JWhiting.com

Elon Musk on Letterman

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

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

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…

Six Four Two One Short Stories About The Law

Once upon a time a young woman fell in love. The woman’s name was America and she was smart and beautiful and practically virginal. She graduated near the top of her high school class and went away to college to study biology.

America had an easy lyrical laugh and a sprinkling of adorable freckles. Her hair was long and healthy and as golden as the sun-drenched wheat belt that stretched from Siskiyou County in the north all the way to Imperial County in the south in her home state of California.

On the first day of her undergraduate Molecular Embryology class, America met a young man named Vigor. Vigor was smart and strong and practically virginal. Vigor was a high school track-and-field champ and had gone away to college to study agriculture. Vigor was tall and broad shouldered. He had kind eyes. His hair was thick and neat and as dark as the seam of ebony marble that wound through the Cascade Mountain Range in his home state of California.

Vigor and America became lab partners, then study partners, then tennis partners. Eventually Vigor asked America if she would become his life partner as well.

Despite the fact that America and Vigor were raised in large tight-knit families, they were determined that their wedding would not be a slavish imitation of ancestral traditions. The ceremony would, above all else, be a true reflection of their green and matchless love. So even though America had been raised Roman Catholic and although Vigor had grown up Southern Baptist, in the spirit of ecumenical harmony the young couple decided that their marriage would take place on the neutral ground of the Kern County Courthouse in Bakersfield, California.

America and Vigor had arranged for their solemnizing ceremony to take place on Friday the 27th of June 2008. It would be the perfect day for a summer wedding, they thought. The spring planting and first cycle of weeding would be long-completed and school would be out for the tow-headed army of nieces and nephews who’d be pouring in from all over the state. If Vigor’s well-thumbed almanac was right, they would exchange their vows on a warm and cloudless day with temperatures dropping low enough in the evening to allow for the use of fashionable wraps and dinner jackets.

When there were only two weeks remaining before the big day, America allowed herself to enjoy a brief moment of self-congratulatory calm. She’d inherited her meticulous nature from her mother and had dutifully dug to the bottom of a highly detailed to do list. There was only one last item to attend to.

America popped open her laptop and surfed over to the Kern County Courthouse Web site. A few additional out of town guests had asked to attend the ceremony and she wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t tip the scales on the wedding hall’s fire regulations.

America was floored by what she found online.

The note was written on the Kern County Clerk’s Web page under the heading, “Marriage Licenses”. America read through it several times until tears of frustration and anger welled up in the corners of her clear blue eyes.

The note said:

The County Clerk’s office will not solemnize weddings after June 13, 2008. We will not have the staff or space to deal with an increase in both licenses and ceremonies. Because of long-term administrative plans, budgetary reasons, and the need to increase security for elections, the Clerk’s office will cease solemnizing weddings, which is discretionary on the part of the County Clerk. As done in other counties, information necessary to solemnize marriages will be made available to those acquiring licenses.

America was shocked. How could this be possible? She’d planned for every contingency. The tents were ordered, the caterers were booked. The Byzantine seating arrangement had been hammered down for over a month. And now, suddenly, the county clerk wouldn’t be performing marriages anymore?

The young woman turned her attention back to the Internet, conducted a flurry of probing research and then picked up the phone. She dialed the Kern County Clerk, a woman named Ann Barnett.

“Hello Ann,” America said as cheerfully as she could manage, “It’s America.”

America listened patiently as the older woman spoke.

“Yes, I see,” America said, “And that’s exactly what’s up on the Web site, but I have a few questions. I mean you say that you don’t have the staff or space to deal with the ceremonies but…”

She took a deep breath and charged ahead.

“I did some research and learned that you and your predecessors typically perform over 40% of Kern County marriages. And I know for a fact that the Kern County Courthouse has two huge rooms dedicated specifically for marriages because as you’re no doubt aware, I had one booked.

“Yes Ann, yes…”

America listened again.

“Yes, but Ann, as to the financial argument, as I’m sure you know the president of the California Association of Clerks and Election officials was recently quoted by Reuters saying that contrary to your claim, marriage ceremonies actually make money. In fact, according to the Bakersfield Califonian newspaper, Kern County civil ceremonies pull in an average of $50,000 a year. And as for staffing, those ceremonies take, on average, seven minutes to perform by staff who are paid less than $20 an hour.”

America listened to one final burst from the County Clerk. She sighed.

“To be honest Ann, the security issue seems like the weakest argument of all,” she said. “If it wasn’t a problem for the past two decades, why would it suddenly become one now?”

“Look Ann,” America said, “Let’s level with each other. Woman to woman.”

She chose an even tone and spoke clearly and calmly into the receiver.

“Ann are you sure that your decision doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that California’s Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage on May 15th in a broadly worded decision that would invalidate any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation that comes into effect two days from now on June 15th?

“And isn’t it true that you requested that the County Counsel file a brief with the California Supreme Court opposing implementation of the May 15th ruling allowing gay marriage and that you subsequently made the decision to shut down all marriages when that same counsel advised that it would be illegal for you to only marry couples of your own choosing?

“And don’t you find it bit too ironic, Ann, that each of the five Californian counties who have decided to stop performing any marriages in the face of this decision have all voted staunchly Republican for over 40 years? I mean I know Republicans have said that gay marriage would ruin traditional marriage but I’m not sure this is what they had–”

But she didn’t get to finish her sentence. The line went dead.

Ann Barnett had hung up on America.

(Click to play song…)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

. . .

Here’s my little coda: if history has taught us anything it’s that people who line up against equality and love have been proven to be on the wrong side of the issue again and again and again.

As of right now, five four Republican-leaning counties in California have stopped solemnizing any marriages, gay or straight, fulfilling that age-old conservative adage, “If you can have it, no-one can.”

The counties are:

Merced County – strongly Republican (reversed its decision under intense pressure)
Claveras County – Republican since 1964
Kern County – Republican since 1964
Butte County – Republican since 1964
Kings County – Republican since 1964

You can contact the Kern County Clerk at the following co-ordinates:

Ann K. Barnett
1115 Truxtun Avenue
Bakersfield, CA 93301-4639
Regular Office Hours 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM Mon-Fri
Open To The Public 8:30 AM - 4:00 PM Mon-Fri
(661) 868-3588

Videotron: Still Sucks…

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).

Film Optioned!

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.

Shut Down the Tar Sands

If you’re a Canadian who cares about things like uncontaminated beauty and sustaining human life on earth, you should stand up and demand that the Alberta’s tar sands be shut down.

The latest news out of Alberta is that a flock of five hundred migratory ducks are drowning [Update: have drowned] in a massive pool of thick sludge, the ever-growing byproduct of one of the dirtiest engineering projects on earth.

From DeSmog Blog:

The oil sands are licensed to use more fresh water in a year than the entire City of Calgary (about the same size as Austin, Texas) and 90% of that fresh water ends up in massive tailing ponds, so large that that they are considered one of the largest human-made structures in the world.

Forget the term ‘tailing pond’. Let’s call these things what they really are: pollution pits. The largest pollution pits in the world. In the Canadian wilderness. What an embarrassment.

(Remember what pits like this have already done to Canadians?)

And all this for an inefficient source of energy that even our mighty American customers are saying is too dirty?

Please do your part towards making sure that the tar sands get shut down.

(Image above found over at oneearth.org)

[Update: To provide a degree of context, here’s the number of dead ducks that we’re talking about…]

50 Tons of Terror

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!

More Horrible News for the Environment

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.)

Not Technically My First Book…

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…

My Book Has A Body!

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

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

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

Al Gore updated his talk for TED. See it below.

Al Gore Launches Massive Ad Campaign

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.

Want: Crayon Physics Deluxe

Conan Casts the Eliot Spitzer Movie

Conan 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

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

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

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:

The Future of Driving

Jeanne and I recently became proud owners of a 100% electric Vespa-like thrill ride fun ride called the EVT-168. And if we ever hit the big-time, we hope that the electric vehicle upgrade path leads towards the ready-for-purchase beast above.

I recently wrote about the Tesla Roadster for Lycos and I don’t think they’ll mind if I reproduce the text here where no one will ever notice it (links embedded in the text)…

Tesla Roadster

If the future of transportation looks like this, let’s hit the fast-forward button pronto.

Even though the Tesla Roadster is working through some prototype issues (like trying to find a transmission that can withstand the kick-assedness of an over-powerful engine that supplies continuous torque) the stats on this vehicle are pick-your-jaw-off-the-floor incredible:

0 to 60 mph in under 4 seconds in a 220 mile range, zero-emission, 2¢/mile thrill-ride.

It’s electronic, guilt-free automotive sexiness.

Tesla is planning to offer more modestly priced versions of their cars in the future (the Roadster retails at about $100,000) and is also going to sell fun add-ons like solar panels that can be installed on the roof of your garage that give enough juice to power you through about 50 miles per day. That’s 100% off-the-grid sweetness. George Clooney already has one, shouldn’t you?

(Don’t have the scratch for that kind of electric ride? Why not look into one of the many, ever-improving, electric motorcycles and scooters that are coming down the pipe?)