Yearly Archives: 2006

Ecological Oxymoron

This entry was posted in Environment on by

This house was built using the latest ‘green’ construction techniques and I laud the owner, designer and contractor for that effort:
klein_house.jpg
This is also, in case you can’t tell from the picture, a large house:

This hilltop site in Corte Madera was once home to the late rock impresario Bill Graham.
Today it holds what its designer says is probably the largest “green” – ecologically correct – house in America.
Designed by Inverness architect Sim Van der Ryn and under construction for more than five years, the 15,000-square-foot house was built for owner Michael Klein, a passionate environmentalist and board member of the Rain Forest Action Network. It replaces the Graham house, which has been razed.

Exactly why is a passionate environmentalist building a 15,000 square foot house? Yes, he can afford it but surely a wealthy passionate environmentalist would set an example for both commoners and his wealthy peers. He would use green building techniques and also build a home appropriate to a human family in the 21st century. I do not believe a case can be made that all 6,492,046,339 of us (as of 01/18/06 at 00:09 GMT) should be living in homes this size as nuclear familys.
It may be a great show place for green building techniques but unless it is to be the home of 30-40 people there is little about it that is ecologically correct.

Via Knockin’ On The Golden Door via Grateful Dead News.

Ridin’ the Railroad

This entry was posted in Railroad Earth on by

Whew!
Three sweet nights with Railroad Earth. Yes, three.
There are some really good reasons to spend more than one evening with a good band.
First, you will hear more of their material and sometimes the same tunes done differently. Unlike typical pop bands who play the same sets night af night a good band gives you something new each night.
Second, a good band draws good fans.
Third, and most important: you can think you just went to a fine show, an excellent show and the next night think the same. Then, on the third night just get blown away when the previous two shows are simply dwarfed. Yep, RRE’s Eugene show (1/14) was one of those shows.

Whew! Perhaps more in a later post.

Friday Ark #69

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Pets Weekend Cat Blogging Weekend Dog Blogging on by

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:

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  • Use the Carnival Submission Form,

  • Email Modulator or

  • Our extensive staff finds it during our weekly search of the web

Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about. Time permitting we will continue boardings until the Carnival of the Cats goes up on Sunday.

Do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders.

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (46 shouts as of 01/12)

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 95th edition will be hosted this week by Niobium. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff’s Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 14th edition edition is up and hosted by Bird Brained Stories.

New for the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The fourth edition is up at bootstrap analysis. The 5th edition is scheduled for January 31 and will be hosted by Pharyngula.

NB: Tiny is in trouble. All our best to Sissy and Family! Update: Tiny is coming home.
Update 6:31 PM CST: Traveling – no more updates until sometime Saturday.

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For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat’s Carnival Page and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted “too rapidly” by the same host. I don’t know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I’m sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh….