After having walked offstage, Leonard comes back to perform Hey, That’s No Way..
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A montage of scenes from the 1972 tour set to Passing Through – a very apt song for the seeming chaos of the tour. Some revealing interviews too and a fail in the chat-up department 😉 From Bird on a Wire 1972.
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The Global Footprint Network has announced that Earth Overshoot Day is fast approaching:This Saturday, we will reach Earth Overshoot Day: the day when human demand on nature surpasses what nature can renewably supply…as of August 21st, humanity will have demanded an amount of ecological resources equivalent to what it takes nature 12 months to produce.
From now until the end of the year, we will meet our needs by liquidating stocks and accumulating greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
According to the Global Footprint Network humanity crossed a threshold three decades ago when we stopped being able to live off of nature’s interest — “consuming resources and producing carbon dioxide at a rate lower than what the planet was able to regenerate and reabsorb each year” — and started living beyond nature’s capacity. They call this gap between human demand and nature’s supply “ecological overshoot” (a concept that was devised by the UK-based new economics foundation).
The pace of this overshoot has grown each year (see links for 2007 and 2008 in the Worldchanging archives). Now the most recent data shows that “it takes one year and five months to regenerate the ecological services (production of resources and absorption of CO2) that humanity requires in one year.” While this year’s overshoot day comes about a month earlier than last year’s, this is not due to a sudden change in human demand, but rather to improvements in the calculation methodology that have enabled the Global Footprint Network to more adequately capture the extent of overshoot. As an example, they report that the world has less biocapacity available, primarily in the area of grazing land, than previously estimated.
2010 Global Ecological Deficit (via “Global Footprint Network, National Footprint Accounts, 2009 edition. Available at www.footprintnetwork.org)To learn more about how the Earth Overshoot Day is calculated, click here. Global Footprint Network President Mathis Wackernagel had this to say of the calculations:
“We would expect our estimates of overshoot to be, if anything, conservative. We know we are far from living within the means of one planet. The good news is, much of the technology we have to begin to address this problem is available and it is open source: things like compact urban design, energy-efficient housing, ecological tax reform, removal of resource subsidies, safe and affordable family planning, bicycles, low-meat diets, and life-cycle costing.”
We couldn’t agree more.
Some strategies for addressing the problem in the archives:
- My Other Car is a Bright Green City | Alex Steffen, 23 Jan 08
- The Politics of Optimism | Alex Steffen, 25 Mar 08
- Principle 14: Density, Compact Communities and Smart Growth | WorldChanging Team, 22 May 07
- Al Gore, Clean Energy and A Better Nation | Alex Steffen, 21 Jul 08
- Defusing The Population Bomb | Adam Stein, 11 Sep 09
- Bike-frastructure 101: Sharrows, Street Parking, Superhighways and More | Sean Conroe, Sarah Kuck and Kamal Patel, 28 Aug 09
- Cows Aren’t Part of a Climate-Healthy Diet, Study Says | Clark Williams-Derry, 8 Jun 08
- The Eco-Nutrition Label | Jeremy Faludi, 17 Sep 07
Related stories in the archives:
- The Emergence of a Biosphere Economy | John Elkington and Alejandro Litovsky, 28 Jun 10
- Ecological Footprint 2.0 | Alex Lowe, 17 Jun 07
- Principle 2: Ecological Footprints and One Planet Thinking | WorldChanging Team, 8 May 07
- The Future is Climate Neutral | Alex Steffen and Sarah Rich, 22 Jan 07
- Europe 2005: The Ecological Footprint | Jon Lebkowsky, 2 Dec 05
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OAKLAND, CA—The headquarters of personalized online music provider Pandora remained in a state of chaos Thursday as frantic workers struggled to find a song that 32-year-old Boston subscriber Dave Lipton would enjoy.
Pandora, which allows users to create virtual radio stations according to their individual tastes, confirmed its employees had spent most of the day rummaging desperately through the miles of shelves in the company’s massive 700,000-CD storage facility in search of a track to appease the increasingly fickle Lipton.
“It’s called ‘Steely Dan Radio,’ for Christ’s sake—why does he keep skipping over Donald Fagen’s ‘The Nightfly’?” song-selection associate Lincoln Foster said as he rifled through a laundry cart full of CDs labeled “’70s Jazz Fusion.” “We’ve already thrown three-decades-worth of Doobie Brothers at him. What the hell does this guy want?”
“Okay, who’s got the self-titled Blood, Sweat & Tears album?” Foster added. “I need ‘Spinning Wheel’ right now!”
LiptonAs a user of Pandora’s free service, Lipton is only allowed to skip six songs an hour, but sources said that by clicking the thumbs-down “dislike” icon, he has registered his disapproval for every track the 2,939-member Pandora team has put on his playlist in the past five hours.
According to genre-tracking department manager Rachel Davis, the problem has been compounded by Lipton’s habit of switching without warning between several extremely specific listening profiles he has created for himself.
“Who makes a station with proto-punk and late-’90s jam bands?” said Davis, explaining how an effort to split the difference by playing the MC5 followed by the String Cheese Incident had failed disastrously. “There are what, maybe two songs ever recorded that fit those criteria? And he just keeps skipping them.”
“At this point, I think he’s just fucking with us,” Davis continued before scaling a 30-foot ladder to retrieve a vinyl-only release by obscure Illinois ska-core group the Blue Meanies.
Lipton reportedly listened to that track for less than 10 seconds before skipping it.
Pandora executives acknowledged that the periodic Heineken and Ford Sales Event advertisements in Lipton’s music stream are the only thing currently keeping the company from shutting down, declaring bankruptcy, and abandoning its manual music upload process.
Though the web radio service has dealt with difficult users in the past, including renowned rock critic Robert Christgau and Bay Area software programmer Richard Sutton, representatives for Pandora said that most subscribers are content to listen uncomplainingly to whatever the song-selection team chooses.
“We admit the meltdown today might have been avoided if we had duplicates of some of these albums,” said Pandora PR representative Timothy Saltzman, sighing as a flashing red light above his head indicated that Lipton had skipped yet another track. “For example, we thought he might find ‘Kashmir’ really cool. Now, that might be a stretch, but my point is, we’ll never know, because Janice DeStefano of Milwaukee has been hogging our copy of Physical Graffiti all day.”
By noon Thursday, Pandora had decided to bring in a panel of genre-bending musicians to act as consultants on the Lipton case, among them Beck, newcomer songstress Janelle Monáe, and retired avant-rock musician Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart.
“I think the best plan is to blindside him with a crazy free-form jazz-rock freak-out,” Beefheart said. “Then, before he knows what’s happening, bam! A real old-time-sounding blues stomper with anachronistically modern lyrics and subject matter. Hopefully that will keep him interested for at least three minutes.”
Added Beefheart, “But if you want to know what I really think, this guy is probably just some bored, bitter asshole who isn’t capable of genuinely enjoying anything.”
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Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Paul (R-TX) are enlisting members of Congress to press President Obama’s Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to propose “significant cuts to the military budget.”
Frank and Paul are seeking signatories to a letter to the fiscal commission, highlighting one trillion dollars in savings they can be achieved, through cuts and efficiencies, in the next 10 years.
“[W]e write to urge in the strongest terms that any final Commission report include among its recommendations substantial reductions in projected levels of future spending by the Department of Defense,” the letter reads.
The main avenue for those savings, they say, include scaling back Cold War era policies and programs, and eradicating waste in research and contracting
A recent TPM report noted efforts on behalf of some members of the commission to achieve savings by, among other things, slashing benefits to service members and veterans. In a statement today, Frank made clear he opposes such cuts.
“I do want to make clear that the one point in which I and my colleagues differ with the Task Force — the proposal for reducing healthcare benefits for veterans, especially with the consequences of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am very proud that the Congress in the last few years has increased veterans health benefits.”
A spokesman for Frank says the letter currently has fewer than 10 cosigners, but that the incipient effort will begin in earnest with “aggressive member to member” outreach when Congress returns from August recess.
You can read both the Dear Colleague, and the letter to the commission here.
Good for them and for all of us taxpayers and citizens of the world! This makes me like both Frank and Paul more. And Frank was already one of my favorite congresspeople, just behind Nancy Pelosi.
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via youtube.com
“To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs.” – Sri Aurobindo (born 15 August 1872), also Independence Day of India (15 August 1947)
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Discovered ‘Terror Babies’ via Talking Points Memo
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Jack Black appears on American Idol’s charity special to perform Kiss From A Rose.
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via youtube.com“You ask me where to begin
Am I so lost in my sin
You ask me where did I fall
I’ll say I can’t tell you when
But if my spirit is lost
How will I find what is near
Don’t question I’m not alone
Somehow I’ll find my way home
My sun shall rise in the east
So shall my heart be at peace
And if you’re asking me when
I’ll say it starts at the end
You know your will to be free
Is matched with love secretly
And talk will alter your prayer
Somehow you’ll find you are there.Your friend is close by your side
And speaks in far ancient tongue
A seasons wish will come true
All seasons begin with youOne world we all come from
One world we melt into one
Just hold my hand and we’re there
Somehow we’re going somewhere
Somehow we’re going somewhere
[interlude]You ask me where to begin
Am I so lost in my sin
You ask me where did I fall
I’ll say I can’t tell you when
But if my spirit is strong
I know it can’t be long
No questions I’m not alone
Somehow I’ll find my way home
Somehow I’ll find my way home
Somehow I’ll find my way home
Somehow I’ll find my way home” -
PORT FOURCHON, LA—In what may be the greatest environmental disaster in the nation’s history, the supertanker TI Oceania docked without incident at the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port Monday and successfully unloaded 3.1 million barrels of dangerous crude oil into the United States.
According to witnesses, the catastrophe began shortly after the tanker, which sailed unimpeded across the Gulf of Mexico, stopped safely at the harbor and made contact with oil company workers on the shore. Soon after, vast amounts of the black, toxic petroleum in the ship’s hold were unloaded at an alarming rate into special storage containers on the mainland.
From there, experts confirmed, the oil will likely spread across the entire country’s infrastructure and commit unforetold damage to its lakes, streams, and air.
“We’re looking at a crisis of cataclysmic proportions,” said Charles Hartsell, an environmental scientist at Tufts University. “In a matter of days, this oil may be refined into a lighter substance that, when burned as fuel in vehicles, homes, and businesses, will poison the earth’s atmosphere on a terrifying scale.”
The oil could soon contaminate areas as far away as this Los Angeles freeway.“Time is of the essence,” Hartsell added. “If this is allowed to continue, the health of every American could be put at risk.”
via theonion.com“Noting that they have acted in strict accordance with U.S. laws and complied with the orders of federal regulators, representatives from ExxonMobil, BP, ConocoPhillips, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Chevron have all denied responsibility for the disaster.”
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via youtube.com
“I lit a thin green candle, to make you jealous of me.
But the room just filled up with mosquitos,
they heard that my body was free.
Then I took the dust of a long sleepless night
and I put it in your little shoe.
And then I confess that I tortured the dress
that you wore for the world to look through.I showed my heart to the doctor: he said I just have to quit.
Then he wrote himself a prescription,
and your name was mentioned in it!
Then he locked himself in a library shelf
with the details of our honeymoon,
and I hear from the nurse that he’s gotten much worse
and his practice is all in a ruin.I heard of a saint who had loved you,
so I studied all night in his school.
He taught that the duty of lovers
is to tarnish the golden rule.
And just when I was sure that his teachings were pure
he drowned himself in the pool.
His body is gone but back here on the lawn
his spirit continues to drool.An Eskimo showed me a movie
he’d recently taken of you:
the poor man could hardly stop shivering,
his lips and his fingers were blue.
I suppose that he froze when the wind took your clothes
and I guess he just never got warm.
But you stand there so nice, in your blizzard of ice,
oh please let me come into the storm.” -
The Southeast Student Renewable Energy Conference (SSREC) is an important event that brings hundreds of students from across the Southeast together for a weekend of essential skills trainings, inspiring keynote speakers, collaborative state network meetings, and movement building. Since its establishment in 2003, the SSREC has served as a platform for Southern students to build a region-wide movement to promote a clean, sustainable energy future. The Southern Energy Network (SEN) was formed from discussions and connections coming out of the 2004 SSREC, hosted at the University of North Carolina and Duke University.
The South is one of the largest contributors to the problems of dirty energy and global warming, and our politicians are some of the most resistant to boldly addressing global warming pollution and climate change. For this reason, building and strengthening the movement of Southern youth fighting for a clean energy future is some of the most important work we can be doing. And that’s where the SSREC comes in!
We’re excited to host the 6th SSREC at the University of Georgia this fall. This year, we’ll be training even more awesome young people to fight dirty energy in their communities, and to promote clean, just, sustainable solutions. We’ll be connecting hundreds of new organizers to each other, growing the youth climate movement regionally and nationally. The conference will provide hope and motivation in a region that can seem very reluctant to change, as well as provide context around the effects of climate change in the Southeast and why this work is so urgent and important.
This year’s SSREC will be October 1 – 3, 2010 in Athens, Georgia, and is co-hosted by SEN and the UGA Go Green Alliance. -
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Originally released in 1972 and directed by celebrated British filmmaker Tony Palmer, Bird on a Wire follows Cohen on his 1972 European tour and contains 17 classic performances, 4 poems and tour footage. After several edits it was relreleased in 1974.
Vodpod videos no longer available.1st collector for Leonard Cohen – Bird On A Wire (1972)
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via youtube.com“I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
If I, if I have been unkind,
I hope that you can just let it go by.
If I, if I have been untrue
it’s just that I thought a lover had to be some kind of liar too.Like a baby, stillborn,
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
But I swear by this song
And by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee.Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry no more. It’s over now, it’s over babe, don’t cry no more. I say don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry anymore. It’s over. It’s finished. It’s completed. It has been paid for.
Oh like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.”
Gatlinburg Garden Castle Rainbow Tower Library Imagination Station Temple Water Spirit Guardian Labyrinth Treasury Magic Healing 