Iggy Pop and The Stooges took to the stage at the United Palace Theater, and proved that some things just don’t change. Pawn actually remembers going to see Iggy at Milwaukee’s lovely Riverside Theater almost twenty years ago, and deciding that the balcony was the safest place from which to enjoy the show. At the United Palace, Iggy invited the audience to “Invade the stage” and they took him up on it.
More covereage here: Music Review | Iggy Pop and The Stooges
A wordsmith friend of Pawn sent this link to a delightful piece of self-promotion by author Miranda July. It is well worth the time to step through the entire slide show.
Follow up: New York magazine, April 23, 2007 issue, The Approval Matrix had this entry:
“Nonebelongsheremorethanyou.com, quite possibly the most endearing Website ever.”
http://nymag.com/arts/all/approvalmatrix/30604/index.html
/. just mentioned this:
New solar cells developed by Massey University don’t need direct sunlight to operate and use a patented range of dyes that can be impregnated in roofs, window glass and eventually even clothing to produce power.
The announcement is here: Massey News Article – Taking nature’s cue for cheaper solar power
Last night on Charlie Rose, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek said (in reference to Barack Obama’s Q1 fund raising):
I think its a very big day in what I’d call “small ‘D'” democracy politics. I think we’re seeing the birth of what you could call ‘Open Source Politics’… In other words the old authority structures that we all became accustomed to are breaking down, and this is very very good for American politics and American society. To level the playing field, let the people weigh in. If you’re saying something that people connect to, [if] you have a message of optimism that resonates… the money will follow.”
This came as news to those active in the last presidential campaign cycle. Or many others:
Of course there is another side to Open Source Politics, as discussed here previously and over at ZDNet: Creativity trumps money in open source politics.
The political calender stretches before us like a yawning canyon. We have a lot yet to see.
*Which itself begins with this Charlie Rose reference, “Bob Schieffer of CBS News made a good point on ‘The Charlie Rose Show’ last week.” Thus demonstrating the circularity of nature.
Just a quick follow up from THe New York TImes on Sen. McCain’s epic adventure to a street market in Baghdad:
“What are they talking about? The security procedures were abnormal! They paralyzed the market when they came, This was only for the media…This will not change anything.â€
Ali Jassim Faiyad, the owner of an electrical appliances shop in the market, said Monday.
How about this quote:
“like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime,â€
Rep. Mike Pence (R – Indiana)
McCain Wrong on Iraq Security, Merchants Say – New York Times
That’s it, no more market days in Indiana!
Constitutional crisis was much in the news a week or two back, when the House and Senate were voting to impose restrictions on the Bush administrations Iraq plans, or supoena presidential advisors.
While these claims of crisis are more hyperbole than real (not that the issues aren’t real, they’re just not a crisis) there are a number of real constitutional crises going on in the world right now. Here is a quick review:
With all of this going on in the world today, you would imagine our diplomatic corps would be racking up the frequent flier miles. Doesn’t look like it, though. The myopia of our current government has kept it focused almost exclusively on Iraq and Iran.
The research team here at Fortune’s Pawn has been hard at work since the hard closed door of ethics was cracked open last night when the question of sin transference was broached with the Burningman article (below). The team of Googling Monkeys® was unleashed upon the Internet and came back with this interesting piece from The International Herald Tribune “Carbon footprint offsets: False sense of satisfaction?”
“These companies may be operating with the best will in the world, but they are doing so in settings where it’s not really clear you can monitor and enforce their projects over time,” said Steve Rayner, a senior professor at Oxford and a member of a working group on reducing greenhouse gases for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“What these companies are allowing people to do is carry on with their current behavior with a clear conscience,” Rayner said.
This is the point that has Pawn wondering about the ethics and efficacy of these programs. Nobility of intent aside, are these programs really providing results? What are the ethics of paying someone else to be good on your behalf?
Is a philanderer less bad if he pays someone else to be celibate? What if the celibate would be celibate even without the philanderer’s gold? Or, to take a real world example, consider the case of Climate Care, from the article:
…the company was engaging in a program that funded the distribution of tens of thousands of low-energy fluorescent light bulbs in South African townships.
But a state energy utility soon afterward distributed millions of similar bulbs for free, so that the “so-called reductions that Climate Care is selling to its customers arguably would have happened anyway,”
said Larry Lohmann of The Corner House
Other examples abound, of projects which purport to offer great offsets but in reality offer little or none, or of conflicts of interest in the selling of legitimate pollution credits.
And of course there is the issue of whether someone buying offsets will simply feel free to keep on generating greenhouse gases since they are now absolved of the guilt that should go along with it.
Much to ponder here…
Also the topic of discussion at Thinking Ethics.
Robert Novak in his most recent column offers up this nugget about a potential campaign for the Republican party Presidential nomination by Fred Thompson, former Congressman and Senator from Tennessee:
Sophisticated social conservative activists tell me they cannot vote
for Giuliani under any conditions and have no rapport with McCain or
Romney. They do not view Sen. Sam Brownback, representing the social
right, as a viable candidate. They are coming to see Thompson as the
only conservative who can be nominated. Their appreciation of him stems
not from his eight years as a U.S. senator from Tennessee but his
actor’s role as district attorney of Manhattan on “Law and Order.” That
part was molded to Thompson’s specifications as a tough prosecutor,
lending him political star power.
RealClearPolitics – Articles – Fred Thompson Is for Real
So a politician retires from politics to pursue an acting career, negotiates the role he will play, and then leverages that role as a springboard back into politics. That, in itself, is an interesting plot line.
Thompson could potentially turn the GOP primaries upside-down. Stay tuned…
John McCain has ventured into the Bermuda Triangle of Irrelevance, the Middle East, in an experiment in extreme irrelevancy. He headed out to a Baghdad street market accompanied by 147 soldiers, armored Humvees and helicopter gunships and then scolded the media for not reporting that you can go for a stroll in the newly safe Baghdad. The press met his report with laughter.
John McCain called out by CNN reporter Michael Ware – People
Trying desperately to bring relevance to the region, Nancy Pelosi went to Israel yesterday, where she met with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and got from him an offer for negotiations to take with her to her next stop, Syria, where she is to meet with President Bashar Assad. The Bush administration lambasted her for visiting Syria and meeting with Assad while staying oddly mute on the visit there, yesterday, by a trio of Republican congressmen who also met with Assad.
Hmmm.
Fresh from the counter-culture wires. Burning Man, that annual bacchanal in the Nevada dessert, has had an environmental epiphany. They have decided to attempt a zero carbon footprint for the next festival. Here is the skinny:
Greening the Man
In 2007, we will calculate the amount of climate changing gases that are released into the air by the construction and the burning of the Man and its pedestal. This is called a carbon footprint. Then we’ll
sponsor projects in the outside world that will efface this imprint. Such actions might include the planting of trees or the development of non-polluting energy resources.
Having played with fire, we’ll take care to cleanse its atmospheric playground.
We are taking some radical measures to ensure that Black Rock City will be the largest “Green” community in the world. These steps will all be covered soon in more detail but this is the outline.
1. A Vehicle free Playa.
No gas powered vehicles will be parked within the perimeter of Black Rock City. We
will have an adjacent parking area approximately a quarter of a mile away. Cars and trucks will be able to unload at camp but then must park in the lot. Those choosing to come in RVs will have a separate RV lot to park in. We will also be operating a number of bio-diesel fueled buses to bring you and your equipment from the parking area to your camps. Art Cars will not be affected by this.
2. People are the Power.
Another step we are taking is a power grid for all of Burningman. We will not be allowing generators this year unless they run on bio-diesel or a solar source. We will be providing a solar power grid for Burningman assisted by a “power plant” run by the power of Burningman attendees. We will have bicycles and “hamster wheels” that YOU will use to power all of Burningman. We are still working out how access to the grid will be provided and details will be given soon.
3. “Burning Potties”
We have reached a deal with Incinolet http://incinolet.com/ to use their new waste system that uses a powerful heater and blower to reduce your human waste into ash. We will provide participants with plenty of ash bags.
By starting with these simple steps we will continue to ensure that
Burningman is a proving ground for a better society.
What about this whole “Carbon Offset” concept? Can we really build a trading economy based upon sin-transference?
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