William Kotke addresses the need to create a human paradise on Planet Earth instead of waiting for otherworldly salvation. This is pertinent to my interests.

Humans must create paradise or they cannot live on the planet Earth. Paradise here is described as a human community that lives in perpetuity and in peace on one place on the earth, over many generations. In the modern view, generated from the Alternative Culture and Cultural Creatives, we have a permaculture design in a valley that has been ecologically restored and has added additional trees in different ecological niches to create a food forest of fruits and nuts. Under the forest canopy are tall bushes also of fruit and nuts. Under this, the lower berry bushes and vining plants grow.

Lower, are the forbs: perennial vegetable plants that grow year after year and require no disruption of the soil community. Below this are the perennial tuber plants and also down in the soil are the edible mushrooms. This is a perpetual food design that will produce more food per acre than the industrial agricultural system, without digging, disrupting and damaging the thousands of species of the soil community, and at the same time, continually building soil fertility and preventing soil erosion.

Next, we add hand made housing of straw-bale, adobe, log, rammed earth, or other local material, along with attached solar green houses according to many successful contemporary designs. The humans, of course, maintain a stable population and live with a stable biological unit.

Then we add a new human culture based on aiding the life force rather than its consumption and destruction.

(The Intelligence Daily: The Paradise Imperative)

New ad spot from Moms Against Climate Change pits child protesters against riot cops in the cuddliest demonstration ever.

Osocio says:

In December, at the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, world leaders will come together to discuss this issue, and Canadians want results. zig joined with Environmental Defence, ForestEthics and hundreds of volunteers to produce this film, and the web site that goes with it, to inspire grassroots action from Canadian parents.

The effects of climate change are going to be very real within the lifetime of the current generation of children, and if our kids knew the facts, they would act. On the web site, people can upload their kids photos to be included in a projection that will appear on Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper?Ǭ?s route to work leading up to the conference to remind him who he?Ǭ?s representing in Copenhagen.

AdFreak is more skeptical:

Zig’s cinematic spot for Moms Against Climate Change pits child protesters (shouldn’t they be in school?) against cops (don’t they have parking tickets to write?) to illustrate that if kids knew what was at stake, they’d take action. There’s no denying it packs a punch. That said, something feels off. I think I was expecting a boffo climax to really drive the point home. Why not have the sides embrace, each kid finding one of his or her parents among the riot squad, to symbolize that we’re all in this together? Conversely, acid rain pouring from above and “frying” every last person? That would make a strong statement! Sure, it’s easy for me to second-guess?

After 20 years, the CIA has finally released Iran-Contra documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. Better late than never, I suppose. See docs and analysis here.

It?

Discover Magazine reports on a new military-grade Taser which has a 200-foot range and has raised concerns about lethality. As opposed to what, um, guns and all that OTHER stuff the military uses? Hey, I just hope mall cops don’t end up with them…

If you?

This image, found via Ectoplasmosis, should properly excite the Masonic conspirators over at Boing Boing.

 
New work from Jeff Koons will be on display at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills from Nov. 14 through Jan. 9, 2010. The gallery?

 
If you call yourself a music fan and you’ve not taken a pilgrimage over to Wolfgang’s Vault, then make a move, stat, hippie! The sprawling website is a veritable treasure trove of classic rock concerts, many from the archive of the late, great San Francisco-based concert impresario Bill Graham (real name: Wolfgang Grajonca). It’s the Ft. Knox of live music.

Graham began recording rock shows at his Winterland, Fillmore West and Filmore East show palaces and stored the tapes in the basement of his Bill Graham Presents offices. These 2,500 hours formed the basis of the Vault’s collection, but the archives of the “King Biscuit Flower Hour” radio show, the Dawson Sound collection, the Ash Grove (a L.A. 60s folk club, now known as the Improv) archive, the Newport Jazz archives and tapes from the Record Plant have been added in recent years. Meticulous restoration work is done on the well-preserved, but aging, material by an army of recording engineers who will even resort to slow baking the tapes for several days so they can be played just one time and captured digitally.

From the acid rock of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix on to the punkier sounds of the Sex Pistols, the Clash and beyond (‘80s New Wave groups like Culture Club, Duran Duran and ABC are represented too), much of the 3,500 concerts on Wolfgang’s Vault stream free for members (it costs nothing to sign up, but you do have to register to listen) and the audio quality is top-notch. Additionally Wolgang’s Vault boasts a streaming radio station and an online store with what is probably the single best source of rock and roll memorabilia on the Internet. New concerts are added weekly. There’s even a Wolfgang’s Vault iPhone app for listening to concerts on the go, which was named the best app of 2009 by Macworld.

www.wolfgangsvault.com

Cross posting this from Brand X

 
Or so says Australian psychologist, Joe Forgas, who seems to think a case of the “grumps” can, in fact, make us think more clearly.  The University of New South Wales researcher says grumpy people, rather than happy types, are better at coping with demanding situations because of the way the brain “promotes information processing strategies.”

He asked volunteers to watch different films and dwell on positive or negative events in their life, designed to put them in either a good or bad mood.  Next he asked them to take part in a series of tasks, including judging the truth of urban myths and providing eyewitness accounts of events.  Those in a bad mood outperformed those who were jolly—they made fewer mistakes and were better communicators.

Professor Forgas said: ‘Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, co-operation and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world.’

Bonus: Grumpy, Yet Clear-Thinking, Max Von Sydow In Hannah And Her Sisters

BBC News: Feeling Grumpy Is Good For You

 
Beautiful in a ?

 

 

 
If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats has a sweet collection of images titled, “Artists and Animals.” It’s worth a click!