Best Available Science First look at the problem of "regulatory scientists" and the long slide of "science" - once a revolutionary method of testing hypothesis - into a secular religion dominated by a highly conservative orthodoxy and a powerful and highly political lobbying machine.
 

THE VOICE OF THE CYNIC (#2)  Observations and analysis that began as a quest for signs that Food Coop shoppers might really be distinguishable from say, Safeway shoppers, based on metrics such as the ratio between food calories and packaging calories found in their shopping carts.
 
Essay on Political Process in Jefferson County Written well over ten years ago and yet so little progress has been made that it is almost horrifying

Shiny Rock Management This one comes in the wake of this year's Oregon Country Fair. Where there is an awful lot of Shiny Rock Management.

Sept 24th Post-WTC snapshot of an emerging understanding ...

THE EARTH'S ENVIRONMENT IS CHANGING RAPIDLY. WHAT ARE THE ISSUES, RESOURCES, AND SOLUTIONS? I have decided to document the sets of "what I know" and "what I do not know" - to segregate one set from the other and then look closely at HOW "what I know" and "what I do not know" intersect. This is the beginning.

write write write. An old friend wrote: "You should take some time off from whatever it is that your are doing that is mute and write write write".

Life in an inverted bureaucracy This is a story I have told a lot this year, the one about negativity falling like rain, about how traditional bureaucracies resist innovation at all levels.

Etymology for activists.
As was the seventh meaning, which was the one the cops were holding to as they condensed the entire protest into one intersection, surrounded by rows of men armed with sticks and men with guns, with police helicopters flying overhead: The Seventh and final meaning of demonstration is: The exhibition of force or movement, indicating a readiness to attack if necessary.

COMMUNICATION PROSTHESIS. An attempt to get to the root of why we are in relationships, and some metrics for evaluating their utility.

THE VOICE OF THE CYNIC  Observations, concerns and Digressions about "Fair Traded" goods, democracy and artful applications of green paint on the ugly truth of globalization.

What REALLY matters? There are some things I have been SAYING a lot lately, about the origins of civilizations and the recent discovery of antidotes to some of its unintended consequences. Here they are.
 

SAFESEX (on the internet): casual thoughts on computer hygiene in the age of Googlecookies, iTunes playlists, and spyware on commercial DVDs, and what it probably means to approach the internet the way we have learned to approach one another's bodies.

REWIRING CHEAP CHRISTMAS LIGHT LED STRINGS FOR LOW VOLTAGE USE. This is Part 2 of the LED story. Cheap strings of molded LED Christmas-tree-lights are finally hitting the market in quantity. For the Dancing Dragons "Festival of the Forest"  we rewired them for battery power. I wrote this page for >>>> from the >>>>> tribe from Burningman. (This page gets thousands and thousands of hits a month)

Welcome to the divestore. I have decided that stuff I have not used for over a year must have become unneccessary. In an effort to become a divester, I have set up a divest-store. This too get TONS of traffic.

A letter to Congressman Norm Dicks about the Cheney Energy bill now coming to a vote, similar to letters sent to Washington's Senators Murray and Cantwell. Knowing full-well that they do not have to listen to the opinions of anyone except people who live in a very few "swing" districts like Shoreline.

On the unbridaled use of our imperial force, unilaterally, against another nation, in contradiction of international law; which fuels the recognition among a growing number of people of the world that nationhood, treaties and international law no longer provide a shred of useful protection against aggressors, thereby forcing the accceptance of terrorism as their sole recourse.

I clearly remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assasination of John Kennedy, and the election Ronald Reagan, and the sabotage of the ongoing hostage negotiations that led to it. And the coup d'etat that occurred in November 2000, that led directly to this ghastly war ... in which the un-elected leaders of the US demonstrate beyond reasonble doubt that they are totally capable of cynically exploiting the 9-11 catastrophe to achieve their geopolitical objective, and in the process once again risk turning the oilfields themselves into WMDs and causing irreversible changes to world climates. Climate change which of course they don't believe is occurring..

Internet cafe' society. In Budapest this winter I was spending about as much on internet access in internet cafe's as I was on food and it took until the last day to find the right one ...

Just one more day and I am out of here. Hard to believe I'd choose the dead of winter to take a vacation in a place where the weather is about as nice as Fargo, North Dakota. But the chance to go exploring villages in Hungary with a native guide had not come up before ...

Second thoughts about Burningman. Burning Man was a gathering of thousands of people in the desert of Nevada that took place at the same time as the Global Summit on Sustainability in Johannesburg, SA. And cost just about as much to participate in ...

Getting to the rope swing at Burningman One of the high points of a long-overdue road trip that I recently completed. The first real road-trip I've taken in years.

Cedarville is east of Alturas and west of Gerlach, on the way to Black Rock City. This is a loop excerpted from a 12-year-old journal. Observations from a road-trip.

Question Number One. This is a song from Oregon Country Fair that never found it's way to completion, about how people in bureaucracies fail to communicate.

After the festival Workweek - Sweet's Mill August 1973. About the factors that get in the way of long term planning.

Another Virgil Byxbe story - from Sweet's Mill - Critical observation about personal assessment tools and team building August 1973

Tractors: A proposal for a more rational way to eliminate land mines in Central Asia, or anywhere in the world. Based on an idea from Bucky Fuller, from over 30 years ago.

Kandahar: In celebration of the first day of spring.

Reminding me that there are some basic rules of human conduct, that we break, knowingly, but not wisely. A bit like the old saying: "there are old climbers and there are bold climbers, but there are no old bold climbers ..."

People don't wear warning signs, but they should.

Ancient History Recently found on an old floppy, an unretouched transcription from the early '80's of a journal entry from the fall of 1972.

August 12th It's about berry picking as a sacrament ...

Rambles from Last Year
Blues wankers at Siren's Pub ...

Jimi Hendrix rolls in his grave ...

Interesting Music with Max Bernard ...

Election Night was really bizarre ...

The Fate of Landuse and GMA in Jefferson County.

Cooperation process - making an instant website.

About fixing other people's computers (& Ramona the Pest).

Abandonment issues from a meditation on arrested development.

From an ongoing dialogue about what I am looking for

Universities and knowledge from The Microbe Hunters

Last weekend I went to Bellingham

This summer's lessons: I decided that I had to teach people some technique before they got into Sea Kayaking.

Communication issues from Folklife 2000.

Playing music for fighting drunks on a piano in a bar.

Using the web to raise the awareness of consumer.

"What's it like there?" she asked ...
 

STRING CHEESE HYPOTHESIS I just got back from rolling back the clock to 1972 and then to 1967.  This is the beginning.


This batch of stuff is REALLY about Politics, not hearts

Going to meetings instead of having a life ...

Not nearly so recent ... 1999

"Serena" - a beautiful young woman playing cello on the Bainbridge Island to Seattle Ferry totally made my day ...

"My Dad's Rubber Boots" ...

Not Recent at all ... Pre-1999

"On loudspeakers" - Initial observations on the role of the loudspeaker in the development of tone in guitar amplifiers and instrument amplification systems.
Essay on Political Process in Jefferson County


A road trip. Travelling through Utah in 1991 looking for powder and finding the first unmistakable signs of age.

Lake of the Angels

Carrying Capacity - a journey through the myth, looking for the real deep south