The Cutting Edge is Green

(Published in Luxury Life & Style)

Living on the cutting edge is the ultimate luxury.
And in building, the cutting edge is green.

Some things, it takes a while before the mainstream catches up. For a while - years, even - they remain the purview of the cranks and the hobbyists, folks who dump every spare minute and every spare dime into their crazy projects – and if you aren't lucky, they’ll tell you all about it until your eyes glazed over.

The automobile was like that, until Henry Ford made the it available for everyone. And these days we just take cars for granted.

It’s the same with green building. From the time just a few years ago when it was a specialized field that only a few people were interested in, it’s now exploding into the popular consciousness… and onto the landscape.

(More...)

“People are starting to demand this of the marketplace,” notes architect Peter Barsuk of Hermosa Beach. A member of the Gensler firm in Santa Monica, Barsuk is a board member of the US Green Building Council’s Los Angeles Chapter, and was also involved in setting up Hermosa’s Energy Patnership.

“Ten to fifteen years ago,” he notes, “there were very few architects and contractors that were practicing green building. Nobody understood what it meant or what it was. And if you asked suppliers what materials went into their products, they wouldn’t even tell you.”

What has changed things? In part, it’s pocketbook – as energy costs have risen, people see the impact every month on their bills for heating and air conditioning. And as asthma rates skyrocket, people are thinking more about indoor air quality.
But it’s more than that.

“It may look like an extravagance, but really, it’s spending wisely,” says Peter DeMaria of DeMaria Design Associates and Logical Home in Manhattan Beach.

“Theres a stigma that for something that’s a luxury, somehow there’s waste. But you look at refined designs, like autos, these are as fine as can be. We’re seeing the same thing now that happened with the automobile, or with MP3 players - the market is starting to drive all these alternative materials.”

And there’s an incredible range of options now – so don’t worry if you’re more in the market for a Lexus than a Bentley. The principals apply whether you’re building your dream home, or simply sprucing up your current place.


One thing that’s easy to do, but terribly important for your health and that of your family, is cut out Volatile Organic Compounds, or VOCs. Toxic compounds like formaldehyde are commonly used in furniture, carpet, paint and other building products; we’ve learned that these substances leak out into the air of your home for years, damaging young lungs, and leading to asthma and other respiratory problems, especially in children.

Designer Sarah Bernard recalls, “I was working with a client who had learned that out-gassing from upholstery foam and furniture glue can cause birth defects. She was pregnant at the time, and we were bringing in a lot of furniture – well, that’s a pretty reasonable concern.”

What to do? She works with natural products – hardwoods, linen and wool aren’t processed with chemicals (although you should check for stain-proofing or flameproof coatings). Get furniture that uses staples instead of glue. “Sometimes it’s not even a matter of giving up something,” says Bernard, “but approaching things in a different way.”

And use low-VOC paints, which are now widely available.

“When you use a regular paint,” notes Bernard. “you fill the house with ‘new paint smell’ – those are the gasses being released. With low-VOC there’s minimal gasses, so minimal smell, which is nice for the home-owner. And at this point, there’s almost no price difference.”

VOCs are an issue in new construction, as well. Plywood is notorious for out-gassing formaldehyde into living space. And while there are companies now making VOC-free plywood, many architects are looking at wood as very “last century”.

Patrick Killen, of Studio9one2 in Hermosa, is one of them. “Why,” he asks, “do we build multi-million dollar homes with a material – wood – that expands and contracts with water, attracts termites and mold, and just doesn’t last?”

There are a variety of alternatives, including metal studs – used in commercial construction for years – and a variety of alternative cladding materials.

“Instead of using plywood,” says DeMaria, “we’re using Dens-Guard gold, by Pacific Materials. It’s gypsum-based. Mold proof! Great R value, easy to handle and easy to cut.... With all its benefits, you’ll see this being used more and more often, and then the price will drop.”

DeMaria is also involved in an exciting alternative form of construction – he’s got a residence going up in Hermosa Beach based around four steel shipping containers.
“It’s just an extension of modular construction, really,” he says.

Even so, they had a hard time getting the design approved – it can be tricky, working on the bleeding edge this way - but he thinks it’s a great demonstration project.
“We found this amazing spray-on insulation, SuperTherm. It was used on the space shuttle, the coating is the thickness of a credit card, but has an amazing R value – R30. And at just $1.50 sq ft, it’s not that much more expensive. But in order to get our title 24 report approved, we had to work directly with the State Energy Commission. We must have spent at least 40 hours on the phone. They had never seen anything like this stuff before.”

Several designers are working with prefabricated living spaces, including DeMaria, who is launching a separate firm to deal with prefab. Another is Jennifer Siegal, whose DesignMobile firm is in the development stages to put one of her Swell houses in Manhattan Beach.

“Swell House gets assembled like Legos at your dream spot,” she notes, “and features Biofiber (a recycled cabinet composite made from sunflower seeds), finishing material made from recycled newspapers, and "ply-boo" (renewable bamboo) flooring.”
And where a typical architect-designed residence can cost $400 to $500 per square foot, her Swell Houses go for $200.

Prefab is good for the big-picture environment: it minimizes wasted materials, and also cuts transportation costs (since both materials and workers go to one central location). And it’s great for the local neighborhood environment – instead of months of banging and dust and trucks coming and going, you get one easy delivery.
Another thing that’s hot right now: Tankless hot water heaters, both for new construction and for home upgrades.

“Instead of heating up hot water and then having it sit there, wasting energy, these units flash-heat the water as you need it,” explains James Meyer of LeanArch, a design and build firm with roots in Manhattan Beach. He’s been using these heaters in the South Bay houses he’s been building (including the home of LL&S publisher Todd Klawin). “You save energy, you never run out of hot water, plus you save a lot of space, which in the South Bay with its tiny lots makes a big impact.”

These may cost $600 to $900, instead of $250 for a conventional tank heater – but what’s it worth to add an extra 90 cubic feet of space to your house?

Another new feature is in-floor heating (well, its been in use since Roman Times, but not the way they do it today). Meyer loves to use in the South Bay because it again combines environmental friendliness with space savings.

“With forced air, you kill a lot of space with ductwork,” he notes. “Instead, we build radiant heating into pipes below the floor. Instead of howling fans blowing dry air throughout the house, along with dust, pollen and mold, you have a nice quiet system that puts heat out from the bottom up.”

DeMaria has it in his own home, and notes, “This pays a dividend in the long run. And your feet are warm! My youngest son is 2.5 years old, and he’s rolling around on the bamboo floor, happy as if he’s in the bathtub.”

You can use similar systems for pool heating. Rick White of California Solar has a couple of South-Bay projects that use solar absorption.

“We now have an in-deck system. At one project in Palos Verdes, we’re putting a heat-exchange system under the concrete of the tennis court. The concrete heats up, and we pull the heat off the surface, put it into a medium that then runs it around to the pool. It heats the pool AND cools the tennis court.”

The cost has come down - you can solar heat a pool for $4500-$5500 dollars. Typically that means the break-even point is just 2 to 3 years.
And of rooftop solar has changed in a big way, too.

“I now have solar panels that are terracotta colored, so they don’t stand out like big black panels,” says White. “We specialize in photovoltaic panels that are integrated into roofing tiles. Match the roof right in, so the look is totally integrated.”

Meyer has a project going up at 217 9th Street with a 3 KW array of photovoltaic panels. They cut back on power purchases, and they’re tied into the grid, so when you’re not using power during the day, you feed power back into the grid when you’re not using. Most architects are now working this sort of package into their new designs.

“We have a ways to go,” notes Killen. “We need to put the kind of effort into solar and wind that we put into marketing the iPod. Solar has been around since the ‘70s, so compared with the MP3, progress has been slow. Right now we have the beginnings of building a foundation, but we’re only scratching the surface.”

Almost as important as heating is cooling. At the container house, DeMaria has installed an industrial-sized 12-foot fan – made by the Big Ass Fan company (its mascot is a donkey).

“Air conditioning will suck up 70 percent of your electricity,” he says. “If you’ve got your building properly designed to take advantage of your prevailing winds, you don’t need AC. And the fan keeps everything inside cooled off. The blades are similar to what you’ll find on a helicopter, cast aluminum and aerodynamically correct. You could blow the dishes right off the table if you want to.”
James Meyer’s 9th Street project uses the entire back of the house, which is a three-story open stairwell, to create a stack effect, drawing air up from the ground floor and cooling the entire house.

Likewise, projections over the windows cut their exposure to direct sunlight, making a huge impact on the need for AC.

“The standard Modern design is a big glass box that didn’t pay any attention to appropriate site orientation,” notes Killian, “and had no overhangs to cut exposure of the sun to all that glass. We’re learning…”

Another way to cut the unwanted energy provided by the sun is going with a roofing material that’s light, rather than dark. It’s estimated that dark roofs can get up to 180 degrees on a sunny day; some of that heat leaks into the house, and the rest is radiated back out, heating up the neighborhood. Going light with roofing could cut summer urban temperatures by several degrees – and saving millions of dollars in AC costs.

If you want to go really green in a big way, the ultimate is a Green Roof. Instead of standard roofing material, you have a full environment built on top of the building, complete with soil, grass, trees and shrubs.

The firm of Marmol Radziner is doing one at a project overlooking the ocean in Palos Verdes, which also features a solar deck around the pool and other green features (Marmol Radziner is also getting into prefab and modular building). And Steve Lazar of Lazar Design/Build is working with Anthony Poon of Poon Design to put a mixed-use office and condo building at 838 Manhattan Beach Blvd with 2500 square feet of green roof.

“You can walk from your unit,” says Lazar, “out onto a roof of real dirt, real trees, grass, shrubs. Your own open space that’s alive, organic. Much nicer than a concrete jungle.”

The soil/gravel system is carefully engineered proper drainage, while holding the right amount of water without too much expansion or contraction. Aside from aesthetics, it provides spectacular insulation, there’s less runoff for the sewer system, and it provides a benefit of better air quality to the inhabitants of the home as well as the neighborhood.

One other way to go: think smaller and smarter.

Part of smarter is taking advantage of the great southern California climate by integrating indoor and outdoor space.

“We had a client in Hermosa with a first-floor view from Malibu to San Pedro. They totally fell in love with it. That’s a million dollar view; you don’t mind spending $50,000 on triple-track doors that open up completely to give them that unobstructed view. On the container house, we have airplane hangar doors that open up on two sides to integrate the interior space with the outside.”

Killen has worked a similar magic at his Widmann Residence in Hermosa, where lots of triple-track sliding glass effectively double the amount of living space, and Meyer has used overhead garage doors and triple-tracks to open his houses up.

“It’s like being in a tree house,” he says, “why would you not want to take advantage of this amazing climate? People would never have done this 20 years ago. I think it’s great we’re breaking all these rules and making it possible for people live in ways that never would have been conceived of before.”

Meyer has pushed the envelope in other ways, like building in charging stations for electric cars. “It’s a lot like music,” he says. “The greatest creativity comes when people aren’t afraid to break the rules.”

And just as with music, the most creative periods happen when the patrons – the folks making the commissions, be they emperors, industrialists, or entertainment lawyers – are willing to take risks, too.

“Everything we’ve tried, we’ve gotten a great response to,” Meyer says.
Killen would like to keep pushing the envelope in other ways – and he recognizes that some of them are a little harder for the patrons to hear.

“Thinking green isn’t just about picking some nice materials out of a catalog,” says Killen. “But we’re doing things now that will have a huge impact down the road.
That’s an uplifting feeling. That’s something that some of our clients are very much in tune with. I’m not the only one saying ‘we can make a difference’.’

I is in yur Bibles

If you don't know what LOLcat is, you should. Go here.

If you do know what LOLcat is, you'll be pleased to know that someone (with way too much time on their hands) has started a wiki-style website project to translate the Bible into LOLcat:

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded the skiez An da Urf, but he no eated it.

2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.

4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stufs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can seez in teh dark An not tripz ovr nethin.

5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1

Huckabee Scares Me

Because of all the Republican Presidential contenders, Mike Huckabee has that "Nice guy I'd love to have a beer with" thing going on.

The media - when they've been paying attention - have just eaten this guy up. Give them an excuse for a "come from behind kid" narrative, and we could have yet another election cycle where the media give the Republican a love-fest pass on all scrutiny.

Update: It's happening already.

"1. As governor of Arkansas, Republican Mike Huckabee enthusiastically worked to free a serial killer from prison because the rapist and murderer-to-be had become a cause celebre on the right.

2. Today Gail Collins of the Times wrote a column saying that Huckabee, while he'd make a terrible president, is a nice guy who essentially made just an error of compassion in freeing the serial killer."

Brad deLong has more...

California Burning

Our friend Kenny videoblogs on Current.

Pretty scary stuff, and he wasn't even close to the worst of it.

All About Calcium

(cross-posted at BeOnLiving)
by Jeremy Bloom

Strong Teeth? Healthy Blood and Nerves Too!

Calcium is important for bones - everyone knows that. It’s the main structural building block of our bones. But did you know that it’s also needed for cell function, muscle tone, nerve function and blood clotting?

So it’s very important to keep the right balance in your body. Not enough calcium can lead to loss of density in bones and teeth, especially in the elderly. But too much calcium can cause blood troubles, impaired kidney functions, and trouble absorbing other nutrients.

It’s rare to see the classic calcium-deficiency disease, rickets, in the industrialized world. But in people who have a long-term lack of calcium in their diet, the body pulls calcium from the bones to maintain basic cell and nerve functioning, which over years can lead to the brittle bones of osteoporosis.

Supplements
Calcium absorption is tricky, so if you take supplements, it’s recommended that you spread them out over the day. With single heavy doses, most will be wasted. Also, Vitamin D is necessary for Calcium absorption, so proper levels of D must be maintained.

Chemically, calcium comes bound in several forms. Calcium carbonate – chalk – is the cheapest, but is hard to absorb and can cause gas, constipation and kidney stones. Calcium citrate is recommended instead. Chelated calcium is recognized by the body and is the best form of all… though getting your calcium via a healthy, balanced diet is best of all.

Notes:
- Chemically speaking, calcium is the most common metal in your body.
- If you’re on corticosteroids, you have to watch your calcium intake. Corticosteroids block activation of Vitamin D; without it, your body can’t absorb calcium.
- Many other medications interfere with Calcium – consult with your doctor.

Benefits
- Strong, healthy bones and teeth
- Proper blood clotting, blood pressure
- Proper nervous system function
- Maintaining proper calcium levels may prevent kidney stones and cataracts
- May benefit Colon Cancer, IBD
- May benefit PMS

Sources
- Dark green leafy vegetables such as chard, kale, spinach, turnip greens, parsley
- Sea Vegetables and Kelp, wakame and hijiki
- Olives and Olive Oil
- Nuts and seeds, including sesame seeds, almonds, brazil nuts, pecans
- Oranges, Gojis, Mango, Pineapple, Camu Camu
- Amaranth, Maca
- Blackstrap mollases, Agave, Yacon
- Dairy products, yogurt (although we don't recommend them)

(Flickr image from williumbillium, used under a Creative Commons license)

Some people are upset by torture

Frank Rich is on a tear today at the NY Times.

The heart of the column:

By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s "enhanced interrogation" techniques have a grotesque provenance: "Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation."

Sexual Harrasment and the High Court

Thanks to Clarence Thomas' new whiny, self-serving book, Anita Hill is back in the news.

So I thought I might repost (as it were) a piece I wrote back at the height of the controversy, when a lot of people were saying "Why didn't she come forward when it was happening? If it were really harassment, she should have spoken up."

Sexual Harassment:
Women are not the only ones to suffer
(Appeared in the Berkshire Eagle)

So 75 percent of men polled say they would be "flattered" at sexual advances made by a female co-worker. Bad news, guys - sexual harassment doesn't work like a fantasy letter in "Penthouse" magazine.

It happened to me at my first job.

Right around the time I was hired, I found myself at a weekend social gathering that was also attended by my editor - an older, married woman. She had to finish off a column that was due the next day, told me that she was ducking back over to the office, and asked if I would come along to proofread it.

Naturally, I was flattered that she was interested in my professional input.

Unfortunately, it wasn't my professional input she wanted, as she made clear after we arrived by taking off her glasses, looking me right in the eye and saying, "You can kiss me if you want to."

(More...)

I suggest that, faced with that kind of reality, every one of those 75 percent of swaggerers who say they would be "flattered" would feel exactly the way that I felt: sheer, abject terror. Remember, I was very young, in my first job - a very promising job, in a very tight field. I had every reason to believe that my entire career hung in the balance at that moment.

Sexual desire? I suppose some people are turned on by a feeling of anxiety, nausea and terror, but I'm not one of them. There is nothing sexy about the situation. Nothing.

What did I do? I did what thousands of men and women do in similar situations every day. I played along, trying to balance my boss' increasing demands with my own self-respect.

Over the next few months, I found myself called into her office for "private discussions," was invited to meet her for private lunches, found her "showing up" at public events she knew I was going to be attending.

My co-workers were resentful of the amount of time she spent with me, and morale in the office suffered. Eyebrows were raised in the community. Her husband never said anything directly to me, but I have no doubt he knew what was going on, and he offered me semi-veiled hints about the dangers of mixing my personal and professional life - dangers I knew only too well, as they were a source of daily anxiety for me at the office.

When she suggested we get a hotel room, I was able to deflect her; fortunately for me, she never pressed the issue. I honestly don't know what I would have done if she had.

This went on for three months, until I began to get praise for my work from the publisher and other editors, and felt I was in a strong enough position to politely but firmly tell her this couldn't go on any longer.

Again, I was lucky - she was relatively gracious. She could have fired me, or turned vindictive - it would have been easy for her to make my job a living hell. Even so, I was
operating under a permanent black cloud, never knowing when the whole thing could break wide open again. I lasted another 14 months, and when a better position came up, I jumped at the chance to get away from her.

Why didn't I sue?

Get real. It would have been my word against hers, and in the meantime, who would hire me? I knew it would be downplayed. I knew some people would say I should have been "flattered". One person I did tell - a psychiatrist, in fact - told me "You must have encouraged her."

So, like Anita Hill, I just swallowed the whole thing for years.

Now, I see smug men clucking their tongues and saying, "But if Anita Hill was so upset by Judge Thomas' behavior, why didn't she quit?"

The answer to that is simple: She wanted to be successful. She had a good job, and she didn't want to jeopardize her career track. When she had the chance to move up with Judge Thomas, she took it - if my abusive editor had moved up the publishing ladder and given me a chance to follow, I probably would have done the same thing.

What's so confusing about that? Particularly as a woman and a minority member, Anita Hill could expect the deck to be stacked against her from the outset. She made the best of a bad situation. Can we fault her for that?

I know there are still some men who will say, "But Thomas didn't really do anything. What's the big deal about telling some dirty jokes?"

I have a simple rule of thumb for men: If you wouldn't do something in front of your mother, don't do it to your co-worker.

What's the big deal about a dirty joke? Well, would you say that to your mother?

What's so bad about putting up a centerfold in the mailroom?

Well, would you walk into your mother's house and tape one up on the refrigerator?

How about the buddy who tells you, speaking of a co-worker, "Ah, I know why she wouldn't date me - she's just a stuck-up bitch"? How would you feel if someone was talking about your mother that way? A real man would probably punch the jerk's lights out.

Put it in "the mother context", and most of these disputes seem sort of silly.

And yet, some men still act as if they have the right to treat a fellow human being who happens to be stuck with them by an accident of employment in a way that they would never treat someone they respect. And some employers - who would never tolerate employees who were chronically late, or turn up at work drunk - still tolerate behavior which is just as destructive to a productive work environment. (That's right - sexual harassment isn't just mean-spirited and a bad thing to do; it's also bad for business.)

And for men who still don't get it, try this on for size: You are a male worker, and another male worker starts making sexually suggestive comments.

Someone you see every day, someone you can't avoid. And when you complain to your boss, she says, "What's the matter? I should think you would be flattered by Bruce's attentions."

Still say, "No big deal?"

And why is Anita Hill only coming forward now, so many years later?

For the same reasons that I didn't sue, and didn't talk about it publicly until now. Ten years ago, nobody talked about sexual harassment, about child abuse, about rape. If it happened, and you did talk about it, you were breaking the code - and society has a way of punishing those who break the code that are often more effective than the punishments doled out to the abusers.

What would have happened if Hill had come forward then? At best, a slap on the wrist for Thomas - and blacklisting for Hill. She would have had a reputation. Nothing would ever be said directly, of course; but search committees would hear, "Anita Hill? She's a troublemaker. Not a team player." I doubt very much if Anita Hill would be a professor of law today had she pushed a suit against Thomas.

Why am I coming forward now, after all these years?

For the same reasons.

Because enough is enough.

Because silence is the ally of the abusers.

Because the situation I went through, and the situation Anita Hill describes, is simply unfair, and no one else should have to go through that.

And because if, by coming forward, one less man or woman has to go through the agony of sexual harassment, it will have been worth it.

More Subpoenas for Doolittle

The Sacramento Bee and the AP (via TPM) are reporting more subpoenas for CA-R Congressman John Doolittle.

Rep. John Doolittle said Thursday that the Justice Department has issued subpoenas to him and five of his staff members seeking records going back 11 years...

In a release issued by Doolittle's office, it said that the Justice Department has assured the five staff members that they are merely witnesses. Left unanswered is the question of what Doolittle's status in the investigation is, and whether he has become a target in the on-going investigation related to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff that would mean an indictment is near.

It's bad timing for Doolittle, who just yesterday was complaining when a watchdog group named him to their list of Most Corrupt Members of Congress.

(More...)

It appears Doolittle is going to attempt to make this into a "separation of powers" issue: the mean ol' executive (via the Justice Department) shouldn't have the ability to kick around Congresscritters.

Now, granted, considering the way things have been going, it's not a bad line to take. God help us if the Unitary Executive ever decided to use its powers to go after random Senators the way Rove appears to have gone after the former Governor of Alabama...

"These efforts raise serious constitutional issues going to the very core of our separation of powers created by the Founding Fathers," [Doolittle attorney David] Barger said.

The Constitution prohibits the executive branch from using its law enforcement powers to interfere with legislative business. Barger said he and Doolittle would "be vigilant" to ensure Congress' independence is "vigorously protected." Any court challenge would go before a federal judge, but the documents would be sealed.

It's possible that the subpoenas may be too much of a fishing expedition, reportedly asking for nearly all legislative documents for the past 11 years. The AP notes that,

in the case of LA-D Congressman Jefferson, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that FBI agents trampled on congressional independence during the raid. Even though they took only documents relevant to their bribery investigation, agents also reviewed legislative documents, which the court said was unconstitutional.

Ironically, it was just last week that the Sacramento Bee reported on a possible motive for Doolittle sticking it out and going for another term: if he's reelected, it bumps his pension by $16,000 a year.

The Roseville Republican is under pressure to retire from Congress. The pressure is coming from members of his own party who think that his embroilment in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal has rendered him unelectable in his Republican-dominated district.

Doolittle has responded by branding some of his harshest Republican critics as "weasels." He has said he is not quitting when the current term ends in December.

"I will not step aside," Doolittle said in a defiant telephone news conference earlier this month. "I am running again. Period."

But with Doolittle up to his eyeballs in corruption charges, it's going to be tough for him to beat Charlie Brown this time around...

Nobody is Funnier Than Wavy Gravy

(One from the archives... hard to believe this is almost 20 years ago, from the 1988 campaign against Bush the First)
Wavy Gravy is a soldier of the clowns.

He was recently at a large demonstration at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California, a place where they do much nuclear stuff. He was dressed as a giant bunny, and carried a sign saying “Mutant Bunnies for Peace - Save the Humans.”

And he wore a human foot on a chain around his waist. For luck.

“Now I assure you that police do not want to be photographed busting no mutant bunny,” he notes genially. “It messes with their macho image.”

So he had practically walked in the gate before he was detained.

“So they grab me, and it was then that I whipped out - my ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.” He pauses. “Laminated.”

He has the impeccable timing of a years-practiced comic. “It’s very important to laminate it first if you want it to be effective.”

(More...)

Well, the cops looked it over, then called in their superior, who called in his superior. Ultimately, the ultimate superior was called in. He scrutinized the laminated card, as all the other police waited breathlessly.

“Well,” said the cop honcho, “this thing’s only good in Contra Costa County....”

“But see,” notes Gravy, “what it did was smash any of that yada-yada energy and it lightened everybody up. I mean, who wants to be blown up by nuclear holocaust? Not even the police. It’s a question of survival.”

Wavy calls his sense of humor his greatest survival weapon. But he also claims he’s not really all that funny.

“It’s the situations that are funny,” he says. “All I do is point.”

As he talks, he is putting on his whiteface - his secret weapon. You see, when the clown puts on his whiteface, he is not putting on a particular face. He is putting on NO face, a blank face; a mirror. He puts on my face, and your face, the face of each person he... entertains. Touches.

“Look,” he is saying, nonverbally, “see, this is you.” We see ourselves, being silly, being vulnerable, and its OK.

With laughter, he breaches our daily defenses and strikes at our hearts with his cream-pie rapier. And we think. And we see. And we understand.

But it requires a delicate balance. Too much whipped cream, and you have nothing but the shallow Barnum and Bailey, clowns without purpose chasing their empty tails, our laughter a hollow practice at the letting down of walls without the consummation of illumination.

And too much of the rapier will wound, injure, cause the hitherto willing victims to recoil in pain, shut the doors, turn from the wounding messenger and spurn - or fail to attend - the message. Lenny Bruce learned this, and it killed him.

Before that, before Bruce unleashed his acid wit on an America that had not yet been Norman Leared, Saturday Night Lived, and MTV’d, Lenny Bruce was Wavy Gravy’s manager.

It is sad, for Bruce could have learned from Wavy, the living master, the consummate balancer: he who walks the line between the hippies and the politicians, between the hog-farms and the police stations.

“I always get arrested as a clown,” he says. “And you know why? You Know WHY?” he says it slowly, like a teacher explaining an important lesson to his students, like a minister imparting a parable of wisdom: “BECAUSE CLOWNS ARE SAFE.”

There have been a lot of long roads for Wavy. His resume reads like... well, like “A certified psychedelic relic,” as he puts it.

He was Born Hugh Romney on May 15, 1936 in East Greenbush, right outside of Albany, NY. He lived in Albany for almost two decades.

Then, “A hundred million years later,” Wavy Gravy was born: He was one of Ken Kesey’s original Merry Pranksters; he M.C.’d at Woodstock; he took a busload of hippies from Paris to Nepal.

And he got involved in politics. His street-theater group worked for Lyndon Johnson’s Campaign in 1964, “because Goldwater was going to start dropping atom bombs.” But when Johnson escalated the war in Vietnam, Wavy lost faith in politicians.

In ‘68 he ran a pig for President: Pigassus. “She was the first female black-and-white candidate for president,” he recalls proudly.

Wavy believes that in any year, “none of the above” should be an option on the ballot. After all, even in Chile they get to vote ‘no’.

“In the old days,” he recalls, “we used to register and write-in for Nobody. The concept was ‘Write in, right on, write off.’ This time we’re telling people to keep the spirit alive in their heart, but register and vote to lick Bush.”

And to help keep the spirit alive, Nobody is running again.

Wavy has hit the road on his fourth quadrennial “Nobody for President” tour, which will bring him to the Iron Horse in
Northhampton tonight. Wavy would never run for President himself, although he points out that with his years of campaigning, he’s at least as qualified as Dan Quail.

“I just work for Nobody. I’m Nobody’s fool. This is the fourth time that Nobody’s run. We were going to run a Piano in ‘88. But when Jesse Jackson threw in the towel... we have these plastic talking teeth that we use for Nobody’s speeches, and they started clicking of their own volition. It was scary - all the hairs on my arm leaped to attention. And I knew it was time.”

He points out that when you look at the issues, Nobody comes out looking magnificent:

• First of all, Nobody totally understands the economy.
  
• Nobody’s freed the hostages, Nobody knows what to do with radioactive waste, Nobody’s lowered your taxes, Nobody’s in Washington right now working for me and you.
  
• Nobody keeps all his campaign promises.
  
• Nobody always tells the truth.
  
• In fact - Nobody’s perfect!
  
• And Nobody works for nothing.
  
• Nobody bakes apple pie better than mom.
  
• Nobody knows you when you’re down and out.

“Look,” says Wavy, a sardonic smile on his lined and lumpy face. “I firmly believe that Nobody should have that much power. I want Nobody to run my life. And if Nobody wins - Nobody loses....”

Which just goes to show that Nobody is funnier than Wavy Gravy.

Into Africa

(Crossposted at EcoFabulous)
One of the best ways to help indigenous people help themselves and the environment is to go there. For example, when you visit Campi ya Kanzi, at the foot of magnificent Mount Kilimanjaro, you'll get the trip of a lifetime as well as help the Maasai people of Kenya and their local wildlife.

Located on 400 square miles between Tsavo and Chyulu National Parks in the heart of Maasai country, the camp offers gourmet-quality meals, wildlife tracking with Maasai guides, and scenic flights around Kilimanjaro.

Love Kenyan coffee? Imagine having it brought to you fresh-brewed first thing in the morning... or sipping it by the campfire as the sun sets. This is the cradle of the first humans, and as you dine under the stars, you can't help but feel the draw of our deep ancestral roots.

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And by going there you help create a better life for the next generations of Maasai people. Not only does the camp provide employment, it also supports the Maasai Foundation, which provides a range of health and educational services. For instance, after years of hunting, lions are staging a comeback - good for the ecology, but bad for semi-nomadic herders like the Maasai; foundation supporter Ed Norton has teamed with jeweler Cartier to raise funds to compensate the community for livestock killed by lions, so the tribesmen won't retaliate against the big cats.

The camp combines charcoal-fired cookery with solar power and hot water heaters - a wonderful marriage of traditional life and modern sensibilities. Not as luxurious as Branson's African oasis, but a pretty awesome and honest way to experience Africa. While you are checking on your flights, don't forget to offset your travel!

Hyping al Qaeda in Iraq, The Anbar Awakening and the Surge

The administration is trotting out a shiny new narrative on Iraq: Petraus's Anbar Awakening has brought around the Sunni Tribes, who are now our allies in a battle against the wicked excesses of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

But what if everything we've heard about AQI is as overblown as the original scare-stories about Saddam's WMD?

Andrew Tilghman, a former Iraq correspondent for the Stars and Stripes newspaper, has an article that just hit the Washington monthly that takes an in-depth look at just how big a movement AQI really is – and the answer isn’t pretty. Particularly since the Anbar Awakening strategy is based around arming Sunnis to fight AQI, it’s pretty important to know just how much AQI there is... and what we’re really arming those tribal leaders for. If AQI is "is a microscopic terrorist organization," then what will the Sunnis do with all those guns?

Never mind the fog of war... Never mind the incredible moving casualty figures... This is midnight in the coal mine, and we really have no clue about what’s going on here...

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Tilghman notes that "In July... the president gave a speech about Iraq that mentioned al-Qaeda ninety-five times." So what's the real scoop? The biggest claim by the military is that AQI is around 15% of the insurgency, but after looking at all the evidence....

The most persuasive estimate I've heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq," according to Nance, "is a microscopic terrorist organization."

One gauge of responsibility is the claims AQI itself makes on its various websites. They're hardly shy:

AQI took credit for 10 percent of attacks on Iraqi security forces and Shiite militias (forty-three out of 439 attacks), and less than 4 percent of attacks on U.S. troops (seventeen out of 357).

Okay, so maybe they don't have a high percentage of the total attacks. But what about the spectacular attacks? The admin has been quick to blame AQI for such huge, destructive bombings as those in Samara or Tal Afar. But according to Tilghman, the pattern has been to step in and blame AQI, even though the evidence is either scanty, or points in other directions:

...it remains unclear whether the original Samara bombing was itself the work of AQI. The group never took credit for the attack... The man who the military believe orchestrated the bombing, an Iraqi named Haitham al-Badri, was both a Samara native and a former high-ranking government official under Saddam Hussein... Samara was the heart of Saddam's power base, where former regime fighters keep tight control over the insurgency.

Same with Tal Afar. The administration blamed that on AQI, but when arrests were made:

...when the U.S. military issued a press release about the arrests, there was no mention of an al-Qaeda connection. The suspects were never formally charged, and nearly six months later neither the U.S. military nor Iraqi police are certain of the source of the attacks. In recent public statements, the military has backed off its former allegations that al-Qaeda was responsible, instead asserting... that "the tactics used in this attack are consistent with al-Qaeda."

Everyone has an interest in promoting the Al Qaeda myth: The Shiite government can avoid looking incompetent in the face of Sunni attacks by blaming the AQI bogeyman; Sunnis can claim "it’s not us, it’s AQI"; reporters hoping for page 1 stories are inclined to hype AQI, since it's easier to report than a confusing, muddled "sectarian violence" narrative; and of course there’s Bush.

This scenario has become common. After a strike, the military rushes to point the finger at al-Qaeda, even when the actual evidence remains hazy and an alternative explanation—raw hatred between local Sunnis and Shiites—might fit the circumstances just as well. The press blasts such dubious conclusions back to American citizens and policy makers in Washington, and the incidents get tallied and quantified in official reports, cited by the military in briefings in Baghdad. The White House then takes the reports and crafts sound bites depicting AQI as the number one threat to peace and stability in Iraq.

So what does all this mean?

We're watching the meme-shifting in Washington, from the failure of the benchmarks to the amazing success of Petraus's brilliant gambit - win over the Sunnis to the war on Al Qaeda! Look, the surge is working!

But if AQI is a rump movement, we're watching yet another short-term fix that will screw us in the long term.

Consider the track record:

* Our ally is the Maliki government. But he was put in power by the Sadrists.
* The Sadrists are our enemy. Why? They want US troop out. We spent more than a year at war with one of the government’s biggest supports.
* We’re also at war with the other side: the Sunni insurgency.
* Next, we declare rhetorical war on the Iranians and their allies. That’s the other half of the government. Smooth move.
* That leaves us with just the Kurds - and our allies the Turks are practically at war with them. Smooth move.
* Fast forward to this year and the Anbar Awakening, in which we arm the Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar, the same Sunni leaders who were our enemies not long ago... So we're fighting our friends, and arming our enemies. Smooooth move.

While the U.S. military has recently touted "news" that Sunni insurgents have turned against the al-Qaeda terrorists in Anbar Province, there is little evidence of actual clashes between these two groups. Sunni insurgents in Anbar have largely ceased attacks on Americans, but some observers suggest that this development has less to do with vanquishing AQI than with the fact that U.S. troops now routinely deliver cash-filled duffle bags to tribal sheiks serving as "lead contractors" on "reconstruction projects."

So we’re attempting to defuse a civil war... by arming and training the fighters on the anti-government side. Smooth move.

At least they’re going after AQI, right? But if Tilghman is right, there isn’t much AQI for them to go after. 850 fighters? That seems like a good deal for the Sunnis – "Sure, help us arm and train a force of thousands, and we’ll go after this annoying upstart runt of a movement for you. And when we’re done... well, we’ll see."

Truly smooth move on their part.

But this leaves just one more question:

If the Kurds are our allies, and the Shiites are our allies (the Sadrists have sensibly ordered their fighters to stand down until after the surge), and now the Sunnis are our allies, and AQI is actually a tiny faction – just who the hell have we been fighting? And where are all these casualties coming from?

And how the hell do we ‘win’ on a battlefield as incoherent as this?

Michael Zacchea, a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Reserves who was deployed to Iraq, said he was sometimes skeptical of upper-level analysis emphasizing al-Qaeda in Iraq rather than the insurgency's local roots. "It's very, very frustrating for everyone involved who is trying to do the right thing," he said. "That's not how anyone learned to play the game when we were officers coming up the ranks, and we were taught to provide clear battlefield analysis."

Blueberry Lavender Coconut Cream

Lyra has done it again... extreme Yum!

Mini Polenta Lasagnas with Rosemary Tapenade

Lyra has gone gluten-free, which has inspired her to start creating some amazing recipies. This was outstandingly delicious...

NY Times: FISA law was a wider power grab

Remember how Bush rammed through a FISA reform bill in just five days? Remember how just when the Dems thought they had a deal Lucy - er, Bush - pulled the football? Remember how there wasn't enough time to fine-tooth comb the bill to find out what they were REALLY authorizing?

Dig this, my friends:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans’ business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.

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This is what The New York Times is reporting in tomorrow's paper. You'll be shocked, shocked, to learn that the administration put things in the bill they weren't telling anyone about.

Or perhaps you'll be reassured by the Admin's statement:

But they said the Democrats were simply raising theoretical questions based on a harsh interpretation of the legislation.

They also emphasized that there would be strict rules in place to minimize the extent to which Americans would be caught up in the surveillance.

Considering the track record of this bunch, I am not terribly reassured.

Here's the really fun part:

Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of "electronic surveillance," the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States.

These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches and so-called "trap and trace" operations, analyzing specific calling patterns.

For instance, the legislation would allow the government, under certain circumstances, to demand the business records of an American in Chicago without a warrant if it asserts that the search concerns its surveillance of a person who is in Paris, experts said.

Note that the administration has already lied and dissembled about the extent of surveillance. They have also nitpicked tiny word differences to allow them to do anything they damn well please. And of course, they have also claimed that the Preznit's power as Commander In Chief bears no oversight or control whatsoever.

Which, of course, makes it worse. The Times also reports on a meeting last week with legal groups - looks like even Republican groups - critical of the Admin's wiretapping power-grab.

At the meeting, Bruce Fein, a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, along with other critics of the legislation, pressed Justice Department officials repeatedly for an assurance that the administration considered itself bound by the restrictions imposed by Congress. The Justice Department, led by Ken Wainstein, the assistant attorney general for national security, refused to do so... It sent the message, Mr. Fein said... that the new legislation... "is just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do. They have not changed their position that the president’s Article II powers trump any ability by Congress to regulate the collection of foreign intelligence."

So really, nothing that happened in Congress this month made a damn bit of difference.

Why Wired Gave up on Second Life.

Chris Anderson of Wired says he's given up on Second Life.

Well, partly it was the whole "there's nobody there" problem, which is of course just anecdotal. Like everyone else, I had fun exploring the concept and marveling at all the creativity. Then I got bored, and I started marveling at something else: all the empty corporate edifices.

Come on, this is silly.

Imagine if you judged the real world this way.
1) You go to a football stadium. It's empty.
2) You go to Coca Cola's Corporate HQ 6 am. It's empty.
3) You go to downtown LA at 4 am. It's empty.

You conclude, "What's up with this Real Life thing? There's nobody there!

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We have vast acres of land and millions of buildings in the real world that are empty part or most of the time. So?

By day I'd speak at marketing conferences that usually had someone pitching SL services, complete with staged demonstrations (the "inhabitants" invariably paid employees). By night I'd go back to the same places, which had reverted to ghost towns once the demonstration was over. I couldn't understand why companies kept throwing money at in-world presences. Were they seeing something I wasn't?

People don't come in response to a marketing message. People come because they want something to do.

Pong proved that you can give them something really simple and they'll do it.

Toyota has a national informational tour about Hybrid vehicles going around the country right now... they get people to stay and go through the information by making it part of a game, with a rewards system. It works.

People come back to bars, movie theaters, casinos, and clubs night after night because they are offered something to do. People do not go to empty buildings where nothing is going on - why on earth should they?

The point has been made that marketing folks are trying to apply the wrong models to Second Life... but look at my last point: People aren't even applying the basic knowledge they've gleaned from the real world in Second Life!

Search me?

Interesting. After several years of having trash sites show up in Google searches, I was wondering how long it would take for an alternative paradigm to arrive... looks like it's finally here, thank god!

From Eric Jones Garage Sale:

With the advent of MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Imeem and the flock, things are a changing. I work for an internet measurement company with a focus on competitive intelligence so I am lucky enough to scope the evolution of the internet in real time. It's not uncommon to see a website's traffic be 20-50% from search (google, yahoo, msn, live, mamma, etc.) However, more and more the social networking community space is... contributing the same if not more....

This is revolutionary. Now marketers are forced to be experts on human behavior much more than algorithmic behaviors..."

William Gibson will be in Second Life, August 2!

From "New World Notes"

At the beginning of August, the man who gave "cyberspace" its name and its imaginative texture will visit the place that probably wouldn't exist, without him. As it happens, one of Second Life's very first regions is named in honor of William Gibson. Tyrell Corporation, one of SL's first groups, gave the place that title, then proceeded to build Nexus Prime, an ever-changing city with gleaming spires above, and mean, untamed warrens below, on top of it. An ideal tribute to the author's work, when you think about it, so I hope Gibson visits Gibson.

The appearance is slated for August 2. To attend, you first have to be Second Life member (free at SecondLife.com), then join the SL group "Penguin Readers" or IM Jeremy Neumann.

So... what is this "Second Life"?

Pixeleen Mistral writes:

Allison Fass reports that the metaverse can be a “can be a weird, chancy place for real-life brands” in a story for the July 2 issue of Forbes, and notes that avatars enjoy having sex and playing pranks instead of getting warm fuzzy feelings about real life brands. What on earth are those avatars thinking of - don't they understand they are meant to be compliant RL marketing hype recipients?

This article has sparked a bunch of interesting discussion... here, here, here.
People are starting to ask: what the heck is this Virtual World thing, anyway? And how on earth can anyone make any money in it?

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See: "The Web", circa 1999.
See: "Television", circa 1959.

Until someone figured out commercials, Television seemed pretty useless... how were you supposed to make money on it?

The answer was, for the most part you didn't... you provided content that people wanted to come see, and when you had enough eyeballs, selling ads became vastly profitable.

When the Web came along, though, people just looked at it and said, "Well, we can't do it the same we do TV, so what good is it?"

You're not going to get the same TV-ad-sales paradigm in SL, either, but you'll get something new. It's all at that amorphous formational stage right now. Which means that some folks will dis it for being lame... and some folks will make a whole lot of money by seeing the potential and running with it.

Will everyone make money? Of course not. There will be Googles, and there will be Worldcoms.

Aid to Pakistan: Not One Dime for Common Sense

The US reputation, in both the mid-east and the world as a whole, is terrible.

But look - we have a chance to redeem ourselves! A killer typhoon has hit Pakistan, 1.5 million people were affected, with 250,000 homeless and another 300,000 displaced... now's our chance to stand up and show what a Humanitarian Democracy can do!

So... where the heck are we? Search the news, and this is all you'll find:

"CARE Australia contributing $250,000 in assistance to the pakistan flood victims..."

"...">So far Canada has pledged some two million dollars in funding for relief operations in Pakistan and the United States 380,000 dollars..."

More...

What are they thinking in Washington? We're spending $280 million EVERY DAY in Iraq, but when it comes to a little compassion (which coincidentally might help a lot in the hearts-and-minds battle) all we can come up with is $380 THOUSAND and one Red Cross worker?

AMERICAN RED CROSS SENDS RELIEF WORKER TO PAKISTAN

Manhattan resident answers call for relief aid after flooding and cyclones hit western Pakistan

Travis Betz, a member of the Greater New York Chapter of the American Red Cross, will be deployed as a Field Assessment and Coordination Team (FACT) member to Baluchestan, Pakistan and surrounding flood areas this evening to provide aid on behalf of the American Red Cross...

This at a time when Pakistan is already spiraling into chaos... doesn't somebody think it would be a good idea to try to keep thousands more people from falling into destitution, poverty and anger? Isn't that the perfect breeding ground for suicide bombers and islamic militants?

And at a time when the Neocons are beating the drums of war against Iran, ostensibly to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of the Islamic Republic, wouldn't it make sense to spend a million or two (the cost of ONE CRUISE MISSILE) to help prevent the ALREADY EXISTING Pakistani nukes from falling into the hands of Islamist Rebels?

Suburban Distopia

There's a big ideas-fest going on over in Aspen (probably without Scooter Libby and Judy Miller), and Ross Douthat blogs on the Atlantic website about Joel Kotkin's discussion of renewed urbanism.

The notion that Americans are moving back to downtowns in large numbers is a myth, Kotkin announced; instead, they're moving ever outward, into new exurbs and rural areas. The traditional unipolar urban downtown isn't going to make a comeback: Young couples with families can't afford to live there, and aging Baby Boomers don't want to.

I think a lot of this falls under the category of "Where I sit everything is fine, or at least I've convinced myself it is."
I'm sure his sweeping generalizations are true for some folks - probably all the people he knows - but are significantly less true for millions of others.
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Telecommuting, not mass transit, is the wave of the future... The suburbs are a triumph, not a torture chamber... Suburbanites are happier and enjoy a more vibrant civic life than other Americans, and it's not just bigoted whites hiding out in gated communities... Post-industrial society will look more like pre-industrial society than anyone ever expected.

Well... my writerly two cents...
Telecommuting is fine if you're a writer or a pundit.

It's not so easy if you are, for instance, a chef. Or a barrista. Or a teacher, or a police officer, or a doctor, or just about any other job that involves something more than sitting in front of a computer all day.

I've done telecommuting from the suburbs.

It sucks.

If you want ANYTHING, you have to get in the car and drive. And that especially goes for human contact - you can make your own coffee, read the newspaper online, but that's just not the same as walking to the corner cafe and reading the paper over a cup of fresh-brewed and chatting with the neighbors and meeting new people (some of whom may end up being useful business contacts, hey!).

I now live in Santa Monica, where I walk to the coffee shop, the bank, the movie theater, restaurants, bookstores...

I have a cheap semi-reliable vehicle for running around town (and there are also buses), and for longer road trips where I'm more concerned about breakdowns (and gas mileage) I have five car-rental locations within a few blocks of home!

The one thing we miss here is land for a nice herb & vegetable garden... but I can tell you first hand that most suburbanites don't actually indulge in getting their hands dirty in that way.

Even my brother and sister, who have very similar sensibilities to mine, tell me they simply don't have the time for a garden, not with families and three kids each. They spend too much time in the car - driving to and from work, taking the kids to soccer games, gymnastics, music lessons...

Sure, there's more space in the suburbs, but you pay for the space with TIME - hours and hours of your life that you never get back. It's a truism of real estate that "Land is the one thing they're not making any more of", but that's just not true; time is at least as precious a commodity, but most people, thinking they have a lifetime's worth of spare moments, end up bleading them away minute by minute waiting at red lights, or tied up in traffic...

Imagine if someone told you, "You live in the suburbs, but in exchange you'll die 10 years earlier, lose ten full years of life."

Would you do it? Millions of people do every day, unthinking.

More commentary from Iglesias and Atrios

Also... a good piece about Seattle, Portland and Vancouver