Less attitude; more bike paths, mountains and beer.

Ever since Brenda & I moved to Boulder there has been one glaring omission from our daily lives, and that is settling down to read a good local newspaper. Back in Jersey, the Star Ledger was an excellent paper that originated from the local county where we last lived in that state. We got great reporting and writing, on everything from the international to the very local. The sports page was phenomenal. Molly Ivins’ column was printed regularly, and we had almost no use for the New York Times and its holier-than-thou masthead font (and pricing).

Here in Boulder, we have the Daily Camera.

Now, being a Boulder newspaper, the Camera boasts some interesting and fun features that definitely pander to the local culture. There is a “trail dogs of the week” section, where reader-submitted photos of their dogs out on the many local trails are featured; there is a rock climbing column, as well as what has to be the highest percentage of sports section coverage devoted to cycling and running in all their forms. And of course the letters to the editor section—replete with outlandish requests and complaints from both ends of the liberal-conservative continuum—never fails to entertain. But the editing of this newspaper has been sub-par from day one, and pretty much every single day I can spot at least a couple of grammatical and spelling errors in what is supposed to be a professional newspaper, and one of the articles in today’s business section encapsulates this dilemma so well I just had to share the first paragraph:

Camera’s Circulation Falls
By Alicia Wallace, Camera Business Writer

New statistics show circulation at major US newspapers continued to tumble, and the Camera does not appears to be immune to the trend.

‘nuff said? Thought so.

Mornin’ folks, happy Earth Day. I’m closing in on three years working for a sustainable design consultant, and I’m delighted to be applying my lighting design and simulation skills toward saving a little energy and creating more pleasant built environments. But I have to say, these years of observing how we work has taught me that we don’t always help our cause when we act all holier-than-thou while making our case for sustainable living. Smug email signatures come to mind, for example. I think as a group, we need to be less preachy and while we’re at it, maybe start walking the walk a little bit more. My office parking lot is filled with SUVs and luxury sedans, which I ride past each morning on my bicycle. Co-workers live in homes three times the size they need. Brenda & I live in a small condo and share one car, but I’m labeled as a cynic and a hypocrite for bitching about the very industry I work in. But I would argue that my “hope for the best but expect the worst” attitude towards everything from people to the planet serves me well in client meetings where many times we are viewed as naive granola eaters.

And with that, I’d like to give the mike to George Carlin for the bulk of the ranting. He doesn’t quite get everything right here, but his central message—that we’re only looking to “save the planet” to save our own dumb asses from ourselves—is pure cynical gold.

“We’re so self-important. So self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. ‘Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.’ And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven’t learned how to care for one another, we’re gonna save the fucking planet?

“I’m getting tired of that shit. Tired of that shit. I’m tired of fucking Earth Day, I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world save for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. They don’t care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.

“Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we’re a threat? That somehow we’re gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floatin’ around the sun?

“The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles…hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages…And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet…the planet…the planet isn’t going anywhere. WE ARE!

“We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little Styrofoam. Maybe. A little Styrofoam. The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.

“You wanna know how the planet’s doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, how the planet’s doing. You wanna know if the planet’s all right, ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble, if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. Or how about those people in Kilowaia, Hawaii, who built their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room.

“The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ‘cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?” Plastic…asshole.

“So, the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now. And I think that’s begun. Don’t you think that’s already started? I think, to be fair, the planet sees us as a mild threat. Something to be dealt with. And the planet can defend itself in an organized, collective way, the way a beehive or an ant colony can. A collective defense mechanism. The planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet? How would you defend yourself against this troublesome, pesky species? Let’s see… Viruses. Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And, uh…viruses are tricky, always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps, this first virus could be one that compromises the immune system of these creatures. Perhaps a human immunodeficiency virus, making them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases and infections that might come along. And maybe it could be spread sexually, making them a little reluctant to engage in the act of reproduction.

“Well, that’s a poetic note. And it’s a start. And I can dream, can’t I? See I don’t worry about the little things: bees, trees, whales, snails. I think we’re part of a greater wisdom than we will ever understand. A higher order. Call it what you want. Know what I call it? The Big Electron. The Big Electron…whoooa. Whoooa. Whoooa. It doesn’t punish, it doesn’t reward, it doesn’t judge at all. It just is. And so are we. For a little while.”

– George Carlin

Hooper is a licker.

In recent days, the temperatures have soared to the point where I wore shorts to work today. Never mind that it is supposed to snow here tomorrow, in April you take advantage of the warm sunny days. So I wore shorts today, and that means Hooper was licking my legs (and up my shorts) whenever I was in the vicinity. With our dear friends Dierdre and Evan coming this weekend with their three kids in tow, I started thinking it might might be a good time to teach Hooper that the vigorous licking, while appreciated, is not always appropriate.

And so we have embarked on our latest “trick”, the training of “stop licking”. Brenda & I decided it would be cool to teach Hooper some Italian while we were at it, so we selected the term “basta” as the “leave me alone” term, which is Italian for “enough”. He’s getting it.

How cool is it to have a bilingual Lab?

Last night I went to see the Eels at the Fox Theatre in Boulder. It was my first concert in about ten years! The last concert I intentionally went to was to see Bluetip at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, New Jersey (which was great).

Once again, as I did when I went to see Bluetip, I went alone; Brenda hates going to shows, and I kind of do too, these days. For a kid who used to see a minimum of three bands a weekend from junior year of high school though college, my last couple decades seem pretty pathetic by comparison, but I have my reasons. I’m an old fart who doesn’t like people and crowds, as well as most new music. So naturally I’m not a fixture at clubs anymore, but the Eels drew me out of the house.

Thanks to my friend and former co-worker, I was introduced to the Eels a few years ago, back in New York. Led by Mark Oliver Everett, son of some sort of quantum physicist genius, the Eels have been inventing new music for the last decade and a half. Their music is alternately haunting, rocking, sad, happy, and always inspiring.

This year’s iteration of the Eels features Mark Everett (a.k.a. “E”) and a dude simply known as “The Chet”. Not Chet, The Chet. They both took turns playing instruments as diverse as the guitar, the piano, drums, xylophone, saw (serious), and others. They even shared a drum solo:

The show was very fun, tight and entertaining. Standing room only, I was tapping my toes and bobbing my head in the aisle at what is now my favorite venue ever. The Fox Theatre is a tiny venue; it feels like you’re having a band come over to your house to jam in your living room. And the Eels are known for their covers, and this tour did not disappoint. This year the cover of choice is Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times Bad Times”, and E and The Chet rocked it as hard as Zep ever did. The Chet was playing a very cool Gibson Les Paul with a tremolo bar, and you can enjoy a segment of the cover here:

A great night of music and fun. Rode my bike home from the show in the rain, drunk, bombing down the hill along Colorado Avenue. Gotta love it.

This is cool. What we got here is the last remnants of the 8” of snow that dumped on Boulder yesterday. The Colorado sun came out in force today, melting most of the white stuff; the final traces are hanging tough here in the shadow cast by the ballfield fence, all nice and neat in a line, while Hooper and Lulu watch in despair as Jeannie and the other woman walk away with their dogs Joplin and Kyla:

Just goes to show you what a little shading can do in terms of reducing the amount of direct beam solar radiation that affects a given area.

P.S.
The bits of snow missing in the foreground were eaten by Hooper. No shading device could have prevented that.

Webster’s defines a patriot as “one who loves his or her country and supports its authority and interests”. But with a country this divided, the term almost has no validity anymore. I mean, our country’s “authority and interests” are presently defined by the Bush administration. Therefore, our country’s so-called authority is bogus, stolen, abused, misused and illegally expanded. Our interests? Hegemony and Looking Out for Number One. Sure as hell, I don’t support those. Am I not a patriot?

The first patriots were revolutionaries. Maybe it’s time to restore the original definition.

A former co-worker just IM’ed me to let me know that a project I worked on has received two Lumen Awards for exemplary lighting/daylighting design. I am pretty psyched, since to date these are my first two Lumens in my 15 year career in lighting.

Awards are stupid, until you win one. Yay!

Looking back, it’s interesting because this was the project that finally got me to get over the learning curve of Radiance, as the tools I had been using were simply not up to the job of simulating the daylight and electric lighting in this complex space. This project forced me to learn Radiance, made me jump back to the Apple Macintosh world (because of OSX’s superior UNIX environment), and, ultimately, those skills landed me my current job in beautiful Boulder, Colorado—and now, a couple of industry awards to boot.

Yay!

Clinton(s) suck, Obama is our best hope at the moment.

Hillary, you are a hawk in a dress, and your move to New York to become a Senator and wage this campaign was sad, sorry and obvious, and you only feed the right wing machine. You have nothing to offer, yet take in millions (in big chunks) to spread your hollow messages about experience and how much you care about and have done for Texas and Ohio (at the moment). You suck, I hate you, and I have donated money to a political campaign for the first time in my life (obviously not for your sorry, smug ass) because I sincerely hope that Obama’s momentum continues to roll right over your pathetic campaign machine, you cunt.

The right and I saw you coming since 2003, and I think it’s very sad that I still have to listen to you and help Obama’s campaign defeat you. You suck. Go away.

Still here? Read this article.

An editorial in today’s Daily Camera mentions a recent judge’s recent order to “disable” the domain name of wikileaks.org, a site that purportedly offers up Standard Operating Procedures for American troops in Iraq, Gitmo, and other evidence of corporate wrongdoing. Potentially interesting reading, and protected under the First Amendment for chrissakes.

Luckily the judge is an idiot, and does not understand the domain naming system too well. Here’s the IP address: http://88.80.13.160. As the editorial says, visit the site today. Do it to honor the First Amendment.

Sheldon Brown is dead; he passed away today following a massive heart attack. The cycling world—particularly the bicycle mechanic world—has suffered a huge loss.

Sheldon Brown’s cycling/technical pages are loaded with excellent information, and I refer to it (and other people to it) often.

Bummer.