Experiments in hair

My 2006 top 5

I know you're a small crowd but I do have those who ask for my annual top 5 records.

They are as follows:

1. Band of Horse -- Everything all the Time
2. Silversun Pickups -- Carnavass
3. Mates of State -- Bring it Back
4. Niko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
5. My Morning Jacket -- Z

And the rest of the 10 ten:
6. CAT POWER - THE GREATEST
7. RATATAT - The Classics
8. The Go Team - Thunder Lighting Strike
9. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
10. Yo La Tengo - I am not afraid of you and I will beat your ass

To those of you who don't know him

Hugh Ferriss changed your life (yes even you in the 'burbs) more than you know.

Also, try this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Ferriss

Find the unhappy dog in this picture.

YOU CAN'T

Horray

well, I'm finally divorced. Papers came in.

And with that a copy of Imperial Chalk Companies logo

Sunday Morning

More Thanksgiving Pics

Images from the Front

I rode the plane home from NOLA with Billy Gibbons

my dog house, not my dog's house

There's a Badger in my Neighborhood

From Overheard in NY

For Your Comfort and Safety, Remember That Kids Are Pretty Literal

School social worker, to kindergartner on lap: So what happened right before you ran out of your classroom?
Kindergartner: I'm peeing.
Social worker: What do you mean, you're peeing?
Kindergartner: I'm peeing.
Social worker: [jumps up, displaying huge wet spot on her pants]
Kindergartner: I TOLD you I was peeing.

5130 Roxbury Road
Indianapolis, Indiana

Ethanol in Brazil

Dumb as We Wanna Be
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN/ NEW YORK TIMES
Published: September 20, 2006

São Paulo, Brazil
I asked Dr. José Goldemberg, secretary for the environment for São Paulo State and a pioneer of Brazil’s ethanol industry, the obvious question: Is the fact that the U.S. has imposed a 54-cents-a-gallon tariff to prevent Americans from importing sugar ethanol from Brazil “just stupid or really stupid.”

Thanks to pressure from Midwest farmers and agribusinesses, who want to protect the U.S. corn ethanol industry from competition from Brazilian sugar ethanol, we have imposed a stiff tariff to keep it out. We do this even though Brazilian sugar ethanol provides eight times the energy of the fossil fuel used to make it, while American corn ethanol provides only 1.3 times the energy of the fossil fuel used to make it. We do this even though sugar ethanol reduces greenhouses gases more than corn ethanol. And we do this even though sugar cane ethanol can easily be grown in poor tropical countries in Africa or the Caribbean, and could actually help alleviate their poverty.

Yes, you read all this right. We tax imported sugar ethanol, which could finance our poor friends, but we don’t tax imported crude oil, which definitely finances our rich enemies. We’d rather power anti-Americans with our energy purchases than promote antipoverty.

“It’s really stupid,” answered Dr. Goldemberg.

If I seem upset about this, I am. Development and environmental experts have long searched for environmentally sustainable ways to alleviate rural poverty — especially for people who live in places like Brazil, where there is a constant temptation to log the Amazon. Sure, ecotourism and rain forest soap are nice, but they never really scale. As a result, rural people in Brazil are always tempted go back to logging or farming sensitive areas.

Ethanol from sugar cane could be a scalable, sustainable alternative — if we are smart and get rid of silly tariffs, and if Brazil is smart and starts thinking right now about how to expand its sugar cane biofuel industry without harming the environment.

The good news is that sugar cane doesn’t require irrigation and can’t grow in much of the Amazon, because it is too wet. So if the Brazilian sugar industry does realize its plan to grow from 15 million to 25 million acres over the next few years, it need not threaten the Amazon.

However, sugar cane farms are located mostly in south-central Brazil, around São Paulo, and along the northeast coast, on land that was carved out of drier areas of the Atlantic rain forest, which has more different species of plants and animals per acre than the Amazon. Less than 7 percent of the total Atlantic rain forest remains — thanks to sugar, coffee, orange plantations and cattle grazing.

I flew in a helicopter over the region near São Paulo, and what I saw was not pretty: mansions being carved from forested hillsides near the city, rivers that have silted because of logging right down to the banks, and wide swaths of forest that have been cleared and will never return.

“It makes you weep,” said Gustavo Fonseca, my traveling companion, a Brazilian and the executive vice president of Conservation International. “What I see here is a totally human dominated system in which most of the biodiversity is gone.”

As demand for sugar ethanol rises — and that is a good thing for Brazil and the developing world, said Fonseca, “we have to make sure that the expansion is done in a planned way.”

Over the past five years, the Amazon has lost 7,700 square miles a year, most of it for cattle grazing, soybean farming and palm oil. A similar expansion for sugar ethanol could destroy the cerrado, the Brazilian savannah, another incredibly species-rich area, and the best place in Brazil to grow more sugar.

A proposal is floating around the Brazilian government for a major expansion of the sugar industry, far beyond even the industry’s plans. No wonder environmental activists are holding a conference in Germany this fall about the impact of biofuels. I could see some groups one day calling for an ethanol boycott — à la genetically modified foods — if they feel biofuels are raping the environment.

We have the tools to resolve these conflicts. We can map the lands that need protection for their biodiversity or the environmental benefits they provide rural communities. But sugar farmers, governments and environmentalists need to sit down early — like now — to identify those lands and commit the money needed to protect them. Otherwise, we will have a fight over every acre, and sugar ethanol will never realize its potential. That would be really, really stupid.

Fun at the lake

v

Some days I hate Masons

At lease ACL (http://www.aclfestival.com/lineup.aspx) is next weekend if I can get through the UT/OS game. Damn shit is going to be crazy this weekend.


I've been playing tennis again this week. It's only been 10 years since I picked up a racket

dog pile

if you look sharp, you will see that Pearl is at the bottom of this pile.










Look again

Stuyvesant Town for sale

This is a very distubing trend to me. No to mention the grants that were given to Met Life 50+ years ago. Why shouldn't they have to pay them back upon sale.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/30/nyregion/30stuyvesant.html

Dog Police - wolf, wolf, wolf

OMG Look what I found. I was in the shower of the motel 6 some 20 years ago when you and dad saw this and laughed about it for years. Now I've seen it and its just plain creepy. Odder still is they were from Texas. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0359hSerDeE

its past time

So as of now, it is past 6:06.06 on 6/6/06 in Jeruselum. We're all still here. I haven't seen the anti-christ yet, though the guy next to me has really thick nose hair. So, did we humans make it through another close call or did Fox News blow yet another story out of proportion?

Other humous reading on the subject

http://www.gambling911.com/060106Gnews.html

But why stop at 10:1, why not 100:1?

I brought in my first large job

We got the job and away we go.

the Pitch is tomorrow

the first version is off the shelf and is getting tweaked today. 8:00 tomorrow is the meeting. A lot of work still to be done.

test remote post

test text test

turtle in travis

notice the longhorn under his chin

Newest House V.1

A bike is born

After more than two years in construction the "chill" bike has made it out of the laboratory and into world. Thanks Molly for the modeling job.

Projects on the Coasts

Dog on Board

Yes, I know I posted this before, but I like the photo.
















Hi, Chris.... Hope you log in.

Politically Correct Police

I had no idea, but apparently it is not PC to use the term "gypped". After all these years, I've been degrading and insulting the gypsies in my midst, if there is such a thing.

So, I'm sorry, take me to the Hague. I owe the Gypsies a pound of flesh.

And while, I'm doing time for unnoticed crimes, go ahead and gouge my eyes out and shiv my ears, but please don’t let Jeff Skilling off without some kind of sentence.

Thing We Remember

I miss her. She’d call me “stampie”. We’d go shoe shopping and she loved riding around in my old truck as we cruised through Spanish Harlem “shooting rats”. She was the smartest I’ve known and loved dogs more than people. She wanted more than I had to give at the time and stalked me outside restaurants when I was with my co-workers. I wish we could talk more but her husband should come first and I am smart enough to know that (pretty damn obvious to most people (MOST PEOPLE)). I want to look at her “eye tattoo”.

I miss her. She could sail and was always a trooper. We went to Marti Gras and she is the only person I can imagine, that could have exposed themselves while still maintaining her poise and dignity. She was unconfident, which was something I though to be unbearable, now I know that is typical. I want to hold her hand. She had great hands.

I miss others and think about them sometimes but these are the ones that mattered and although, I’ve had to rebuild my life this last calendar year, these are the ones who matter. These are honorable women and the reason that I keep hope. Thank you.

As I’m listening to Noam speak, I am thrilled to be back in a thinking life. I’m making music. I’m designing more since my first 4 years in NYC. It’s ok, but I still need to learn balance. My timing is still all off. I’m not perfect, but things are ok. I’m working on three coasts again soon and may start island hoping in the next few months.

No worries of infidelity, no park benches, no caffeine, no smoking, no tumor and little stress. Things have been worse.

A Bifurcated Tale

Sun drawn, under the sky,
We dug in, after most all things

The brine of night and the butter knifes
Sang the grains of light.

Liberty, watched as the glass round
Your neck, caught our eyes

In all the angles and relations
There are so many emulations
Of our hobby and our hearts
Of our hobby and our hearts

In all the ways to be divided
It’s ideal that we collided
In our hobbies and our hearts
In our hobbies and our hearts

Lucinda and your summer hair,
all soft and bright

We walked along the avenue
of a 1000’s smiles

The feathered Wink of altitude
gave up our miles

On the path that we did find
It’s so lucky to have aligned
In our hobbies and our hearts
In our hobbies and our hearts

Sharp as a whisper in the dark
and never to be split apart
In our hobby and our hearts
In our hobby and our hearts

POTATO ON FIRE (circa spud)

Shackiness Afoot

Just feeling totally detached yet pissy today. So I'm just going to include some photos of people I love.