More Signs of Peak Oil
November 10th, 2009
Andrew Sullivan over at The Daily Dish points to some disturbing words coming from an IEA whistleblower who says that Peak Oil is already upon us. Â (Link here.)
Andrew Sullivan over at The Daily Dish points to some disturbing words coming from an IEA whistleblower who says that Peak Oil is already upon us. Â (Link here.)
Elon Musk on Letterman
May 1st, 2009 Remember when I talked about the Tesla Roadster back in Feb of 2008? Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk was on Letterman recently and gave a nice interview (below). Musk made the first of his several fortunes on Zip2 and PayPal before moving on to do the kind of world-changing work that he’s doing now.Simple Uplifting Video
July 8th, 2008 I read about this over at the NYT. I didn’t expect to find it so moving.Become one of the millions of people who are checking out Matt Harding’s moves.
(There’s a good hi-res version on the YouTube. Click the vid screen below two times and find the ‘watch in high quality’ link under the millions+ view counter.)
A Story and a Song
July 7th, 2008
A comedian buddy of mine recently launched a monthly themed storytelling event at Le Cagibi.
The inaugural storytelling theme was “the law” and I got on board both because I’ve been I’ve been buried for a long time in solitary writing and because the topic hit a nerve. The extent to which modern conservative governments are flagrantly breaking the law really upsets me.
I originally wanted to do a bunch of short stories about the scandals that are linked to up above, but time got the better of me. I only managed to bang out one before the June 26th reading.
The event was, I think, a big success. There was some comedy, some drama and some dramedy.
I thought it’d be fun to post up the story that I read that night along with a song that I think works well with the theme.
Hope you like it…
Videotron: Still Sucks…
June 29th, 2008 Over the past week my Videotron connection has been up and down without warning. This particularly sucks because when Videotron goes out, both my home phone and my internet go down at the same time.Here’s what happened when I tried to get in touch with Videotron’s tech support via chat this morning (notice that they have removed the timestamp from their previous chat interface).
Posted in Personal |
Comments (0) »
Film Optioned!
June 26th, 2008
I haven’t spoken about it very much here because there was never much to say, but after many reversals, headaches and false-starts I finally optioned my first film script!
To make a long story short, Jeanne and I and a producer friend sat down a couple of years ago and banged out a detailed 50-page treatment for a PG horror film aimed at tweens. (Note to aspiring filmmakers: leave producers out of the equation until you have a script-in-hand.) I then went away and wrote the full script.
Jeanne and I allowed things to proceed, trusting that our contributions and interests would be respected without much more than a loosely drafted written-by-us agreement. (This was, obviously, also a mistake.)
Anyhow after several months, meetings and rounds with entertainment lawyers, we finally have a signed agreement and cash in hand! I’m not sure if the film will ever get made and what state it will be in if/when it finally does hit the screens, but it’s good to know that this chapter of our lives is finally closed.
Posted in Writing |
Comments (4) »
Shut Down the Tar Sands
April 30th, 2008
Posted in Environment |
Comments (1) »
50 Tons of Terror
April 25th, 2008 You may have spotted me getting beat up by John Cleese in a Just For Laughs gala, you may have noticed me sitting one over from the late-great Heath Ledger in I’m Not There, but I’ve just received word that I will be playing my biggest smallest role ever in the upcoming Black Flag Pictures hilariously B-movie flavoured film, Crawler. (I think I’m going to be the bull dozer deliveryman… )The Black Flag site is here and the teaser trailer is below…
Let’s hear it for acting!
Posted in Performing |
Comments (0) »
More Horrible News for the Environment
April 24th, 2008
Terrible news out of B.C. yesterday as the CBC reports that yet another ‘positive’ climate change feedback loop has been activated, accelerating the Earth’s rush towards full-blown climate crisis.
Warmer weather has allowed pine beetle populations to spread far and wide across British Columbia’s Central Interior region, turning a once effective forest-based carbon sink into a carbon smokestack. The article quotes estimates that the beetle will wipe out 80% of the pine forest in the next five years. And what does that mean?…
Canadian Forest Service scientist Werner Kurz estimates the beetle’s devastation will release almost a billion megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by 2020. That’s equivalent to about five years of emissions from Canada’s transportation sector, said Kurz.
What’s it going to take to start moving information like this from the science page to the front page? (More info here.)
Posted in Environment |
Comments (2) »
Not Technically My First Book…
April 23rd, 2008
I was recently reminded that the big book draft that darkened my doorway on Friday isn’t technically my first book… That dubious honour belongs to the soporific 8000 Series Components Manual. (Click the link for a free copy!)
When I graduated with a computer engineering degree from the Royal Military University in 1996 I knew a few things: the Canadian military was stuck in a massive rut and I wanted to go somewhere to combine my green writing and technology skills.
My first step down the writing/tech path was to become the Junior Technical Writer at Tundra Semiconductor Corporation. The dot-com boom was on and considering the mundaneness of the things we got into from day-to-day, they were fairly exciting times. I was young, flush with cash, given stock options and an expense account. The experience financed my move to Montreal and the purchase of the duplex that I’m happily ensconced in at this very moment.
One of my first jobs at Tundra was to touch up the 8000 Series manual right before they decided to discontinue that product line forever. Part of that job entailed drawing up a couple of schematics. As a non-artist, non-Adobe Illustrator guy, I remember being particularly proud when I finally figured out how to make the correct curves on a tricky little 28-pin SOIC package. (And no, I no longer have any idea what an SOIC package is…)
Hopefully the success of my second book will surpass that of my first…
Posted in Writing |
Comments (0) »
My Book Has A Body!
April 19th, 2008 I haven’t really spoken about it here, but I spent much of last year and the beginning of this year writing my first novel. So far the book-writing process has been both highly satisfying and deeply maddening. Luckily the highs have outnumbered the lows. And one of those highs came on Friday via the mail.For all of its life so far the book that I’ve been writing has only existed in my head and on the computer screen. No one else (including my best buddy life-partner) has seen or read a word of it… Until now. [Cue the dramatic music.]
Late last night after piloting our new electric scooter through the mean streets of Montreal, Jeanne and I laid eyes on the first-ever printed pages of The Virus Makers.
I finished the first draft of this Young Adult novel at the end of March and my soccer-loving, boy-fathering, cousin-in-law Peter Coles kindly offered to print it up for me. Pete’s the VP of Sales and Marketing at Arcprint (and imaging) and it seemed appropriate that the book be birthed back in Vancouver where I first started writing it in the spring of 2006.
I’ll speak more about the book in, I’m sure, way too many subsequent posts, but for now I just want to fête the newly corporeal block of text that is the first draft of The Virus Makers!
Boop Oop a Damn Fine Animation
April 10th, 2008 I’m going to be doing some writing today for King Features’ Betty Boop franchise and, like the good writer-boy that I am, I spent some time last night researching the brand. I loved what I found.Betty Boop started out her cartoon life as a dog-like creation of Max Fleischer (an animation legend who helped bring Popeye, Superman and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to life).
Boop first appeared in the early 1930s sporting a decidedly 1920s style — it was all about the saucy little flapper dress, jazz beats and wry winks to sexily intoxicated good times. Eventually she was toned down (yet another black mark on the morality police) and her popularity waned.
One thing that makes Betty Boop’s earlier cartoons so great was that, unlike other movie-makers at the time, Max Fleischer wasn’t afraid to work with black musicians.
Check out the incredible1933 Betty Boop cartoon Snow White below (not to be confused with the Disney version that came out four years later: You can read Time’s 1937 review of that movie here).
Fleischer’s inspired version of Snow White features an incredible section with Koko the Clown dancing in a skeletal underworld. Koko was voiced by none other than Cab Calloway doing an amazing version of St. James Infirmary Blues…
(This film was chosen for preservation by the U.S. Library of Congress in the National Film Registry in 1994.)
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
April 8th, 2008 Up to this point, this site has been a sort of clearinghouse for my random fascinations. It helped me get a handle on blogging, RSS, using Wordpress etc. It allowed me to rant at Videotron. And now things are going to change a bit.Over the next little while I’ll be modifying the look-and-feel of the site as well as its focus. The site (now simply jwhiting at jwhiting.com) will serve as my professional face-to-the world.
Although I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea, in order to advance a big-ish project that’s coming down the pipe I have to get into the business of self-promotion. Expect some more talk about my writing and what I’m up to and less about my gift wishes and what I’m laughing at. Also expect the site to look a bit wonky and going up and down before everything gets back on track.
Thanks.
Jason
Updated Al Gore Talk
April 8th, 2008 Al Gore updated his talk for TED. See it below.
Posted in Environment |
Comments (0) »
Al Gore Launches Massive Ad Campaign
March 31st, 2008 Al Gore is set to unveil a three-year, $300 million climate change campaign Wednesday that is one of the most ambitious and costly public advocacy campaigns in U.S. history.What I like about this story is where the money comes from. Including this snip:
While Gore declined to quantify his contribution to the effort, he has devoted all his proceeds from the Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” the best-selling companion book, his salary from the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers and several international prizes, such as the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which add up to more than a $2.7 million.
Read more here and see the video below.
Posted in Environment |
Comments (0) »
Want: Crayon Physics Deluxe
March 20th, 2008
Posted in F'n Cute |
Comments (0) »
Conan Casts the Eliot Spitzer Movie
March 15th, 2008Conan O’Brien casts his fake made-for-TV movie about the Eliot Spitzer scandal. Some really priceless choices in there (Bea Arthur’s is my fav. Knowing a bit about her temperament, she’ll probably sh*t a kitten.)
Architecture’s Response to the Global Oil Crisis
March 2nd, 2008
Last night Montreal hosted ‘Nuit Blanche‘ a sort all-night winter party that wraps up the Montreal High-Lights Festival. The ‘festival’ itself is really just a glossed-up bundle of disjointed cultural events that would be going on festival or no festival, but it still manages to turn into a pretty good exercise in city-wide cohesion. When you’ve got stuff going on all night, free shuttle buses, communal breakfasts and disco dancing at City Hall, you’re obviously heading in the right direction.
Since I’m interested in the future, the environment, oil and the end times, I decided to head down to the Canadian Centre for Architecture to check out a program that they were offering that included DJs, an outdoor bar made of ice and exibits on the looming global oil problems and a look back at the energy crisis of 1973. It was pretty fun to wander around the exhibit at two in the morning reading about a series of experiments in off-the-grid living that took place in the late 70s.
I’d never heard about the “New Alchemy Institute“, for example, who from 1971 to 1991 conducted a series of experiments whose aim was to discover new sustainable living techniques. They used fish and rabbits and worms. A quote from New Alchemy co-founder John Todd:
We asked ourselves the question: Is it possible to grow the food needs of a small group of people in a small space without harming the environment and without enormous recourse to external sources of energy and material? Could we design a system that is self-sustainable?
We’ve been in trouble before when it comes to expensive energy and the effects hit the Western world hard and fast. We started to put our heads together to work towards practical solutions and then we totally stepped on our dicks, forgot our lessons and were suddenly building McMansions to house our boxy SUVs. A truly huge wtf? moment in human history.
You can catch the “1973: Sorry, Out of Gas — Architecture’s Response to the Global Oil Crisis” exhibit in Montreal until April 20th.
An unprecedented exploration of the architectural experimentation following the 1973 oil crisis, when the value of oil increased exponentially and triggered economic, political, and social upheaval across the world. Sparked by the combination of reduced oil production and drastically increased prices, the oil crisis marked the end of a period of constant growth in Western countries following the Second World War. Along with social and economic adjustments came the understanding that unlimited development based on unrestricted oil at low prices was no longer feasible. Taking its title from familiar signs at gas stations throughout North America during those years, 1973: Sorry, Out of Gas features over 350 objects including architectural drawings, photographs, books and pamphlets, archival television footage, and historical artefacts to map the global response to the shortage and its relevance to architecture today.
Svalbard Global Seed Vault
February 26th, 2008
The future is now.
The New York Times has an excellent piece up about:
[the world’s] first secure, deep-frozen repository for backup supplies of seeds from hundreds of thousands of plant varieties that underpin agriculture
I know I’m a sucker for apocalyptic end-times talk but you’ve got to admire human ingenuity when we’re doing stuff like this.
The new repository is intended to be an insurance policy for individual countries and also for humanity more generally, should larger-scale disaster strike (anything from pestilence to an asteroid impact).
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault’s official site is here.
Wind Turbine Failure
February 26th, 2008 I was in Denmark recently and fell head-over-heels in love with the tiny country of 5 million people that seem to be living in the future in almost every way possible.One of the things you notice as you drive around the Danish countryside is the awesome amount of wind turbines everywhere. I learned that because Denmark took Kyoto seriously, they became a world leader in this type of technology and that more than 20% of their electrical grid is now supplied by wind power (from turbines that are largely owned by small groups, that reap the monetary rewards that come from limitless “free” energy).
The turbines are programmed to keep rotating in low wind (to prevent lock-up) and to lock-down during big windstorms. Here’s what happens when the locking mechanism fails:
