Radiohead’s most recent album, In Rainbows, was launched extremely successfully using a pay-what-you-can model, and a new website, Aralie, is banking that this model can work for smaller bands as well. Says the website:

Aralie.com was created to support independent artists, by giving them a free market place to sell and promote their music. We are dedicated to helping small artists by doing anything we can to help them get exposure, gigs, sponsorship, and interviews. All music on Aralie.com will always be available DRM free, with no strings attached, and always downloadable for what ever price you choose (including $0).

After talking to Wyatt, the man behind this operation, and browsing the site, I feel pretty optimistic that the pay-what-you-can model can thrive. Even if the average download generates just a couple dollars, that’s still matched with the money from a traditional record deal - minus all the hassle and controlling influences. And I love Aralie for how little they demand from the artists that use their download service - no contracts, exclusivity, any of that shit. I just hope that people will throw a few bucks to the up and coming bands, not just the Radioheads of the world. I guess we can just watch and find out.

Tensions are rising in the Middle East in the aftermath of Iran’s ballistic missile testing. Israel has been undertaking major military exercises in the past months, which some have seen as a lead-up to an air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities (nevermind that they can’t actually produce nuclear weapons). The concern is that when Iran receives its new Russian anti-aircraft weapons systems, it could neuter the effectiveness of a pre-emptive Israeli strike. As with all arms races, this has created a frighteningly real impetus for action in the short term.

Of late, Iran has renewed its threats to respond to any military action by closing the Strait of Hormuz, a shipping lane through which 20% of the world’s oil supply travels. While this is nothing new - Iran’s geography and influence on the oil trade is its main strategic advantage in a conflict between it and the West - it still represents a serious threat to the oil trade.

So should war break out with Iran, and the Strait of Hormuz closes, where does that leave us? An instant spike in the price of oil up to $200+ per barrel would be a huge hit to the economy, driving explosive inflation in the price of food, consumer goods, and transportation; the perfect trigger for a recession.

The price of diesel fuel has already nearly tripled in the past year - while this has been painful for the trucking industry, it’s also shown up in the price of nearly everything we buy, as a result. While the price of jet fuel has ‘only’ doubled in that same period, airlines are folding at a rate of one every week - on some routes, the price of fuel now represents more than half of the total ticket price. Oil prices (and the present misplaced emphasis on food-crop biofuels to compensate) have played a huge role in the global food crisis, and a further spike in prices could have devastating effects on the developing world.

But maybe its exactly what we need. I’m loathe to put a price on lives, but dramatic short-term pain may be the only way to bring the severity of the global energy crisis (and climate change, by association), into clear focus. Despite complaints from SUV drivers, the average person in the U.S. has largely been able to tread water with $150/bbl oil. At $200/bbl, the prognosis changes. The entire world, developed and developing, would need to take notice, and a short-term crunch today could alleviate catastrophic suffering in the distant future, at a time when we may no longer be able to address it.

This situation is not without precedent. The 1973 oil crisis spurred rapid and widespread societal change in America. Government policies were instituted to promote conservation (some of which were silly and ineffective, such as daylight saving time), including, for the first time, vehicle fuel economy standards. Buyers abandoned large gas-guzzlers in droves, embracing tiny, poorly-built (but efficient!) imports, heralding the slow decline of the American auto industry. Brazil began its highly effective sugar-cane ethanol program, which today supplies 40% of the fuel for Brazil’s transportation fleet. Alternative energy in the form of solar and wind power experienced a nascent boom, despite immature technology.

In today’s world, I expect the impacts would be at least as stark. Automotive efficiency is already under serious scrutiny by industry and buyers alike. At current prices, commuters from the GTA into Toronto spend nearly $10,000/year on gasoline alone. If prices increase another 30-50%, the suburbs will die, or they will collapse in on themselves, becoming self-sustaining communities, rather than mere dormitories. Commercial electric vehicles, mass-transportation systems, and thoughtful urban planning will become imperative. Already this summer, gas prices have led to a surge in urban commuters who walk, ride, or take the TTC, rather than drive. On the utility front, at $200/bbl, the economic incentive for pursuing renewable electricity and storage becomes impossible to ignore. High gas prices would be more than enough to sustain the solar industry over the hump in 2010, when a huge increase in supply is expected to depress growth (from its current triple-digits down to a more modest 20%, perhaps). And while it is wishful thinking from a veggie, the price of food may even nudge people into changing their eating habits - while the government heavily subsidizes meat prices, the costs stand to grow exponentially with the price of grain. Even now, chicken is supplanting beef due to its healthful image - with the useful byproduct of a significantly reduced environmental footprint.

From my bubble of privilege, I say bring on the blockades, Iran. Let’s shake things up.

If your reaction isn’t “who the hell is Wayne Leibel?”, then I’m pretty impressed, but I fully expect it to be. Don’t worry, it’s ok. (Besides his mate choice research, he’s probably best known for writing regular columns in two of the biggest aquarium hobby magazines, making him one of the people I’ve admired most since I was a little kid). The point of this shitty story (shitty to everyone but me) is that it makes me feel the need to comment on how fantastic the academic community is - for democratizing knowledge and ensuring ideas are judged above all else. I have been lucky enough to attend the Ecological and Evolutionary Ethology of Fishes conference in Boston this past week, and it’s been an incredible venue for scientists from 15 countries, from students to established heavyweights, to get together and discuss their research, share their problems, and get suggestions from everyone else. Not in my wildest dreams did I think that such a venue would be so cooperative - there really is no hint of secrecy or competition, just a genuine desire for answers. There I was chatting with Wayne, the guy who “knows everything”, and we were talking about how important it is to learn from amateur aquarium hobbyists and their observations. Maybe I was too cynical going into this thing, after experiencing a life of watching so many self-congratulatory events in almost every field, but nothing here was about the accomplishments of the past. It was about reaching out to novel ideas, trying to find new ways to explain behaviour, preserve fisheries, and understand evolution. I just wish there was a way to get the rest of the world to understand the advances that could be made if egos were put aside and people actually bought into cooperative efforts.

I’m starting to get really excited about the whole open source design concept.

So I’m in Boston right now , and yesterday evening I walked past an Abercrombie store. Wouldn’t you know it - they have topless male models all around the place. Now I don’t frequent these stores, so I can’t say for sure that these models don’t exist in Toronto, but I can hardly believe they do. As I’ve thought about this, I’ve been unable to attach any positive/negative value judgement - I’ll leave that up to you guys. Right now, I’m just showing off what I believe to be a crazy phenomenon.

So long Jeb Bush, and good riddance. New(ish) Florida governor Charlie Crist, another, better republican, has just invested a very un-republican amount of money into the Everglades. No, we’re not talking the usual $100,000 or $1 million that public parks usually beg for. This is an investment worth $1.7 billion that will purchase over 750 square kilometers of land to add to the park. The best part? This land is being acquired from a sugar producer (this is an industry notoriously damaging to environments everywhere), U.S. Sugar, and will result in this company going out of business within 6 years. There is no government forcing out business here, no draconian intervention, just good old capitalism doing what it does best - tempting a business into its own death with shitloads of money.

Stolen from the National Parks Service

What this money, and new land, will allow is the connection of Lake Okeechobee to the Everglades, reestablishing the historical hydrological system. This will provide a more reliable water source for the “River of Grass”, hopefully stopping the slow degradation that has plagued the Everglades for the last few decades, and protecting habitat for everything from Florida panthers to snail kites. And if you’re a bigtime anthropocentric asshole, this new water flow should really help maintain the region’s groundwater supplies - possibly a big deal if the West decides they’d rather import water than give up trying to grow grass in the desert.

I love being able to write something positive for a change.

Alternative energy is booming. The solar industry in the US grew nearly 100% in 2007 (!), and the industry is expected to see a worldwide compounded growth of 40-50% for the next three years. No longer just the idle dream of environmentalists, solar power has become an immensely lucrative investment opportunity, and is spurring the growth of tens of thousands of new domestic manufacturing jobs in North America. In the US, where energy from oil and coal remains dirt cheap, much of this growth has been borne on the wings of federal investment tax credits.

These credits, which currently pay for 30% of the cost of solar installations, were due to be renewed in 2008 - but congress seems content to let them expire. The estimated cost of renewing the tax credit for 10 years is $1.7B - not an insignificant sum, but paltry in comparison to its benefits. The credits have spurred billions of dollars in investment into local industry, jobs, and high technology research. Energy will always be a growth industry, and low-cost alternative power has the potential to become a truly massive export for the US if American businesses can establish early dominance through their famed ability to innovate and commercialize.

While letting the investment tax credit expire represents political and economic myopia, recent news from the Bureau of Land Management comes across as nothing more than utter, blinding stupidity. The agency has proposed a 2-year moratorium on the installation of all new solar plants on public land, citing the need for environmental impact assessments. Clearly, industry of any kind can have a disruptive impact on wildlife, but there is a perverse fucking irony in shutting down growth in arguably the most promising sustainable industry in the world because of fear that solar plants might affect desert habitats.

Ignoring the fact that the solar industry already funds many environmental impact studies on new plants, enacting legislation requiring developers to conduct concurrent assessments on any new plant without completely freezing installations would be trivially easy.

If there is a more perfect example of missing the forest for the trees, I can’t imagine it.

Yeah the old bastard is dead. As you may have heard, George Carlin recently “passed away” effectively stripping me of one of my three living idols. It’s hard explaining the significance of a man like Carlin in a culture so saturated with the fruits of his labours that it becomes difficult to imagine what came before. It scares me that there may very well be a generation that doesn’t know who this man was, nor understand the relevance of his work. Not all of his jokes work any more - his social examinations were relevant and pervasive, and he was able to critique our world in a way that was funny but thought-provoking.

For me personally, George Carlin helped shape the way I view free speech, religion and reason. He refused to allow anyone to limit what he could say or think, and challenged us to fight for our own freedoms alongside. He tore apart the coddled and pretentious douchebags in our society, who hide behind soft language and censorship to remind the “economically disadvantaged” [SIC] and “differently abled” [SIC] how they should think.

“Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins, it’s as simple as that.”

“We don’t have any cripples in this country any more… these poor people have been bullshitted by the system in to thinking that if you change the name of the condition you’re going to change the condition. It doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen…. It’s getting so bad now that any day now I’m waiting for someone to refer to a rape victim as an unwilling sperm recipient”.

Penn Gillette shared a story about how the late, great, comedian Lenny Bruce was the last man to be arrested for publicly using “obscene language” in America. During his stage act, Lenny attacked a system that had effectively abandoned its own lower classes, and he presented his material in a language that was discernible for his audience. He didn’t condescend to his fans, resulting in jokes rife with the same bad language they used in their daily lives, leading to his eventual incarceration. As Bruce was getting thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, the cops were harassing the audience members, which happened to include a dirty-haired hippie that refused to present any identification. Claiming he didn’t believe in official I.D., this teenager got arrested and thrown into the back of the same wagon that Bruce was in, leaving the two together for a number of hours. That teenager was George Carlin.

Over the next few decades, George Carlin fought against the illiberal and unjust regulations of a government that tried to control how its people could express themselves. The FCC is a regulatory commission that controls American broadcasting networks (basic television, the radio) that can effectively censor what gets on the air - there’s a reason you’re not allowed to hear swearing before a certain time on FOX, etc. This bureaucratic branch of government is getting federal sponsorship - tax dollars from supposedly free individuals - to tell the general public what words we are mature enough to hear. Premium cable and the internet are free of their restrictions, which is why pervasive media like the Sopranos, Q.A.F, and streaming video can actually represent uncut realities. George Carlin went before the supreme court, albeit unsuccessfully, to protect the integrity of artistic expression and honest and rational discussion. There is no such thing as bad words, only bad people, and Carlin fought against those that try to distract us from the real evils of the world with cozy language or by shaming us in to political correctness. Our world is a worse place without this man in it.

The following two videos are your homework, hopefully the internet survives long enough for you to see ‘em:

It has become a bit of a cliché among our posts to point out the pervasive unsustainability of our society. Occasionally there are laudable developments worth mentioning, but even when we write about these, the discourse is too often tinged with cynicism. We know what’s wrong now, and what can be done, but progress is slow, and maintaining enthusiasm in the face of perpetual disappointment can be difficult. It becomes important to occasionally detach yourself from the minutiae of the everyday, and take the long view.

The question becomes, then, what should the future look like? What is required to craft a world without harmful emissions, without waste? A world where our energy, our buildings, our products, move in closed loops?

Visionary projects such as Masdar City in Abu Dhabi offer us tempting glimpses as to what one such future might look like. While it is a cost-no-object halo project for the UAE (who are wisely investing their present oil wealth into a future that is independent of it), it serves as a beacon, achieving a carbon neutral society using technology that exists commercially today. Yet the same technical feasibility that makes Masdar so edifying in shaping policy today renders it inadequate as a model for the future, given the awesome pace of technological development.

Masdar is today’s vision of a sustainable utopia, but what does 2020’s Masdar look like? Or 2050’s?

One should be able to look towards science fiction as a source of inspiration, but even here, the drama of suffering leads to endemic negavity, promoting a ubiquity of dystopian visions. Clearly, it’s harder to make incisive social commentary by portraying a happy future than a tragic one.

The call to arms for a sustainable future is being ushered in with the stick; but maybe that’s only because no one is growing carrots. I think we need both.

I’m planning to use this mandate as an opportunity to do a number of small design projects, giving a snapshot of my views for a sustainable future, from transportation, to infrastructure, to architecture, to anything else I happen to think of (and I’m open to suggestions). The idea isn’t to create a polished vision, but to develop a jumping-off point for discussion; the Internet is full of people who know a lot more than I do. Besides, my sketching skills are getting rusty, and I need an excuse and some motivation. It should be fun.

An astounding amount of astronomy is dependent on technological advancement, so it’s pretty neat when enough of the little things come together to allow for big breakthroughs. A group of researchers at the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland have recently used an intense Chilean telescope to survey the velocities of 150 stars, looking for perturbations of less than ONE METRE PER SECOND! (The average speed of stars in the universe is upwards of 32,000 metres per second). The fact this can be done at all just blows my mind, though the researchers claim that with continuing calibration this sensitivity can be increased further (accurate to less than 10cm per second). Anyway, the big finding: it seems that around 30% of stars (of those surveyed anyway) are orbited by planets roughly the same size of earth. This is a much, MUCH, higher proportion than was formerly commonly accepted, and lends evidence to the “crowded universe” theory - the idea that there are a lot of planets out there. I can only hope this means that the odds of finding life out there have increased substantially as well.

If you have access, read the Nature article. (I think it’s available free for the next few days)

For people that enjoy the subtle quirks of the Interweb or society at large, take a peek over at Google Trends. It would take an aneurysm these days to be unaware of this superpowered search engine that has effectively eliminated the need for public libraries, like, ever. What’s lesser known is that the site happily publishes the statistics (”trends”) that arise in searches, sorted by year and countries. Curious which country searches for pictures of dead babies? How about the most popular month for people to be googling “suicide”? What wins, good or evil?

For the truly adventurous, consider fabricating elaborate back-stories to explain random, hilarious patterns that you may find. I, for one, wonder why anal fisting became all the rage in the Czech Republic as of exactly January 2006.