I designed a mockup for Waldo earlier in 2008 and today it launches on Richmond Sunlight. Erik Kastner did the HTML/CSS sexiness for it.

For those of you not familiar with the Sunlight projects, they are sites dedicated to increased transparency in the legislative process. This particular site focuses on the Virginia General Assembly. For more information you can read about the Sunlight Foundataion.

Check it out live: Richmond Sunlight

So looking back at my list from 2008, there’s some stuff that’s still ongoing, like the Rotoscope record. Oy veh. One day, I swear.

1. Exercize

Check. Started with InfoEther and we go twice a week to a personal trainer. Oh yeah!

2. Be prepared

Not really something to check off, just more of a mindframe shift. Getting there.

3. Clean out the junk in these boxes I haven’t seen in a year

About half of them are done. The rest are in the storage unit. So clean out the storage unit is what this has become.

4. Expand the Balcony garden

Boy did I ever.

Going to give it a whirl again this summer with some variations upon the plantings and a bit more cyclical to get it all working right. Also, continuing on canning the stuff (Jalapeño Jelly FTW!)

5. Learn to shoot (yes, a weapon)

Slightly untrue, as I’ve know how to shoot a rifle since I was ten. But I went and took a class from a Secret Service instructor via the NRA here in Northern Virginia and have been enjoying going to the range every once in a while. A fun sport for sure!

6. Relax

Fail.

Here’s the list for 2009:

1. Zero the debt (except for college loans)
2. Finish the Rotoscope record. For serious.
3. Get in shape and stay that way
4. Maintain a more positive attitude
5. Read 2 books a month

I know those are nebulous and wimpy but whatever. I’m just happy I survived the last half of 2008.

The second Victoria’s Secret video using Juniper Lane’s songs is up on YouTube. This one features an instrumental of our song, “Take Me Home”, which has also been seen on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight and MTV’s The Hills.

Two of our songs from the album Wake From Yourself are being used in one of the online promos for Victoria’s Secret fashion show. It’s pretty disturbing and awesome to hear “Memento” and “Follow Me” with supermodels talking over them. A guy could get used to this.

Phil Rossi is a long time friend of mine who I’ve jammed with over the years in his outfit, The Bad Habit. He did a podcast novel last year entitled “Crescent” that did really well and you can still get for free from iTunes. Dark Sci-fi theme.

He’s started a new one, and I’m helping him score it. Eventually, when it’s all done, I’ll collect the pieces and put it out as a record. Here’s a snippet from the first episode that we’re working on right now:

Eden Appears (mp3, 3.6MB)

More to come!

Freddy and I produced a track for Honor By August for the Alternative Addiction sponsored compilation entitled An Alternative Christmas. We did all the recording in the studio in my apartment and it was mastered by Dave Harris at Studio B Mastering in Charlotte.

You can hear the song on the Borealis Studios myspace page.

For those of you who may not know, I acquired a kitten at the farm that we frequent a little after Leanne passed away. I’ve finally gotten photos of Smokey and the sibling cat, Bandit, up on Flickr.

Smokey and the Bandit

As Tom Bridge says, “The Cuteness… it burrrrns.”

NSA Eavesdropped on Americans, Journalists in Baghdad | Two whistleblowers came forward to allege that “it was common practice at the NSA facility [in the Green Zone] to not only record the phone conversations of ordinary Americans with no connection to terrorism, but to single out the exchanges that were somehow novel or salacious for sharing, ridicule, and general discussion.” Your tax dollars at work. How long until this happens domestically? My money is on that it already does happen here.

The Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition | Really, truly, one of the best new bands I’ve seen since MuteMath. From Melbourne, Australia. As Tom Bridge said in a conversation with me, “It has a great urgency to it. I MUST ROCK. IT CANNOT WAIT. ROCK!”

Honey Can Help Fight Sinusitis | Well, certain types, and it’s limited to petri dish testing. It goes to show that Mother Nature really makes the best medicine.

The Cab Ride I’ll Never Forget | Just a great feel-good story about an old lady and a cab driver. It’s the little things we do that make a difference.

Mad Men Illustrated | A great group of images of illustrated scenes from Mad Men. Well done art! (via .sara)

Consumers not waiting for Automakers to Install Plug-in on Hybrids | This shows the obstinance of Detroit on getting with the program. When people are moding hteir cars so much in order to increase mileage, it might be something to look into…

No-Tech Hacking | Security is often focused on firewalls and digital encryption and randomized passwords. This is a great look at how non-technical issues can often do you in, how situational awareness is paramount, and how you car, dress and haircut can tell someone more about you than you care to let on. (Defcon talk by Johnny Long)

Typography for Lawyers | Or other clients who just don’t seem to get it.

Grocery Items rise 10.5% from Last Year | Maybe food will be the next hot market. Of course, most of these things aren’t storeable, and these hikes all seem to be related to costs of inputs on the agricultural end as well as transportation costs.

The Palins’ un-American Activities | Since Sarah Palin is pounding so hard on Sen. Obama regarding his weak link connection to Bill Ayers, Salon’s David Talbot hits back with some great points. If you read some of the statements of the founder of the Alaska Independence Party, of which her husband was an active member for years, you’d be a bit shocked: “My government is my worst enemy. I’m going to fight them with any means at hand.” So who’s the anti-government terrorist now?

McCain Loses His Head | Conservative commentator George Will calls out and rips McCain on his recent campaign activities calling him disconnected.

Global Electoral College | The Economist combines polls taken worldwide to see who would be President if the world could vote. It’s a decidedly blue map.

Ciny McCain Says Obama Runing ‘Dirtiest Campaign’ Ever | Yeah. I’m not sure what planet the Senator’s wife is living on, but I have three words: Pot. Kettle. Black.

‘Perfect Storm’ Could Give Dems ‘Magic 60’ in Senate | I’m not sure this would be good, as I think consensus building generally makes for better long term laws. However, after the disasterous years of the Republican Control of the White House and Capitol Hill, we’ve got a lot of crap to undo.

Walking a Fine Line | McCain did come out and try to push this back on Friday, but they should never have let it get this far out of control.

So we have McCain today getting his crowd riled up asking who Barack Obama is and then apparently giving a wink and a nod when one member of the crowd screams out “terrorist.”

And later we have Sarah Palin with the same mob racket, getting members of the crowd to yell out “kill him”, though it’s not clear whether the call for murder was for Bill Ayers or Barack Obama. It didn’t seem to matter.

These are dangerous and sick people, McCain and Palin. Whatever it takes. Stop at nothing.

Garabage Pail Kid version of Sarah Palin | This is just funny. I’d actually like to see someone do all four candidates up this way.

Make Believe Maverick | A relatively biased (especially in the tone of the writer) view of McCain. Strip away the hype and take it for the facts and it’s pretty interesting in regards to the underpinnings of McCain.

Berlusconi Says Leaders May Close World’s Markets | The Italian Prime Minister would like to suspend the markets for a short time in order to “rewrite the rules of international finance.” Well, the problem I see is that you have debt. And not only people but governments living excessively outside their means. Fiat currencies not backed by gold and you basically have a bunch of paper that people say has a certain value. When that paper gets traded at 20 times its value, it’s only a matter of time until that becomes untenable. And it is going to correct. If they keep the markets from sinking further in number, they do it in actuality through inflation. Just look at Zimbabwe, Argentina, etc. to see where this could end up for us.

AIG Draws Fire for Executives’ $440,000 Post-Bailout Retreat at Posh California Resort | Shock. Amazement. Bewilderment. The government bails you out because you screwed up and what do you do? Fix it? NO. You go on a fscking resort and pay for $6 diet cokes on the company (now taxpayer) dime. These people should have their personal assets taken from them to pay back the 85 billion (or part of it) and get a pittance of a salary to fix it. Or they can just quit. Or they can go to jail. I like door number three myself. “Executive Douchebag? meet Bubba. He likes men.”

Jim Cramer: Get Out of the Market | Jim Cramer recommends that people get the heck out of the market if you plan on using that money in the next five years. We heard something similar from our USAA advisers about 6 months ago when this all started to rumble with the sub-prime debacle. But this is going mainstream. Will this affect a sell-off of large proportions?

Settlement Day Approaches For Derivatives | Derivatives are really the 800 lb. Gorilla in the corner that everyone’s been ignoring. If these things go, get ready for fun.

Is This A Replay of 1929? | No. And that’s a relief. Newsweek’s Robert J. Samuelson talks about the differences and similarities between now and the Great Depression. Also see The End of Prosperity, Time’s look at similar concerns.

Worst Case Scenario Is Approaching Rapidly | The European Union is in chaos as certain countries jump out of step to secure their own domestic banking accounts.

As the bailout has passed the Senate and the House, it appears to be the law of the land. $700,000,000,000.00 dollars. That’s a lot of zeros. “700 Billion” doesn’t look as bad as $700,000,000,000.00 does it? It seems that everyone is now lining up for money because of the credit crisis. California is asking for $7 Billion ($673B left) to “pay for teachers salaries, nursing homes, law enforcement and ever other state-funded service” [emphasis mine].

Two quotes are applicable:

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)

“The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic destroyed.”
– Abraham Lincoln, November 21, 1864, a letter to William F. Elkins

Telling indeed.

And now to read about others blaming religion for making them financially insolvent due to "Prosperity theology". The thought “that God would ‘make a way’ for poor people to enjoy the better things in life” is more than a little disconcerting. The way is, and always has been, work. There are no entitlements. You deserver absolutely nothing in life. And some of the things that are most important to you will be suddenly and mercilessly taken away from you. God didn’t want you to get a house. God didn’t want your loved one to die. Let me be perfectly clear in my belief on this:

God doesn’t act.

He cares, okay. Fine. I’ll go with that. But if God’s hand is at work everywhere, then free will cannot exist. And saying “it’s God’s way” is another means for one to absolve themselves of responsibility for the actions that the take on a daily basis.

Take responsibility for yourself. Live within your means. Strive to improve your situation. Don’t give up on life. Don’t expect a handout. And don’t blame God for your problems.

People are to blame.

Ask Umbra Gets Noticed by the New York Times | My friend, Jennifer Prediger, gets props from the NY Times about her new “Ask Umbra” featurettes on the environmental site, grist.org. Yay!

Urban Vehicle Camouflage | Someone spent a lot of time to look like a generic fleet vehicle.

What Happened to Muxtape | Sad that the industry couldn’t figure out how to make this work in their favor. Seems they keep stepping on anything that would help them sell music.

Creating a Magical Rainbow Color Flame in Photoshop | Veerle comes through again with an amazing tutorial showing how to create a very nice effect in Photoshop.

And finally, a funny image from Amy Hoy:

I was working on my Friday links article and I saw that way too many of them were specific to the Bailout and all things financial, so here they are in a seperate post:

Derivatives are the Next Big Problem | $55 trillion dollars in credit swaps is where a lot of growth happened, however, it wasn’t proper growth. So now, we’re stuck with a big problem. No bailout can fix this stuff. It just has to adjust.

Bank Limits Fund Access by Colleges | Wachovia has limited about 1,000 colleges access to their $9.3 billion i assets held by the bank. When credit disappears, bad things happen.

BB&T President Tells Congress to Rethink the Plan | John Allison, President and CEO of BB&T, basically called out Congress asking why there’s a bailout for people who were simply irresponsible and reckless and calls out many of the points that are just plain dumb. Here’s the original PDF scan

Treasury Admits No Basis to $700B Figure | From the article: “It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

There is no Crisis | A commentary calling out what it sees as a blatant lie of the Bush administration to help their friends on their last days in office.

A Moral Hazard for the Housing Bailout | How do you sot out those who really got screwed versus those who wanted to play the market and got caught with their pants down (but were knowledgeable about the risk)? You cannot privatize profit and socialize debt and risk. It just doesn’t work that way. We have to let risk-taking financial institutions fail

Bailout as Nigerian Scam Email | This is quality. For those of you who have suffered the Nigerian email scams over the years, this will make you laugh (or cry… you decide).

Wonkette Canned Soup Index | Campbells Soup is the only thing to gain in a day of losses. Bring on the soup lines!

Credit Cards to Implode | UK analyst believes that “a combination of a 10-year steady drip of deteriorating personal finances and a tidal wave… brought on by the mortgage and credit crisis leads us to believe that credit cards are going to implode in the near term.” Yay.

Disclaimer: I’m a Virginia Democrat (aka, I have slight libertarian leanings). This is not meant to be fair or balanced in any way, shape, or form. Just what I’m reading and I like this week. Deal.

“Qui Tacet Consentire Videtur” – He who keeps silent is assumed to give consent. So speak up! Here we go, the political fun I’ve read this week:

The Truth About Sarah Palin | Rolling Stone delivers myth vs fact coverage. Worth the read.

Sexist Treatment of Palin Must End | Campbell Brown rips another one apart with this great op-ed. Fits in nicely with the John Stewart video below.

Let’s Play Wall Street Bailout! | A great excerpt from C-SPAN with a Congresswoman mocking the proceedings by calling it a new game to play and going through some excellent snark.

Worst Self-Inflicted Campaign Move Ever | John McCain’s “suspension” was arguably the dumbest thing anyone has ever done. It said “I can only handle one thing at a time,” and came at the time when his poll numbers were falling like meteors.

McCain’s Bizarre Earmark Obsession | Earmarks are such a tiny part of the budget, and yet McCain can’t stop talking about them. Non-issues since he has no talking points on actual issues.

The website for RubyConf has gone live. I did the design for my friends at InfoEther. I’ll be down in Florida for the event (baring unforeseen circumstances) but will not be talking. I’m not the Ruby programmer you may think me to be. I make pretty pictures for Ruby programmers. And dabble a bit when i have time with archaeopteryx and MaxMSP.

Here’s a bunch of things I’ve seen this last week in regards to the elections.

Palin the Book Banner | This is really somewhat ludicrous in modern society, but fear not dear cultural conservatives! Book banning is alive and well in Palin’s Alaska:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving “full support” to the mayor.

Fact Checking of Palin’s Speech at RNC | Suprise, it’s full of stretches and misrepresentations. But hey, that’s politics right?

Why The Media Should [or Shouldn’t] Apologize | Politico’s satirical response to the Republican machine’s comments on how the media is unfairly attacking Palin.

Daily Show Slapping the Republican Talkers around | Jon Stewart and crew do a great job showing Republican talking heads saying one thing and then completely the opposite about Gov. Palin. Jamie Lynn Spears reason for being pregnant? Her parents are “pinheads”, according to Bill O’Reilly. But not the Palins. Ah hypocrisy.

Palin Never Issues Any Orders to the Alaska Nat’l Guard | Touting her role as Governor and managing the state’s National Guard as part of her “experience” over Sen. Obama, Gov. Palin has never given a single order in her role as commander of that force. Experience indeed.

Palin’s Speech Raises $10M in 24 hours… for Obama | From the site: ”’Sarah Palin’s attacks have rallied our supporters in ways we never expected,’ says Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton. ‘And we fully expect John McCain’s attacks tonight to help us make our grassroots organization even stronger.’”

McCain’s PR Chief Can’t Explain Palin’s Experience | Campbell Brown rails Tucker Bounds on Palin’s experience and gets him all flustered because he won’t answer a simple and direct question. Because he can’t.

I’ve been a bit absent from this blog of late. The summer got very busy between Juniper Lane going into the studio to record 3 new songs and then being selected to open for Coldplay at the Verizon Center. I had a pretty busy August planned, culminating in a trip to Berlin and Vienna with my girlfriend, Leanne, for Amy Hoy’s wedding.

On August 4th, that all changed. It was the day after the Coldplay show and things seemed normal (besides leaving my cell phone at Chris Bonavia’s house after the Coldplay show) until I got an IM from my brother that Leanne’s Dad had called and that they hadn’t heard from her (she called every day to her mom). The police entered her apartment that afternoon and found she had passed (later determined to have been a brain aneurysm). You can read the obituary here.

Things have been pretty much a maelstrom since that point. I have good days and bad days. I still can’t believe that I had finally found someone that just seemed to fit perfectly and then it was gone in a flash. I still don’t know what to say about it, so I’ll just put up roughly what I read at her funeral and the memorial service a week later:

I think most of you know me, but for those that may not, I’m John Athayde——Leanne’s boyfriend. I was hoping to be meeting you all at a rehearsal dinner or something like that. I had conned Leanne into a trip up here in the fall. I think she was afraid of me meeting the parents or something. We were going to visit her friend in Syracuse, then see my cousin in Rochester, and finish it out with a few days in Erie. A good time to ask her parents blessing and all that.

Most everything I’m going to say about Leanne you already know. She was amazing, caring, intelligent, beautiful inside and out. She was my cheerleader, my sounding board, my shopping guide, my confidant, best friend and more.

Her friends had told me that even before we started dating, she thought we were soul mates. It sure felt like that the more I got to know her. She was so positive all the time. The closest thing we had to a disagreement was that she would use up the toilet paper and not change the roll. I didn’t know if she just didn’t know how to change it so I asked her if she needed me to show her how to change it up.

She worked with rescue animals and… Angela was telling me how she had signed up for a cat while they were hanging out one night, forgetting she was allergic to cats. The benefits of reading the email list while drinking wine. But that was Leanne – always thinking of others before herself. The low maintenance girl with the high maintenance dog. The fierce defender of her friends. The amazing cupcake and cookie baker. The lover of history and learning. A shining light for all in her life. A beacon to guide me home. I am sad for all of those who will never know her the way we know her. I am sad for the future generation who would have known her as a mother, aunt, grandmother, and ancestor.

She was a radiant woman who will always be a light for us.

I at least have that the last words I said to her when I dropped her off were “I love you” and I will keep that with me always.

Please consider donating to her memorial fund at Homeward Trails. Leanne was very involved in animal rescue and fostering animals and there’s a place on the top of that page by which you can donate to her fund.

In time I hope to be able to talk about this a bit more eloquently in a public sphere. Please keep her and her family in your prayers.

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Over at Hyphenated People, we’ve been spending the summer cooking up something new: a fixed-price deal. Fun and challenging for us, and affordable for you.

For a flat rate, you can choose either:

• The Inspector. In which we explore and analyze your entire application¹ and deliver to you a fancy report including a written analysis (including callouts and sketches) and suggestions for improvement. Topics considered include application structure, flow, individual screens’ usability and layout, insights about targeted users, and aesthetics (aka “the pretty”).
• The Drive-By Design. In which we explore your application, and thence, with that knowledge, take any single, full page of your choosing and redesign it from the ground up to be more effective. In this case we deliver to you a fully-realized design, original design source files (PSDs) and a written explanation of our recommendations for that page and its situation in the entire application.

Either package is ideal for smaller companies and startups, and anyone who is having a difficult time loosening the purse strings for hiring usability consultants for a long-term project.

There’s no further obligation. Our reports and advice are yours. We will happily make ourselves available for further assistance (availability permitting), but you can implement our suggestions any way you want, and with whomever you want.

That Price, Which is Fixed

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Write us now. You know you want to.

Nota bene: We’re only budgeting the time for a few of these projects this summer. It’d be a clever marketing tactic to make that up and then urge you to contact us now if not sooner, but it’s actually true. This is something we’ll be doing in addition to our normal, larger jobs. We will of course deliver our very best (as we always do), but this is an experiment for us from a business standpoint.

[1] This assumes a fairly typically sized application: similar to or bigger than Basecamp, smaller than Salesforce.

My Dad sent me an op-ed from the New York Times entitled Mr. Bush, Lead or Leave this morning and asked my opinion on it. I agree with a lot of what the author says, but I think that we’re missing the boat entirely on this stuff. People are thinking about this as “how do we replace oil?” The real question they should be asking is “How do I live without oil?”

Not radically different, but if we only look at how to replace oil, we limit the potential of what can happen. Everyone scrambling for a piece of the pie too. “Clean Coal” — which I believe to be the biggest oxymoron since “slightly racist” — sponsored most of the Presidential debates. You know what that got us? Very few questions or discussion about a real energy policy.

Anyway, here’s my reply, in whole, to my father. It was written quickly, not proofread, and is missing links. I’ve tried to add them where appropriate to fill in the context of conversations not shared, but the idea is there. The bold paragraph at the end is the most important thing.

— Begin —

Oh, where do I begin?! :)

deeep breath

Basically, even if we found new reserves in US Territory and sucked them dry, that would only account for something like 8 Billion barrels (gotta find where I read that). At 120 million barrels of world consumption a day, that’s a little more than two months supply.

Two months

Those reserves would take years to find and even longer to bring online, and then we don’t have the transportation in place to get most of that to refineries (well, the coastal shelf stuff we do, but not the ANWR). Also, it’s a reserve. Regardless of what you think might be there, it was set aside for a reason. Is Bush’s next element of the energy policy to open Yosemite to geothermal companies and The George Washington Forest to loggers?

It’s basic macroeconomics: The problem is a combination of an increase in demand without an increase in supply. And there really isn’t any more supply. The OPEC guys can’t get it out of the ground fast enough to keep up with China and India’s demand. And we can’t tell them to not develop. Their people see American culture and want to live that way. Problem is, that culture was built on sixty years of cheap oil.

Alternate energy isn’t much better at this point because all of it – every single thing that’s out there today, relies on an underlying fossil fuel economy in order for it’s manufacture, delivery, marketing, etc. Yes we’ve been losing research jobs in alt energy overseas, but that’s as much to blame on bad policy since 1970. All nuclear engineers go to France or China because we’ve not launched a new plant since Three Mile Island. “Nuclear power is great! except… um… put it in HIS backyard” – that’s the problem.

Geothermal is great too. This would work well in the Northern central plains where heating is critical more so than anything else. But how do you tell an out of work auto worker or small family farmer that they need to drop thousands of dollars on a new geothermal heat pump? Only if it’s cheaper than their heating bill from oil. Wave energy looks cool too, and would be quite successful in our area I feel (with the sheer area covered by the massively tidal Chesapeake, it could be quite a boon) and is also working 24-7. But that’s a lot of investment and maintenance (corrosive salt water).

Solar? Cool stuff. We have a massive desert in the southwest, the majority of which is still federally held land. Smack some arrays down there and make a combo solar/wind farm. Or do Algae. Some big Texas oil men are already dumping money into wind to take advantage of the free stuff they get on the plains. Again, manufacture and transportation rely on oil. Photovalactic cells have come a long way, and are still progressing. Same with battery banks. They all have a shelf life as well.

Another issue with solar is cost. In the state of Virginia, I can’t make back my investment because of the way that Dominion power doesn’t really pay you for the power you generate back to the grid. Waldo has an excellent article on this from last year. With energy starting to skyrocket tho, it might become cost effective in the math.

On a smaller scale, you can do what they did at Gaviotas in Columbia. A solar reflector (basically aluminum) heats water and creates a turbine. It’s like a coal fired engine but with the sun. Now that is renewable and not oil dependent (except maybe for milling of pipe, etc). That can also be used as just a water heater for showers and for distilling water.

Ethanol? Corn is such a crappy fuel. We put almost as much into it via petrochemicals (that also pollute the crap out of the Mississippi and turn the Gulf of Mexico into an algae bloom, killing off other species) that it’s a zero gain situation. And with world grain consumption and crop failures up (3 million acres of corn lost from these recent floods) you’re going to have food riots (already happening overseas) and all food prices are going to increase and stay high (see this article about the CEO of Nestle ). We could use switchgrass, but you’ve got farmers paid to raise corn, not switchgrass. Brazil is all ethanol based, and look what sugar production is doing to the Amazon.

That algae based idea would be great if they could get it into production. The return per acre would make the american southwest the algae ethanol king. Heck, Mexico could even be better than us in the Sonora states.

The author, James Howard Kunstler, writes about a lot of these technologies in his book “The Long Emergency”, which, while quite dour, is a potential vision of what we’re up against. I’ve already seen many of the ideas he espoused years ago in main stream media outlets (McMansions are the new ghettos, etc). (See his article in the Washington Post from May.)

I agree that a real President would get up and do a Kennedy-esque speech of energy independence before the next decade is out. Seeing as I don’t foresee Sen. McCain making it through the next decade, that leaves the only logical choice :) But it’s not just energy. It’s about sustainable human settlement patterns. It’s about bringing back victory gardens. It’s about effective mass transit. It’s about tearing down the temples of commerce sitting in seas of asphalt (e.g. malls, strip malls, etc) and building livable, walkable communities. It’s about reverting the way america lives to pre-WWII. It’s about family farming. It’s about sustainable agriculture.

I expect to see replays of the 1970s sooner rather than later, regardless of the direction taken by any President or Congress. We’ve already had rice rationing in some states. It’s like getting prepared for a massive hurricane that will leave you without power, food, or gas for years.

Man. I want a farm.

— End —

So yeah. Um. Discuss?

Here’s what just went up on the HBA blog on MySpace:

Dear friends and fans of HBA:

It is with a heavy heart that I announce my departure from Honor By August. Over the last (almost) two years, I’ve had the time of my life on the road with the guys but it’s come to the point where I cannot give my full attention and energies to furthering the band. I feel that in this critical stage in the band’s development, they need an individual who will be there in full mind and body at every moment. And I sadly am not that person right now in my life.

Some of you know that I’ve been working on my solo project, Rotoscope (www.myspace.com/rotoscope) for many years and also my electronic project, Boboroshi and Kynz (www.myspace.com/boboroshikynz). Both projects have full-length records coming out before the end of the year. I’m also starting a production career with Brian Frederick of Juniper Lane called Borealis Studios.

So I, as my predecessor Joe, will pass the torch to the next person. I will miss every moment on stage and will hold this time close to my heart. I’ll be going away for a while to the studio and performing locally both solo and with Juniper Lane (www.myspace.com/juniperlane). In the words of Bono, it’s “time to go away and dream it all up again…”

I hope to see you in the audience at an HBA show in the future. This time standing next to you as a fan.

Love and Peace -
John Athayde/Kid A

Catch you all on the flip side…