Your own Petition!

PetitionOnline.com is a free service that sets up an online petition for you. It seems very professional and unobtrusive. I recently signed one of their petitions, and I had no idea it wasn't developed by the author until I recieved PetitionOnline's email confirming my 'signature.' They handle petitions relating to the death penalty, keeping Manny in Boston, and the Grateful Dead. They claim over 33 million signatures have been collected. This could be a useful organizing and activism tool.

Sustainable Communities Network

The Sustainable Communities Network is a website "Linking citizens to resources and to one another to create healthy, vital, sustainable communities." SCN has guides to help plan a "Sustainable Event""Community Action" etc.

Recently I wrote about PostSecret, a favorite site of mine. If you are looking for an intersting Christmas gift, the new PostSecret Book was Released today.

Free Concert Downloads

The NPR live Concert Series offers free downloads of concerts by Bloc Party, Bright Eyes, White Stripes and many others. I am listening to Bloc Party in DC right now, sounds pretty good... enjoy!

Americans: Greed, materialism, poverty and justice biggest crisis, not gay marriage...

According to a recent Zogby poll in Yes! magazine, greed, materialism, poverty and justice are the moral issues that concern most Americans; The exact question was...
"What is the most urgent moral crisis facing the U.S.?"
Greed and Materialism 33%
Poverty and Economic Justice 31%
Abortion 16%
Gay Marriage 12%
Gives one hope (for at least 72% of us), and contradicts the spin after the 2004 election, claiming that gay marriage and abortion were the moral issues of greatest concern to voters.

Procession of the Species short video

Every year we have a parade in celebration of nature and community called the Procession of the Species. It started here in Olympia and had become by far the largest celebration in town, about 10,000 participants and 20,000 spectators. A wonderful and community building event, it has spread to about fifty other communities around the world. I shot this in 2004.

The Universe is Conspiring...

...to make your life BETTER. This concept is sometimes known as Pronoia (the opposite of Paranoia) a term floating around since the sixties, and the title of Rob Brezny's (Free Will Astrology) new book.
"Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings" is the elongated title of Free Will Astrology's Rob Brezsny new book. It has been compared to Be Here Now (written by Ram Das over thirty years ago). Brezsny is attempting to counteract cynicism and apocalyptical fantasies with "pronoia."
I am still reading this (as well as a dozen other books as per usual), here is my favorite quote at the moment from the book (but actually stated by Robert Anton Wilson) - "You should view the world as a conspiracyrun by a very close-knit group of nearly omnipotent people, and you should think of those people as yourself and your friends."
You can listen to Rob discuss Pronoia on the RU Sirius show here.
Some items from Rob's list of actions to build your pronoia;
6. Brag about yourself nonstop for 10 minutes. Record it so you can listen back to it later.
7. Perform a senseless act of altruism, for instance by giving an anonymous gift or providing some beauty or healing to a person who cannot do you any favors in return.
10. Build an altar devoted to beauty, truth, and love in one of the ugliest places you know.
12. Compose and perform a ceremony in which you get married to yourself.

Share a Secret

Out of the Fog is supposed to focus on the positive. PostSecret is amazing, but I don't know if it is truly positive - give me your feedback. People mail in (like real snailmail) postcards with a secret written on them. Soul-bearing comments, some impressive artwork, and even stories to go along with some of them. And it is updated regularly. Becoming one of the top blogs. LinkLink to the new PostSecret book.
I am about to post another movie, and I plan to continue posting videos every two weeks or so. However, the focus has definitely moved to the printed word, and I am embracing that. I am working on a treatise about the evolution of my appreciation of the written word, that I will post the highlights soon.

Victory!? House defeats "Reverse Robin Hood!"

I don't know if our pictures helped, but this criminal budget was defeated Thursday night 224 to 209. Passage of the budget has grown increasingly imperative to a leadership that has been rocked by scandal and is on the verge of losing control of its rank and file. House GOP leaders last week jettisoned one of President Bush's top priorities -- opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling -- but that was not enough to secure passage of the bill. Moderates were still objecting to a provision that allows states to impose new costs on Medicaid beneficiaries, squeezes student lenders, cuts federal child support enforcement and pares farm supports. The unexpected setback marked the first time the final version of a major spending bill was rejected by the House in a decade.Link
UPDATE in the early hours of the morning, Republicans in the House pushed through a revised budget bill with over $50 billion in cuts to services ordinary folks depend on. The final tally was a heatbreaking 217 to 215. However, thanks to calls, letters to congress, letters to the editor, "Speak Out" events, and pictures, the bill is significantly better than it could've been. Drilling in the Arctic Natural Wildlife Refuge was pulled out of the bill. Cuts in food stamps and Medicaid have been reduced.

Photos against 'Reverse Robin Hood' Budget

Hundreds of people have already submitted their pictures for MoveOn's "Face America" photo petition—calling on Congress to literally look these people in the eye and do the right thing. Email your picture to faces@moveon.org
Link to photos

Developing world $100 Laptop - Video Update

Here are pics of the laptop you have been hearing so much about. More important things to be working on I suppose (food, shelter, water, enviromental protection), but seems like it could be good thing for some...And check out the hand crank! - Update: Here is video of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Unveiling the $100 Laptop Prototype. Link

The Most amazing Music Site - updated

I am really shallow. All day I planned on putting up a post about all the wonderful things that happened today - The AWR being saved from the Republicans, 7000 churches, schools and homes showing the anti-Walmart movie next week etc. But I didn't get around to it. But when I re-discovered the Pandora site, and found out that it is now FREE, I just had to let you know! "What is Pandora?" you ask...created by the Music Genome Project On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever. Put in a favorite artist or song, and it will create a "station" of similar music for you, it may not seem like much, but try it and you will be amazed, a lot of people put a ton of work into this. UPDATE; I have been playing with this site, and here is how to help Pandora Read Your Mind better...First, for each song played click on it and rate it (a menu will pop up when you click, you can also add the song to your 'favorites' list, etc.). Second, instead of choosing an artist, you may want to enter a favorite song by that artist, so you get music that is similar to the song you like instead of maybe your least favorite cuts. Third, if you don't want to spend the $36 to buy a subscription, or want to check it out first, choose the free option with 'commercials' - there are no commercials - maybe eventually they will start adding them, but not yet. Fourth, you can click on "guide us" and add another song or artist to your station(s) to help fine tune the selections you hear. Fifth, let Pandora know how well they are matching your song or artist. I emailed them about the band Unicorn - the music was bit off and their choices by the band were suspect (all my other stations - Run D.M.C., Lover I don't have to Love, This Modern Love, Tim Buckley etc. are amazing), and I got an email back in TWO MINUTES - not a generic email either - but a thought out response with a history of what Unicorn music they had tested! Amazing - enjoy!Link

Power of Positive Thinking

Those of you who have been around may remember The Secret Life of Plants. This page covers an experiment on this influence of positive and negative thinking on the well-being of plants... the one receiving negative thoughts died the first day...Link

Auto-play is OFF - Sorry about that!

One problem with the site that I am hosting these videos with is that their code comes embedded with auto-play. It was really enoying some of you (as you let me know) having two videos auto-start, and to hear me and Compash Man start blabbering everytime you visited. I wrote the site about it, and they didn't know how to fix it, but I just took a look at the code, and it is a really simple fix. I just changed the auto-play settings from True to False. So hopefully you are not hearing me right now (atleast until you joyously hit the play button when YOU are ready to watch the video)

Do you want to become a Super Hero?

My website See The Way, is down while I transfer it to a new server. In the meantime I am going to post one of the short videos from the site.
One fine spring day, I was at a stop sign, and a father and a son went by in a BMW convertable, one dressed as Batman, the other as Robin. And then a minute later a large group on bicycles went by in capes... It was spring, these were not Halloween costumes. I had to figure out what was going on.
The BMW ended up being a coincidence, but the bikers were on a mission, a mission to save the world, or at least make it a better place...

Adding Video to Your Blog...

Today’s post is for fellow bloggers that are, or are considering putting video on their blog. When I started about a year ago, I searched for other video blogs, and could find none (that doesn’t mean there weren’t any, but if there were, I couldn’t find them). Now they are becoming more common. The obvious questions are: ‘is it worth it?’ and ‘what are the advantages?’

When I started, I was attempting to put up a video every week or so. At that time I didn’t track the traffic to my blog, so I have no idea if videos had any impact. Now that I do, I wanted to put up another video installment, and see if it impacted my traffic. I hadn't posted a video in months, so I just came home the night before last and threw one together. I usually have 20-100 visitors a day. The two days previous to the video post, I had 33 and 30 hits, on the day that I posted I had 27. This is far, far from a scientific study, but it certainly didn’t give any obvious evidence that posting video will result in greater traffic to your blog.

So, what is the amount effort and resources required to include video? When I started I had was hosting a site with Dreamhost, so I just put my videos on their server, and imbedded streaming video in the posts. I can’t say it was painless, but it worked pretty well. I am in the middle of moving this site to another (and smaller) account, so it didn’t make sense to put the videos on the Dreamhost server. I looked around for other (ideally free, or at least cheap) places to host my videos. There are a couple new companies popping up to assist with video blogging. I checked out a couple of them, and they weren’t really up and running, and were so limiting as to not be worth it anyways. So I uploaded my video to the Internet Archives, but I couldn’t get it to work properly on their site. I had an account at Revver, the new video site, that shares the add revenue generated by your video with you. It seems like a cool site, and they are open to you using your video how and wherever you want, but you do end up with a still ad at the end of your video (you can control what kind of ad). So I uploaded my video to them. Pretty painless, drag and drop, with there up-loader. It took about a day for them to approve it and all, which is less than ideal. But once it was up, I just embedded the code (they provide) in my post and everything ran smooth.
A bit of a hassle, and maybe no more traffic, are there any advantages? Sometimes. For most posts, the ideal for your readers is to have clear, concise text, they can glance at, and pursue if they are so inclined. A video requires more of a commitment from your readers. Sometimes however, to get the full emotional impact of what you are conveying, or to clearly illustrate something, there is nothing like video.

In conclusion, video has its place, but don't expect too much from its impact.
If you want to see the latest video mentioned above, it is in the post below.

Main points;
*It is constantly getting easier to upload video to your blog
*You no longer have to host your own video
*I have no evidence of increased traffic due to video
*But it does have its place, and a power that text can’t transmit
*It is getting relatively common, so the ‘newness’ factor is fading

Halloween and the Meaning of Life - Video!

I came home from a smokey bar last night (I don't go to bars much, usually just when friend's bands are playing - and I don't like cig smoke), and recorded this. Be forgiving, my eyes are a bit bleary, my voice a bit smokey, but hey it's 2 a.m. Let me know what you think of what I have to say...

Video returneth...

Supposedly this is a Video Blog, but I haven't put up a video in months, I shot one last night, and am anxious to put it up. But I am letting my hosting go, so I have been looking for an alternative host, and it has been a hassle...hopefully soon it will be worked out...stay posted.

You are home to 200 species.

I read in today's Independent(UK) that about 200 species live on each of our bodies...including 80 in the mouth alone...

But that is to belie the sheer industry of the microbial entrepreneurs that inhabit our beings. The total number of bacteria excreted by the body every day ranges from 100 billion to 100 trillion. Every square centimetre of human bowel is home to around 10 billion microbes. Some 10 million organisms occupy every square centimetre of flesh. The most densely populated areas of the human body are the teeth, throat and alimentary tract, where the concentrations are increased by a thousand compared to bare skin. But while such figures seem huge, it has been calculated that the amount of bacteria on the skin of the average human would be the same size as a pea. That is to say nothing of the common parasites found on the human body. The follicle mite, found on every individual, spends its days harmlessly munching dead skin cells. Which is less than can be said for Naegleria fowleri, an amoeba that invades the brain and multiplies until the host drops dead.

A victory for the trees! (and therefore all of us)

This is a David-and-Goliath story of a community fighting to regain control from international corporations and the world's powerful elite. It's a story about the resurgence of sustainability... The day I arrived on Haida Gwaii, I walked to the blockade site anticipating a melee of angry loggers, violent police and screaming, staunch activists. Instead, I found a group of a dozen people eating cake. A few Haida were whittling art out of wood from the "tree of life," the Western red cedar. Two policeman were standing around drinking tea, and some loggers were staffing the blockade, stopping and identifying cars that were driving up to the line...On April 22, the day after the meeting, the government of British Columbia agreed to protect 40,000 acres of land that the Haida deem important. It is also expected that over time, islanders will see a significant drop in the amount of wood that is logged on the island, greater economic control over the island's operations, a cessation of bear hunting and a move toward eco-forestry.

One Thousand Hits ... R.I.P. ?

See The Way finally limped its way to 1000 visitors this week. The original focus of this blog, it has suffered from a lack of new films, and my focus on other projects. At its height it reached a few hundred hits in a month, not much (this blog gets many times that). If I want to keep it going, I've got to put up $120 for the hosting this week, not likely...

Be Domains for free.

just Be Here Now. Be Free. All .be domains are free for the next two months. .be domains are Begium registrations. I recently regestered a couple of domains with .be, it fits well with some of the ideas I had.. But they were expensive registrations, now you can register .be'sfor free! Site doesn't seem to work well with firefox, works fine with Safari. Be forwarned, that if you want to renew in a year, be ready to pay the full price.Link