According the Urban Environment

Hammering out the Accords at World Environment Day
I got to do something pretty cool over the weekend. My friend Julian hooked me up with an opportunity to be a volunteer facilitator during UN World Environment Day, which really is like 5 days. My job was to sit down at a table of mayors and delegates from all around the world and be a notetaker while they hashed out the wording on 3 specific Accords within a category that most interested them. The table I sat down at was Urban Design and was occupied with Mayor Jason West of New Paltz, New York, Mayor J. Ssebaana Kizito of Kampala, Uganda, Sustainabilty Officer Fred Blood of Austin, Texas (pictured above from right to left) and a fourth guy whose name I didn’t catch. He was from the mayor’s staff of some new city outside of Seattle which I also didn’t catch, though it does begin within a ‘B’ an no, it’s not Bellevue. These are the Accords that our table worked on:

Action 7 Adopt a policy that mandates a green building rating system standard that applies to all new municipal buildings.

Action 8 Adopt urban planning principles and practices that advance higher density, mixed use, walkable, bikeable and disabled-accessible neighborhoods which coordinate land use and transportation with open space systems for recreation and ecological reconstruction.

Action 9 Adopt a policy or implement a program that creates environmentally beneficial jobs in slums and/or low-income neighborhoods.

Our table was pretty much satisified with items 8 and 9, but item 7 needed a little work. Jason West wanted to see green building technologies mandated in municipal building design, not just a standard that a builder could easily choose to ignore. The good mayor from Uganda wondered why we had to limit this to only municipal buldings. Why not all new buildings, he asked? West was all for it. The Austin guy was trying to be a bit of diplomat about it, stating that it wouldn’t fly in Texas. He ultimately agreed to go with the stronger wording knowing that these Accords are only has binding as cities want them to be. Item 7 became this:

Create a regionally appropriate green building standard which mandates the use of green building technologies on all new construction.

Everyone in the room regrouped for a final group sharing moment. A mic was passed around and any mayor or delegate could offer a last word or thought. A whirlwind of accents surrounded the room, from India, Sweden, Peru, Brazil, Nigeria, Uganda, Japan, Cambodia and even somewhere in the deep south. Only one mayor used a translator.

The next day, everyone gathered under the rotunda of City Hall with their golden pens and signed the Accords. The idea is for each city to pick 3 Accords a year to implement with the goal of implementing all 21 by the end of 7 years. The cities with the most Accords implemented will receive gold stars and the thanks from humanity for preserving it. Another great first step in the survival of the human species.

UN World Environment Day

World Environment Day is in full effect here in SF. It’s a weird mix of private and corporate dollars funding a United Nations sponsored event with 80+ mayors from cities all around the world. All I know is I spent 5 hours last night in a big ass building that had free food, drinks, music, art, friendly smart people and a panel discussion on green urban renewal and social justice. People were abuzz all night and it was like fighting gravity finally trying to leave. I think we’re onto something here.

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BLF: To Serve Man

BLF: To Serve Man
Reason #74 why San Francisco rules. On the 50th anniversary of the existence of McDonald’s, the Billboard Liberation Front unwrapped a little birthday present across the street from a franchise in the Haight. A billboard graphic was revealed of a pudgy Ronald and slovenly alien created by Ron English whose work was featured in the brilliant movie Super Size Me. Soon after the unveiling of the billboard and accompanying mechanized Ronald McDonald feeding a Big Mac into a grotesque figure, a couple dozen clowns dressed as Ronald as well as a few Hamburglers showed up to pay their respects to the piece. The phrase To Serve Man comes from a disturbing Twilight Zone episode. You just don’t see this kinda shit in Tulsa, and that’s a shame cause Tulsa really needs it. Laughing Squid and SFist has a complete rundown of the craziness.

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Webzine 2005 is on!

Webzine 2005

It’s offficial. Webzine 2005 is back! After four years, I’ve become reinspired. It was clinched at SXSW this year after running into about a dozen Webzine alumni telling me about how their lives found new purpose after Webzine. New love, new fortunes, new reasons to live all thanks to Webzine. Michael Moore ranted to a room of 50 zinesters in 2001 and now look at him!? OK, so maybe that’s going a bit far, though there’s generally no doubt that previous years’ events left people really happy that the web wasn’t simply a shopping mall.

This year, Webzine will happen over a weekend, September 24 and 25 at the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco. 2 days of inspiring panelists, creative workshops and shmoozy opportunities will guarantee that everyone will walk away armed to answer their personal call to action. Webzine is a collaborative effort between interested independent publishers, activisits, artists and slackers with too much time. If this describes YOU, help us out dammit!

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Swim, Peddle, Run Tim!

Tim in trainingMy good friend Tim has embarked upon a life changing event to well, help save lives after a family friend of his passed away from Lymphoma. He’s running a triathalon this weekend, just like every weekend. To him that’s like going for a stroll, doing the backstroke and peddling a few times. Actually, it’s INSANE. He’s been training for the past 6 months, it’s a major life achievement. Most people never do a uniathalon much less a triathalon. And I can’t think of a more appropriately nice, caring, giving and INSANE person to do it. That’s my way of saying I’m too much of a loser to take on such insanity, which is my burden. In all seriousness, what Tim is doing is incredible and he deserves big ups and support. He’s still looking to close the fundraising gap, 73% of the way there as of now. If you can give, any amount would help. All the details are right here.

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Marla Showed Us Another World is Possible

Marla RuzickaI never knew Marla Ruzicka. Reading about the incredible things she’s accomplished in her short 28 years on this planet has to move even the most jaded anti-warrior and war supporter alike. Marla committed her life to bringing some semblance of justice to those civilian causalities (“collateral damage”) caught in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Doing the job our government refuses to, she went to Iraq going door-to-door to count, take names and hear people’s stories of loss. Armed with this information, she went to Washington and lobbied for repatriations for those civilians. It’s with sad irony that Marla was killed yesterday by a suicide bomb on the road out of Baghdad. She’s a NorCal native and grew her social justice skills at Global Exchange here in San Francisco. From the things I’ve read, her selflessness is rivaled only by her compassion and commitment to making life a little better for others. The organization she birthed, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), will no doubt continue Marla’s miracle mission of realizing another world is possible.

The Imperial Nature of Western Civility

The Imperial Nature of Western Civility
I admit it. I’ve been slacking lately, letting myself go. I only gargle after every OTHER meal and well, you don’t wanna know what happens when I can’t find the latrine. Lucky for me, I can now print out this full size poster to remind myself how to honor my individual cleanliness. As seen on the bathroom wall of the Rickshaw Stop during a recent League of Pissed Off Voters fundraiser party.

Videos contradict cops at RNC

There’s a piece in today’s NY Times [reg required] that describes how amateur video helped get a few people off who were falsely charged during the RNC protests last year. The real story is how the cops, in at least two cases, completely lied and fabricated evidence.

“We picked him up and we carried him while he squirmed and screamed,” the officer, Matthew Wohl, testified in December. “I had one of his legs because he was kicking and refusing to walk on his own.”

During a recess, the defense had brought new information to the prosecutor. A videotape shot by a documentary filmmaker showed Mr. Kyne agitated but plainly walking under his own power down the library steps, contradicting the vivid account of Officer Wohl, who was nowhere to be seen in the pictures. Nor was the officer seen taking part in the arrests of four other people at the library against whom he signed complaints.

The last bit about the officer not being present to make the arrest doesn’t surprise me. When I was arrested, I was basically assigned an officer to make my arrest. There were so many of us corralled together on the sidewalk, they just peeled us off five at a time and delivered us to the next available officer for processing. For most of us, our arresting officers could not have witnessed (and therefore truthfully testify) about anything that we may or may have not done as they weren’t even present during the alleged infractions. Yay for cheap video cameras and people who aren’t afraid to use them.

Gmapping History & Future



Washington, DC 20050
Originally uploaded by ekai.

The latest example of cool emergent technology is Google Maps rendered with satellite imagery annotated with Flickr notes. Geeks and the geekly inclined are zooming in on neighborhoods where they once lived and are tagging those screen capture images with notes describing historical moments in the geography. Flickr has a group called Memory Maps dedicated to this.

Since I grew up in the DC area, I decided to look around some internationally known locations to see what they look like from the sky. Interesting to note that the White House and the neighboring Old Executive Office Building and Department of Treasury buildings are “sanitized” from the top, for national security reasons I’m sure. Their roofs are represented as blank continuous dull colors with none of the detail you’ll find on other buildings. Some areas, such as the courtyards in the Old Executive, are grossly pixelated. On the other hand, the Pentagon, looks complete with detail. This begs the question, what does it take to get a piece of property obscured from Google’s database? Can I fill out a form and demand that my house be gzapped so no one knows that the grass hasn’t been cut in 3 years or that my meth lab exploded?

As if that wasn’t enough cool, this brilliant individual figured out how to remix Craig’s List housing ads with Google Maps. This is the kind of thing that some bubbleheaded VC would have sunk $30 million into 5 years ago. And now it’s done emergent style with an idea and a little duct tape. Imagine what can happen when there is an open API for all this.