Nope, I assume it's \"wired\" and what is it's \"tired\" counterpart?"}, {"response": 45, "author": "AdamLipscomb", "date": "Tue, Feb  9, 1999 (20:54)", "body": "Tired? That would be the Luddite Greens. Technology is the only thing that can extract us from our current predicament and still allow something resembling our current leisure-rich lifestyle."}, {"response": 46, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Tue, Feb  9, 1999 (22:06)", "body": "Long Live Technocracy!"}, {"response": 47, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Fri, Feb 26, 1999 (12:18)", "body": "Huh, thanks fer the invitation to this here place, Terry - where's the fridge? Or, in other words: Haven't heard anything from the fearless viridian leader. Is he still in front? Or wherever, as front is 20thCent-think, right? Or rather, not (as right is a political concept, which is very much 20thCent in flave)? Uh, all this makes me dizzy. May I have some more of it?"}, {"response": 48, "author": "stacey", "date": "Fri, Feb 26, 1999 (12:27)", "body": "spin the other way now Alexander... it'll get you dizzy in the other direction too!"}, {"response": 49, "author": "terry", "date": "Fri, Feb 26, 1999 (13:21)", "body": "Bruce? He's traveling for a while. Expect a flurry of updates soon though."}, {"response": 50, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Sat, Feb 27, 1999 (10:57)", "body": "yee-haw! and welcome, Alexander!"}, {"response": 51, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Tue, Mar  2, 1999 (15:23)", "body": "Thanks for the friendly welcome, here, too. Hey, Stacey, hey, Kitchen - how come you're whereever I go in this here Spring? Uh, Stacey, the award goes straight to you - first person here to figure I'm dizzy in more than one direction. Terry, Does The Fearless Leader hafta tour for his book (again), or is he having fun? ;=}"}, {"response": 52, "author": "stacey", "date": "Tue, Mar  2, 1999 (15:52)", "body": "*grin* WER and I (and I speak for him allthe time so don't fret!) are unshakable forces within the Spring... ummm... or maybe we're the shakiest forces within the Spring... how 'bout we're forceful within the Spring and like to shake... ...like shakes taken by force? Alas... perhaps there is no answer to the question \"why are WER and Stacey everywhere\" perhaps there is only the fact of our large base of existance."}, {"response": 53, "author": "terry", "date": "Tue, Mar  2, 1999 (20:11)", "body": "They're ubiquitous. Book Tour? Would hafta write a book first. But keep the rumor circulating anyway. Glad you're checking out the Viridian list, what do you think of the content and concepts so far? Can you explain it to us all?"}, {"response": 54, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Tue, Mar  2, 1999 (21:25)", "body": "think Alexander and you have currently got you and Bruce Sterling confused... (whereas Stacey and I are always confused everywhere...)"}, {"response": 55, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Mar  4, 1999 (06:38)", "body": "Stacey is Bruce Sterling."}, {"response": 56, "author": "stacey", "date": "Thu, Mar  4, 1999 (09:01)", "body": "ah ha!!!"}, {"response": 57, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Fri, Mar  5, 1999 (08:27)", "body": "Well, seems not only this here reader got the dizzies... Sorry to confuse you, Terry, but with Fearless Leader I meant Stacey Sterling. and with book I was referring to Distraction. Or Bruce Vura. Or else. Also read below: * Glad you're checking out the Viridian list, Well, how could I refuse your invitation? I'm on the mailing list, too, so I wouldn't want to miss the fun on this one. *what do you think of the content and concepts so far? Hmh, you really care about what I think? It takes long to load. Newest stuff should load topmost first, maybe. Somehow, there should be a distinction between the papal transmissions and our completely irrelevant mumblings. *Can you explain it to us all? Listen, buster - any time I feel like making a complete idiot of myself, I'm gonna do it. But I don't let anyone push me on that one. ;=} Honest, what or who do you think I am? It's very kind of you to ask me, as this somehow indicates that from whatever facts you collected from my rumblings on the Spring, you dedicated I would have something to say. Maybe even something meaningful. Well, I don't. Sorry."}, {"response": 58, "author": "visitor", "date": "Fri, Mar  5, 1999 (09:04)", "body": "and, I have nothing to post and I'm going to post it just once."}, {"response": 59, "author": "stacey", "date": "Fri, Mar  5, 1999 (15:26)", "body": "Aaaaaaaa- men!"}, {"response": 60, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Mar 11, 1999 (09:58)", "body": "Catch the party invite at the end! Bruce Sterling (bruces) Mon Mar 8 '99 (15:29) 210 lines From bruces@well.com Mon Mar 8 17:08:46 1999 Date: Mon, 8 Mar 1999 17:08:46 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00051: Viridian Commentary X-UIDL: 9f17f04fd746fcf64311a06b7a3c1672 Key concepts: pedal-powered buses, hurricane names, wind- up browsers, table-of-contents Viridian Notes 00025-00050, party invitation to Bruce Sterling's house Attention Conservation Notice: It rambles a lot, but you get invited to a nice party with free beer. Entries in the Viridian Teakettle Design Contest: http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/teakettl.html http://www.dnai.com/~catnhat/teapots.htm http://www.interlog.com/~shamann/ This contest ends March 20, 01999. From: tor@araneum.dk^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^* Subject: Pedal-powered bus Subj: All ABOARD THE PEDALBUS -WORLDWIDE COLLABORATION Date: Tuesday, January 26, 1999 10:26:49 AM Bagelhole1 ( http://bagelhole.hypermart.net/) , under construction, calls for collaborators, globally, to share ideas as to the best ways (design, mediums, etc) we can think of to build a bus for about 50 people, that is a hybrid, run both by pedal power and electrical (generated by the pedal power and the turbine on top), equipped with sail. There would be a driver who steers, changes gears, and brakes. Music, perhaps, to inspire the pedal/passengers, maybe made from bamboo partially. All passengers ride/pedal for free, of course. Electric kicks in, when there are not enough pedal/riders. Every city could have such a bus to bring attention to people to aid in soliciting low-tech, homemade style ideas for self-sustainability, thinking in terms of small neighborhoods, in mutual co-operation with each other, as a way to really kick off community contingency preparation, globally. This needs to be done very quickly. So please heed, if you hear the call. bagelhole1@aol.com (((bruces remarks: I rather like this nutty, innocent scheme, as long as we can make sure that these giant urban rickshaws are restricted to highly-developed countries, and powered exclusively by rich, well-educated, overweight people.))) From: cascio@well.com^^ (Jamais Cascio) Subject: Weather Violence Terminology >From the Rachel (rachel.org) newsletter #634: \"We favor the idea, floated early last year, to stop naming hurricanes after individual humans and start naming them after oil companies. In place of Hurricane Alice or Hurricane Hugo, we would have Hurricane Mobil and Hurricane Exxon. A headline like 'Exxon Kills 10,000, Leaves 50,000 Homeless' would have a certain salutary ring of truth to it.\" (((bruces remarks: Yes, of course, but.... \"Shell\" would get off lightly due to the alphabetical listings, while the new \"Amoco/British Petroleum\" hybrid would catch more than its fair share of abuse.))) >From wex@media.mit.edu^^^^^^^^^** (Dr. Alan Wexelblat) Subject: Wind-Up Browsers for Ten Dollars These people don't know it, but they are Viridian... To: mas-students@media.mit.edu From: Joe Jacobson Subject: Windup Browsers Seminar Seminar - MAS 968 (H level) Fridays 10-12, E15-468H Design of Information Appliances for the Third World: Windup Browsers The WIND-UP Browser seminar will be geared towards designing and building an information appliance for developing nations. The sole constraints are that 1] It must change the world 2] It must have a manufacturing cost of $10. Week 1: Introduction to the Problem Assignment: Map of literacy and access to information around the globe Week 2: Introduction to low cost information technologies Full survey of everything in existence from displays to radio receivers to hand-crank generators that could be cobbled together to make a $10 device. Week 3: In class design session of self contained reader Week 4: presentation of self contained reader. Week 5: Economic models - how can third world peoples supplement their income: Contract programming, inventing etc. over the web. Week 6: In class design and presentation of an economic model for supplemental income. Brainstorm on how to build 1 Billion wind-up browsers. Week 7: In class design of linked information device Week 8: Presentation of linked information device Week 9: Final project. (((bruces remarks: Here's another stirring step-forward for the philosophy that wants every Saharan Tuareg to carry his own solar-powered satdish and boombox. A ten- dollar browser will change the world, all right == it'll change the world to a place that will gladly pay ten *million* dollars for any device that will *eliminate* web browsers, in say, a five-mile radius.))) From: pdo@metamajik.com^* (Paul D. Ouderkirk) Subject: Re: Correction to Viridian Note 00045 Bruce Sterling wrote: \" The US Armed Forces can no longer fully command their own dedicated industrial base == they're forced to use common off-the-shelf stuff now, the poor wretches even have to run battleships on Windows 95....\" If you're referring to that Navy "}, {"response": 61, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Fri, Mar 12, 1999 (02:18)", "body": "Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 20:22:40 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Add to Address Book Reply-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00052: Human-Assisted Wildlife Migration Key Concepts: Emergency global heat strategy; multinational ecostructures; Post-Pleistocene landscape designs; totemic ambassadors; distributive intellect; decentralized aesthetic appreciation Attention Conservation Notice: Peter Warshall, editor of Whole Earth Review, wrote us this Note. You're not likely to find a Viridian screed more \"whole-earthy\" than this one. Entries in the Viridian Teakettle Design Contest: http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/teakettl.html http://www.dnai.com/~catnhat/teapots.htm http://www.interlog.com/~shamann/ This contest ends March 20, 01999. From: pwturtle@well.com* (Peter Warshall) Sources: Among others, Whole Earth magazine's issue on modern landscape ecology (Number 93). Many net sites for groups (see issue) that monitor greenhouse changes and impacts on our extended selves == the animal kingdom. Email becomes ecological. Ecostructures equal infrastructures. Prophesy includes Monarch butterflies, jaguars, unlimited ducks, and a sub-movement == the Cerulean Movement. Beauty and paying attention lead to conservation. Citizen science is already happening. Kids and oldsters are tracking the great heating of the planet by tracking NAFTA zoology. Monarch butterflies that move from Canada to Michoacan are tracked by kids and volunteers who tell who's arrived or departed on the web. They spot the hottest spots where the milkweeds (Monarch fueling stations) have gone extinct and fragmented the tri- national corridor. They monitor the results of the World Trade Organization (without saying it). So when the US stops genetically engineered soybeans from being labelled as such, and GE soybeans spread through the soy/corn belt, and milkweed in the fields or along the roadways is herbicided with RoundUp, they know, and the news surges over the net. The same for ducks that travel from Canada to Mejico. And wood warblers. But, global warming is sending the subtropical critters north. Armadillos in Texas, jaguars in New Mexico/Arizona, elegant trogans, coatimundis...all heading north with the heat. Ecostructure is to nature, what infrastructure is to humans. It's the corridors and composition of the corridors that help trees or animals move with the heat. Jaguars used to be as far north as the Grand Canyon. That mom and cubs are stuffed in New York, in the American Museum of Natural History (1905). Jaguars used to be in Louisiana. Now, with the heat and forest fires and clearcutting, they're heading north and need corridors. So old fart ranchers and hunters and multiple-aged maniacal naturalists have tracked the ecostructure needed and are preparing for 2012 and beyond. Supplying a space to move that is Viridian, since jaguars and coatis have a hard time in sand dunes. Add to this, the Cerulean Movement which knows that the greenhouse effect will raise the seas and mudflats and lagoons will drown. So, the NAFTA effect on shorebirds who will find few places to land and fuel up by pick, jab, and stab at spineless inverts. No ecostructure. Either they will become albatrosses or perish. The NAFTA critters include greywhales and sea turtles. They used to include steelhead and sea otters. In short, the webbing of the Earth (ecostructure) parallels the webbing of the human invention (roads, wires). No college scientist nor the NSF can track these changes in grounded and oceanic ecostructure and movements. It's beyond the scope of satellites. Yet the non-humans carry the news. They are allies of the prophets. By believing in their intelligence, the future can be known. To do all this requires a distributive intellect and integrated decentralized observation network. Its only citizens in love with looking and feeding their love (an aesthetic if there is one) into the net that is cheap and joyful. A new viridian science that will allow focused finances to see the landscape breaks and gaps and heal them. This movement too has an automatic end. Stop global warming, connect the dots, and end the movement. Peter Warshall, Whole Earth Quarterly 1408 Mission Avenue San Rafael, CA 94901 USA Phone 415-256-2800, ext. 224 Fax 415-256-2808"}, {"response": 62, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Mon, Mar 15, 1999 (00:36)", "body": "interesting little piece there...hmmm..."}, {"response": 63, "author": "terry", "date": "Mon, Mar 15, 1999 (10:50)", "body": "Someones thinking about ecostructure. Registrant: Matrix Group, inc. (ECOSTRUCTURE-DOM) 4701 Keswick Road Baltimore, MD 21210 Domain Name: ECOSTRUCTURE.COM"}, {"response": 64, "author": "terry", "date": "Tue, Mar 16, 1999 (19:10)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Sat Mar 13 23:32:14 1999 Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1999 23:32:14 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note OOO53: The Ecosystem Game X-UIDL: af47508cf91b9df9d6fd34d440d9b49b Key concepts: imaginary products, computer games, ecosystem design Attention Conservation Notice: This imaginary product does not exist, but this long, fake product-pitch is worked out in such scary, meticulous detail that the whole screed seems quite convincing. Links: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian Tor Kristensen remarks: I've added searching functionality to the Viridian archive! An easier way to find that kernel of wisdom from 12 messages back. Entries in the Viridian Teakettle Design Contest: http://www.xensei.com/users/stewarts/teakettle.html http://www.dnai.com/~catnhat/teapots.htm http://www.interlog.com/~shamann/ http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/teakettle.html We have a Russian entry on the way... This contest ends March 20, 01999. The EcoSystem Game by Alex Steffen (steffen@ems.org^^^^^^^^^^^***) Okanogan County, WA The hottest computer game of the year isn't about blowing apart zombies with a shotgun, or trying to land a virtual lunar shuttle on the deck of an aircraft carrier in pitching seas. No, the latest sensation in the gaming world comes down to a 26 year-old biology PhD candidate standing up to her hips in a mountain stream, skimming bugs of the surface with a mesh net. \"I'm doing an aquatic insect count,\" the biologist, Sarah Greene, explains. \"This will give us a rough estimation of how healthy this habitat is, whether or not it's providing sufficient food for wild salmon.\" By itself, counting bugs is not very exciting. It's what happens to the count that has made this odd game a hit. You see, in this game, \"EcoSystem\" the \"board\" is a real place == a three-hundred-fifty-thousand acre system of valleys here in rural Washington, in a county larger than the state of Connecticut. The actions of the \"players\" == tens of thousands of paying customers from around the planet == control all the management decisions for this vast tract of land. It's a real-world, real-time, high-tech videogame, where things are actually born and eaten, flourish or dwindle, based on the players' mouse-clicks == and often in front of their very eyes. After identifying and counting the insect population, Greene feeds the information into a computer, which tabulates the data and puts it up on the game's website. There, it is added to and cross-referenced with literally millions of other pieces of information to present a picture of how the EcoSystem is doing. Some of the information is arcane, like Youst's bug count. Some is more personal, like another grad student's daily observations and video about the habits and behavior of the valley's only spotted owl brood. Members post thousands of queries about this data, make notes on GIS maps, make and debate motions about how to manage the land, even plot coups and counter-coups in the management regime. Debates often become quite heated, such as a recent quarrel over whether to introduce a pack of wolves into the valley (the wolf-fans won). In exchange, the EcoSystem team is able to meet three of its goals: the preservation of a vast tract of land (ranging from logged-over scabland to a few isolated patches of ancient forest) at a time when public money for wilderness preservation has all but dried up; the restoration of portions of the ecosystem using experimental techniques; and the chance to study the workings of an entire ecosystem in a level of detail never before attempted. This last is due largely to the availability of large numbers of grants through the company for graduate work in the area, but EcoSystem president Jack Muir says none of the project would be possible without recent advances in computer and telecommunications technology. \"Not only do we have hundreds of employees and thousands of customers, all connected via networks,\" Muir says, \"but we also have thousands of remote sensing devices of all different kinds, all going 24-7, measuring a wealth of data which has never been practical to consider before.\" But technology has made the game possible in a more direct sense as well. Part of the $30,000 entry fee to play includes the interface screen and equipment, a large flat-display screen which receives a direct feed from the valley, allowing players to show off pictures from any number of robot cameras (the camera on the owls is particularly popular), as well as track any number of information streams. The EcoSystem, many players say, is a part of their daily lives. To some this might sound boring, but most of the players this writer spoke with claimed it was quite the opposite: some say they experience a deep connection to the EcoSystem which they feel for no other land. Others recount powerful on-line experiences, such as the time cameras captured the wolf pack bringing down an elk and thousands across the w"}, {"response": 65, "author": "terry", "date": "Wed, Mar 17, 1999 (09:44)", "body": "And now for something a bit different but relevant in an oblique way, from Justin Hall's diary: we wandered over somehow to bruce sterling's house - he'd invited the near-whole of south by southwest to his 1912/frank lloyd writey custom designed/build admirable family pad. respected but unread pat cadigan science fiction author i should know better, bruce sterling holding court in his office, showing off computer crime books, ru serius and his wonderful welcome-matt-flinging ladyfriend eve, demi-stars and the 13 year old dj, who may have put on eminem more than once, though it may have been carl. adam powell told me about fugazi with the most incredible fervent look in his eyes, as he is want to do describing a trip to eat a burrito. paul with recent videos of me gathered persistenly at http://www.spring.net/ threw out occasional questions, still in his rather large but not laden vest-of-many pockets. jon lebkowsky i've felt somehow has been most host-behind-the-scenes all along and he was there looking quite impish in eyebrows and friendly in his belly, smiled much and suggested i think seriously about repurposing my web ramblings into a sellable book. his tome on netpolitics should be rescued from academic press in time for a presidential-era publishing this november if possible i suggested. joey anuff of suck did the usual rib-tickling rundown of myself or whoever availed. the woman from the ACTlab here described the collaboratively written opera she'd organized and had just seen performed. never having done opera before she was prompted by sandy stone to do something new first and therein find the necessary knomwledge. bruce sterling's youngest daughter of maybe 3 was eating candy necklace beads that had been already separated from the string. i sat near her on the wooden stairs and tried mimicry to initiate play - she had none of it and steadily rolled away from my ovations of friendship, beginning a slow moan that threatened to become a cry. a guy who's name slips me and i'm too tired to find his card had long red hair and a longer attention span than i for the subject at hand between us - managing web site collections of links. another fellow, jeff? can't recall; he mentioned wanting to auction me off on ebay. joey said a famous VC had auctioned off an hour of his time there and i should try that too. of my party carl david and ariana were leaving after 10 minutes. they invited my departure as well but i could not stand to leave a nice group gathered here under a writerly umbrella for casual chatting in pleasant audible surroundings so i abandoned any party hopping for 90 minutes wandering happy at the sterlings. his office was lined with books, many his, many cyber, much eclectica. sterling has a quite old mac (fewer wiz bang - maybe more work), while his daughter of 3 has a powerful PC that he is sure to be kicked off of if she catches him on it when she has work to do. over his desk, much like howard, strikingly like howard, sterling had a large ganesha. at first he dodged acknowledging the significance, but he came to share a dream of a visitation by a three foot high rat in some clothes the day he cleaned and installed the large painted statue (rat being the messenger of ganesh and the title of a story by a fellow i did not note and do not recall). later i paused in the kitchen a moment to say thanks yous ands goods byes to him my host. i introduced myself and sterling mentioned my hair change. somehow origin came up and he mentioned that garriot was an astronaut's sun who had famous halloween parties every few years. there was a large hammock outside between the house and my ride. i jumped in, it was a broad sweep, many feet between the anchors. amidst my late-evening breeze riding sterling ran by and snatched up an attached rope to pull me to exciting heights cackling something resembling \"appropriate use\""}, {"response": 66, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Wed, Mar 17, 1999 (11:59)", "body": "Huh, see, Wer, that's what I call something to say. Wished I'd been there, though, and could have watched people. Well, I got treated to a Granfaloon Bus concert on Monday, so I did have some life, too."}, {"response": 67, "author": "AdamLipscomb", "date": "Wed, Mar 17, 1999 (18:21)", "body": "Definitely a good party. I dropped in for a couple of hours, talked Telcomm with a couple of guys formerly of Motorola, chatted with Paul, then got in an involved coversation with a chap from Australia comparing/contrasting Amerind/Aborigine treatment by the US and Australia, and media portrayals of the same relations over the years. I've decided to sell my soul if that's what it takes to be as good at throwing parties as the inimitable Mr. Sterling."}, {"response": 68, "author": "AdamLipscomb", "date": "Wed, Mar 17, 1999 (18:25)", "body": "Ooops - also forgot a brief discussion with our host re: debating Viridian Manifestos. I'm getting in on the ground floor of a virtual community based in the UK, and I'm mining every interesting topic I can for ideas for a debate forum. Any Viridian concepts that you guys consider especially arguable? I'm looking for ones that are controversial and mind-grabbing."}, {"response": 69, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Wed, Mar 17, 1999 (23:50)", "body": "you ought to talk to Mike since he's our \"resident\" Englishman..."}, {"response": 70, "author": "AdamLipscomb", "date": "Thu, Mar 18, 1999 (00:00)", "body": "OK. Mike? Any ideas as to provocative concepts for discussion on the other side of the pond? I like the idea of a \"Truth and Reconciliation Commission\" for polluters, a la South Africa."}, {"response": 71, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Thu, Apr  8, 1999 (01:34)", "body": "explain, please..."}, {"response": 72, "author": "AdamLipscomb", "date": "Thu, Apr  8, 1999 (20:45)", "body": "Sterling suggested something along these lines in one of his first Viridian mailings. Basically, like Mandela's government, a commission would be set up to hold hearings, getting all the information possible on major polluters. Cooperation with the commission would reflect favorably on those who did so, according to the amount of information they were willing to give. In some cases, immunity from prosecution would be granted, but not automatically. This would serve to bring into the open all the dirty little secrets of all of the corporate polluters, in a framework that encourages openness and some sort of reconciliation without simply delving into the realm of bloodthirsty vengeance. It *seems* to be working so far in South Africa, but time will tell...."}, {"response": 73, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Thu, Apr  8, 1999 (23:35)", "body": "kinda partial to bloodthirsty vengeance myself...thanks for the details!"}, {"response": 74, "author": "AdamLipscomb", "date": "Sun, Apr 11, 1999 (18:47)", "body": "Don't get me wrong - vengeance is good, and I'm sure enough polluters will refuse to cooperate to satisfy our bloodlust... But this way, we can at least get more information. Information that will help prosecute other polluters...."}, {"response": 75, "author": "wer", "date": "Sun, Apr 11, 1999 (21:52)", "body": "hey, I understand! more of the transparent society kinda stuff..."}, {"response": 76, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Thu, Apr 15, 1999 (12:46)", "body": "Subject: Viridian Note 00060: Viridian Strategy Key concepts: catalogs, design shows, imaginary products, fundraising, money and organizational problems Attention Conservation Notice: If you read these notes because they're funny and they have weird news clippings, then you'd better skip this one. Links: http://www.arts-cape.com/softearth/ A woman who makes pottery out of deep-sea abyssal mud. Teakettles anyone? After the Viridian Teakettle Contest, I have had some time to ponder Viridian imaginary products and possible Viridian events. I believe we Viridians have hit a nerve with this imaginary products theme. The response is strong. Viridian Notes with \"imaginary products\" provoke a lot of list feedback. They also stir up media interest. Grim reportage of melting Antarctic ice packs is all well and good, but we're preaching to the converted as we track the climate news. These made-up gizmos of ours, by contrast, really seem to suit the contemporary temperament. It's an age which is profoundly weary of ideology and hates to face the facts, but it's still touchingly eager for a technical fix, especially if it's personal, intimate, and can be FedExed in with a single website click. So I'd like to see the Viridian Movement invest some serious effort in this promising direction. Expressing one's desire for righteous knicknacks is an effective political tactic, much less shopworn than protest signs, peptalks, or dire prognostications. I believe our tactics here should echo those of the Canadian publication ADBUSTERS. ADBUSTERS violently loathes the advertising industry and all its works. A typical ADBUSTERS fake ad is \"Joe Chemo,\" a chainsmoking camel undergoing chemotherapy. The uniform subtext of all ADBUSTERS fake ads is that you, the viewer, are a victim of mental pollution and corporate false-consciousness. ADBUSTERS tries to hammer you into a more socially- advanced awareness by revealing the machineries of consumer manipulation. This is doubtless a virtuous and useful message, but there's already a group energetically doing this, ie. ADBUSTERS. Given our limited resources and innate Viridian Inactivism, we lazy Viridians could never out-do ADBUSTERS. However, I think we could detourne advertising in another way. Our Viridian version of fake ads should strongly suggest to the viewer that he lives in an *entire culture* which is so crass, so crude, so filthy, and so lacking in refinement, that he or she is being *cruelly denied* these very valuable and attractive consumer items. Viridian Imaginary Products should look as luscious, guilt-free and enticing as possible. They're utterly wonderful -- cheap, too! So, we Viridians do NOT want to urge the pampered consumer to behave in a more adult, reponsible fashion, consuming less, consuming correctly, and spending more time in (for instance) sprout-eating and transcendental meditation. No, our basic intent here is to provoke a trance-rupturing *consumer tantrum.* Our intent with these fake ads is to *push the contradictions* -- to exacerbate an atmosphere of *consumer hysteria.* We Viridians want consumers to be instantly afflicted with a terrible, tantalized greed for these marvelous items that they *simply cannot possess.* This is because Viridian imaginary products are, by their very nature, products inherent to a *superior and more advanced 21st century civilization.* Stupid 20th-century cultures vilely smothering in their own CO2 trash cannot manufacture items this cool. Desire that item, therefore, and you find yourself, will-nilly, desiring some better culture. As an important corollary, we want actual, contemporary product manufacturers to suffer severe pangs of future-shock and competitive anxiety when they see our imaginary ads. That's because our imaginary ads make all their actual, real-life, coal-powered products *look really bad and ugly.* Now, if we had a sufficient number of these imaginary ads in production, we could assemble an entire Viridian Imaginary Products Catalog. I surmise that this publication would look and act rather like a SHARPER IMAGE catalog, only, well, very Viridian. This catalog would be a visionary work of science fiction (without of course, identifying itself as \"science fiction\" in any way). In order to get it into as many hands as possible, we would sell it commercially. It would probably be retailed in alternative bookstores, fanzine outlets, by mail-order, and so forth. If this publication created useful interest and did not bankrupt our so-called organization, then a Viridian Exhibit would be in order. We would create mock-ups and models of our Imaginary Products, and take the show on the road. Like the magazine, this would be a commercial effort. Entry fees would be charged in host galleries, and, to cover our costs, it is quite likely that the fake products would be auctioned off to eager sci-fi collectors at the end of the event. Should we reach this exalted, ambitious stage, many further opportunities beckon. Pers"}, {"response": 77, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Fri, Apr 16, 1999 (12:46)", "body": "Now this sounds like fun. You gonna run any of the ads in SUPERSTAR, Alexander?"}, {"response": 78, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Fri, Apr 16, 1999 (13:08)", "body": "Haha, somebody just mailed me and wrote ------------------------------------- To: alexander_schuth@yahoo.com Subject: Re: Viridian Note 00060: Viridian Strategy / superstar I definitely like the idea of these \"ads\" being translated into German and printed in Superstar. It's a great notion. -------------------------------------"}, {"response": 79, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Fri, Apr 16, 1999 (13:36)", "body": "see!!!"}, {"response": 80, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Fri, Apr 16, 1999 (13:56)", "body": "Well, I volunteered that... Somebody liked it... Pretty much the idea behind the whole thing..."}, {"response": 81, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Thu, Apr 29, 1999 (02:41)", "body": "--- Bruce Sterling bruces@well.com wrote: Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 15:16:54 -0500 From: Bruce Sterling bruces@well.com Subject: Viridian Note 00062: What I Did for Earth Day Key concepts: Earth Day, solar power, politics, Austin, Texas, carbon dioxide ascii symbolism, Earth Day 2000 Attention Conservation Notice: It's political. There's a lot of it. Links: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian The Viridian Products listing at bespoke.org has recently doubled in size. Entries in the Viridian Power Banner Contest: http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~rmharman/img/viridian/warn.fossil.gif http://www.subterrane.com and http://www.netaxs.com/~morgana (note dino animation at bottom of page) This contest expires May 31, 01999 Today was Earth Day 1999. My home town, Austin Texas, opened a new solar facility, its third and largest. This is the biggest solar generating unit I've ever personally seen. Black tilted wings of glassy silicon cover maybe a quarter-acre at our new airport, and they can generate a hearty 111 kilowatts in the blistering Texas sun. I attended the formal opening. It was a windy, clouded day. There was a crowd of about forty there to help snip the ribbon, most of them city functionaries. The mayor gave a brief speech extolling Austin's high-tech, quality of life, competitive advantages. He's an okay mayor. I've seen quite of few of them in my 27 years here. We Austinites have done a lot worse than this guy. Austin has a city-owned electrical utility. If you volunteer to pay extra each month on your city electrical bills, you can buy 50-watt \"blocks\" of solar power. Therefore I do -- I splurged and bought 200 watts, or somewhat less than 4 light-bulb's worth. About one thousand other earnest volunteers also pay extra for solar. Thanks to these and other laudable fringe initiatives, the City of Austin now has 450 peak kilowatts of green, renewable power. That's about one percent of our local capacity. It may not sound like much, but the national American average is two-tenths of one percent, so (if you are another Yankee) that probably makes us at least five times more virtuous than you. And gaining. The chief of our local utility, also there, shouted into an ironically power-dead microphone that his outfit is moving forward \"aggressively.\" This city is spending a full million dollars a year on renewable, sustainable power. By 2005, therefore, we'll possess a full *five percent* renewable! What does this mean? Well, imagine that this piece of electrical email (Viridian Note 00062, direct from green, high-tech Austin Texas) had truth-in-labelling about its sources of power. As whiz@ricochet.net^^^^^^*** artfully suggests: \"All emails sent using a server not specifically known to use a renewable energy source ought to have a border of CO2 molecules following the message, thus: 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 \"And perhaps a short written statement above, like: 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 THIS SERVER USES POLLUTING POWER, CONTRIBUTING TO GLOBAL WARMING. 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 or a simpler: 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 BEWARE! SMOGGY SERVER! 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0\" Whiz has a fine idea, so let's extend his suggestion further. If one of his vile CO2 molecule ascii symbols represented one percent of the electricity I used to compose this heartening piece of Earth Day news, the result would look like this: Subject: Viridian Note 00062 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 * 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 While five years and five million dollars from now, it will radically improve to *this!* Subject: Viridian Note 28765 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 * * * * * 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 Still, it's surely better to light even one solar candle than to merely curse that black, oily darkness. Meanwhile, in national Earth Day news, the CO2 issue stumbles front and center in the gerontocratic green contingent: 04/18/99 1st leader to he"}, {"response": 82, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Thu, Apr 29, 1999 (02:42)", "body": "Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 19:37:43 -0500 To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00063: Real-World Projects Key concepts: imaginary products, ad campaigns, Viridian Curia, solar power banners, Viridian commentary, organizational problems Attention Conservation Notice: It's mostly about products that don't exist. Lots of rambling. Links: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian http://www.solarsolar.com Entries in the Viridian Power Banner Contest: http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~rmharman/img/viridian/warn.fo ssil.gif http://www.subterrane.com http://www.netaxs.com/~morgana (note dino animation at bottom of page) http://www.phuq.com/viridian http://www.freeyellow.com/members6/vandewater/banner.gif http://humlog.homestead.com/viridianart/index.html http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/banner.html This contest expires May 31, 01999 On the subject of solar banners, Cor Van de Water (deleau@freemail.nl*) remarks: \"I have my own web pages, although not my own server. I also do generate my own power. The Solar system that I am powering my home with is on display on my web pages. Last 40 days I (my solar system) generated 250 kWh while I (my appliances at home) used only 200. The rest is surplus, back into the grid. Theoretically this could be used by the server that my web pages are on, resulting in a green- powered site. Although in practice I think it is just my PC, where I make my web pages, which is powered 100% green AND the neighbour's dish-washer (or something like that). Anyway, I did make a banner (actually for Linkexchange) where I feature some solar cells and the address of my page, supported by the slogan: \"No time to waste PV\". If you want to look at the banner: http://www.freeyellow.com/members6/vandewater/banner.gif My solar pages are located at: http://start.at/solar Kind regards, Cor van de Water the Netherlands\" (((bruces remarks: This is yet another fine example of the Viridian practice known as \"predicting the present.\"))) Roger Weeks (roger@bayarea.net^^^?) offers a new idea for a Viridian Imaginary Product: \"I'm working on another idea for the Imaginary Products catalog == the Viridian Home. Not all of the ideas are conceptualized yet, but it features the following: \"Rain-collection system that serves as the primary irrigation and water source. \"Septic tank is fitted with microbes that eat waste and output pure H2O. \"The house is a single-story set into a hill, with indigenous flora planted on the roof. This keeps the house cool in summer and blends into the landscape. \"Wind-up washer and dryer. \"Power is supplied either from solar, wind, or fuel cells. \"Construction is from entirely recycled cellulose or other fibers. \"Walls are extremely thick, at least 18-24 inches, again for insulation. \"Skylights provide all daytime light. \"Nighttime lights are provided by bacteria or fungi that give off natural light. Ideally, these would be the same microbes that eat waste. Perhaps their other byproduct would be light. \"No cathode ray tubes. All displays in the model Viridian house are smart ink displays. \"Wireless or satellite data connections to the world net. No copper cable or telco lines in the future. \"We should get someone with 3D design skills to mock up a demo. This would make a great Viridian gallery piece. Visitors could walk marvelling through a 3D full-size house that *they can't purchase.*\" Bruce Sterling remarks: I am eager for more suggestions along this line. We have now assembled a group of Viridian Volunteers, known as \"the Viridian Curia,\" who want to work on Viridian imaginary ad campaigns. Members of the Curia are the highest-ranking Viridians, and have their elite status denominated by a Viridian \"bishop's crook\" by their log-in name. If you would like to join the Curia and engage in the rough-and-tumble of undertaking ad projects, send me your snailmail address, and a 100-word biography indicating your areas of creative interest. Note that there are about thirty Curia members already. Manpower is not our problem. Here is a summary list of Viridian Imaginary Products suggested to date. I've not yet decided which project will be first, how to divvy up authority within the Curia, how to coordinate volunteers, what to do with the \"ad\" when we have it, or how to pay for any of this. This is why Viridian life is rich and full. Perhaps we will divide the Curia into rival design teams, depending on popular response to potential products. Attention please, Curia members: if you find any of these notions particularly attractive, let me know and I will make careful note of it. The Viridian EcoSystem Game (Note 00053) The Viridian Alcohol Cellphone (Note 00042) The Viridian Electrical Meter (Note 00043) The Viridian Service Station (Note 00044) The Viridian Teakettle (we have our design; this is a model-building project) The Viridian Model Home (Note 00063) The Viridian Model Family (Note 00018) The Viridian Genetically Reconstituted Mammoth-Fur Sweater Viridian \"Fungal B"}, {"response": 83, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Thu, May 27, 1999 (02:20)", "body": "Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 22:33:59 -0500 From: Bruce Sterling Subject: Viridian Note 00068: Household Localizers Key concepts: housekeeping, ubiquitous computing, tangible cyberspace, digital localizers, anti-theft tags, ACM SIGCHI 99 Attention Conservation Notice: It's not a custom-written Viridian note, but a brief speech recently delivered to 2,500 computer-human interface designers. Links: http://www.acm.org/sigchi/ The Viridian Library: http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/viridian/ Entries in the Viridian Power Banner Contest: http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~rmharman/img/viridian/warn.fossil.gif http://www.subterrane.com http://www.netaxs.com/~morgana (note dino animation at bottom of page) http://www.phuq.com/viridian http://www.freeyellow.com/members6/vandewater/banner.gif http://humlog.homestead.com/viridianart/index.html http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/banner.html http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/sunservr.html http://www.dux.ru/digbody/viridian/vir.htm http://members.aol.com/stjude/viridian http://www.id.iit.edu/~chad/viridian/viridian_banner.htm http://www.dnai.com/~catnhat/viridianbanners.htm and http://www.erols.com/ljaurbach/Banners.htm This contest expires May 31, 01999 Presentation at SIGCHI 99 Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, USA May 18, 01999 by Bruce Sterling For my mercifully brief presentation today, I'd like to talk in a rather unromantic, practical way about the interface between humanity and its stuff. My humble topic is that ancient curse, humanity's most basic task: housekeeping. First, let's try to get the technological big picture, and then we'll get into some practical, everyday implications. I'll use myself and my own life as a cogent example here. I think I'm rather typical of most SIGCHI attendees in that I now have two classes of possessions: actual possessions, and virtual possessions. Over the last twenty years, I've gotten my hot little hands on much more of both classes, but mostly, an explosive increase in the second class, virtual stuff. I own a hell of a lot of virtual stuff now. A Guatemalan family of four could live an upwardly mobile life on the revenue I spend on data flows. Especially if you count my cable TV, phone bills, Internet hookup, software, modems, PCs and the household security system. So, if there's a difference between my two classes of possessions, it isn't the money involved. No, the truly remarkable thing about my virtual stuff is its anomalous relationship to property law. Is it my property, or isn't it my property? Who knows? I sure don't know. I've got virtual stuff that is freeware, it's shareware, it's cut- and-pasted from heaven knows where. It's personal, it's public, I made some of it myself, and every flavor of so on. Even the stuff I bought direct from Steve Jobs and Bill Gates doesn't actually belong to me. It came almost mummified in complicated shrinkwrap declarations, so even though I paid real money, carried the box home, and installed the contents myself, I don't actually own this stuff. I kind of license it, or rent it, apparently. The Software Publishers Association says that I'm to regard this purchased virtual property as something like a chair. I'm supposed to believe that software is a physical, sacred property that will stay in one place and under one legal identity, forever. Or until release 2.0, whichever comes first. Even though, for instance, I used Netscape for years, when it was college freeware, and then a booming corporation, and then open-source code, and then a division of AOL, and then, probably, nothing at all but a memory, except that I'll still be using Netscape, because I'm really lazy. Here's my pitch in a nutshell: I can't imagine virtual property becoming anything much like a chair. Butt I can easily imagine chairs becoming much, much more like virtual property. This idea is probably best filed under the grand conceptual heading of \"tangible cyberspace,\" i.e., the process in which the products, programs, and innate nature of virtuality spill out of the computer screen and infect the physical world. People used to talk about \"wiring the home.\" This is old-fashioned rhetoric now. Turn the term inside out, and it becomes \"sheltering your network.\" It all becomes clear if you postulate that the net always comes first. My physical possessions are an aspect of the net. Today, right now, if you objectively compare my virtual possessions to my actual possessions, it rapidly becomes obvious that my actual possessions are violently out of control. I have all kinds of searching and cataloging devices and services for my desktop machine, and for the Internet. But I've been known to hunt for my socks or my car keys for almost an hour. My house is an awful mess, because my actual possessions are very stupid. They don't know what they are, they don't know where they are, and they don't know where they belong. All this could change with"}, {"response": 84, "author": "terry", "date": "Tue, Jun 29, 1999 (13:06)", "body": "Subject: Viridian Note 00073: Viridian Commentary Key concepts: household localizers, the coal-burning net, energy consumption practices Attention Conservation Notice: Who are these people? Viridian commentary is ruthlessly edited for reader convenience. Entries in the Viridian Couture Contest: none This contest expires July 21, 01999. Links: http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/ From: Pete Kaiser (kaiser@acm.org) Subject: Re: Viridian Note 00068: Household Localizers \"Bruce: \"Your household localizers actually have existed for years, even though they're rather large and they cost more than ten cents. I have experience with one variety, the ones called 'active badges,' developed by Olivetti at its Cambridge (UK) research lab and elaborated by Olivetti and Digital Equipment. \"The classic active badge has about the area of a credit card and is about 8mm thick, in a housing of black plastic. It has a single button on the front, plus an almost unnoticeable little infrared emitter and a similar little receiver. Inside is a battery and a tiny circuit consisting mostly of a unique identity number in ROM. The badge responds with that number when it gets a signal, or when the button is pressed. \"Every second or so a ceiling-mounted box emits a low- powered infrared pulse, and every active badge in range responds with its identity. The box then emits a message that says \"I'm box A, and I have these badge identities in range: x, y, z, ...\". A computer collects that information and, on request, can tell you \"Bruce Sterling [wearer of badge x] is in his living room [near detector box A].\" \"People can be tracked all over a campus or factory; and since the computer knows where you are, it can see to it that your incoming phone calls ring where you *are.* Suppose you don't *want* people to know where you are? Simple: you hide your badge in your pocket, and you become invisible to the system. \"You can also glue active badges to valuable pieces of equipment, or better yet, build badges into their housings. \"This technology is quite old. When last I was in contact with it, they were trying to make the devices smarter and smaller. \"So much for the Oh-Wow! factor. Active badges haven't been a market success because, it turns out, people don't *want* to be locatable all the time. People want to be able to be unlocatable without explicitly signalling that they're unlocatable, for reasons that may range from the mundane (using the toilet) to the clandestine (eating at restaurants instead of the company cafeteria). \"We have to think seriously about whether we really want to know where all our stuff is. Suppose one's spouse discovers the existence of certain small, prized objects you've kept hidden since you bought them out of the petty cash. \"What would be the real repercussions of knowing where everything is? There must be any number of second and third-order social problems that we would never discover without performing the experiment. \"Finally: real Viridian localizers would be intrinsically part of the objects localized, and would have more than one function. In many cases, like the Viridian teapot, the tags would grow along with the object, or form within it like the crystalline interior of a geode. They might cover the exterior like tiny buds. The same for locator detectors. After all, biology is much better at producing emitters and detectors than we are at designing them from scratch.\" (((bruces remarks: No wonder these clunky \"active badges\" were a market failure: why the heck should I pay one thin dime to let *Olivetti* know where *I* am? Furthermore, if some political regime dares to put an Orwellian locator dog-tag on me, then it's obviously time to raise the black flag and start shooting. This \"market problem\" is a straightforward power question of who owns the means of information. Power may be subtler nowadays, but beware any digital consumer-marketing company that blithely offers to cheaply catalog everything you possess.))) (((Viridian Note 00070: The Coal-Burning Net, on the subject of how much CO2 is produced by the Net, aroused much response.))) From: Peter Denning (pjd@cne.gmu.edu) \"In Viridian Note 00070, you quoted a Forbes piece quantifying the electrical consumption of computers. I've seen one or two other papers recently of the same ilk. Many years ago, when people proposed founding paper journals about the coming age of paperless offices, I said 'The only difference between a computer and a book is the age of the trees.' Others heard that as a quip, but now they are measuring it. From: Charles Raymond (craymond@northweb.com) \"I've never read Forbes magazine, but after this Viridian Note, I don't think I ever will. *My* power is generated solely by moving water. Sixteen concrete- enclosed turbines, half of the project. The other half serves Ontario. \"I have to wonder how many cubic tons of poison gas, liquid and solid pollutants are produced each month for the production of Forbes magazine. Not to mentio"}, {"response": 85, "author": "terry", "date": "Fri, Jul  2, 1999 (01:53)", "body": "From bruces@well.com Thu Jul 1 15:24:56 1999 Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 16:30:34 -0500 To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00075: Kyoto Politics X-UIDL: ab75fafc2d1e207a2094d0ae29b9b219 Key concepts: inadequate government, Kyoto Protocol, US Senate Attention Conservation Notice: it's entirely and utterly political. There are 1,300 words of it. Links: Alliance to Save Energy http://www.ase.org/ Senator Thad Cochran, Republican from Mississippi http://www.senate.gov/~cochran/ United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (includes full text of Kyoto Protocol): http://www.unfccc.de Republican Senators Resent Clinton's Temerity on Kyoto: http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1997/Gwupdate-mw.htm Kirk Fordice, Governor of Mississippi, on Kyoto Protocol: http://www.govoff.state.ms.us/pr051998.htm Horrific EPA graph of growing climate temperature anomalies: http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/news/j-dlo_pg.gif Entries in the Viridian Couture Contest: None. Greenhouse heat wave in effect, Viridians reduced to shabby sombreros and gym shorts. This contest expires July 21, 01999. In Viridian Note 00074: \"Browning the US Govt,\" we described how Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi tried to stop the President of the United States from mandating less CO2 use in the federal government. On the face of it, the Senator's act seems incredibly stupid, vindictive and pointless, and was promptly denounced as \"unbelievable.\" While politics are of tangential interest to the Viridian movement, it's important to understand why the US government has become so dysfunctional in climate issues. Why have even simple, \"no-brainer\" reform efforts that actually *save taxpayers money* become areas of partisan confrontation? Why did Thad Cochran do this apparently ludicrous thing? Let's speculate, shall we? It would be too simple to denounce Senator Cochran as a corrupt puppet of the carbon-mining industries. This kind of polarizing demogoguery is boring and counterproductive. It's been done to death. Obviously the carbon industries are major players in the energy process. It could scarcely be otherwise. For instance, the recent Interior Appropriations Bill (which Senator Cochran deliberately amended in order to frustrate the President), contains about 300 million dollars in Energy Department federal subsidies for oil and coal. But the carbon industries don't own Thad Cochran. Mississippi isn't Kuwait. He's never been an out-and-out oil man, unlike, for instance, George Bush. There's some oil and a whole lot of foul, soft-lignite coal in Mississippi, with mining representing maybe 2 percent of the state's economy, but Senator Cochran's main legislative interest is catfish farming. Maybe the guy is just incomprehensibly mean-spirited. Perhaps he hates Bill Clinton so much that, like many Republican zealots, he's willing to slash his own wrists to bleed on Clinton's shoes. But no. Thad Cochran is a former Eagle Scout, a white-haired Baptist lawyer from Mississippi whose demeanour is commonly described as \"courtly.\" Cochran is the senior Senator from Mississippi, a career pol who wins his re-elections by large, cozy margins. Cochran pre-dates the savage trench- warfare epoch of his junior Senator, Trent Lott, and the politically extinguished Newt Gingrich. The Senator has been in power a long time. He is not childish, and he doesn't make trouble merely for trouble's sake. The Alliance to Save Energy artfully suggests that Senator Cochran is attempting to fleece the American taxpayer while stuffing fat back into the government. If mere pork was the goal, Senator Cochran would be doing what he specializes in doing, i.e., rural Mississippi water projects. No, Thad Cochran has two basic reasons to do what he did. Defending the Senate's privileges, and ideological pressure. First, the jealous Senate. In introducing his amendment, the Senator irately declared that the President's action was a \"thinly disguised effort to implement the Kyoto Agreement.\" Why does he consider this a bad thing? Because it makes the Senate into a potted plant, that's why. The Senate believes it has already successfully dealt with Kyoto. The Senate, in the bipartisan persons of Senators Byrd and Hagel, carried out a maneuver, back in 1997, called \"putting the treaty in the parking lot.\" The Senate didn't want a straight-up, confrontational vote on the Kyoto treaty, because this might cause political stress. So, they simply stuck the treaty into permanent limbo, by passing the \"Byrd-Hagel Resolution.\" This resolution states, more or less, that the US Senate is not going to consider the Kyoto Protocol unless it's firmly established from the get-go that the United States comes out on top in the UN negotiations no matter what. Byrd-Hagel is a silly resolution, but the text of the resolution isn't really important. The resolution's formal text is just vapid rhetorical dogfood for various economic and military American interest groups. "}, {"response": 86, "author": "terry", "date": "Sat, Jul  3, 1999 (01:53)", "body": "Comments?"}, {"response": 87, "author": "terry", "date": "Fri, Jul  9, 1999 (11:08)", "body": "Key concepts: lobbying groups, political power structure in USA, Viridian Notes Table of Contents 00001-00075 Attention Conservation Notice: It's political. It goes on quite a while. Entries in the Viridian Couture Contest: http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/computercasual.html http://humlog.homestead.com/viridianart/Fashion0110.html Prada's Fall 99 \"EcoWarrior\" get-up, pirate-scanned out of July 01999 issue of VOGUE: http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/viridian/contest5.ht ml (((Thanks for showing us how the pros do it, Miuccia! Everybody go click the banner ads in gratitude at http://www.vogue.com!)) ) Links: http://www.wholeearthmag.com Summer 1999 issue of Whole Earth magazine has lead article on \"Viridian Manifesto\" http://www.bespoke.org/viridian Tor Kristensen remarks: \"The links in the bespoke.org Viridian Notes are now active (clickable). Please notify the Viridian public that I need an Archive Administrator to update the Viridian archive while I'm in Alaska. It's dead simple. Copy, Paste, Click 'submit.'\" Tor Kristensen tor@araneum.dk^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^***? Sources: FORTUNE magazine December 01997 When you're baking in inhuman heat beneath an angry sky, just as, for instance, millions of inhabitants of the East Coast of the United States are doing as I write this, the carbon dioxide problem can seem monstrous and unstoppable. After all, the planet's entire atmosphere has been soiled. There's no place left for anyone to hide. It's easy to feel helpless and to become very paranoid. No entity anywhere seems to be helping climate matters much. Especially in politics. The National Wildlife Federation's *Conservation Directory* (44th edition) lists no fewer than 3,000 government and private environmental groups, in the USA and Canada alone. Many of them have been beavering along in the halls of power for decades now. Yet we're still roasting in our own exhaust spew, just like the turkeys we are. But in fact, to date, CO2 has never become a central political issue. The Kyoto treaty is buried under the US Senate's carpet. Even the political anti-Kyoto forces, (and there are plenty of them with plenty of funds) are very much fringe amateur small-fry, power-politically speaking. Before I tear into the anti-Kyoto groups as if they were causing the end of the world (as in point of fact they may be), it's useful to put CO2 politics into a broader political perspective. We'll stick to an American political perspective for the time being, because I haven't found good data yet for other juridictions, and the Americans clearly play a major, starring role in the planet's CO2 crisis. Who actually runs the American political system? Could it be CIA/NSA/FBI? The Military-Industrial Complex? Freemasons? The ultra-rich? The Skull and Bones Society? The 4,312 guys on the grassy knoll who shot Jack Kennedy? Alas no! In December 01997, FORTUNE magazine took the trouble to conduct a formal poll of members of Congress, Congressional staffers, and White House officials. The magazine, aided by two professional pollsters, asked 2,200 politicians to rank American interest groups in terms of their political clout. These were America's top politicians, talking about the people who tell them what to do. Who can get their way from the US government? Who do American politicians fear to cross? Who really compels their political attention? Interest groups have their ups and downs, just like all other aspects of industrial democracy. It's only a year and a half since the FORTUNE poll though, and we're still in the same Administration. So this is a viable snapshot of the American political landscape, seen from the top of the system. FORTUNE did the ranking, but I'm doing my own helpful commentary. I hope that non-Americans may find this list of particular use. 1. American Association of Retired Persons Old people who vote faithfully and have plenty to gain and lose by government subsidy. 2. American Israel Public Affairs Committee Wealthy, discreet alien sympathizers with a focussed agenda. 3. AFL-CIO Largest labor union. Historically dominates Democratic Party. 4. National Federation of Independent Business The small-business lobby. 5. Association of Trial Lawyers of America The privileged legal caste. They know how legislators think and act because many of them are future, current or former legislators. 6. National Rifle Association of America Notoriously zealous American armed-populace freaks and the industries that supply their ammo. The classic single- issue pressure group. 7. Christian Coalition TV-satellite evangelical empire. Good at grass-roots attacks on Republican party structure. 8. American Medical Association The privileged medical caste. 9. National Education Association Huge numbers of government-employed teachers. 10. National Right to Life Committee Abortion zealots. 11. National Association of Realtors Huge real-estate industry is highly vulnerable to changes in federal tax structure. 12. American Bankers Associati"}, {"response": 88, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Thu, Aug 26, 1999 (17:32)", "body": "Below is of interest for gamers, game designers, and anybody residing in virtual communities or virtual community builders (= YOU!). ************************************************************ Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 18:36:01 -0500 Subject: Viridian Note 00090: Design Principles for Virtual Worlds Key concepts: virtual communities, computer gaming, virtual politics, virtual economics, violence, automation, virtual personae, entertainment industry Attention Conservation Notice: Almost 3,000 words. Of interest mostly to net.organizational specialists. Written in subcultural jargon of computer gaming industry. Unlike most tracts on virtual community, reflects actual, sustained, hard-won experience with its subject matter. Has little to do with CO2 emissions, except that 125,000 computer gamers whacking imaginary dragons with imaginary swords are emitting a lot of actual carbon dioxide. Entries in the Viridian Summer Health Warning Contest: http://www.earthlight.co.nz/~bretts/vs.html http://www.tux.org/~lasser/viridian/ http://www.subterrane.com/heat.htm http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~rmharman/img/viridian/sun.bmp http://humlog.homestead.com/viridianart/HEAT.html http://members.tripod.com/~MSpong/viridian/heatdeath.html http://www.premierestedivolt.com/HEAT.HTML http://www.radix.net/~kreinsch/viridian/heatkills.html http://www.provide.net/~herrell/heat.html http://www.gothic.net/~weasel/viridian/ http://home.earthlink.net/~keim9/heatwarning.htm http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/viridian/viridianhea t.html http://www.octa.net/heatposter.html http://www.boston.quik.com/kitsune/gfx/heatwarn.jpg http://jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu/~djb14/viridian/heatkills.htm http://www.artlung.com/viridian6/ http://www.well.com/~smendler/heat.html http://www.greenbuilder.com/viridian_heat_load@148K.html http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/heatkills.html http://www.cs.brown.edu/~pal/viridian.html http://www.potatoe.com/viridian/poster.html http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Village/3203/viridian_heat.h tml This contest expires on September 1, 01999. Links: http://www.ultimaonline.com http://mud.sig.net/raph/gaming/ (((Raphael Koster (rkoster@origin.ea.com*) was lead designer for Ultima Online, an interactive virtual world with over 125,000 subscribers. He and his colleagues have come up with a set of principles and rules of thumb for managing these complex interactive environments. == bruces))) The Laws of Online World Design by Raphael Koster These are taken from both experience and from the writings of others. Many who have done this sort of game design take some of these rules for granted, but other rules may be less intuitive. Many of the laws here were actually stated as such by others, and not by me. A Caveat Ola's Law About Laws: \"Any general law about virtual worlds should be read as a challenge rather than as a guideline.\" You'll learn more from attacking it than from accepting it. Design Rules The secrets to a really long-lived, goal-oriented, online game of wide appeal: * Have multiple paths of advancement (individual features are nice, but making them ladders is better); * Make it easy to switch between paths of advancement (ideally, without having to start over) * Make sure the milestones in the path of advancement are clear, visible, and significant (having 600 meaningless milestones doesn't help); * Ideally, give your game a sense of limitless significant milestones (try to make your ladder feel infinite). Modes of expression You're trying to provide as many modes of expression as possible in your online world. \"Character classes\" are just modes of expression, after all. Persistence means it never goes away Once you open your online world, expect to keep your team on it indefinitely. Some of these games have never closed. And closing one prematurely may result in losing the faith of your customers, damaging the prospects for other games in the same genre. Macroing, botting, and automation No matter what you do, someone is going to automate the process of playing your world. Corollary: Looking at what parts of your game players tend to automate is a good way to determine which parts of the game are tedious and/or not fun. Game systems: No matter what you do, players will decode every formula, statistic, and algorithm in your world via experimentation. It is always more rewarding to kill other players than to kill whatever the game sets up as a target. A given player of level x can slay multiple creatures of level y. Therefore, killing a player of level x yields (n)y reward in purely in-game reward terms. Killing players will therefore always be more rewarding in game terms than killing monsters of comparable difficulty. However, there's also the fact that players will be more challenging and exciting to fight than monsters, no matter what you do. Never trust the client. Never put anything on the client machine. The client is in the hands of the enemy. Never, ever, ever forget this. J. C. Lawrence's \"do it everywhere\" law: \"If "}, {"response": 89, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Aug 26, 1999 (20:47)", "body": "1998 must have been an year to forget...or from which to learn. How miserable."}, {"response": 90, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Fri, Aug 27, 1999 (15:47)", "body": "Yeah, but what about the ideas on how to motivate people in MUDs? That's the industry's experts, and they tell us what makes places like that - and the Spring, which is basically a bit like online roleplaying, too - work over a while (and in their cases, SPEND MONEY!)... Springfolks, comment!"}, {"response": 91, "author": "moulton", "date": "Sat, Aug 28, 1999 (09:51)", "body": "ideas on how to motivate people in MUDs? Bring a Candle, Not a Sparkler"}, {"response": 92, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Tue, Aug 31, 1999 (03:12)", "body": "Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 18:07:40 -0500 Subject: Viridian Note 00093: The Deep Hot Biosphere Key concepts: non-biological petroleum, chemosynthetic bacteria, deep hot biosphere, Thomas Gold Attention Conservation Notice: Geologists have somehow managed to ignore this heretic for thirty years, so why should we be listening to him now? Provokes cognitive dissonance of the first order. Paradigm-rupturing. Entries in the Viridian Summer Health Warning Contest: http://www.earthlight.co.nz/~bretts/vs.html http://www.tux.org/~lasser/viridian/ http://www.subterrane.com/heat.htm http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~rmharman/img/viridian/sun.bmp http://humlog.homestead.com/viridianart/HEAT.html http://members.tripod.com/~MSpong/viridian/heatdeath.html http://www.premierestedivolt.com/HEAT.HTML http://www.radix.net/~kreinsch/viridian/heatkills.html http://www.provide.net/~herrell/heat.html http://www.gothic.net/~weasel/viridian/ http://home.earthlink.net/~keim9/heatwarning.htm http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/viridian/viridianheat.html http://www.octa.net/heatposter.html http://www.boston.quik.com/kitsune/gfx/heatwarn.jpg http://jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu/~djb14/viridian/heatkills.htm http://www.artlung.com/viridian6/ http://www.well.com/~smendler/heat.html http://www.greenbuilder.com/viridian_heat_load@148K.html http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/heatkills.html http://www.cs.brown.edu/~pal/viridian.html http://www.potatoe.com/viridian/poster.html http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Village/3203/viridian_heat.html http://way.nu/greens/heat.html http://users.erols.com/ljaurbach/Kirkwood.htm This contest expires very soon: September 1, 01999. Viridian Individual Projects: http://www.radix.net/~kreinsch/viridian/themeproject.html http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/everydayobject.gif http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/vrml http://www.spiritone.com/~terenced http://www.bomoco.com/Viridian/viridian.htm A new Viridian Individual Project by Will Munslow (anubis@deming.com^^**): http://www.nicotinetea.com (((Will Munslow remarks: \"I was fiddling around with Perl and ripped off some nice scripts that I reworked. A small Viridian Version of slashdot.org. Dunno if anyone is interested, but if the amount of information headed to you is as big as I expect, people might enjoy having a different place to display it.\"))) *Viridian T-shirts for sale, $15 each http://www.bomoco.com/Viridian/curia/curia.htm http://www.bomoco.com/Viridian/curia/zebrabothsides.gif We're Shipping the First Ones Out the Door Right Now. ***************************************************** *The Deep Hot Biosphere:* \"a renowned scientist's revolutionary theory of a vast subterranean habitat and its significance for life's origins on our planet and the possibility of live elsewhere in the universe\" by Thomas Gold Copernicus, Springer-Verlag, 1999. ISBN 0-387-98546-8 http://www.copernicus-ny.com Well, this new book of Thomas Gold's is getting a lot of play. I just read it. All 208 pages of it. And I'll say this for it: if it's true, it's certainly is revolutionary. Here's the pitch. \"Fossil fuels\" aren't fossils. They don't come from squished dinosaurs or ancient buried vegetation. Hydrocarbons like methane and crude oil are inherent planetary substances. They're basically the same material as the \"carbonaceous chondrites\" seen in asteroids, or the methane and ethane seen in Jupiter and its moons. The earth is heavily loaded with various primeval oils and tarry goos, which have been slowly cooked out of its crust over the eons by radioactive heat from the core. Here's where it gets weirder. The substances we know as oil and natural gas have been streaming up toward the planet's surface since the planet first formed. When this hydrocarbon muck is still about ten kilometers down, it gets caught within pores of the stone by primeval archaic bacteria. These bugs live inside rock, they eat this primeval asteroid goo, and they turn it into the stuff we call \"coal\" and \"crude oil.\" They are chemosynthetic organisms, and they thrive in extremely high, oxygen-free temperatures, in vast, impossible numbers. They're probably the original form of life on Earth. Primitive earthly life probably started inside the Earth, in these flowing high-energy streams of goo and muck, long before the surface was colonizable. Oil and gas looks like organic products to a biochemist, but that's not because they are fossilized. It's because they've been basically fermented by a previously unsuspected ecosystem of archaic bacteria. These ancient bugs basically saturate the entire rocky crust of the planet. By weight, they're probably eighty percent of all living things on Earth. And that's just the start of Gold's theory. These primeval bugs give off enough fizzy foul-smelling gas to break rocks and start earthquakes. Most metal deposits: gold, zinc, silver etc == are not caused by flowing water or lava, but by flowing hydrocarbons filtered and transformed by bugs. Even though coal sometimes has foss"}, {"response": 93, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Tue, Aug 31, 1999 (09:50)", "body": "How very curious. Think I just might run some of this past a real Geeologist to see what he thinks of this theory. I hope this guy did a lot of footnoting, because it is easy to make statements. Backing them up is quite another thing."}, {"response": 94, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Sep  2, 1999 (10:14)", "body": "Let us know what the geologist thinks. I guess the implications are that oil is forever?"}, {"response": 95, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Sat, Sep  4, 1999 (10:17)", "body": "If using this stuff is bad, and the supply of them is (nearly) infinite, doesn't that make even worse news? Marcia, have that rock-science-son of yours investigate the matter!"}, {"response": 96, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Mon, Sep  6, 1999 (20:42)", "body": "It is a good thing I telnet on occasion. It makes me go through all new posts includeing this one which I had forgotten. I willpaste him the article athis office tomorrow. (please excuse the poor typing...)"}, {"response": 97, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Tue, Sep  7, 1999 (17:38)", "body": "I asked son David (the Geologist) to comment on the review of Gold's book. Terse and to the point, he said: \" I have heard of (the book) before and I think it is horse pucky.\""}, {"response": 98, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Wed, Sep  8, 1999 (13:31)", "body": "Thanks for this funny quote, hehe... \"Pucky\" - is that Hawaiian or Geologistian ? The reviewer makes a point of showing that this author has been thought wrong often... Circumstances proved that not be be correct at times... I wish we could some opinion from a knowledgeable person who had actually read this - HEY TEXANS! Y'all have dem oil-science boys, right? How about it?"}, {"response": 99, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Wed, Sep  8, 1999 (13:46)", "body": "For what it's worth, David's main job is purging old gas station sites of residual oil and petroleum in the soil after the leaky tanks and other stuff was removed. He does know about oil and things related to it, but not these critters. \"pucky\" is a euphemism clean enought ot send to his Mother...self-invented, I think."}, {"response": 100, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Sep  9, 1999 (00:27)", "body": "Mmm, viridian horse pucky revealed. Any details?"}, {"response": 101, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Sep  9, 1999 (00:45)", "body": "None yet...just a quick note from his cubicle at work. Will try to pry more out of him over the weekend."}, {"response": 102, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Sep  9, 1999 (08:06)", "body": "I love would love to hear a detailed critique of that piece. It's so radical in it's implications and to the unknowing it may have a certain plausibility. I mean, what is the evidence that dinos decayed in to oil?"}, {"response": 103, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Thu, Sep  9, 1999 (11:47)", "body": "Right, Terry, it makes us ole conspiracy theoretists-cum-fanatical-viridina-pose really nervous, like \"I want to believe!\", and \"The Truth is down there!\". The up-side is: Don't worry, there'll be enough as long as you and your kids live. The down-side: Keep using this, and you're not gonna live as long as you thought... Neither might the kids... But there is fun stuff out there IN ABUNDANCE (like the French-developed car running on compressed air...). From Pointcast: The Little Engine that Might by Leander Kahney 3:00\ufffda.m.\ufffd\ufffd9.Sep.99.PDT -- Taking on the world's giant energy business, a tiny startup is set to launch an engine that requires no fuel, produces no pollution, and is free to run. Naturally, the experts think it's too good to be true -- although they can't exactly say why. [I LOVE that line... A.] --------------------------------------- See also: Plasma-Powered Trip to the Stars --------------------------------------- Entropy Systems, a seven-person startup based in Youngstown, Ohio, is scheduled to launch the Entropy engine early next year, said the technology's inventor, Sanjay Amin, a mechanical engineer and co-founder of the company. The Entropy engine acts like a heat sponge, absorbing heat in the atmosphere and converting it to power, Amin said. Since it consumes no fossil fuels, nuclear fuels, or electrical power, it produces no emissions, directly or indirectly. Its only byproduct is cold air. Initially, the technology will be used to create an outboard motor for small pleasure boats, simply because it's the easiest market to break into, Amin said. But as it is developed, the technology could be used to run refrigerators, air conditioners, generators -- even automobiles. \"There's no reason it can't power a car,\" Amin said. So far, Amin has built a prototype, which he said generates one-tenth of one horsepower. The outboard motor -- yet to be built -- will produce between two and three horsepower. It will be roughly the same size as a conventional outboard motor and only marginally more expensive. But, apart from routine maintenance and lubrication, the engine will be free to run. Named after the unit in physics that describes the amount of available energy in a system, the Entropy engine consists of a central chamber, filled with air, that has a piston in the center, Amin said. The engine operates on a cycle. First, a starter motor spins the engine to a high speed, which pushes the gas to the edge of the central chamber, as in a centrifuge. As the gas moves to the edge, it creates a partial vacuum in the center that draws the piston out, compressing the gas. In the second part of the cycle, the engine is slowed, and the gas redistributes itself throughout the chamber, which increases the pressure on the piston. Heat trapped in the gas is converted into the energy that moves the piston, which cools the air in the engine chamber. The engine will run year-round in any climate, even sub-zero temperatures. Although it operates better in warmer climates, it will work in any environment above absolute zero (minus 273 degrees Kelvin). \"In physical terms, even ice has a lot of heat,\" Amin said. Amin claims to have patented the technology in the United States, Australia, and Europe. He said he has published a book on thermodynamics and in 1996 received an Engineer of the Year award from the American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin. Always obsessed with engines, Amin built steam engines as a teenager. He has devoted more than a decade to the Entropy engine. He began by looking at gravity as a power source, which eventually led to the idea of using atmospheric heat. The technology was developed in part when Amin was studying at Youngstown State University, which helped launch the fledgling company. Bill Dunn, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said that while he hasn't seen the engine in action, he has examined the materials on Entropy's Web site. He said the logic appears sound, but the outcome -- free power -- doesn't make sense. \"It's the end result -- that you can create power from heat at ambient temperature -- that flies in the face of the basic laws of physics,\" said Dunn, who acknowledges that he hasn't devoted time to figure out why the engine shouldn't work. \"To track down where his thinking may be flawed is a difficult thing to do,\" Dunn said. In Amin's favor, Dunn noted that he has attracted backing from \"some very intelligent people.\" Hedging his bets, Dunn said breakthrough technologies have frequently been greeted with skepticism. \"Every time someone suggests something like this, you should at least give them the benefit of an open mind.\" Iain MacGill, an energy campaigner at Greenpeace, said that because vehicle pollution makes up about a third of US greenhouse gas emissions, a pollution-free engine would be an incredible breakthrough. Nevertheless, it sounds to him like fiction. \"It's got a flavor of 'too-good-to-b"}, {"response": 104, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Thu, Sep  9, 1999 (11:49)", "body": "BTW, THAT Sterling was only a pastor, Austin's is Pope-Emperor of a world-wide movement. Just FYI."}, {"response": 105, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Sep  9, 1999 (15:12)", "body": "Geez, you don't get much higher in the order on this Earth that the Pope-Emperor. I AM impressed!"}, {"response": 106, "author": "moulton", "date": "Fri, Sep 10, 1999 (18:44)", "body": "To absorb heat from the atmosphere, the engine has to be cooled below ambient temperature. To cool it requires the refrigeration cycle performed by the \"starter motor.\" But the starter motor will need to be powered from some conventional source of power, and will draw more power than the rest of the system produces. There just ain't no way to get free energy."}, {"response": 107, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Sun, Sep 12, 1999 (04:55)", "body": "Do you know the principle of the Sterling engine? Creates power from temperature differences... No other fuel, just air-filled cylinders. This technology is 19th-cent., current use is - to my best knowledge - as heatsink or cooler in satellites (possibly by exploiting the heat to have it slush around coolant)."}, {"response": 108, "author": "moulton", "date": "Mon, Sep 13, 1999 (09:52)", "body": "You need a natural source of temperature difference. This can be based on the temperature difference between the air and the ground, which relies on the way the sun's heating work. That makes it a kind of solar energy. Most thermodynamic engines burn fuel to create the hot zone. The problem with relying on natural temperature differences is that the differential temperatures aren't very far apart, so the differential pressures (needed to move pistons) isn't very great. Still one can build a small Sterling engine, perhaps enough to power a fan."}, {"response": 109, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Wed, Sep 15, 1999 (11:55)", "body": "Yes, you can order working miniature Sterling machines to show off on your desk, powered by a small flame. You can also power Sterling machines by using sun's power, collected with a convex collector mirror. But Amin's idea is like that somehow turned inside-out. Once it's started, the compressed gas creates heat, that causes the gas to expand again. And the starter could be a crank or rope, like lawn-mowers or small boat-engines. Hmh, Terry, drag out Ray to take a look at this, please."}, {"response": 110, "author": "moulton", "date": "Wed, Sep 15, 1999 (23:19)", "body": "Trust me. I have a Ph.D. in engineering. I actually sweated my way through Thermodynamics back in college. Once you stop pumping in energy with the starter motor, the thing comes to equilibrium and stops moving. You push on the piston and compress the gas. The gas pushes back. You let go of the piston, and the gas pushes the piston out, expands, and cools. End of cycle. Nothing happens after that unless you push on the piston again. Which is where the energy is coming from."}, {"response": 111, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Wed, Sep 15, 1999 (23:24)", "body": "There is, in fact, no perpetual motion machine, then?!"}, {"response": 112, "author": "moulton", "date": "Wed, Sep 15, 1999 (23:33)", "body": "Not one based on thermodynamic cycles, no. They need a supply of thermal energy. But the motion of an electron in orbit about a nucleus is a perpetual motion system. Of course like all such perpetual motion systems, you can't extract energy from it."}, {"response": 113, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Wed, Sep 15, 1999 (23:41)", "body": "Oh yes, there's the rub. That your degree says you have searched for the highest knowledge does not mean you have managed to find every bit of it...that is still out there awaiting discovery!"}, {"response": 114, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Thu, Sep 16, 1999 (12:02)", "body": "Barry, thank you for your patience. Hmh, I know your arguments are valid, but this idea has one thing that makes me unsure about writing it off 100% - these folks seem to be into engineering, too, and still they think they might have something there... Not that I want to compare this to Einstein or Freud - who were nutcracks, too, for their contemporaries -, but - what if it works? Could gravitational pull or centripetal forces be the missing link?"}, {"response": 115, "author": "moulton", "date": "Thu, Sep 16, 1999 (20:13)", "body": "If you set up an engine in the ambient, you can draw energy out of it based on fluctuations in the ambient over time. For example, there is a perpetual clock that works by drawing energy from the day-to-day fluctuations in the barometric pressure. It has a sealed chamber with a diaphragm that moves in and out with changes atmospheric pressure. This motion is enough to power the clock. An engine with a thermal mass that stayed at the average temperature could operate by sinking one side of the piston into the thermal mass and letting the other ride in the open air. If the air temperature fluctuates faster than the rate of cooling of the thermal mass, you could power a small Sterling cycle engine. But this is not true perpetual motion. It's based on the diurnal heating of the earth between day and night, so it's a form of solar energy. Ocean buoys can draw energy from the bobbing waves. That's how they sound their wails, for example. Air is drawn in and out of a chamber as the bob. There is lots of ambient energy that one can draw on, but only for small amounts of power, perhaps enough to power a clock or some electronics."}, {"response": 116, "author": "moulton", "date": "Fri, Sep 17, 1999 (06:55)", "body": "By the way, if the notion of measuring energy seems inaccessible, take a look at the movie \"Apollo 13.\" It has a great scene where the engineers are trying to figure out how to power up the capsule for re-entry without exceeding the energy budget of the available power -- something like 8 amps as I recall. Budgeting for energy is like any kind of economy. You can't spend more than you got. It's just one of God's laws."}, {"response": 117, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Sat, Sep 18, 1999 (15:04)", "body": "Huh, and you went into engineering because you can't stand laws, right? ;=}"}, {"response": 118, "author": "moulton", "date": "Sun, Sep 19, 1999 (10:16)", "body": "I love discovering God's Natural Laws. I have no love for those laws of man which are instituted by algolagnic control freaks who delight in damaging people who break them."}, {"response": 119, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Mon, Sep 20, 1999 (12:43)", "body": "algolagnic?"}, {"response": 120, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Mon, Sep 20, 1999 (12:46)", "body": "For me, the \"laws\" of nature and the \"laws\" of societies both are simply agreements on how to handle things. Compromises. And history has shown that both categories can be changed upon short notice, and that some offers are only good while supplies last. The problem is that most people think them unchangeable. They aren't, though."}, {"response": 121, "author": "moulton", "date": "Tue, Sep 21, 1999 (08:01)", "body": "To the best of my knowledge, no human agreed to the Inverse Square Law of Gravity, or Maxwell's Equations. Those were recently discovered, not legislated. Algolagnic means to derive emotional gratification by inflicting pain and suffering. It's commonly found in competitive cultures such as ours."}, {"response": 122, "author": "moulton", "date": "Tue, Sep 21, 1999 (08:04)", "body": "I seek not merely to edit the laws of man. I seek to abolish the belief that society is well-regulated by means of rules and laws enforced by sanctions and punishments. There is good scientific reason to believe that such a regulatory mechanism is ineffective at best and counterprodutive at worst. Moreover, there are superior regulatory models which are proven to work without inflicting deliberate self-damage on the system."}, {"response": 123, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Tue, Sep 21, 1999 (11:41)", "body": "By now, I know about your position re: changing the system (a bit at least), but I don't see what you believe why these things were accepted first place, and what became of these reasons. I understand from your post above, that you don't take offense with the concept of laws themselves - perhaps they are even a valuable invention in your mind? -, but that it's the enforcement that upsets you (besides obviously ridiculous and unjust laws, of course). I feel that both the content of laws as well as consequences of not abiding these rules are subject to change by cultures. E.g. is it perfectly okay to kill people in the US or Japan that where senteced to death penalty. These cultures think de th penalty is okay and has its place in their culture. What we know is, it's a very old tradition that's being kept up there, but has been abandoned in other countries, which have abolished the death penalty. Change is possible if a society changes their set of values. Right now there is e.g. a discussion in Germany to revise sentences for crimes against things and against people. If you steal somebody's car, here you're punished harder than if you'd beaten him up. This still reflects feudal times, where he possessing classes were protecting their stuff, but people now feel attacks upon health and honour are worse than against possessions. More changes to come... When I said that the laws of nature are not unchangeable and eternal, I mean e.g. that there have been many \"discovered\", or rather, \"invented\". Think of cosmology, how that changed. And at any time, scientist were sure to know the \"obvious\" truth, which everybody accepted until some bloke came up with Truth 1.5 or even 2.0, and Bang!, the world was not the center anymore, mankind not the crown of creation, the universe infinite or not... Nothing faster than light, or at least nearly nothing, etc. Science interprets not \"nature\" or the \"truth\", but the subjective image of how things appear to us - filtered through our sensoric means and neurological processing, and describes them in a vocabulary agreed upon by usage within the scientific community. These things are approximations, working models, until some fault is found, and other explanations are accepted. Science is to nature what laws are to a society's morals: Approximations that mimick observations, and either are with a time-lag revised when obvious and urgent need be, or ignored and kept unchanged, even after having survived the cause they served. Hmh, what do you say?"}, {"response": 124, "author": "moulton", "date": "Fri, Oct  1, 1999 (14:38)", "body": "I say our system of laws is immoral, unethical, unjust, corrupt, evil and tacky."}, {"response": 125, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Fri, Oct  1, 1999 (15:22)", "body": "Ok, lemme see \"our system\" is the problem, not the \"laws\", or at least the concept of laws as such?"}, {"response": 126, "author": "moulton", "date": "Fri, Oct  1, 1999 (22:57)", "body": "The concept of goals or guidelines is fine. The concept of rules, laws, or foul lines which entitle the state to visit authorized and sanctioned damage is not fine. It's an idiotic idea which doesn't work and causes a world of hurt. Whoever is praying to the god that invented that system is praying to a false god."}, {"response": 127, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Fri, Oct  1, 1999 (23:09)", "body": "Perhaps that god is the one created in his own image - the image of the worshipper, that is, rather than the reverse!"}, {"response": 128, "author": "moulton", "date": "Sat, Oct  2, 1999 (06:48)", "body": "The irony is that of all the various gods in our culture, the one who gave us rules and laws enforced by state-sponsored sanctions and punishments is one whose name we do not know. We do know the name of that god's chief prophet: Nicholas Machiavelli. But more people pray to that unnamed god and practice that god's religion than follow the alternative (and logically superior) models of Moses, Buddha, or Jesus."}, {"response": 129, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Sun, Oct  3, 1999 (22:22)", "body": "too true to argue with you on that point! ( also pertinent point about Machiavelli and his results...we are still contending with them, are we not!"}, {"response": 130, "author": "moulton", "date": "Mon, Oct  4, 1999 (09:21)", "body": "I just wish we could get Machiavelli's religion designated as one, so that we could then invoke separation of church and state, and outlaw that pernicious brand of state-sponsored religion. Perhap's the name of Machiavelli's god is Molokh. That god once held sway in Gey-Hinnom, the rubbish dump south of the old city of Jerusalem, where worshippers of Molokh sometimes sacrificed their disobedient children by burning them in the hellfires of the rubbish dump."}, {"response": 131, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Tue, Oct  5, 1999 (18:38)", "body": "What a brilliant idea (not the Molokh one)...I am delighted with the idea."}, {"response": 132, "author": "moulton", "date": "Thu, Oct  7, 1999 (07:51)", "body": "The neat thing about Machiavelli's religion is that, unlike other theologies, this one can actually be disproven by scientific research. There is overwhelming empirical evidence and theoretical analysis to show that his method of social regulation is ineffective at best and counter-productive at worst, leading to a world of suffering. But we kinda knew that, now, didn't we?"}, {"response": 133, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Oct  7, 1999 (12:34)", "body": "It would seem that we should have been aware of this long ago. It is counter-productive, indeed, but his followers blindly procede in the direction in which he pointed them all those years ago. As we spiral downward we seem unable to do anything about it...or, worse, accept it as the way things must be! (And, yes! We did kinda knew that all along...)"}, {"response": 134, "author": "moulton", "date": "Fri, Oct  8, 1999 (13:41)", "body": "The interesting part of this analysis is that it ties together deep thinking from systems science, theology, psychology, and literary analysis. I tumbled onto this confluence of thought by way of a book by Gil Bailie, _Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads_. I had just finished reading it when the Columbine school shootings occurred, so I took the opportunity to apply the theory to that tragedy. But it actually applies more broadly to competition, conflict, drama, and violence throughout the cu ture. Anyway, my first essay is called Thinking About Violence In Our Schools ."}, {"response": 135, "author": "sociolingo", "date": "Tue, Jul  3, 2001 (12:39)", "body": "This subject is still on going ....I found the following of which I will put the synopsis here and leave you to follow the link to get the whole article. http://www.gorp.com/gorp/interact/guests/viridi.htm The Manifesto of January 3, 2000 Part 4 By Bruce Sterling A brief sketch may help establish some parameters. Here I conclude with a set of general cultural changes that a Viridian movement would likely promulgate in specific sectors of society. For the sake of brevity, these suggestions come in three parts. (Today) is the situation as it exists now. (What We Want) is the situation as we would like to see it. (The Trend) the way the situation will probably develop if it follows contemporary trends without any intelligent intervention. The Media Today. Publishing and broadcasting cartels surrounded by a haze of poorly financed subcultural microchannels. What We Want. More bandwidth for civil society, multicultural variety, and better-designed systems of popular many-to-many communication, in multiple languages through multiple channels. The Trend. A spy-heavy, commercial Internet. A Yankee entertainment complex that entirely obliterates many non-Anglophone cultures. The Military Today. G-7 Hegemony backed by the American military. What We Want. A wider and deeper majority hegemony with a military that can deter adventurism, but specializes in meeting the immediate crises through civil engineering, public health and disaster relief. The Trend. Nuclear and biological proliferation among minor powers. Business Today. Currency traders rule banking system by fiat; extreme instability in markets; capital flight but no labor mobility; unsustainable energy base What We Want. Nonmaterial industries; vastly increased leisure; vastly increased labor mobility; sustainable energy and resources The Trend. commodity totalitarianism, crony capitalism, criminalized banking systems, sweatshops Industrial Design Today. very rapid model obsolescence, intense effort in packaging; CAD/CAM What We Want: intensely glamourous environmentally sound products; entirely new objects of entirely new materials; replacing material substance with information; a new relationship between the cybernetic and the material The Trend: two design worlds for rich and poor comsumers; a varnish on barbarism Gender Issues Today: more commercial work required of women; social problems exported into family life as invisible costs What We Want: declining birth rates, declining birth defects, less work for anyone, lavish support for anyone willing to drop out of industry and consume less The Trend: more women in prison; fundamentalist and ethnic-separatist ideologies that target women specifically. Entertainment Today: large-scale American special-effects spectacle supported by huge casts and multi-million-dollar tie-in enterprises What We Want: glamour and drama; avant-garde adventurism; a borderless culture industry bent on Green social engineering The Trend: annihilation of serious culture except in a few non-Anglophone societies International Justice Today: dysfunctional but gamely persistent War Crimes tribunals What We Want: Environmental Crime tribunals The Trend: justice for sale; intensified drug war Employment Today: MacJobs, burn-out track, massive structural unemployment in Europe What We Want: Less work with no stigma; radically expanded leisure; compulsory leisure for workaholics; guaranteed support for people consuming less resources; new forms of survival entirely outside the conventional economy The Trend: increased class division; massive income disparity; surplus flesh and virtual class Education Today: failing public-supported schools What We Want: intellectual freedom, instant cheap access to information, better taste, a more advanced aesthetic, autonomous research collectives, lifelong education, and dignity and pleasure for the very large segment of the human population who are and will forever be basically illiterate and innumerate The trend: children are raw blobs of potential revenue-generating machinery; universities exist to supply middle-management Public Health Today: general success; worrying chronic trends in AIDS, tuberculosis, antibiotic resistance; massive mortality in nonindustrial world What We Want: unprecedently healthy old people; plagues exterminated worldwide; sophisticated treatment of microbes; artificial food The Trend: Massive dieback in Third World, septic poor quarantined from nervous rich in G-7 countries, return of 19th century sepsis, world's fattest and most substance-dependent populations Science Today: basic science sacrificed for immediate commercial gain; malaise in academe; bureaucratic overhead in government support What We Want: procedural rigor, intellectual honesty, reproducible results; peer review, block grants, massively increased research funding, massively reduced procedural overhead; genius grants; single-author papers; abandonment of passive construction and the third person plural; \"Scien"}, {"response": 136, "author": "terry", "date": "Thu, Aug 30, 2001 (16:21)", "body": "For release: 29 August 2001 SOLUTIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE URBAN CENTERS TO BE EXPLORED AT PARADOX CONFERENCE 21-23 SEPTEMBER New Ideas About Energy Consumption, Cultural Values and Reinventing the \"American Dream\" to Challenge Policies of the Bush Administration Phoenix...24 August...Sustainable alternatives to the \"short-sighted\" steps of the Bush administration will be explored at the 21-23 September Paradox Conference by Paolo Soleri, Ph.D., philosopher and pioneer of more livable, environmentally-intelligent cities; Joe Firmage, scientist and technology entrepreneur; and Paul H. Ray, Ph.D., co-author of the influential book The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World. The third in the biannual Paradox series, the September program continues the ongoing inquiry into the paradoxes in the increasing interplay between physical and cyber reality. This year's conference focuses on \"Third-Millennium Habitats\" that integrate sustainable habitats, cyberspace and new forms of community. New- and old-economy business executives, architects and urban planners, cybernauts and students are expected to attend. Dr. Soleri to Address the Need to Redefine the \"American Dream\" Paolo Soleri, Italian-born architect and associate of Frank Lloyd Wright, is hosting Paradox III at his Arcosanti habitat 65 miles north of Phoenix. A self-contained community in the Arizona desert, Arcosanti embodies Dr. Soleri's theory of \"arcology,\" or the marriage of architecture and ecology to create urban habitats that conserve resources and blend harmoniously with the environment. \"Unless we moderate, unless we reinvent the 'American dream,'\" Soleri explained in a 26 July interview with The New York Times, \"then it's not going to be a dream. It's going to be doomsday.\" Soleri estimates that if the standards of the American dream were applied to every nation, the resources of 19 earths would be required to maintain the resulting levels of consumption and pollution. \"The American Dream physically embodied in the single family house has to be reinvented in terms which are coherent with the human biospheric reality.\" Mr. Firmage to Explore Alternative Energy Resources \"Technologies are possible that could make daily use of energy nearly free within perhaps 20 years, but they receive almost no R&D funding\" states Mr. Joe Firmage, a panelist who has made significant investments in the development of alternative energy resources. \"The Bush administration's energy plan does little to address efficiency and renewable programs; yet, it includes a two-billion-dollar subsidy for the coal industry.\" \"In short, capitalism does not see the value in innovations that would drop prices to nearly zero, since such prices would decimate revenue lines of P&Ls,\" says Firmage, who will discuss potential breakthroughs in green-energy technologies. \"Energy-generation industries have been controlling supply to prop up profits for decades; meanwhile, the price of subsistence-level energy consumption exceeds the earning power of much of the world's population.\" Firmage is founder of Motion Sciences Organization and co-founder and chairman of International Space Sciences Organization (ISSO), established in 1998 to sponsor research and development of new technologies derived from the emerging principles of modern physics. In 1995, Firmage founded USWeb, the world's largest Internet professional-services company. Until 1998, he served as CEO and chief strategist of the three-billion-dollar company and received recognition as Ernst & Young's 1997 \"Young Entrepreneur of the Year.\" Dr. Ray to Examine the Values of a New Civilization \"Our civilization is in the midst of an epochal change, caught between globalization, accelerating technologies and a deteriorating planetary ecology,\" concludes Dr. Paul H. Ray in his book, The Cultural Creatives, which examines the growing number of people who want to see deep changes in the cultures that have evolved in industrialized nations. \"A creative minority can have enormous leverage to carry us into a new renaissance instead of a disastrous fall.\" Ray will lead a panel discussion on the need to develop shifting cultural values. He explains: \"Seventy percent of all Americans and 70 percent of all homebuyers in America are unhappy with suburbs as they are. They ask, 'Why can't we have good, sustainable urban places that we want to live in?'\" Ray, who is CEO of Integral Partnerships LLC consulting firm, started his career in urbanism: sociology, planning and policy analysis. As former chief of policy research on energy conservation for the Canadian Government, he headed the largest evaluation-research project conducted in Canada on home energy conservation. He has led over 100 values-oriented research projects in such areas as housing, ecological sustainability, energy, cars, food, recreation vacation travel, finances, health, good causes, media, altruism, and innovation. Project sponsors have been mostly foundations, s"}, {"response": 137, "author": "cfadm", "date": "Sun, Jul  2, 2006 (08:30)", "body": "I see the Arcosanti website is powered by http://pebble.sourceforge.net/ Arcosanti Project History Rebar for Vaults Setting Rebar during Construction of the Vaults : Photo : Cosanti Foundation In 1970, the Cosanti Foundation began building Arcosanti, an experimental town in the high desert of Arizona, 70 miles north of metropolitan Phoenix. When complete, Arcosanti will house 5000 people, demonstrating ways to improve urban conditions and lessen our destructive impact on the earth. Its large, compact structures and large-scale solar greenhouses will occupy only 25 acres of a 4060 acre land preserve, keeping the natural countryside in close proximity to urban dwellers. Early Construction of the VaultsArcosanti is designed according to the concept of arcology (architecture + ecology), developed by Italian architect Paolo Soleri. In an arcology, the built and the living interact as organs would in a highly evolved being. This means many systems work together, with efficient circulation of people and resources, multi-use buildings, and solar orientation for lighting, heating and cooling. In this complex, creative environment, apartments, businesses, production, technology, open space, studios, and educational and cultural events are all accessible, while privacy is paramount in the overall design. Greenhouses provide gardening space for public and private use, and act as solar collectors for winter heat. Arcosanti is an educational process. The five week workshop program teaches building techniques and arcological philosophy, while continuing the city's construction. Volunteers and students come from around the world. Many are design students, and some receive university credit for the workshop. But a design or architecture background is not necessary. People of many varied interests and backgrounds are all contributing their valuable time and skills to the project. Week-long silt sculpture workshops and Elderhostel programs offer other ways to be involved. At the present stage of construction, Arcosanti consists of various mixed-use buildings and public spaces constructed by 5000 past Workshop participants. Residents of ArcosantiThe residents of Arcosanti are workshop alumni, who work on planning, construction, teaching, computer aided drafting, maintenance, cooking, carpentry, metal work, ceramics, gardening and communications. They produce the world-famous Soleri Bells, as well as hosting 50,000 tourists each year in a Gallery, Bakery, and Cafe open every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Day. Guided tours introduce visitors to the philosophy , history, planning and ongoing construction of the site. Concerts and other events in the Colly Soleri Music Center also allow visitors to experience Arcosanti. Shows include dinner, and are often followed by a pictograph light show on the opposite mesa. from http://www.arcosanti.org/project/background/history/main.html environment conference Main Menu"}]}]}