Save the Planet, Save Money, and Save Your Sanity by Not Driving
Hybrid vehicles and bio-fuels may help, but they are not the solution. Solving the global warming problem will take dramatic action, and becoming car-free is an action with a lot of impact.
The iPhone just went on sale a few hours ago. Judging by reports already out, irrational geeks and sleazy speculators are spinning a consumer frenzy reminicient of the Tickle Me Elmo craze of 1996.
We just read two very moving letters by Cindy Sheehan. The first, written this morning, was a message of disgust at the Dummycratic party and its inability to stand up to Emperor Bush and stop the war. Then as the day ground on, she apparently suffered from a lot of abuse from all directions, and threw in the towel on her activist efforts.
The political bureaucracy has done what it seems to be designed to do: it has taken another good-hearted person and worn her down to the point that she has nothing left to offer:
I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost.
Please read both letters. There’s a lot written between the lines that this country needs to learn.
A friend and reader writes…
I was wondering what you think about the 60 Minutes report in case you missed it
This story has been circulating in the geek press for over a year now. It goes something like this:
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is developing a rugged and inexpensive laptop to be distributed to schools around the world, and their goal is to bring the machines’ cost down to 100 dollars apiece. Here is the Wikipedia entry on it. Mainstream America was introduced to the program by a 60 Minutes segment last weekend.
This project is Really Cool for a lot or reasons that weren’t discussed in this report. In a way, it resembles the “put a man on the Moon” project in its stimulation of innovation.
I like the way they’re getting power from hand-cranked generators. I like the use of Open Source software (Imagine if Micro$oft were writing the software for this: it would be expensive and impossible to understand). I like the networking scheme, where the computers all communicate with each other directly, rather than thru a router or a hub.
I worry about what will happen to all of these machines once they get old and worn out. Will they be refurbished or recyled? Or will they end up in dumps, adding to the burden of toxic e-waste? I hope this team is thinking about that.
It can be amazing what people can build, create, or invent once they are provided with adequate tools. That’s why food aid groups hand out things like shovels as well as food. There will be many surprising benefits to come from the spread of these tools of communication, education and invention.
Five years later.
Our first “published” video is now out on YouTube. (An iPod-compatible version can be downloaded here.) The St. Stupid Day Parade is an annual event put on by the First Church of the Last Laugh, and it’s a colorful costumed spectacle that mocks consumer culture and the corporate power structure in the heart of San Francisco’s financial district.
Speaking of podcasts, RoZ has been producing a music show for about six weeks now. It’s called Whirling Rainbow, and if you like interesting music that’s new to your ears, you should check it out.