Google, Evil genius with plans to take over the world ?

This post via http://crazysexytechiecool.blogspot.com/2009/08/google-evil-genius-with-plans-to-take.html

Is Google trying to take over the world ? And what is up with Google’s colors being the same as Microsoft ???? (see Cartoon below, I never thought of it either until now)..

Maybe they are just trying to Kill Microsoft and are a force of good ? I don’t honestly know, personally I love Google Chrome, Google voice and Android. -Eff it lol, only time will tell what Google’s legacy will be.

I present my case exhibit one:

• Google (search engine, control what shows up on the web and what information you see)
• Google Voice (Done right, will Kill the companies with FREE phone calling)
• Clear Wimax (Wireless internet covering entire cities and Google is a main investor)
• Google Chrome ( Access the internet via Google Chrome’s browser)
• Google OS (Run your computer on Google Chrome OS)
• Google Android ( Control the mobile operating systems)
• Google cell phones (Control the mobile phone market)

Fond this interesting article about Google and the Good vs Evil argument.

“I’m no conspiracy theorist, I swear. I don’t think Google tries to be evil (though they missed a pretty good chance), and I don’t think they sit there all sweaty and peering at all the private data they collect from users. But they do have it, don’t they?

The Largest Violator of Privacy…

…is almost always the user. People like myself realize the dangers of your information exchanging too many hands, but 90% of people do not, and will freely hand it over if the receiver has a shiny appeal and a trusted name (like, say, “Google“).

Chrome OS will be no different, just with a more streamlined way of going from hardware -> boot -> Internet -> Google for the information exchange.

And there’s no doubt that, with Google controlling the entire GUI layout and design, there will be a heavy slant towards Google Docs and other products to take the place of Word etc. for the new netbook.

While this will undoubtedly appeal highly to users, the exchange of so much information into the hands of one entity will trouble many concerned about privacy on the Web (such as myself).

I know Google isn’t evil (at least 90% sure). But the very fact that Google owns so much information about users along with a history of sharing it with other entities (including governments), it is troublesome. Not to mention the fact that they own doubleclick.net.

It worried me even before the giant was behind every bit of software running on my hardware (I like netbooks), and it troubles me even more so now. If Google, say, was ever compromised on a large scale, could you imagine just how devastating that would be to the general population”..

Monthly Fred Rogers Quote

For more information about Fred Rogers and Family Communications, the company he founded, please visit our website at www.fci.org

“Imagining something may be the first step in making it happen, but it takes the real time and real efforts of real people to learn things, make things, turn thoughts into deeds or visions into inventions.”

Positive spin on future of suburbia

The End of Suburbia is a must see documentary about peak oil, arguing that it spells a hard crash for the suburban dream. David Holmgren here offers a counterview, a vision of a radically retrofitted, food producing suburbia. David Holmgren is the co-originator of Permaculture. http://www.holmgren.com.au

evolver.net

What is Evolver.net?

Evolver is a new social network for conscious collaboration. It provides a platform for individuals, communities, and organizations to discover and share the new tools, initiatives, and ideas that will improve our lives and change the world. Evolver promotes sexy sustainability, yoga glamour, and shaman chic.

Are you an evolver?

Evolvers are hope fiends and utopian pragmatists. We see the creative chaos of this time as a great gift and opportunity to rethink, reconnect, and reinvent. Evolvers appreciate pristine mountains, open source economics, and the precocious laughter of small children. Evolvers belong to the regenerative culture of the future, being born here and now.

Did you ever think:

Humanity has potential beyond our imagining?
We are a part of nature and not the bosses of it?
We could make a world that works for everyone?
We could collaborate instead of compete?
If so, you are an evolver already.
If not, maybe you should give it a try?

Why Evolver.net?
Because we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Because it’s our world to change.
Because the universe is deeply mysterious, displays an extraordinary sense of humor, and has a great dance beat. Maybe you don’t like social networks. Maybe you use too many already. Maybe you are sick of being IM’d and pinged, poked and stroked, prodded and friendstered.

Evolver is different.

Evolver.net brings together a global community that shares similar interests and values. It provides a platform that helps us find the resources, peers, news and information that makes a difference. Evolver.net is collaboratively filtered and professionally curated so that the best material gets disseminated widely.

On Evolver.net you can:

• Express yourself to your peers.
• Find inspiring news and helpful information.
• Share resources and swap services.
• Connect with pioneering groups and organizations.
• Find the collaborators you need to help you realize your vision.
• Meet the community off-line – at regular Evolver “socials,” film screenings, parties, and events.
The evolution will be actualized.
www.evolver.net

What to do with foreclosed houses—How about letting homeless families move in?

What to do with foreclosed houses—How about letting homeless families move in? An innovative idea that’s also illegal.

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/526/index.html

American streets are littered with foreclosed houses, but one daring advocate says these homes shouldn’t go to waste. He encourages and facilitates homeless squatting. It’s an idea that addresses two issues at once – homelessness and foreclosed homes—and it’s also illegal.

This week, NOW travels to Miami to meet with Max Rameau, an advocate for the homeless. Rameau’s organization, Take Back the Land, identifies empty homes that are still livable, and tries to find responsible families willing to take the enormous legal risks of moving in.

Rameau, who considers his mission an act of civil disobedience, says it’s immoral to keep homes vacant while there are human beings living on the street. But while these squatters have morality in their hearts, they don’t have the law on their side.

With the faltering economy separating so many people from their homes, what’s society’s responsibility to those short on shelter?

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/526/index.html

openfilm.com

Openfilm is changing the world of online video entertainment. Whether it’s an animated short, comedy, documentary or other type of film, we are the source for the highest quality video content on the Web!

Our Focus

The site showcases a fast-growing collection of high quality live-action and animated films displayed in high resolution. Openfilm provides a venue for users to watch premium video content, as well as for filmmakers to exhibit their works. Openfilm also takes a full-service approach to its members and visitors including a full-featured social networking forum between viewers and creators, reviews and blogs, coverage of industry events, and an online database of film festivals. Openfilm is focused on ‘user-generated films’ – original, high-quality live-action and animated videos with high production values and artistic merit, from shorts and web series to feature-length films. We are closing the gap created by sites where anyone can upload anything and sites that primarily showcase network TV and Hollywood movie content. Openfilm also provides a rich social networking environment:

• Video recommendations and reviews by Openfilm editors who strive to provide some insight into the filmmaking process and highlight the creativity of the contributors;
• Staff blogs sharing some sought-after production knowledge, covering an industry news item or just plain venting about life where users are welcomed to leave their comments;
• Comprehensive, modifiable database of film festivals past, present and future.

http://www.openfilm.com

Looking for a FREE T-Shirt?

Free T-Shirt

You can own your own Oogavé T-shirt for the ludicrously low price of . . . nothing. Nada, zip, zilch, zero, free (except for shipping and handling of course but that goes without saying).

All you have to do is send us a check or money order in the amount of $5 (for the aforementioned shipping and handling).* Make the check payable to Oogavé and send it to Oogavé Sodas, 4420 Glencoe Street, Denver, CO 80210.

Be sure to include your return address, your name and, of UTMOST IMPORTANCE, your size. Duh!

You can get a regular adult T-shirt in S, M, L, XL, and even 2XL! Children’s sizes are S, M, and L. And a new women’s “baby doll” cut is available in S, M, and L.

*Or, if you happen to be in the neighborhood, stop on by the warehouse at 4420 Glencoe and save yourself five bucks! (Just give us a call beforehand as we don’t always keep regular hours.)

http://oogavesodas.com/free_t-shirt.html

Break it down KRS

Break it down KRS-One 1/3

Break it down KRS 2/3

Break it down KRS 3/3

Professor Griff (Public Enemy) says No to Barack Obama, Supports Cynthia Mckinney

Professor Griff of the legendary rap group Public Enemy tells the world why he supports Green Party presidential ticket of Cynthia Mckinney/Rosa Clemente instead of Barack Obama. This interview touch on other topics such as FISA, NAFTA, Skull-N-Bones, Sean Bell, Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, AIPAC, Israel and Obama avoiding Memphis on the 40th anniversary of the MLK assassination. This is part 1 of 2.

This is the conclusion of Professor Griff of Public Enemy explaining why he supports Cynthia Mckinney’s Green Party presidential ticket instead of Barack Obama.

The Obama Deception HQ Full length version

The Obama Deception is a hard-hitting film that completely destroys the myth that Barack Obama is working for the best interests of the American people.

The Obama phenomenon is a hoax carefully crafted by the captains of the New World Order. He is being pushed as savior in an attempt to con the American people into accepting global slavery.

We have reached a critical juncture in the New World Order’s plans. It’s not about Left or Right: it’s about a One World Government. The international banks plan to loot the people of the United States and turn them into slaves on a Global Plantation.

Covered in this film: who Obama works for, what lies he has told, and his real agenda. If you want to know the facts and cut through all the hype, this is the film for you.

Watch the Obama Deception and learn how:

- Obama is continuing the process of transforming America into something that resembles Nazi Germany, with forced National Service, domestic civilian spies, warrantless wiretaps, the destruction of the Second Amendment, FEMA camps and Martial Law.

- Obama’s handlers are openly announcing the creation of a new Bank of the World that will dominate every nation on earth through carbon taxes and military force.

- International bankers purposefully engineered the worldwide financial meltdown to bankrupt the nations of the planet and bring in World Government.

- Obama plans to loot the middle class, destroy pensions and federalize the states so that the population is completely dependent on the Central Government.

- The Elite are using Obama to pacify the public so they can usher in the North American Union by stealth, launch a new Cold War and continue the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

http://www.infowars.com
http://www.prisonplanet.tv

Phasing you out of you tube

Hulu is Killing Youtube

Human, All Too Human (BBC) – Jean Paul Sartre

Human, All Too Human (BBC) – Jean Paul Sartre: Part 1

Human, All Too Human (BBC) – Jean Paul Sartre: Part 2

Human, All Too Human (BBC) – Jean Paul Sartre: Part 3

Human, All Too Human (BBC) – Jean Paul Sartre: Part 4

Human, All Too Human (BBC) – Jean Paul Sartre: Part 5

Human, All Too Human (BBC) – Jean Paul Sartre: Part 6

It’s on!

The BBC’s Ben Brown reports on the violence at the RBS offices

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7977489.stm

Protesters stormed a London office of the Royal Bank of Scotland as thousands of people descended on the City ahead of the G20 summit of world leaders.

Demonstrators launched missiles and forced their way into the bank after clashes with police in the capital. A branch of HSBC also had windows broken.

Twenty-two people were arrested and some police and protesters injured.

Climate change activists have pitched tents in the street, while anti-war campaigners are holding a rally.

The protests came as US President Barack Obama spoke of the “sense of urgency” needed to confront the financial crisis after he met Prime Minister Gordon Brown at Downing Street.

World leaders are holding a series of bilateral talks on Wednesday to thrash out finance reform plans, with Mr Brown claiming that a global deal is just “hours away”.

The police estimated there were about 5,000 people taking part in demonstrations, and officers cordoned off a number of streets.

Officers later used “containment” then “controlled dispersal” and made temporary toilets and water available to protesters, police said.

At about 1800 BST, a small group of protesters faced a line of riot police in Threadneedle Street, near the Bank of England and the branch of RBS attacked earlier.

The BBC’s Rob Broomby said demonstrators were “angry, but getting weary – they’ve been held in just a few narrow streets for a number of hours now”.

A few protesters threw plastic bottles, banners and toilet rolls at police, amid chants of “Let us out, let us out.”

Riot officers

Protesters had smashed RBS windows with missiles, including coins and computer keyboards, and entered the building. The branch had been closed already as a precautionary measure.

Mounted police and riot officers used shields to push demonstrators back and officers said they entered the RBS building just after 1400 BST “in support of building security”.

Two people were arrested for aggravated burglary at the RBS, police say.

RBS has been in the spotlight after the £703,000 pension arrangement of former chief executive, Sir Fred Goodwin, sparked public anger.

By late afternoon, the BBC’s Dominic Hurst said a branch of HSBC had also been attacked and had windows broken.

Police say CCTV footage and other video evidence will be reviewed to try to identify those involved in crimes.

Earlier, officers were pelted with empty beer cans, fruit and flour outside the Bank of England as the crowd of demonstrators had attempted to reach a peaceful climate change protest in nearby Bishopsgate.

Police said officers suffered only minor injuries during the protests, although one was admitted to hospital. Scotland Yard also said its response had been “proportionate”.

Some of the protesters had been “provocative” and “determined to cause violence”, claimed Met Commander Simon O’Brien.

Seven demonstrators were taken to hospital for treatment for injuries.

Hundreds of Climate Camp demonstrators – behind direct action protests at Heathrow Airport and power stations in North Yorkshire and Kent – pitched tents in protest against carbon markets.

The BBC’s Mark Georgiou said there was an “almost Glastonbury atmosphere” at the demonstration outside the European Climate Exchange, which featured “music and meditation”.

But from about 1630 BST “a different sort of demonstrator has started to arrive – clad in black, masked and aggressive”, he said.

Several hundred anti-war demonstrators have also marched to a rally in Trafalgar Square from the US Embassy in central London.

The BBC’s Dominic Casciani said it had been “completely different” to the protests in the City, and demonstrators were in peaceful mood.

Crowds also gathered outside Buckingham Palace for the arrival of US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, who began a visit with the Queen shortly after 1700 BST.

The day began with protest groups under the G20 Meltdown banner marching to the Bank of England in the City urging those who had lost their homes, jobs, savings or pensions to join them in following four “horsemen of the apocalypse” to “lay siege” to financial institutions.

‘Greed’

Many City workers have dressed in casual clothes after banks and other institutions were warned they may be targeted.

Protester Daniel Blinkhorn, from Brighton, was among those marching from London Bridge station to the Bank. He said the G20 leaders had a “real opportunity to green the global economy”.

Housing association worker Tony Streeter told the BBC: “I’m here because I think people are angry about what’s going on in the world there’s too much greed.”

Scotland Yard said there had been 22 arrests related to the protests on Wednesday, following four arrests on Tuesday.

The four people detained on Tuesday were charged after officers were alerted to a group trying to break into a building in the Holborn area of central London, police said.

On Wednesday, police questioned demonstrators travelling in an armoured vehicle dressed in helmets and overalls.

Police say 11 people have been arrested on suspicion of possessing police uniforms and for road traffic offences.

Six police forces are part of the £7.5m G20 security plan, led by London’s Met.

Animation and drawings by BLU

http://www.blublu.org/sito/video/muto.htm

http://www.blublu.org/

http://www.blublu.org/blog/

SQUAT your own homes!

Rep: Foreclosed owners should squat in their own homes

David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster
Published: Friday January 30, 2009

If you’re poor and the bank is coming for your home, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur has a plan for you.

Just squat, she says.

Yes, this Ohio Democrat is actually encouraging her financially distressed constituents whose homes have been foreclosed upon, to simply stay put.

In a Friday report, CNN’s Drew Griffin explored the case of Ohioan Andrea Geiss, whose home was foreclosed upon in April.

“Behind in payments, out of work, a husband sick, she had nowhere to go,” said Griffin. “So, she decided to follow the advice of her Congresswoman and go nowhere.”

In Lucas County, Ohio, over 4,000 properties were foreclosed upon in 2008, reports CNN.

“So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes,” said Congresswoman Kaptur before the House of Representatives. “Don’t you leave.”

She’s called on all of her foreclosed-upon constituents to stay in their homes and refuse to leave without “an attorney and a fight,” said CNN.

“If they’ve had no legal representation of a high quality, I tell them stay in their homes,” Kaptur told Griffin.

Kaptur is a high-profile advocate of an increasingly popular mode of fighting foreclosures best known for it’s key phrase: “Produce the note.”

By telling a bank to “produce the note,” a homeowner can delay foreclosure by forcing the lender to prove the suing institution is actually the same which owns the debt.

“During the lending boom, most mortgages were flipped and sold to another lender or servicer or sliced up and sold to investors as securitized packages on Wall Street,” explains the Consumer Warning Network. “In the rush to turn these over as fast as possible to make the most money, many of the new lenders did not get the proper paperwork to show they own the note and mortgage. This is the key to the produce the note strategy.”

And Friday’s segment on this growing foreclosure fighting “movement” was not the network’s first. Earlier in January, CNN explored one person’s strategy in demanding her bank “produce the note,” only to find that the lender had “lost or destroyed” the evidence of debt ownership. Such a revelation can significantly strengthen a homeowner’s position when asking to renegotiate a mortgage.

That these banks, many of which received billions of dollars in government bailout funds, continue to boot defaulted owners from their homes, makes them “vultures” says Kaptur.

“They prey on our property assets,” she said. “I guess the reason I’m so adamant on this is because I know property law and its power to protect the individual homeowner. And I believe that 99.9 percent of our people have not had good legal representation in this.”

This video is from CNN’s American Morning, broadcast Jan. 30, 2009.

Read a Book (Dirty Version)

Home Squatters

a la . . . http://www.realitysandwich.com/home_squatters

A US Congresswoman from Ohio, Marcy Kaptur, is encouraging her  constituents to squat in their foreclosed homes, counseling them to to refuse to leave without “an attorney and a fight.”  She is advocating that homeowners stay put until the bank “produces the note” that proves it owns the home.

“During the lending boom, most mortgages were flipped and sold to another lender or servicer or sliced up and sold to investors as securitized packages on Wall Street,” explains the Consumer Warning Network. “In the rush to turn these over as fast as possible to make the most money, many of the new lenders did not get the proper paperwork to show they own the note and mortgage. This is the key to ‘the produce the note’ strategy.”

Kaptur addressed citizens from the floor of the House in Washington: “I say to the American people: you be squatters in your own homes.  Don’t you leave!”

Image by Jeff Turner, courtesy of Creative Commons license.

Off the grid of modern technology

more about “Off the grid of modern technology “, posted with vodpod

What do you think, is it possible, would you want to, is he doing it right?

What benefits would it have in the practice of Bioregional Animism?

How would you do it?

Being Human

John Trudell at the People of Color Conference 2008 in New Orleans.

The Intentional Economy

http://realitysandwich.com/intentional_economy

Daniel Pinchbeck

While exploring shamanism and non-ordinary states, I discovered the power of intention. According to the artist Ian Lungold, who lectured brilliantly about the Mayan Calendar before his untimely death a few years ago, the Maya believe that your intention is as essential to your ability to navigate reality as your position in time and space. If you don’t know your intention, or if you are operating with the wrong intentions, you are always lost, and can only get more dissolute.

This idea becomes exquisitely clear during psychedelic journeys, when your state of mind gets intensified and projected kaleidoscopically all around you. As our contemporary world becomes more and more psychedelic, we are receiving harsh lessons in the power of intention on a vast scale. Over the last decades, the international financial elite manipulated the markets to create obscene rewards for themselves at the expense of poor and middle class people across the world. Using devious derivatives, cunning CDOS, and other trickery, they siphoned off ever-larger portions of the surplus value created by the producers of real goods and services, contriving a debt-based economy that had to fall apart. Their own greed — such a meager, dull intent — has now blown up in their faces, annihilating, in slow motion, the corrupt system built to serve them.

Opportunities such as this one don’t come along very often and should be seized once they appear. When the edifice of mainstream society suddenly collapses, as is happening now, it is a fantastic time for artists, visionaries, mad scientists and seers to step forward and present a well-defined alternative. What is required, in my opinion, is not some moderate proposal or incremental change, but a complete shift in values and goals, making a polar reversal of our society’s basic paradigm. If our consumer-based, materialism-driven model of society is dissolving, what can we offer in its place? Why not begin with the most elevated intentions? Why not offer the most imaginatively fabulous systemic redesign?

The fall of capitalism and the crisis of the biosphere could induce mass despair and misery, or they could impel the creative adaptation and conscious evolution of the human species. We could attain a new level of wisdom and build a compassionate global society in which resources are shared equitably while we devote ourselves to protecting threatened species and repairing damaged ecosystems. Considering the lightning-like pace of global communication and new social technologies, this change could happen with extraordinary speed.

To a very great extent, the possibilities we choose to realize in the future will be a result of our individual and collective intention. For instance, if we maintain a Puritanical belief that work is somehow good in and of itself, then we will keep striving to create a society of full employment, even if those jobs become “green collar.” A more radical viewpoint perceives most labor as something that could become essentially voluntary in the future. The proper use of technology could allow us to transition to a post-scarcity leisure society, where the global populace spends its time growing food, building community, making art, making love, learning new skills and deepening self-development through spiritual disciplines such as yoga, tantra, shamanism and meditation.

One common perspective is that the West and Islam are engaged in an intractable conflict of civilizations, where the hatred and terrorism can only get worse. Another viewpoint could envision the Judeo-Christian culture of the West finding common ground and reconciling with the esoteric core, the metaphysical purity, of the Islamic faith. It seems — to me anyway — that we could find solutions to all of the seemingly intractable problems of our time once we are ready to apply a different mindset to them. As Einstein and others have noted, we don’t solve problems through employing the type of thinking that created them, but rather dissolve them when we reach a different level of consciousness.

We became so mired in our all-too-human world that we lost touch with the other, elder forms of sentience all around us. Along with delegates to the UN, perhaps we could train cadres of diplomats to negotiate with the vegetal, fungal and microbial entities that sustain life on earth? The mycologist Paul Stamets proposes we create a symbiosis with mushrooms to detoxify eco-systems and improve human health. The herbalist Morgan Brent believes psychoactive flora like ayahuasca and peyote are “teacher plants,” sentient emissaries from super-intelligent nature, trying to help the human species find its niche in the greater community of life. When we pull back to study the hapless and shameful activity of our species across the earth, these ideas do not seem very farfetched.

In fact, the breakdown of our financial system has not altered the amount of tangible resources available on our planet. Rather than trying to re-jigger an unjust debt-based system that artificially maintains inequity and scarcity, we could make a new start. We could develop a different intention for what we are supposed to be doing together on this swiftly tilting planet, and institute new social and economic infrastructure to support that intent.

This article originally appeared in Conscious Choice.

Image by jouste, courtesy of Creative Commons license.

BLDGBLOG Book

a la http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/bldgblog-book-bldgblog-book.html

I’m still reeling from the announcement of Postopolis! – but the good news keeps on coming.

To make a long story still rather long…
Back in January, Alan Rapp, the art, design, and photography editor for Chronicle Books, attended a BLDGBLOG event hosted by the Center for Land Use Interpretation here in Los Angeles.
Alan and I met, kept in touch, had a pizza, talked about David Cronenberg; and then, last month, we organized an event together in San Francisco.
Somewhere in there the idea of a BLDGBLOG book came up – which I soon turned into a formal proposal… and now it’s official: Chronicle Books will be publishing a BLDGBLOG book in Spring 2009 – and my head is spinning!
BLDGBLOG: The Book! The BLDGBLOG Book!
I just can’t even believe how many possibilities there are with this thing. It’s a little crazy.
In a nutshell, though, it’ll be divided up into three major sections – Architectural Conjecture, Urban Speculation, and Landscape Futures – covering everything I’ve already covered here and more…
From plate tectonics and J.G. Ballard to geomagnetic harddrives and undiscovered Manhattan bedrooms, via offshore oil derricks, airborne utopias, wind power, fossil cities, statue disease, inflatable cathedrals, diamond mines, science fiction and the city, pedestrianization schemes, the architecture of the near-death experience, Scottish archaeology, wreck-diving, green roofs, W.G. Sebald, flooded Londons of the climate-changed future, William Burroughs, Andrew Maynard, LOT-EK, Rupert Thomson, The Aeneid, shipbreaking yards, Die Hard, Pruned, Franz Kafka, Rem Koolhaas, tunnels and sewers and bunkers and tombs, micronations, underground desert topologies, Mars, Earth, lunar urbanism, sound mirrors, James Bond, the War on Terror, earthquakes, Angkor Wat, robot-buildings and the Taj Mahal, Archigram, the Atlas Mountains, refugee camps, Walter Murch, suburbia, the Maunsell Towers… and about nine hundred thousand other topics, provided I can fit them all in.
There will be interviews, essays, quotations, photos, original artwork – and hopefully even a graphic novel, strung throughout the book. And it will be well-designed and affordable! And it will put all existing architecture books to shame. Every single one of them. Except maybe a few…
And, importantly, even if there’s someone out there who’s read every single post on this site – I know I haven’t – they’ll still find loads of new material.

Further, since I’ll more or less be writing this thing over the next six months, I’d love it – love it! – if BLDGBLOG readers wanted to make suggestions, or send me links, or leave comments, or tell me what to avoid…
In fact, half the joy of writing BLDGBLOG has always been the comments, so I hope I can even figure out a way to include the best of them in the book somehow, either chasing down anonymous readers for permission or… something, I don’t know, but the whole point is to be open to everyone’s input and ideas.
A BLDGBLOG book Flickr pool, perhaps…
Or a design contest…
A questionnaire… What’s your favorite bus stop in the world and why?
Who knows – but this should be an absolute blast – and I’ll make sure that the book is actually worth picking up. You won’t just get a bunch of crap you’ve already read, reprinted word-for-word from the blog, served back to you for $30 (or $20, or $25…).
But, man, I don’t even know how many blogs make the leap into book-form! So I’m also nervous. But excited. And a little delirious with possibilities. Hoping that I do it right.
So look out for BLDGBLOG: The Book, or The BLDGBLOG Book, or whatever it will eventually be be called, coming soon to a Borders near you. Spring 2009. Chronicle Books. In a deal that never would have happened had it not been for Alan Rapp.
And, of course, without so many hundreds – and hundreds – of people out there, who went out of their way to help BLDGBLOG find an audience – or who just did or wrote or built or made or said something cool, thus supplying me with material – I might never have started blogging at all.
So I don’t want to jump into some kind of Academy Award acceptance speech here, but I really do have to say thanks to dozens and dozens and dozens of people, including, but in no way limited to – hold your breath: my wife, for editing almost literally every single post I’ve written on this thing and making everything, universally, on all levels, better; Javier Arbona, Bryan Finoki, John Jourden, and Paul Petrunia, in particular, of Archinect for the early break, as well as the entire Archinect crew for putting up with me there; Alex Trevi at Pruned; Marcus Trimble of gravestmor; Simon Sellars at Ballardian; Sarah Rich and Jill Fehrenbacher; Jonathan Bell of things magazine; David Maisel; Cory Doctorow, Jason Kottke, William Drenttel, Jim Coudal, Bruce Sterling, Steve Silberman, Robert Krulwich, Lawrence Weschler, Douglas Coupland, Warren Ellis; The Kircher Society; all the people I’ve interviewed; all the people who have participated in BLDGBLOG events; all the commenters out there, both regular and one-time only, including people who have disappeared (or who no longer leave comments – I miss you!); all the people who have sent me tips; Christopher Stack; Dan Polsby; friends of mine who were part of BLDGBLOG at the very, very beginning, before it even had a logo, including Jim Webb, Cathy Braasch Dean, Neena Verma, and Juliette Spertus; David Haskell of the Forum for Urban Design; William Fox; Ruairi Glynn, Abe Burmeister, Dan Hill, Régine Debatty, Chris Timmerman, Chad Smith, Dave Connell, John Hill, Jaime Morrison, Andrew Blum; Scott Webel; Matthew Coolidge, Sarah Simons, and Steve Rowell of the Center for Land Use Interpretation; Materials & Applications; Leah Beeferman; John Coulthart; Theo Paijmans; my del.icio.us network for linking to so many interesting things; Joerg Colberg; Siologen, Dsankt, and Michael Cook; Theresa Duncan; Curbed LA and SF; Jörg Koch; Steven Ceuppens; Yahoo!, Time Magazine, MSNBC, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Architectural Review, Mark Magazine, Artkrush, Planetizen; Thomas Y. Levin and Annette Fierro, for letting me sit-in on their classes, free, way back in 2004, leading directly to the birth of this blog; my family (including in-laws!); Blogger; and about ninety-nine million other people, things, places, friends, writers, editors, architects, and on and on and on.
BLDGBLOG would have folded up and disappeared long ago were it not for the encouragement of people who it would take me literally the next two days to thank completely.
So thanks – again – especially to Alan Rapp and to Chronicle Books.
Meanwhile, expect to hear more about all this as I set about actually writing it… And I’ll hopefully see some of you in New York City next week for Postopolis!

(Note: I’ll add more links and such in a little bit – including the names of people who I’ll realize, with horror, that I forgot to mention).

When you give up on hope

A WONDERFUL THING happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realize you never needed it in the first place. You realize that giving up on hope didn’t kill you. It didn’t even make you less effective. In fact it made you more effective, because you ceased relying on someone or something else to solve your problems—you ceased hoping your problems would somehow get solved through the magical assistance of God, the Great Mother, the Sierra Club, valiant tree-sitters, brave salmon, or even the Earth itself—and you just began doing whatever it takes to solve those problems yourself.

When you give up on hope, something even better happens than it not killing you, which is that in some sense it does kill you. You die. And there’s a wonderful thing about being dead, which is that they—those in power—cannot really touch you anymore. Not through promises, not through threats, not through violence itself. Once you’re dead in this way, you can still sing, you can still dance, you can still make love, you can still fight like hell—you can still live because you are still alive, more alive in fact than ever before. You come to realize that when hope died, the you who died with the hope was not you, but was the you who depended on those who exploit you, the you who believed that those who exploit you will somehow stop on their own, the you who believed in the mythologies propagated by those who exploit you in order to facilitate that exploitation. The socially constructed you died. The civilized you died. The manufactured, fabricated, stamped, molded you died. The victim died.

And who is left when that you dies? You are left. Animal you. Naked you. Vulnerable (and invulnerable) you. Mortal you. Survivor you. The you who thinks not what the culture taught you to think but what you think. The you who feels not what the culture taught you to feel but what you feel. The you who is not who the culture taught you to be but who you are. The you who can say yes, the you who can say no. The you who is a part of the land where you live. The you who will fight (or not) to defend your family. The you who will fight (or not) to defend those you love. The you who will fight (or not) to defend the land upon which your life and the lives of those you love depends. The you whose morality is not based on what you have been taught by the culture that is killing the planet, killing you, but on your own animal feelings of love and connection to your family, your friends, your landbase—not to your family as self-identified civilized beings but as animals who require a landbase, animals who are being killed by chemicals, animals who have been formed and deformed to fit the needs of the culture.

When you give up on hope—when you are dead in this way, and by so being are really alive—you make yourself no longer vulnerable to the cooption of rationality and fear that Nazis inflicted on Jews and others, that abusers like my father inflict on their victims, that the dominant culture inflicts on all of us. Or is it rather the case that these exploiters frame physical, social, and emotional circumstances such that victims perceive themselves as having no choice but to inflict this cooption on themselves?

But when you give up on hope, this exploiter/victim relationship is broken. You become like the Jews who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

When you give up on hope, you turn away from fear.

And when you quit relying on hope, and instead begin to protect the people, things, and places you love, you become very dangerous indeed to those in power.

In case you’re wondering, that’s a very good thing.

Full article here . . .

Let’s Eat Stars

via http://www.allenginsberg.org/index.php?page=nanao-sakaki-passes-on

Nanao Sakaki passed away into the stars on, December 21, in Nagano prefecture, Japan, nearly two weeks shy of his 86th Birthday. His best known collections were Let’s Eat Stars and Break the Mirror.  One of Allen’s most cherished friends, he was also very dear to Gary Snyder. Gary wrote on Tuesday:

“Last night I got word from Japan that Nanao Sakaki had suddenly died.  He was living with friends in the mountains of Nagano prefecture in a little cabin.  He had stepped out the door in the middle of the night to stargaze or pee and apparently had a severe heart attack.  His friends found him on the ground the next morning.  Christmas afternoon they’ll hold the otsuya  – intimate friends drinking party in his room, sitting with his body — and a cremation after that.  He was one of my best friends in this lifetime.”

[photo: John Suiter]