Take Action: Tell New ExxonMobil CEO To Change Course

Take Action: Tell New ExxonMobil CEO To Change Course

Our country remains overly dependent on oil, which has serious consequences ranging from rising gasoline prices that burden every American to global warming that threatens current and future generations.

This addiction to oil represents a failed energy strategy, one that your company not only supports but has helped to develop. I am most disturbed by:

* ExxonMobil's active support of drilling in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge;

* ExxonMobil's efforts to block meaningful action to cut global warming pollution and its funding of junk science to hide the real facts about global warming;

* ExxonMobil's conscious decision to forgo investment in clean energy solutions - despite your record profits at a time of rising gasoline prices;

* ExxonMobil's failure to pay all of the punitive damages awarded to fishermen and others injured by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

ExxonMobil represents yesterday's energy policy; I would rather spend my money and time moving forward, not backward.

That's why I will NOT purchase ExxonMobil's gas or products, invest in ExxonMobil stock, or work for the company.

Click here to send this email to the new CEO at ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson (photos). He is a new guy and in the spirit of Christmas, it's never too late.

BP is getting the jump on these guys with the whole "We are an energy company, not nessecarily an oil company" ads. At least they acknowledge that global warming is happening and that things must change. Therefore, BP and Citgo is where I fill up and I avoid Exxon at all costs. (Except if it's late and I'm running out of gas). But don't take my advice on where to fill up the tank - Others are asking the questions and getting the answers .

Link - 2005 SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY RANKINGS FOR GAS STATIONS

Stop the war - the war on drugs

LEAP: Mission Statement: "Founded on March 16, 2002, LEAP is made up of current and former members of law enforcement who believe the existing drug policies have failed in their intended goals of addressing the problems of crime, drug abuse, addiction, juvenile drug use, stopping the flow of illegal drugs into this country and the internal sale and use of illegal drugs. By fighting a war on drugs the government has increased the problems of society and made them far worse. A system of regulation rather than prohibition is a less harmful, more ethical and a more effective public policy.

The mission of LEAP is to reduce the multitude of unintended harmful consequences resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition."

Prohibition doesn't work.

Idiotarod January 28, 2006

Idiotarod January 28, 2006: "The Iditarod is the famous long-distance race in which yelping dogs tow a sled across Alaska. Our Idiotarod is pretty much the same thing, except that instead of dogs, it's people, instead of sleds, it's shopping carts, and instead of Alaska it's New York City."

Dave’s Wordpress Blog � Yahoo game-changers for 2006

Dave’s Wordpress Blog � Yahoo game-changers for 2006: "3. P2P webcasting. I wrote about this vaguely the other day, and no one apparently understood what I meant by Skype for webcasting. Come on guys, it’s pretty simple. Suppose we’re having a conversation, and I decide “Wow, this would be great for Scripting News, let’s do a webcast of this right now.” So I whip out my laptop, get onto the net (there’s wifi everywhere of course, heh) and launch my Yahoo Webcaster desktop app for the Mac. I choose New Webcast from the File menu. A window opens. There’s a button that says “Copy URL to clipboard.” I click it. Go over to my outliner, paste it into a post on Scripting News. “Tune into this webcast I’m about to do with Bull Mancuso about intellectual property and organized crime.” I highlight the word webcast and click on Add Link. Save. Then I go back to the Yahoo app and click Start. We talk for ten minutes, all the while people tune into the stream, which is managed via a realtime BitTorrent-like P2P connection. And of course when it’s all done it’s automatically archived to an MP3 and included in my RSS 2.0 feed for people who subscribe. If you’ve ever done a webcast, you know how much better this would be. And it’s ready to go, we know how to do all the bits."

Now this is the kinda of thinking I'm "talkin' about". Here is the Dave Winer of old - breakin it down for the everyman. In this selection he shows that he understands how we, the average joe (and jane) use these technologies. When he writes a post like this, it's like a guidepost that helps me clue in to what is happening.

Then they start talking over my head, but thats okay. I keep digging and I get alittle closer all the time.

Leapfrog - "causing trouble today for a better tomorrow"

What's going on here?!

WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Hands-On Leapfrogging: "Wireless Networking for the Developing World is a how-to guide for building, deploying and maintaining wireless information networks in rural parts of the developing world. Written by Tomas Krag, O'Reilly editor Rob Flickenger and a wide assortment of wireless hackers brought together by the Wireless Roadshow last October, the book is now available as a download under a generous Creative Commons 'share alike' license (which means you can do whatever you’d like with the text, so long as you share the output -- allowing people to translate the text into local languages, for instance.) In the near future, the book will also be available in a print-on-demand format."

Leapfrog technology - The gist is this. The western world has developed along a path (ie - wheelbarrow -> horse cart -> horseless carriage -> tractor trailer -> ? -> flying cars (next year)... What if we could help the developing world (Africa, Southeast asia, South Carolina, etc) skip the tractor trailer and go right to the flying car. We all see that if everyone with a horse cart gets a Ford expedition, we are screwed - unless you sell Expeditions, and / or oil, and / or don't care about living on the freeway, in traffic, with smog, with a broken, soft body ....

This post is getting to be depressing. It's not and neither is leapfrog technology for the developing world. Wikipedia to the rescue!

Leapfrogging is a theory of development in which developing countries skip inferior, less efficient, more expensive or more polluting technologies and industries and move directly to more advanced ones.

A frequent example is countries which move directly from having no telephones to having cellular phones, skipping the stage of landline telephones altogether.

Speaking of cell phones (and this really is the depressing part of the post) Both my and Angies cell phones were STOLEN! (plus her bookbag and palmpilot!) So I've spent the week without phone and trying replace stuff. Angie got a new Palm, the LifeDrive (4Gs with a big ole' screen) and we are negogiating with Cingular about replacing the phone (I'll have to ask my manager if we can allow you to use a different phone).

Sorry for the rambling post! Remember to leapfrog whenever possible. Don't leave your cell phone in the car.

The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2005

The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2005: "44. George Lucas

Charges: It needs to be said: George Lucas is an awful writer and a shitty, shitty director. His second Star Wars trilogy absolutely sucked from beginning to end, and was in fact the least brave creative endeavor he could possibly have chosen, a guaranteed grand slam. Lucas has grown so accustomed to massive commercial success that he has no idea he’s putting out the worst work of his career, and no one dares to tell him. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because an army of sexless, sedentary thirty-something dweebs with an unhealthy fixation on Princess Leia will insist that his schlock is brilliant as if their lives depend on it, and an absurdly disproportionate media blitz always brings the kids in. But everything that was great about the first trilogy—reasonably decent acting, an engaging storyline and cool model-based special effects—is gone, replaced by detestably unsympathetic characters reciting torturously bad dialogue in a manner so wooden that coaching from Keanu Reeves would have helped, and CGI effects that, while painstakingly crafted down to the nanopixel, somehow looked less real than plastic spaceships and Muppets.

Exhibit A: Already revising the new trilogy for DVD releases.

Sentence: Cast into the gaping maw of Tatooine’s all-powerful Sarlacc and digested alive for a thousand years, along with a talkative Jar Jar Binks."

and there are 49 others, people!

Marcus Fuller - Powder Magazine Local Hero

Our ol' Valdez friend, Marcus, was nominated for a local hero award. The readers of powder magazine submitted nominations of their friends based on "skills, attitudes and willingness to sacrifice anything for time on the snow." Marcus made it to the round of four and recieved a very nice write up by Travis Andersen. Our man got over 1000 votes - That's 1000 people he inspired AND read powder AND have the internet. That's impressive! And I know my mom didn't vote and I'm sure she would have.

Our collective hats are off to this unsung (now sung?) hero. I hope this recognition inspires him to keep up his middle way to whatever's next. I hope to see him on down the line.

You can read Travis Andersen's write up here : http://www.powdermag.com/marcus_fuller/

And look at some original watercolors and photography here:The work of Marcus Fuller - Skiing snowboarding photographer and wilderness watercolor painter

Greenpeace dumps dead whale at Japanese embassy in Berlin - Yahoo! News

Greenpeace activists dump a great big whale on the steps of the Japanese embassy. hmmm... That's really freakin cool. It's a non violent protest. Doesn't hurt anybody. Forces the issue. It is a public spectacle and generates headlines and photos. I like it. It's different. I mean I was getting pretty bored of the greenpeace ship getting in the way of the whaling ships. Those dudes on the boats can REALLY stop - It's up to the law makers and the fat cats sitting in the embassy.

And now they smell the whale.

Greenpeace dumps dead whale at Japanese embassy in Berlin - Yahoo! News:

"BERLIN (AFP) - Greenpeace activists called a protest in which they dumped a dead whale in front of the Japanese embassy in Berlin a big success as they removed it to a museum.
ADVERTISEMENT

'We think it is a pity that we have to take it away because the Berliners' response has been brilliant,' said Bjoern Jettka, a spokesman for the environmental group.

He said large crowds had gathered to look at the 17-meter (55-feet) -long mammal that was laid on a trailer in the snow in front of the embassy from Wednesday night to Thursday afternoon in a protest at Japanese whale hunting.

The whale, which was between 10 and 20 years old, was brought to Berlin by the environmental group after it was found beached near Wismar on Germany's Baltic coast on Saturday.

They had hung a banner over it stating: 'Science does not need harpoons.'"

link

Other creative protests: The parking place park , The truth anti tobacco ads, cycle naked day, anything with naked....

Flickr Photos of the whale - Greenpeace whale and Berlin Whale

Nanny and John

...

A few months later, I came across a newspaper story on the guy. Turns out, his retirement hobby was pedaling his bike 50 miles every weekday. It was like a 9-to-5 job, but fun. He’d get up, eat breakfast, say goodbye to his wife and then start riding. He wouldn’t stop until he had knocked off 50 big ones. Every time an odometer maxed out at 9,999 miles, he’d disconnect it and hook up a new one. The old ones stayed on the handlebar showing all those beautiful nines lined up in a row.

...
Read the whole story on Bicycles and Icicles

It sort of reminds me of my 92 year old Grandfather, John Townsend. He rides his stationary bike 2 miles at the gym three days a week as a warm up for a weight lifting session. While my grandmother, Nanny, hangs out with her friends doing their "workouts", John is pumping iron with people half his age. When I lift the weight he lifts, my jaw drops and then I try hard not to strain and breathe as normally as I can.

He just smiles - "Just happy to be here"

Doc Searls and Dr. King and History now

The Doc Searls Weblog : Monday, January 16, 2006:

"Listen to the Dream speech, and hear the hope it brought to people of all races. That hope was real. That hope lifted a nation. That hope moved civilization forward.
The Dream speech was dawn. It was light. It promised freedom. After that speech, many more people fought for that freedom, most effectively without violence, as Dr. King had taught them. I was one of those people.
The cause of freedom, of nonviolence, of peace, of opportunity, of so many good things people can bring to each other, was shot along with Dr. King on April 4, 1968. The setback was enormous, incalculable."

Read the whole post here

Doc Searls recognizes the MLK holiday. Something I didn't know about Doc is that he was in North Carolina during the civil rights movement. He tells about a time of curfews and the National Guard peace keeping.

What an incredible time in US history! I hope that when Doc's generation gets to the 'I wanna write my memoirs' phase of life - I hope that they don't just skim over the 60s and the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war (like they do on the news and in text books)

I think the problem with history as a subject or a theme is that it's so easy to seperate the past from the present - the story of the past seems so unconnected to the present. It's a story. It's a myth. Those people. That time.

When someone, like Doc, relates a personal history, I realize it's not history. It's life. And it didn't just happen in the past. It's happening now.

hmmm, so Thanks Doc for making the holiday and the history real

Martin Luther King and American innovation

Good Morning, yall.

It's a wet morning here in Tacoma. The rainy day streak ended yesterday windy sunny day at 28 days. The radio announcer said the new streak begins today at 1.

Doing what I do for MLK day - A humble list of links

muchfun,esl

A couple of links here for the esl set

Flickr: The MLK BLVD Pool

Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world. Show off your favorite photos to the world, securely and privately show photos to your friends and family, or blog the photos you take with a cameraphone.

1956 Martin Luther King "Montgomery Story" Comic Book

A very cool comic about the bus boycott. And a great example of communicating with comics

American Rhetoric: Martin Luther King, Jr. - "I Have a Dream"

Full text and audio of Martin Luther King speech -- I Have A Dream

: : We Will Not Be Silenced : :

We Will Not Be Silenced - You've got to watch this flash animation of a MLK day speech. It's freakin' awesome and makes me want to run out in the streets to start the revolution.

Martin Luther King, Jr. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Get the facts.... wiki style! BTW, who shot MLK?

Martin Luther King Jr. Day Lesson Plans

Lesson Plans for teachers to use on Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

TrueMajorityACTION Oreos

Ben and Jerry's breaks down the budget crisis cookie style.

American Experience | Citizen King | Non-Violence | PBS

KEXP 90.3 FM - where the music matters

Civil rights movement music show

TrueMajority

I good primer on King in his own voice - another Flash animation

Sorry for the many many links... but WTF it's a holiday and if you aren't starting a non-violent protest in the name of Jesus, Ghandi, or King - sit down and read alittle.

Also,

I'm reading "The United States in 1800" by Henry Adams and it's getting good.

I wanted to put this quote in ....
"Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land,
All fear, none aid you, and few understand."

3quarksdaily: About us

A recommendation from Steven Pinker means I read the blog. 3 Quarks daily is also recommended by OpenSourceRadio which I love by don't seem to get around to reading. I need a new work flow....

Anyway, I like what I saw on Quarks particularly the header graphic. It's more like a sig and a blog header.

"'I couldn't tear myself away from 3 Quarks Daily, to the point of neglecting my work. Congratulations on this superb site.'—Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Blank Slate, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, and The Language Instinct."3quarksdaily:

Technorati Tags: pinker, lydon, blog

Eduardo Gucci

Things looked alittle weird in 1998 and so did Eddie. Thanks so much for the visit to Vancouver, BC this weekend. I made a list of some of the discussion topics and events:

graffiti

you and me and everyone we know ))<<>>((

life

cities

travel

religion

Cory Doctorow and Boing Boing

ESL websites

blogs and the new Web

starbucks meme

cars being super evil killers

taiwan and our friends there

the noon horn

crazy Vancouver bum / addict aquariums

my haircut

Mels cousins

the goodness of swarma / gyros / donair

missing the bus - Even Taiwanese bus stations announce departures

Stanley Park

Netflix

Eating all the time - No hotdogs after midnight!

the rain

John's discovery of the funky tree illusion

"Do you have an extra quarter... spare change.... 25 cents!"

Dai Chi's bike

Mel's pancakes! says Eddie "I'm not a pancake man"

... so much more. Thank you Eddie and Mel for a great trip to Vancouver BC!

The 80 / 20 rule

Is it true? Have you heard? No, not about the 911 coverup or the definition of "meme".

I'm talking about 20 percent of the effort produces 80 percent of the result.






A big thank you to Cathy SieCreating Passionate Users for the link and graphic

Jack Handy - Life, like lawndarts, can kill you.

I'm just back from Vancouver, BC and an excellent visit with Eddie and Melanie. They are enjoying the wild and free life, supported by hard work, true love, and craigslist rss feeds. They truly have taken to the "Bloody your hands" lifestyle. They are taking the initiative and moving ahead. Soon they will leave BC and head South.

Eddie tells a analogy of their way of "traveling". He says, when he was a younger guy he would move around like a paper airplane. It travels a long distance and then lands on the surface, he says. It also is easily effected by the wind and is often unpredictable. The paper airplane is like the tourist that never gets away from the tourist traps. This type of traveler never gets to see the real place- never meets the real "people" - only other tourists. (It sort of begs the question if these people are just tourist on EARTH, tourist with their WHOLE LIFE, but I digress...)

But now he wants to live life like a lawndart. A lawndart travels with purpose and when it lands it penetrates and finds firm footing. Melanie points out that if it lands on your foot or head, you can sue, because lawndarts are illegal - good point, Mel! The lawndart style is going to find the goods. It cuts through the crap of superficial surface living. It breaks through... down to the soil, where life grows. It's not always 'pretty' down there with the slugs and worms and dirt, but it's the real life. And you can't have the flower, without the fertilizer.

So whether you are a paper airplane or a lawndart, 'adventures in living' is hard... and it's not a game. To illustrate the point I asked Jack Handy (of Deep Thoughts Saturday night live fame) to write a piece to really describe it. Thanks to Betsy Devine for the link.

"This is not playtime or make-believe. This is real. It'’s as real as a beggar squatting by the side of the road, begging, and then you realize, Uh-oh, he's not begging."

...

"You go skipping and prancing through life, skipping through a field of dandelions. But what you don't see is that on each dandelion is a bee, and on each bee is an ant, and the ant is biting the bee and the bee is biting the flower, and if that shocks you then I'’m sorry."

read more from The New Yorker: Shouts and Murmurs

Technorati Tags: jack, handy, life

JH STAR GAZER HOME PAGE

JH STAR GAZER HOME PAGE: "'Star Gazer' is the world's only weekly television series on naked eye astronomy. Each weekly episode features selected objects for naked eye viewing for the following week."


Jack Horkheimer, (his name is my name, too) is a freakin' pimp! If you wanted a reason why Miami is cool, look no further than Mr. Horkheimer. He has an Asteriod named after him. I love - no... LOVE - his show on PBS. It comes on at funny times, like most PBS shows, but when I stumble across it, I sit mezmorized.

Anyway, you can now get podcasts of the show and watch anytime you like. But you still have to get up an hour before sunrise to see most of the cool stuff.

KEEP LOOKING UP!

Block and Bird got NOTHINGS on Horkheimer!

Southern Kitchen

Southern Kitchen
Originally uploaded by newmania.

Fried Okra: Not from Uncle Fred's garden but pretty good.

Hush Puppies: My favorite

Greens: Show me the money

Black Eyed Peas: Not the hip hop group

It's going to be a good year...

Good Morning 2006!

Greetings Race Fans! I'm going to give a break down right quick. I want to tell you about the book I'm reading, my new years day meal, and ... I don't know, maybe New Years resolutions.

First the book - It's by Po Bronson and called "Why do I love these people?" My friend, Angie, picked it up at the airport after a trip back home, read it, and recommended it to me. I've read 87 pages and now I'm recommending it to you.

If you have a family, you might find the book interesting. It's basically a collection of short biographical essays of people who had to deal with some sort of family issue - a guy who fights to keep a relationship with his son, or a single mother who struggles to keep her hyperactive boy from being put into "special" classes. It's kinda heartfelt and touching, but the author, Po, presents the stories in a style that brings out the insights and not the sappy, girly crap. (sorry girls) Of course some people think it's new touch feely dad stuff, but I don't.

Topic 2! New Years day you eat black eyed peas and collard greens. Black eyed peas are really beans and are an excellent source of vitamins. Sometimes called collards, or simply greens ( you could get turnip or mustard greens), they are really the green leafy parts of a cabage plant. Why is it a tradition? It brings good luck, of course. The greens bring cash money and the peas bring coins or copper. Some people say that they are healthy foods you should eat all the time and others call it "soul food". I like the taste and ... well I must admit - Black eyed peas are my favorite and I might skip the collards (which might explain the large amount of coins I have on the dresser and the low number next the $ sign on my bank statements)

I found a great restuarantand treated myself to good luck meal and I think it's working. Also on the menu was fried okra, hush puppies and Sweet tea. So, along with my deep fried goodness I got some traditional southern luck.

That brings us to New Year's resolutions - I might follow up on being a talk show host, which the people around me as we watched the fireworks thought might be a good idea. Speaking of jobs, I might want to get one this year. I ate my collards,so I'm expecting some returns. hmmm... Resolutions... It sounds sort of hard and fast and I'm not that kinda guy, so here is a New Year's Motto.

"Bloody your hands"

The purpose of life nobody knows. (If you think you know, keep it to yourself or people will try to kill you.) I can bet we aren't here to keep a perfect record. Teams lose. People fail. Stuff breaks. Bloody your hands means to get involved without fear of failure or injury. If anyone is reading this from TOBC class 6 (transportation officer basic course) you will remember the instructor who gave used this motto.

So Bloody your hands (dirty your hands, if you prefer - same concept), and get involved in 2006. I'm not the only one who is happy to wave goodbye to 2005, nor the only one with a hopeful look for 2006.