California Raises the Bar on Renewable Energy

The State of California passed a law today requiring one third of the power supplied to the state come from renewable energy by the year 2020. All it needs is Gov. Jerry Brown's signature to be law.  I can't see him NOT signing it.

This might mark the beginning of what I have been predicting since Obama took office. A convergence of democrats and republicans on an energy bill in late 2011. Of course that lame energy bill brought to you by the three amigos - Kerry, Graham , and Lieberman didn't get passed last year.  It was too oily, and glowing red.  We now have the BP oil disaster and Fukushima fresh in the collective neo-cortex and are poised for RADICAL change in energy policy.  If we can pass a national energy bill that comes close to this Californina mandate we might actually wash off some of that stain left on our face by Mr Bush, and Mr Obama might just get a second term. What am I talking about, of course he will. No contender has even had the "equipment" to step out and say they are running against him.  The election is NEXT YEAR.   Come on Rush, come on Newt, come on Romney, Palin?  - What... what.

Alright, if we go into a double dip recession then they might try it. But all this public union busting has got them looking more evil than the most egregious of the teatards.

Keep your eye on the renewable sector tomorrow morning.  Top picks from me, Abound Solar, First Solar, Ascent Solar, Nano Solar, Advanced Energy, Vestas Wind, Iberdrola, and (even though they have received much negative attention lately) - General Electric.
 
Btw, what happened to being pissed off at AIG? GE may have received some back scratching from their well plumped congress people but I didn't see them getting the kind of unthinkably large bailouts some of those other giants got.  AIG is  old news I suppose, on to hating the next one. If we are going to talk about something over coffee tomorrow please let it be California and Jerry Brown's pending pen strokes!

PSA - Hey, if you like this website and want me to keep doing it support me by following TPG on facebook, sharing this or any post on your wall or, if you have some extra cash drop it in the tip jar (above the bearded bicycle gear man in the sidebar ----->).  Consider this as bad as my annual public-radio-like fund drive will ever get. I used to call them "the talkers" on PBS - "Mom make the talkers go away!" - Now I'm a talker : / but worse because you won't even get a DVD of Celine Dion fist pounding her chest for 2 hours with your donation. 

RePost: Beer, and the Bucolic Beauty of Bruegel

This following piece is all about tagging information to images uploaded online. I wrote this in 2008 and am wondering what the barrier is to obtaining a pair of the "meta-information goggles" I imagined once upon a time. Photosynth is up and available for use through Microsoft, but none of the "saints are labeled." As I am about to make extensive travel around this pale blue dot I want to know how I can tag meta-information to photos most effectively. Will Facebook eventually be the source of this data set? Did Blaise Aguera y Arcas sell out? Have we already moved into the age of meta-tagging? Are people and their willingness to share or lack thereof the limiting factor? Is there a webspace to post meta-information aside from Facebook I am unaware of? I guess Foursquare with their "tips" feature sort of addresses this request. I would like to see more seamless transparency so we can all see what the rest have seen or thought they saw! Enter the ARGUS!

The "winter landscape with a bird trap" painted in oils by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1565 testifies to what I consider immortality. Though the bones of Bruegel have long since returned to dust the preservation of his works allow his spirit to echo through recorded history. Along with digital record keeping the propagation and iteration of art will undoubtedly change forever as we are now passing into an age where social commentary will literally be attached to these echoes fully accessible to the curious observer. The following TED talk by Blaise Aguera y Arcas explains the attachment process and how social networks will add infinite detail to any object in the world with a story behind it. Imagine looking at the world through goggles that display any known history relating to that object.



In many ways society is already testing a beta-version of these "goggles" with the rise of you tube and other video sharing sites. The interface is the only cumbersome part. When a person sees a sculpture in a city square the vast information relating to that sculpture is entombed in libraries and brains throughout the planet. In the present day the "user" has to take the initiative to look up all those historical tales that give the piece a context on their own. What if all that information automatically displayed in your mind's eye just by glancing at an object? This would make going into a thrift store like having a microscopic assessor from the "antiques road show" sitting on your shoulder. The next step will be to bypass this information selection process and simply attach the relevant video/audio/smell-o-vision to the content on a users radar.

Of course, no person should be denied the privilege of an unadulterated view of cultural objects, but choosing to experience this type of contextual depth could speed general education exponentially. I use Bruegel as an example of the tagging process because, as the northern hemisphere is swinging away from the sun into the frosted part of the year, these winterscapes remind me that people have hustled and bustled and thrived through the cold for all of history. Viewing and thinking about this work on a blog in 2008 makes me realize that universally accessible collaboration across centuries is possible now even while we continue to learn how to collaborate in real time. In my mind, Bruegel = Belgium = Beer. During the summer of 2004 as I spent two weeks in Leuven, Belgium I became increasingly fascinated by the tome of culture Bruegel's simple recording of folk life in 16th century Flanders represented. Here were people from nearly 400 years ago alive in front of my eyes. There were many other historical pieces of art to which I wish I had added digital anecdotes as a family friend explained them and lead the tour of Leuven the home city of Inbev-Anheuser-Busch (then called Interbrew.) I was also entrenched in the Flemish appreciation for brewing good beer. Today the theme of collaboration and beer seemed to be jumping out at me. As the Rock Mountain Collegian student newspaper proclaimed their approval of an ingeniously sustainable green business initiative undertaken by Fort Collins' own New Belgium Brewing Company. The initiative involves collaborating with Seattle-based Elysian Brewing Company by sharing each others' equipment in order to brew at the others market hubs. An elegant amber collaboration I might say so myself. While reading this article I was immediately taken back to a table at the choice city deli where I had shared a bottle of Signature Ale with the same friend who had so enriched my experience in Belgium. This was a brewmasters collboration bewteen the Port Brewing Company of San Marcos California and De 'Proef' Brouwerij of Lochristi-Hijfte, Belgium. The Signature Ale was Belgian-American Collaboration and drinking it with great friends from Belgium made the idea of an otherwise forgettable beverage affect me. So in some way all these thoughts are on the same plane; Bruegel, Belgium, Beer, and all mean collaboration. And here I have giving three increasingly concentrated stories of beer co-operativeity and each on the terms designated by their size. Large: InBev and Anheuser-Busch - Corporate takeover. Medium - New Belgium Brewing Company and Elysian Brewing Company co-operation. Small - Port Brewing Company and De 'Proef' Brouwerij - collaboration. The latter extolled virtue is at the center of Tom Paine's Ghost.

David Kocieniewski's Article Prompts Jon Stewart to 'Give Up'

This stinging article in the New York Times prompted a spirited response from Jon Stewart! Where's the outrage in main stream?!?!?! The excellent piece of investigative journalism composed by David Kocieniewski has prompted much discussion between my political science friends and myself - see Facebook screen shot below.

Soda Can Solar Panels?

Mr. James Meaney of Cansolair out of Dildo, Newfoundland is wrapping recycling and renewable heating together to bring free energy to market!

Tip to John for the heads up!

Hammer Time! Tool Cooperative

“it’s cool, a lot of the tools we get here are super-old, like dead-grandfather-style kind-of-things. Its really great, people have all theses old tools and they don’t know what to do with them. They’re really great and they work better than the new tools. You can fix them up, take them apart, and get them back and running. New tools sometimes don’t even have screws and nuts where you’d need to take them apart. It’s meant to be broken."

                                                                                                        ~ Garret Carr

This being the case, the radical forces-that-be have brought into existence a Tool Cooperative in Fort Collins, Colorado.  A new aspect of this nascent project will be a tool lending library. Keep up to date on all the Tool Co Op happenings on their website.

Annie Leonard on Bottled Water

"Carrying bottled water is on its way to being as cool as smoking while pregnant."
                                                                                                              ~ Annie Leonard

Temple Grandin on the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant

The Crunk Feminist Collective - POST with the MOST Entry #3

"After all of these years, I’ve realized that the perfectly humble, holy hairstyle is not what I needed. I needed a bigger view of God."

The Crunk Feminist Collective has nominated a post - "Single, Saved, and Sewn In: The Gospel of Getting Your Hair Done" by Ashaf to the POST with the MOST competition on Tom Paine's Ghost.

This post is a history lesson, a religious ray of light, and a smart slice of life for black women in the US.

Her smart use of video, photos, and Bibles translations makes for a powerful argument. This tackles a huge issue in race and feminism in a serious, thoughtful, and funny way, and leaves the reader enlightened and free. 

"The church says stay away from those demonic braids because they were a sign of sex work in Paul’s day. The world says get a sew-in—a style that requires braids—because real men dig Beyonce."

POST with the MOST entries so far include -
Single, Saved, and Sewn In: The Gospel of Getting Your Hair Done by Ashaf
Nuclear Engineer on Japan Nuclear Disaster by Evelyn Mervine
Nothing to plunder – the evolution of Somalia’s pirate nation by the Southern Fried Scientist

Bernie Rollin ~ our obligation to animals

I am currently writing up a series of interviews I did with Bernard Rollin, PhD. Look for it in the next issue of the Matter Journal. Returned from a book signing he did tonight at the CSU bookstore where he gave an intimate talk on the highlights of his 41 years as a Professor of philosophy at Colorado State University.  He is a University Distinguished Professor and Bio-ethicist in residence.

His autobiography is Putting the Horse before Descartes.

 

Temple Grandin presents "My Favorite Lecture"

Temple Grandin, PhD will present her lecture, "The World Needs All Kinds of Minds," beginning at 4:30 p.m. in the Plant Sciences Auditorium, Room C-101 on the Colorado State University campus Wednesday, March 23rd.

The lecture is presented by The Institute for Learning and Teaching (TILT).