Garbage Patch knowledge growing

It was quite late the other night, while I was just finishing up a post, when I looked at the TV screen and noticed the tell-tale images of pelican and albatross corpses full of pieces of plastic. This imagery seems to almost always be a precursor to discussion about the North (Great) Pacific Garbage Patch.

So as I watched, the terrain became familiar, and I soon heard the narrator, Edward Norton, introduce Captain Charles Moore. I realized I was watching a National Geographic show called Strange Days. I was in no position to watch it, but I hope it will be on PBS again at a better time than 5am.

At a family get-together yesterday, my brother Rodd and I continued our talk about the Garbage Patch. Rodd has watched 11 of the 12 episodes of the Vice production of Garbage Island. I have only seen five of them, but it’s almost like I can’t take watching too many of them at once. I get a little rage building in my gut when I realize that my complacency, and the melange of everyone else’s complacency has lead to people and corporations treating the planet like a septic tank. There should be more outrage.

Perhaps I’ll post again when I watch the rest of the series.

Bikes are cool

There’s a great video I found reading NPR’s The Bryant Park Project (BPP) which shows a group of bike riders deciding to make a point to car-drivers by taking to the freeway (405). The cars, often at a stand-still, are left in the dust by these bike riders, which is unlikely in Windsor but not too far from the truth.

I have been keeping pace with cars for several city blocks, and I’m still a chump. My legs are still tired when I get off the bike. But being new to this whole “driving across the entire city almost every day” thing is extremely enticing, and even after today’s sunburn, I am very happy to be riding a bike instead of driving a car. People who pay for gas? Suckers! All of you. Heh-heh-heh…

Actually, I am suprised at just how many bike riders there actually ARE in this city of difficult-bike-conditions. Bicycles are everywhere it seems.

Today I rode to a massage appointment, and then to my brother’s school, where we shot baskets for an hour, and then downtown to drop the bike off. I’ll only be riding it home tomorrow night. I have my niece Alex’s First Communion to attend, and if I ride the bike, it’ll be disgusting. But redemption was playing another hour of pick-up basketball with my Friday night group which was close to my home (short drive). Just glad I got a bit more cardio.

The map above is only the first leg of the trip, which was 6.71 miles (10.8km). The next section was 4.29 miles (6.9km). The last section was 1.56 miles (2.5km). The entire trip was 12.56 miles, or 20.2 kilometers. It kicked the crap out of me, as I am totally not used to this kind of exercise just to get from Point A to Point B. All of the other bike riders in Windsor will laugh at me if they ever read this.

I still highly recommend it though!

Phil Donahue on Tavis Smiley

Tavis Smiley had Phil Donahue on his show tonight.

Phil Donahue has made a new documentary about the real people being hurt surrounding the war in Iraq. It’s called Body of War. It is centralized around a paralyzed soldier named Thomas, who wasn’t even out of the truck while in Iraq before he was shot in the shoulder, and spine (T-4).

Donahue has been outspoken about the war in Iraq, calling it a blunder that will be felt for the rest of this century.

One of his points was indelible. I was very pleased to hear it. He pointed out that according to right-wing media pundits, anyone opposed to the war, in the beginning or even recently, was un-American. If you were against the war, you were “with them”. The blind nationalism spouting from the mouths of people who speak of democracy and condemn others for thinking about the reality of the “campaign” in Iraq are laughably hypocrites.

Why are they hypocrites?

Because 50% of them don’t VOTE! If they are so pro-democracy, why don’t they vote? Do they think that having a yellow ribbon-magnet on their bumper is a substitute for voting!? They must! And I’m not foolish enough to be told that anyone outspoken about the war is a definite voter. Half is half. It means that half of the people denouncing the war are also not voting the way they should be. And I love Donahue for pointing this hypocrisy out for us. For people who care about their country, and their soldiers, and democracy, and their freedom of speech (and other Amendments), but not about the grand money-grab happening in Iraq, be equally vocal about your feelings about this war, but for goodness sake, vote. Show your utmost respect for the brave soldiers past, present, and future, by voting and taking advantage of your right to do so.

This also reminded me about the civil rights struggle. If I were someone involved in the civil rights movement, especially in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, I would make it a pointed issue that the people I fought for did everything humanly possible to stay informed about the political process and to cast their vote.

It can become a sticky subject, because I am a white guy talking about what black people “should do” when it comes to voting…or prodding people to vote. The truth is, anyone who’s anyone should be voting, especially those who feel that their interests have been marginalized by the people currently in government.
Really, I’m just echoing the voices of many black pundits who know what was fought for in the civil rights struggle, and who realize the importance of the turnout of citizens who have been and continue to be misunderstood.

I have way too many thoughts on this subject, ranging from voting rights to running for office yourself. Perhaps some other time.

Kagan McLeod

There’s this guy I know who lives in Toronto, but he’s originally from Windsor. To say the least, he’s an artist of the highest degree. Kagan McLeod and I “sorta” met when I strolled into the now defunct clothing store on Pelissier Street dropping off copies of the also-now-defunct Windsor Vox Magazine. Jhoan and I were publishing the magazine for a while, looking for stories at every turn, when I saw comic books in the display with the title “Infinite Kung-Fu“. The art was insanely good. I asked the owner why they carried comic books, ad she told me that her friend, the artist and writer, was on the roof at that moment, doing some graffiti art to spruce up her storefront.

I think I waved while he was on the roof, but I left after I saw him paint this incredible afro-ed man with crazy sunglasses, arms akimbo. After e-mailing him a short time later, he told me about his job at The National Post, I think he was the graphics director at the age of 23 or 24.

Subsequent to all of this, I was flipping through an incredible defunct magazine called Shift (which if the wiki is true, Evan Solomon co-founded) and who do I see? Yes, Kagan is on the opposite page of Chuck D (of Public Enemy) and he is listed in the Top 50 talents to watch out for…or something akin to that theme.

Shortly after this, we ran a cover story about how this uber talent was from Windsor. Within a year or two of this, we buried the magazine, and I co-opened a music venue/bar/cafe in downtown Windsor called Phog Lounge. Needing some art on the outside of the building, I asked (begged) him to paint the side of our new place.

The result was incredible, considering we never met to discuss a design, or a theme.

To the best of my knowledge, this is Kagan’s largest piece of work, and I have recently asked him to consider doing another one on the front of the building this summer. I can’t WAIT!!

So, that said, I highly recommend that you go to his site and scroll through the work, as it is worth the time it takes to sift through all of it. If you need another reason to see his work, it has appeared in The National Post, Mad Magazine, New York Magazine, Toronto Life, Toro, Entertainment Weekly, Wired Magazine, and he illustrated a book called Archetypes by Mireille Silcoff.

Starting to ride

What has happened is simply this: The oil companies have found my limit.

I cannot rightly spend $75 to $80 to travel to work. I cannot simply get into the car to go somewhere anymore. There’s a funny thing about the reason for riding a bike. The best reason is “because cars are dirty and bad for the planet”. But the thing that made me change my mind is the cost of gas. In case you were sleeping, or you don’t drive a car, the price of gas being raised almost as if there were a monopoly on the industry…oh!…wait…I forgot…there is!

So in short, these bastards are selling gas to us at wildly increasing levels, and from what I read in the New York Times on Sunday, the thirst is growing. The best part, is that the infrastructure has been put in place to DEPEND on gasoline. The mindset of people traveling (to work, to the corner store, to Montreal to visit relatives, anywhere) has a major paradigm…it involves cars. The way our cities arteries are made, we cater to, build for, adjust for, and bow down to the almighty car. I die a little when I read a quote like this in the New York Times,

“The pursuit of oil will be just part of the energy challenge. The world’s total energy demand — including oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear power, as well as renewable energy sources like wind, solar and hydro power — is set to rise by 65 percent over the next two decades, according to the I.E.A.

But petroleum, the dominant fuel of the 20th century, will remain the top energy source. It accounts for more than a third of the world’s total energy needs, ahead of coal and natural gas. Refined into gasoline, kerosene or diesel fuel, oil has no viable substitute as a transportation fuel, and that is not likely to change much in the next 30 years.

The problem is that no one can say for sure where all this oil is going to come from.

That might not sound like such a bad thing for those concerned about carbon emissions and climate change. High prices might end up forcing people to conserve and encourage the development of alternatives. But the energy crunch might also result in a global scramble for resources, energy wars, and much higher energy prices.”

It’s something worth frowning at, but also something that makes me wonder how we’re going to think around it. Will humans be proactive? According to this article, we’re basically fucked. Which is the thing I’ve had burning me for a good long while now…where are these new technologies? The worry I have is that I have given too much credit to human beings and their ability to bring ideas to fruition in any realistic time-frame. I have been waiting for solar energy to be available for eons, it seems. And bubkiss. Nothing. I cannot even hope to have my municipality subsidize the cost of solar panels, even though Peterborough has figured out a way to do it…and it was years ago! They have a program called Green Up Peterborough, and they were able to offer solar panels for a short time, at a much smaller cost.

I want to tell you about a conversation I had at Phog recently.

There was a mish-mash of topics being tossed around, but most of all it was about gas. I had divulged that I was willing to traverse one of the most bike-unfriendly cities in Canada, (Windsor, Ontario) almost from one end to the other because of the cost of gas. I was hoping that I could be of some inspiration and example to others who have pondered the possibility.

What came up was in-depth ideas about how humans will just think of other ways around this problem. But having heard this discussion, and read The Times, I see that there is little hope of us adopting anything new. This was my argument at the time. We are such moronic creatures when it comes to proactive thought. We are going to suck the blackest teets of Mother Nature until we get all we can from her because of nothing more than money. Let’s dig somewhere else, somewhere that the environment won’t be harmed. Hey good news! We found a HUGE SEAM of new oil in (fill in the blank)! This is not good news. This is paradigm thinking. This is being stuck in old thought. Let’s do it without oil. Is that SO crazy a thing to think?

We don’t sit idly by because we like it the smell of gas when it spills on our shoes, and we won’t do it because we love shitty air quality, and we won’t do it because we love it when those stupid water fowl get caked in crude after an oil spill…no…but WE do it, us, WE DO IT because we are too lazy. We are too complacent to take our lives into our own hands and make a stand for something. We are scared to say,

“This oil thing is bull. You stuffed shirts, who are grandsons of the brilliant entrepreneurs who fooled everyone back when energy options were being weighed and people were trying to amass fortunes, yeah, you inheritors who have been lolling about on your huge chemical-laden lawns and palatial abodes doing NOTHING in the way of thinking outside of the box (or your wallets) have had enough. You’ve had enough of my lung tissue, and of my hard-earned money. You don’t get to tell me how to travel anymore. You don’t get to effect the way I survive. Now go away with your money. Go! Shoo! Go to an island where people who might be able to forgive you and your ancestors live too. Rub each other’s backs and chortle about all the life you sucked out of humanity and the planet. I mean, it’s a whole goddamn planet! It’s the only one we know, and with your helping hand, we are killing it. Nice. Ride off into the sunset on your shit-horse and never come back.”

A friend (acquaintance) of mine named Michael Louis Johnson, lives in Toronto, and LOVES bikes. He is not afraid. He is outspoken, and wonderful. The fearlessness of his beliefs manifests itself in his music (the band The New Kings), his lifestyle, and his actions. He is true. What I know of him is true. He lives his life truly based on his morals and ideas of how things should be. He’s not like me, spouting off on a blog. He spouts off by living the way he knows we all can if we want to. He was a part of this uber-cool attempt to get attention on the importance of bikes, and re-planning cities for bikes. *Funny note: In writing “replanning” I was informed by Spellcheck that it is not a recognized word. Which just goes to show you that our language needs to reflect our possibilities. Otherwise the possibility just doesn’t exist.* Check Michael’s event out HERE!

Unlike Michael, people just want to sit back and have a chance to buy cheap milk and bread, and everything else is hunky dory if we can keep reading about talentless fools who bob up and down on our TV sets and sing through our awful Top-40-station-supplied-radios. The soma is so evident to me the more that days carry on, and there are few others who are hip to the zombification of our poor world through entertainment fake-news shows like E-Talk Daily and Entertainment Tonight and Extra etc. We worry about brand-names, and mostly ourselves. We are number one. I am number one. I count. What you think of me counts, so I want the best stuff so you think I am great, greater, the greatest…

When I heard that woman at the TED Talks discuss her left-brain being shut down, I didn’t realize that it was more than just connecting to the oneness of the universe. Her description of the walls falling on her labeling, judging, measuring, worrying, thinking brain made me think of her experience to be more like reaching Nirvana than having a stroke. And during my discussion at Phog with my contemporaries, I realized that the way to prevent the oncoming world food shortages, furthering starvation and hunger, the oncoming water shortages we have to look forward to because of ignorant government policy in Canada and the U.S. (exampled in the story in this link), the energy crisis linked directly to the climate change epidemic (ecodemic), is to have that compassion that Jill Bolte Taylor had when she had that stroke.

Maybe if we feel that connection to other will we realize there is something worth saving. Maybe we will realize that people are magnificent, not because of who they are, what they buy, where they live, where they work, but because they are. That’s it. They are. If we gave a shit about this whatsoever, we might be on the right track toward making the proper decisions to save our skies, oceans, starving, sick, and our own souls.

To begin with, I’m riding my bike to work.

Albrecht Durer

Seeing the most recent opening at The Art Gallery of Windsor, displaying approximately 55 woodcuts and etchings by Albrecht Durer, was an honour. Jhoan had tickets from work to attend the pre-opening event closed to the public. The opening was started with a discussion about the 15th Century, the time period that Durer did some of his work, and the time period in which he was inspired by the surroundings.

The Early Music Ensemble of Windsor performed Northern Renaissance tunes in the gallery before we actually saw the works. Using very strange looking instruments, a far cry from the indie musicians’ gear I am used to seeing and hearing, the Ensemble was extraordinary.

On to the artwork.

When I went to high school, I remember fondly the days we took Art history. I, you see, could not draw worth a snot. But I was fascinated with the works that were hammered into our memory by discussion, review, quizzes, and general appreciation (or bragging rights for remembering). One of the artists whose work was most memorable was Durer, whose woodcuts and etchings were phenomenal. In particular, Adam and Eve, an etching, was one of those pieces you see at the front of the room and think, “That thing must be in a gallery in Germany somewhere.” One never really thinks they’re going to see the thing at the end of their nose in a local gallery.

And there it hung, Adam and Eve. Right there. Beyond the surreal sense that I was so close to a wildy well-preserved classic work from the 1500s, it was unnerving to have something from my past being in my lap. It would be like meeting Cecil Fielder (ex Detroit Tiger) in person, after having collected his image on baseball cards as a tot.

Another time I had that feeling was when I was with Jhoan, at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. We were walking out of the gallery, having had our fill of an amazing collection, and I saw something familiar. It was a woodcut called The Prophet, by Emil Nolde. It was a piece, once again, I remembered clearly from Art History in Grade 11 with Mr. Roy James.

Other instances of great works appearing out of nowhere have been regular occurrances, and I have no plans to simply list them, but I will say that The Art Institute of Chicago had more single instances of this than anywhere else I’ve been. Seeing Grant Wood’s American Gothic in a room full of previously unknown works was bewildering. We just stood there, jaws agape, wondering how this painting was actually in front of us.

To finish this post, I want you to see a “version” of American Gothic that trumps the original, in my eyes.

My friends Dan and Jenna are getting married. Soon. They have impeccable taste, and an imaginative spirit that is contagious and inspiring. They have created an indelible image for their wedding invitation, and I love showing it to strangers. Every time I see this, I wish I were more creative.

TED from Rodd: Brain Chatter Reduction

My brother Rodd, one of my four older brothers, is a very smart guy. The troubling thing is that all of my brothers are extremely bright, and I fear I will not learn all I can from them.

Rodd posts a lot of great websites, and web tools, and links to things that are mind-blowing on his del.icio.us account. He was also the guy to tell me about the TED conferences in Monterey, California every year. A conference of ideas. They have a website, TED.com, where you can watch just about ever speech, demonstration, and talk that happens at the conference.

Rodd chose one of these talks to post to his del.icio.us account, which I subscribe to, and I was happy to watch the presentation given by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor.

She had a stroke one day, and as a brain researcher, she knew what was happening, and was fascinated by it as it happened. I was particularly impressed with her description of losing touch with her left side of the brain, where the stroke occurred. She remembers dropping all of the “brain chatter” and feeling a oneness, a connectedness to everything around her, even the walls and floor.

I think her experience is akin to what is achieved when meditation specialists reach a place of inner silence, solace, and sensory disconnect. It only made my own hunger to learn to meditate that much stronger. GO TO THIS LINK TO VIEW THE TED.com VIDEO! I hope you like the video, as it was something I was happy to have passed on by my brother.

His delicious link is cleversheep if you are looking to follow the interests of a man who teaches teachers how to implement technology into their classrooms in southwestern Ontario. His blog is here.

Indian or Native?

Indian.

I was listening to someone on the radio the other day, and I caught the story in mid-
flight. They were talking about an “Indian community” where a tragedy occurred. I immediately thought about a potential fire, earthquake or flood in India…you know, where Indians live?

But when the discussion continued, I realized they were talking about the shooting on the central Alberta reserve, where the 23-month-old toddler, Asia Saddleback, was shot in a drive-by incident by a 15 and 18 year old boys.

The incident spurred me to do more than shake my head, as my wife was present, and I spouted, “Can we not get names right yet?” I’m sure she was a little caught off-guard. I continued, “Scientists downgraded Pluto from being a planet to a ‘dwarf planet’ and no one makes the mistake anymore. Who doesn’t know that Pluto isn’t a planet? But we still use the term Indian! How long ago did we realize we didn’t live in India? How long did it take Columbus and Co. to realize that they weren’t in India? I just don’t get how we still use that term.”

I’m not someone who is oversensitive about this kind of thing. I just believe that terms have power. They have domain over our perceptions of people and groups of people. And when our First Nations who are “Natives” as they are native to Canada (so far as anyone in anthropology can postulate: i.e. they may have traveled to what is now The Americas when there was still a Bering land-bridge between both east and west hemispheres of the globe) are being called Indians, because explorers were ass-backwards and thinking they were in India, I think it is a foolish piece of our lexicon.

I doubt anyone can question the validity of Natives not being from India, nor living in India, yet we accept the label of Indian. Why? We let go of “planet” for Pluto, but we can’t seem to let go of Prince (The Artist Formerly Known As Prince), because the name change was stupid, contrived, and egotistically artsy. We saw the name-change as silly, and we kept the original. For the record, I love Prince, and his Superbowl halftime show clobbers every halftime show, since of before, so badly it’s embarrassing. I digress.

We also weren’t fooled by the Freedom Fries, 10-year-old-behavior charade, and we all just stuck with french fries. But these two instances were lame to begin with. They were clearly media events, designed to get attention. Calling Natives by the name Indians is a lack of sensitivity to a people who had more than their identity taken from them at the arrival of white explorers. Indian IS NOT akin to Freedom Fries. It is more important. It is not some publicity stunt to rally nationalism.

Very few people know that I went to El Salvador when I was 18. I remember very clearly the reaction to the term “American” whenever is slipped out of someone’s mouth. People in South or Central America are not particularly pleased with residents of The United States of America calling themselves “Americans” as if they’re the only people living in “America”. People in Central America, El Salvador for sure, see this is pompous, as they know that they are also Americans, except their name has the prefix “South” attached to it.

If people can be this sensitive to the naming of their national identity, or global identity, I don’t understand how the word Indian has not been actively discouraged in favour of the term Native.

We can respect the name changes of people like Mohammed Ali from Cassius Clay, Malcolm X from Malcolm Little, Kareem-Abdul Jabbar from Lew Alcindor, Pope John Paul II from Karol Wojtyla, because it seems that name changes pertaining to religious identity, or freedom from someone else’s name are legit. So how can Indian not be considered anything less than a non-identifier of First Nations Peoples or Natives?

Any clarifications on this subject would be appreciated. I ask these questions and rant like this to better understand. To understand how a nation, how a hemisphere fails to adopt a respectful, mindful, geographically accurate name for an unfairly marginalized group of original inhabitants of what we call Canada and the United States.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Quite a while ago I heard a podcast talking about this enormous gyre in the North Pacific Ocean that collects a hell of a lot of garbage and plastic. It is aptly named The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I read several articles to follow this up, and subsequently e-mailed Google asking them why I couldn’t zoom in on the North Pacific and see this monstrous garbage patch. Surprise! I never heard back from them. Just found a link to this great conversation about why there may or may not be any visible floating garbage.

The articles I read are from Best Life Magazine and The San Francisco Chronicle. They sadly inform on the state of The Horse Latitudes, which I think is a brilliant name for a band. The discussion basically boils down to the fact that when plastic photodegrades and becomes smaller and smaller pieces of plastic (eventually nurdles) it likes to absorb the most heinous chemicals known to man. No big deal? Actually, it’s brutal. It’s getting eaten by plankton, and just about every other freakin’ creature in the ocean. They eventually get these chemicals in their bodies, and continually pass it down the line until we begin eating our own goddamn garbage. Irony is painful.

So, everything from Bisphenol A, human biochemistry, jettisoned trash from freighters, plastic bag consumption, the evils of bottled water, and much more is linked to this story.

The details are in the articles linked above, as the experts did the work, and it is fresh for the reading.

However, I found the Holy Grail of Garbage Patch research when I found this documentary series produced by Vice Magazine. They had a guy write a short article on his journey into “The Patch” in a recent issue of Vice, and as I read it, I remember wishing for more. More images, more stories, more statistics, more hope. Lo and behold, here is this guy’s face, on a series of videos online comprising a documentary that I cannot WAIT to watch. I highly recommend this, as it is a strong young approach to the issue. Yeah, you may hear profanity here or there, but this is a more reasonable response than simply going about our daily routine creating more waste.

I feel like I can go on and on about this for too long. Not just the ocean issue, but about the waste culture I am firmly situated within. Maybe another day. In the meantime, please go check out these videos called Garbage Island by Vice.

Bullshit

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

I am not necessarily a fan of The Onion videos or podcasts or the paper for that matter…not for any particular reason other than maybe I’m jealous of how great their product is, and how I couldn’t contribute to it if I wanted to…but…

My brother Mark had me listen to a couple of podcasts recently, and I was laughing pretty damn hard at them, and today, for no good reason, I found myself watching a few videos on The Onion website because a friend, Dave Odette, posted a comment on someone’s Facebook wall with a link to an Onion video.

Here is the one that I liked the most, out of the four I watched. The truth can catch us off guard in the best of ways. When you hear this, thinking perhaps it is a real newscast, one is struck with the overwhelming sense of, “this is so damn true, our society is so goddamn foolish for being hoodwinked by garbage/bullshit that gets fed to us by TV and most radio”.

This should be shown to every bloody person who has yet to know any single thing about the ISSUES that the Presidential candidates stand for…

Enjoy.

And, am I crazy, or do you ALSO know 25 people who you suspect couldn’t give two shits about the issues of these candidates, and are likely to focus on BULLSHIT?