Okay, I'm obviously trying to find my voice here (Mi mi mi mi mi mi me), with great help from Eric, Carol and Frank.
What we've decided is that this blog will be focused on the problems (climate change, peak oil and related energy issues, population) and solutions that The Truth About Everything in all it's forms discusses.
We'll keep this blog focused and more scholarly (but fun!) and professional, while "The Making of The Truth About Everything" (or another name) will be the other blog that is more personal, primarily about how big our dreams are for "The Truth About Everything" and how laughingly short of those dreams we currently are.
Also, I won't be posting every day as I have been. I know both of you (One?) are disappointed.
I will be posting both blogs every Monday and Wednesday very early in the morning.
While "The Truth" will be more about the content, "The Making of the Truth" will be discussing how and when we finally plan to release this blog and the related podcast on the world.
Suggestions will be more than welcomed, however you more than welcome something.
Oh, and check out our first two podcasts at:
podcast1
podcast2
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Friday, June 29, 2007
How Hard Can It Be?
I know my tone was a little down last night.
One of the things I'm experimenting with here is being really honest about the downs and ups of trying to get all the aspects of "The Truth About Everything" off the ground, which is no more difficult than getting a fully-loaded 747 off the ground after the wings have been taken off and the pilot is Dom DeLuise.
My intense study of all media - okay, my channel surfing - has taught me that everything in every medium is character and story, and that the lifeblood of every story is conflict.
Since I have no shortage of conflict in my life, I thought I'd share some of that with you in all mediums, especially if it can be helpful to you in some way.
Intensely private people (Dick Cheney comes to mind) don't realize that no one else really cares about your problems since everyone has so many of their own. So it doesn't really matter what others know about you, and if it can help them deal with their own problems, great.
Earlier this evening I was also feeling a little overwhelmed, but since then I had a great conversation with my primary collaborator, Eric Barendsen, got great e-mails (as always) from my sister Carol (including an e-mail from one of her extremely intelligent employees), had a substantive conversation with my wife Patti, confirmed both podcast interviews for July 19, and requested the ability to podcast two fascinating panels on July 2 and July 10.
So things went from down to up.
Most importantly, I reread the last chapter of my book and then broke through the most difficult writer's block of the entire 1000 pages (Yes! I'm editing it down to 300!) to FINALLY FINISH THE BOOK! (Tickertape parade goes here, or at least when I shake my head there's some dandruff.)
I spent the thousand pages to get to a very strong message in the last few pages, and those were the most difficult pages to write. So I tore the last few pages out of World Book and so they're inexplicably about Picasso to Pizarro.
Also during this time I made plans to go on a 14-mile hike with Sarah up to the cliffs at the base of Long's Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park for her to take more awesome pictures, and any plans I make with Sarah make me extremely happy.
All I have to do now is edit 1000 of the most complex pages ever written into 300 of the most accessible pages, and all our species has to do is completely reverse the habits of about 6.6 billion of us.
How hard can that be?
One of the things I'm experimenting with here is being really honest about the downs and ups of trying to get all the aspects of "The Truth About Everything" off the ground, which is no more difficult than getting a fully-loaded 747 off the ground after the wings have been taken off and the pilot is Dom DeLuise.
My intense study of all media - okay, my channel surfing - has taught me that everything in every medium is character and story, and that the lifeblood of every story is conflict.
Since I have no shortage of conflict in my life, I thought I'd share some of that with you in all mediums, especially if it can be helpful to you in some way.
Intensely private people (Dick Cheney comes to mind) don't realize that no one else really cares about your problems since everyone has so many of their own. So it doesn't really matter what others know about you, and if it can help them deal with their own problems, great.
Earlier this evening I was also feeling a little overwhelmed, but since then I had a great conversation with my primary collaborator, Eric Barendsen, got great e-mails (as always) from my sister Carol (including an e-mail from one of her extremely intelligent employees), had a substantive conversation with my wife Patti, confirmed both podcast interviews for July 19, and requested the ability to podcast two fascinating panels on July 2 and July 10.
So things went from down to up.
Most importantly, I reread the last chapter of my book and then broke through the most difficult writer's block of the entire 1000 pages (Yes! I'm editing it down to 300!) to FINALLY FINISH THE BOOK! (Tickertape parade goes here, or at least when I shake my head there's some dandruff.)
I spent the thousand pages to get to a very strong message in the last few pages, and those were the most difficult pages to write. So I tore the last few pages out of World Book and so they're inexplicably about Picasso to Pizarro.
Also during this time I made plans to go on a 14-mile hike with Sarah up to the cliffs at the base of Long's Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park for her to take more awesome pictures, and any plans I make with Sarah make me extremely happy.
All I have to do now is edit 1000 of the most complex pages ever written into 300 of the most accessible pages, and all our species has to do is completely reverse the habits of about 6.6 billion of us.
How hard can that be?
Thursday, June 28, 2007
If there is a tomorrow. . .
I'm sorry, but I'm tired. I just fell asleep watching a preview of a TV show on the computer where every alternative energy source for cars was hyped without the real price of each energy (it takes at least three gallons of fossil fuels to make four gallons of ethanol at this point) source ever being discussed.
While the program had useful information, it was fundamentally dishonest.
Meanwhile, Paris Hilton danced across the muted TV in the background of our living room.
Who names their kid after one of their franchises, and why isn't Fresno Denny's as famous?
I'm trying to finish my book but preparing for this blog and podcasts beginning in five days (or whenever the audio recorder comes courtesty of the wonderful generosity of my sister Carol and her husband Frank) is quite time-consuming, along with the caregiving, household repairs, household organizing and many other obligations I had today and every day.
I get cranky when I don't get to write what I feel I should be writing.
But then an argument could be made that I should be doing this blog and podcast so that there's a mechanism to promote the book when it comes out.
The thing is that contemporary authors need to think of themselves as entrepreneurs who can't count on publishers and publicists to do their work for them.
So I'm trying to do everything at once and occasionally I get a little overwhelmed, like now.
Thank you for understanding and I hope to have a better post tomorrow, if there is one.
While the program had useful information, it was fundamentally dishonest.
Meanwhile, Paris Hilton danced across the muted TV in the background of our living room.
Who names their kid after one of their franchises, and why isn't Fresno Denny's as famous?
I'm trying to finish my book but preparing for this blog and podcasts beginning in five days (or whenever the audio recorder comes courtesty of the wonderful generosity of my sister Carol and her husband Frank) is quite time-consuming, along with the caregiving, household repairs, household organizing and many other obligations I had today and every day.
I get cranky when I don't get to write what I feel I should be writing.
But then an argument could be made that I should be doing this blog and podcast so that there's a mechanism to promote the book when it comes out.
The thing is that contemporary authors need to think of themselves as entrepreneurs who can't count on publishers and publicists to do their work for them.
So I'm trying to do everything at once and occasionally I get a little overwhelmed, like now.
Thank you for understanding and I hope to have a better post tomorrow, if there is one.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Beavers and Cockroaches, in that order
Beavers alter their environment the second-most of any species.
Looking around, you can't help but notice that it's a fairly distant second.
And how they've won back to back NCAA baseball championships is beyond me.
But the way beavers alter their environment creates wonderful habitats for many other species, while the way we alter our environment destroys habitat for most species.
One species that we provide for is cockroaches. Most cockroach species thrive in tropical climates, but our heated buildings have allowed them to extend their habitat to thousands of cities and towns around the world.
A cliche is that cockroaches would be primary survivors of total nuclear war. Actually they'd largely perish along with us because while we've extended their habitat by heating buildings and the planet, nuclear destruction and winter (The solution to global warming!) would mean their outside and inside habitats would largely disappear.
(I'm referring primarily to the American cockroach most of us are familiar with; there are 3,500 species and the hardiest ones in the warmest locations would probably inherit the earth, since they're also meek.)
When I was the world's worst waiter in Steamboat Springs, Colorado I was putting a salad on a table full of people when a large crouton jumped ship and I stepped on it, making a large crunching sound that I had to explain somehow, so I said, "Cockroach."
When I moved back to Santa Monica a beautiful blonde (woman) was over at my apartment and she'd just made a large salad and when she opened a cabinet door above the counter a cockroach fell off and into her salad. Not so much a moveable feast as a moveable crouton.
And people wonder why I was a bachelor for most of my life.
I bring this up not only to gross out my sister and not only because I hope like you do that this is the last post about cockroaches, but also to point out how karma works. Make an inappropriate joke and six months later you lose a girlfriend.
Oh, and since humans are the cancer killing the host body of all life on earth, it would be appropriate for all animals and insects of all sizes to attack us every chance they get, and not just get our girlfriends to leave us.
When I walk out the door, squirrels should jump at me from every tree, fox, deer and dogs in our neighborhood should form packs to try to take me down.
When I lived in a 16-story dormitory in Moscow, Russia I turned the light on in the communal kitchen at 2 am and the floor and walls were moving with cockroaches. They should've all worked together to throw me out the window, and there were enough of them to do this.
Actually cockroaches do work together extremely well, as most insects do. Unlike humans, cockroaches are almost always cooperative and egalitarian.
Cockroaches have been around for 300 million years (maybe 15 minutes more or less), meaning that they've evolved over billions of generations.
Homo sapiens have been around 180,000 or so years, or for less than ten thousand generations.
If we're going to be around even one-thousandth as long as cockroaches, we have to learn to be egalitarian and to cooperate as they have.
And to eat the donut crumbs that have fallen between the counter and the stove.
Looking around, you can't help but notice that it's a fairly distant second.
And how they've won back to back NCAA baseball championships is beyond me.
But the way beavers alter their environment creates wonderful habitats for many other species, while the way we alter our environment destroys habitat for most species.
One species that we provide for is cockroaches. Most cockroach species thrive in tropical climates, but our heated buildings have allowed them to extend their habitat to thousands of cities and towns around the world.
A cliche is that cockroaches would be primary survivors of total nuclear war. Actually they'd largely perish along with us because while we've extended their habitat by heating buildings and the planet, nuclear destruction and winter (The solution to global warming!) would mean their outside and inside habitats would largely disappear.
(I'm referring primarily to the American cockroach most of us are familiar with; there are 3,500 species and the hardiest ones in the warmest locations would probably inherit the earth, since they're also meek.)
When I was the world's worst waiter in Steamboat Springs, Colorado I was putting a salad on a table full of people when a large crouton jumped ship and I stepped on it, making a large crunching sound that I had to explain somehow, so I said, "Cockroach."
When I moved back to Santa Monica a beautiful blonde (woman) was over at my apartment and she'd just made a large salad and when she opened a cabinet door above the counter a cockroach fell off and into her salad. Not so much a moveable feast as a moveable crouton.
And people wonder why I was a bachelor for most of my life.
I bring this up not only to gross out my sister and not only because I hope like you do that this is the last post about cockroaches, but also to point out how karma works. Make an inappropriate joke and six months later you lose a girlfriend.
Oh, and since humans are the cancer killing the host body of all life on earth, it would be appropriate for all animals and insects of all sizes to attack us every chance they get, and not just get our girlfriends to leave us.
When I walk out the door, squirrels should jump at me from every tree, fox, deer and dogs in our neighborhood should form packs to try to take me down.
When I lived in a 16-story dormitory in Moscow, Russia I turned the light on in the communal kitchen at 2 am and the floor and walls were moving with cockroaches. They should've all worked together to throw me out the window, and there were enough of them to do this.
Actually cockroaches do work together extremely well, as most insects do. Unlike humans, cockroaches are almost always cooperative and egalitarian.
Cockroaches have been around for 300 million years (maybe 15 minutes more or less), meaning that they've evolved over billions of generations.
Homo sapiens have been around 180,000 or so years, or for less than ten thousand generations.
If we're going to be around even one-thousandth as long as cockroaches, we have to learn to be egalitarian and to cooperate as they have.
And to eat the donut crumbs that have fallen between the counter and the stove.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Fossil Fools
Yesterday's post may seem a tad down. Okay, a tad Apocalyptic.
I think those who believe in imminent Apocalypse are right. But this Apocalypse is a self-fulfilling prophesy, because we're the cause.
So it's not so much the Second Coming as it is a Jim Jones-like mass suicide. It's our consumption of fossil fuel that is killing us, not Kool-Aide.
If we can cause our own extinction, we can also do the opposite.
We are being asked to evolve into more intelligent beings than we've been.
This evolution is more dramatic than the one from hunters and gatherers to farmers and from farming to the Industrial Revolution put together.
We are being asked to evolve from matter-based to Spirit-based beings, from a material economy of lack, fear, greed and selfishness to a spiritual economy of unselfishness, caring and sharing.
We might not get it done in this lifetime or here on earth, but it is the direction we need to go.
We need to get off the bullet train we're taking in the wrong direction, and get on the bullet train headed in the right direction.
Or we'll simply be fossil fuels for some future life form.
I think those who believe in imminent Apocalypse are right. But this Apocalypse is a self-fulfilling prophesy, because we're the cause.
So it's not so much the Second Coming as it is a Jim Jones-like mass suicide. It's our consumption of fossil fuel that is killing us, not Kool-Aide.
If we can cause our own extinction, we can also do the opposite.
We are being asked to evolve into more intelligent beings than we've been.
This evolution is more dramatic than the one from hunters and gatherers to farmers and from farming to the Industrial Revolution put together.
We are being asked to evolve from matter-based to Spirit-based beings, from a material economy of lack, fear, greed and selfishness to a spiritual economy of unselfishness, caring and sharing.
We might not get it done in this lifetime or here on earth, but it is the direction we need to go.
We need to get off the bullet train we're taking in the wrong direction, and get on the bullet train headed in the right direction.
Or we'll simply be fossil fuels for some future life form.
Monday, June 25, 2007
What is "The Truth About Everything" about?
Well, I've mentioned everything except what "The Truth About Everything" is really all about, so here goes:
Our species faces unprecedented problems of climate change, population growth, peak oil and related issues, and it will take an unprecedented advance in our collective thinking and actions to meet these problems.
If we keep doing what we're doing indefinitely, we won't be around indefinitely.
It's like we're blowing up a balloon of population, consumption and pollution growth, and this balloon cannot be blown up indefinitely on a finite planet with finite resources.
Due to climate change, species die-off and migration, rising sea levels and the collapse of agriculture, our children or grandchildren, or at the very longest their grandchildren, might live on a planet that would be unrecognizable to us.
And the population of people and other species might be a tiny fraction of what they are today.
People have heard doomsday predictions before and most of them haven't come true. They were hearing many of those predicitons when there were a third or a tenth or a twentieth as many people on earth as there are now, and with the average person consuming and polluting infinitely less than the average person does now.
Just because a prediction like those of Paul and Anne Ehrich (authors of "The Population Bomb" in 1968 and the completely on-track "Population Explosion" in 1990) don't come true in 20 years doesn't mean they aren't coming true in 50 or 70 or 90.
Just because we've dodged the nuclear bullet for 62 years doesn't mean that we'll be able to dodge it for another 62.
Agricultural productivity might well collapse due to peak oil (the Green Revolution has been base on cheap oil for fertilizers, pesticides, operating farm machinery and shipping food), the loss of topsoil and freshwater, and other factors like rising sea levels.
The more educated someone is and the more they've studied these issues, the more they see this coming. The vast, vast majority of us do not.
What I am trying to do is to take the conversations extremely concerned scientists and experts have among themselves and share that with the general public.
While what Al Gore has done is wonderful and important, you can't discuss climate change in a vacuum. Maybe because you can't have a climate in a vacuum. He mentions population but not peak oil, but all three and other issues are completely intertwined. For instance, if we can't get the oil and gas we're used to using, do we burn more coal? If we do, that will accelerate global warming and all its catastrophic effects.
What we know and can see scares scientists to death. But they know that it is what we don't yet know and can't yet see that could mean the death of us all.
This is a difficult issue to discuss, so I applaud and respect your reading this, and hopefully your desire to discuss it.
Take all of our political, economic, social, family and sports concerns, add them all up, and they are not as important as the issues we're discussing here.
That is what "The Truth About Everything" is about. Thank you for joining me and I look forward to hearing from you.
Our species faces unprecedented problems of climate change, population growth, peak oil and related issues, and it will take an unprecedented advance in our collective thinking and actions to meet these problems.
If we keep doing what we're doing indefinitely, we won't be around indefinitely.
It's like we're blowing up a balloon of population, consumption and pollution growth, and this balloon cannot be blown up indefinitely on a finite planet with finite resources.
Due to climate change, species die-off and migration, rising sea levels and the collapse of agriculture, our children or grandchildren, or at the very longest their grandchildren, might live on a planet that would be unrecognizable to us.
And the population of people and other species might be a tiny fraction of what they are today.
People have heard doomsday predictions before and most of them haven't come true. They were hearing many of those predicitons when there were a third or a tenth or a twentieth as many people on earth as there are now, and with the average person consuming and polluting infinitely less than the average person does now.
Just because a prediction like those of Paul and Anne Ehrich (authors of "The Population Bomb" in 1968 and the completely on-track "Population Explosion" in 1990) don't come true in 20 years doesn't mean they aren't coming true in 50 or 70 or 90.
Just because we've dodged the nuclear bullet for 62 years doesn't mean that we'll be able to dodge it for another 62.
Agricultural productivity might well collapse due to peak oil (the Green Revolution has been base on cheap oil for fertilizers, pesticides, operating farm machinery and shipping food), the loss of topsoil and freshwater, and other factors like rising sea levels.
The more educated someone is and the more they've studied these issues, the more they see this coming. The vast, vast majority of us do not.
What I am trying to do is to take the conversations extremely concerned scientists and experts have among themselves and share that with the general public.
While what Al Gore has done is wonderful and important, you can't discuss climate change in a vacuum. Maybe because you can't have a climate in a vacuum. He mentions population but not peak oil, but all three and other issues are completely intertwined. For instance, if we can't get the oil and gas we're used to using, do we burn more coal? If we do, that will accelerate global warming and all its catastrophic effects.
What we know and can see scares scientists to death. But they know that it is what we don't yet know and can't yet see that could mean the death of us all.
This is a difficult issue to discuss, so I applaud and respect your reading this, and hopefully your desire to discuss it.
Take all of our political, economic, social, family and sports concerns, add them all up, and they are not as important as the issues we're discussing here.
That is what "The Truth About Everything" is about. Thank you for joining me and I look forward to hearing from you.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
A Brief History of Time, or at least today
I'll try to be more brief.
Today I went shopping with my 14-year-old daughter Sarah.
Her old running shoes had worn out from her freshman high school varsity track season, so we went to the Boulder Running Company, which has been voted the top running store in America. (Boulder has what cyclists consider the best bike store [University Bikes], climbers consider the best climbing store [Neptune Mountaineering], Roger Ebert said is the best video store [the Video Station] in the U.S., and a Target.)
Sarah likes to hike, as you can see from her pictures of our Father's Day hike posted below, and we live right below Mt. Sanitas, which has a classic network of trails leading to the summit that she does with her friends and her yellow Labrador Retriever Nimoy.
On the Father's Day hike she found steep patches of icy snow nestled among the cliffs surrounding Ouzel Falls and she climbed up them and amazingly shoe-skied down on slick-soled, no-support Keds.
So I asked Mark Plattjes, who owns the Boulder Running Company, to tell Sarah that in addition to her road and track running shoes she should get trail running shoes but she didn't want them. She runs down steep mountain trails faster than anyone on the Boulder High varsity boys track or cross-country teams, so she needs them to be safe.
As always, she wouldn't budge. Mark was gently trying to convince her. He knows what he's talking about; he won the Marathon World Championship in 1993. After more impasse finally I said, "Sarah, don't listen to me. Don't listen to anyone else in this store, but could you please listen to a World Champion?"
Mark laughed and said his daughter Camille (who will join Sarah on the cross-country team as an incoming freshman this summer) doesn't listen to him either.
After years (I've lost count how many) of not buying any new shoes and turning my ankles hiking in my old running shoes, I bought trail running shoes (for me they're the lightest hiking shoes) also, and as I was trying them on I met an old friend from the store, Jason Hill, who's now the head of footwear design for the North Face, and I gave him the whole "Truth About Everything End of the World Tour" sponsorship spiel and he loved it and we set up an appointment for me to meet with him and the North Face director of marketing in Berkeley in early August.
Sarah and her friends came up with the idea that they don't want to shop at any chains if they can help it, but feel they can't help shopping at Target and so we got her 15 running socks that are a fraction of the price of running socks in any running store.
At lunch I asked her if she'd like to join me on my entire West Coast trip in a month and she said she didn't and that hurt me so I got angry and so did she and after going back out into the heat I told her that I get angry when I get hurt and we worked through it as we always do (not completely through it, but we're working on it).
During the heat of the argument she told me that all animals have to leave their parents because their parents drive them crazy and I pointed out that if any other animal parents suffered the abuse from teenagers that human parents suffer, they'd put all the teenagers on an ice floe and push it out to sea.
I guess this is how Marlin Perkins argued with his teenage daughter.
We crossed the street to REI, where two different families had given me generous gift certificates for coaching their children in ski racing. Last year Sarah raced Nordic rather than Alpine skiing and she'd skate-ski over after her Nordic practice to help me coach Alpine ski racing as a 13-year-old and all the six, seven and eight-year-old boys I coached idolized her like the goddess she is.
Even with that year off she qualified for her third Junior Olympics (out of three years she was eligible) this year and her coaches feel she has the best technique on the mountain, including among the 2006 NCAA Champion CU ski team (she doesn't have their size, power, strength, tactics or experience).
Because she was so dedicated to her own training this winter she only helped me coach once, while she helped me coach a dozen times the winter before, leading the boys on cliff-jumps (one landed on her) and through trees so tight adults couldn't come close to fitting on the lines she ripped through double-black diamond, dense forest.
(I'm starting a 12-step program for PSPs, or Psycho Sports Parents. As you can see, I am the worst. I'll be the first to say, "Hi, my name is Richard, and I'm a Psycho Sports Parent. I know of at least 30 parents I could get to join me in a circle and I'm certain that I could get each of them to agree that, "Yes, Richard, you are a Psycho Sports Parent.")
So the family that gave us the most generous gift certificate was in the REI and I showed them how we were using it and the father Lee Wood puts on conferences and I said at the end of The End of the World Tour we should put on a conference together and he agreed.
Then I recognized the customer at the next cash register and he's a CU Physics Professor who wants to join The Truth About Everything Advisory Board and have me speak to the CU Physics Department. Not that they're smart or anything.
We picked up the slides (in sleeves and on a CD) of Sarah's that you see below, shared a strawberry shortcake at an outdoor bistro (Okay, a fast food chain called Good Times), came home and Sarah posted the pictures on this blog, expertly positioning the lettering over the darkest part of the picture in a few minutes when it had taken Eric and I half an hour to do the same thing on an earlier picture.
Just as I was on edge with Sarah, I was on edge with Patti also. I think I'm so anxious about all these different media coming together and at the very least starting to make a living wage from all this that my anxiety boils over into inappropriate anger and I'm trying to learn to control and eliminate that, which isn't easy, because my family anger goes back so many generations it's survived the die-offs 65 and 248 million years ago, and the one we're creating now.
Today I went shopping with my 14-year-old daughter Sarah.
Her old running shoes had worn out from her freshman high school varsity track season, so we went to the Boulder Running Company, which has been voted the top running store in America. (Boulder has what cyclists consider the best bike store [University Bikes], climbers consider the best climbing store [Neptune Mountaineering], Roger Ebert said is the best video store [the Video Station] in the U.S., and a Target.)
Sarah likes to hike, as you can see from her pictures of our Father's Day hike posted below, and we live right below Mt. Sanitas, which has a classic network of trails leading to the summit that she does with her friends and her yellow Labrador Retriever Nimoy.
On the Father's Day hike she found steep patches of icy snow nestled among the cliffs surrounding Ouzel Falls and she climbed up them and amazingly shoe-skied down on slick-soled, no-support Keds.
So I asked Mark Plattjes, who owns the Boulder Running Company, to tell Sarah that in addition to her road and track running shoes she should get trail running shoes but she didn't want them. She runs down steep mountain trails faster than anyone on the Boulder High varsity boys track or cross-country teams, so she needs them to be safe.
As always, she wouldn't budge. Mark was gently trying to convince her. He knows what he's talking about; he won the Marathon World Championship in 1993. After more impasse finally I said, "Sarah, don't listen to me. Don't listen to anyone else in this store, but could you please listen to a World Champion?"
Mark laughed and said his daughter Camille (who will join Sarah on the cross-country team as an incoming freshman this summer) doesn't listen to him either.
After years (I've lost count how many) of not buying any new shoes and turning my ankles hiking in my old running shoes, I bought trail running shoes (for me they're the lightest hiking shoes) also, and as I was trying them on I met an old friend from the store, Jason Hill, who's now the head of footwear design for the North Face, and I gave him the whole "Truth About Everything End of the World Tour" sponsorship spiel and he loved it and we set up an appointment for me to meet with him and the North Face director of marketing in Berkeley in early August.
Sarah and her friends came up with the idea that they don't want to shop at any chains if they can help it, but feel they can't help shopping at Target and so we got her 15 running socks that are a fraction of the price of running socks in any running store.
At lunch I asked her if she'd like to join me on my entire West Coast trip in a month and she said she didn't and that hurt me so I got angry and so did she and after going back out into the heat I told her that I get angry when I get hurt and we worked through it as we always do (not completely through it, but we're working on it).
During the heat of the argument she told me that all animals have to leave their parents because their parents drive them crazy and I pointed out that if any other animal parents suffered the abuse from teenagers that human parents suffer, they'd put all the teenagers on an ice floe and push it out to sea.
I guess this is how Marlin Perkins argued with his teenage daughter.
We crossed the street to REI, where two different families had given me generous gift certificates for coaching their children in ski racing. Last year Sarah raced Nordic rather than Alpine skiing and she'd skate-ski over after her Nordic practice to help me coach Alpine ski racing as a 13-year-old and all the six, seven and eight-year-old boys I coached idolized her like the goddess she is.
Even with that year off she qualified for her third Junior Olympics (out of three years she was eligible) this year and her coaches feel she has the best technique on the mountain, including among the 2006 NCAA Champion CU ski team (she doesn't have their size, power, strength, tactics or experience).
Because she was so dedicated to her own training this winter she only helped me coach once, while she helped me coach a dozen times the winter before, leading the boys on cliff-jumps (one landed on her) and through trees so tight adults couldn't come close to fitting on the lines she ripped through double-black diamond, dense forest.
(I'm starting a 12-step program for PSPs, or Psycho Sports Parents. As you can see, I am the worst. I'll be the first to say, "Hi, my name is Richard, and I'm a Psycho Sports Parent. I know of at least 30 parents I could get to join me in a circle and I'm certain that I could get each of them to agree that, "Yes, Richard, you are a Psycho Sports Parent.")
So the family that gave us the most generous gift certificate was in the REI and I showed them how we were using it and the father Lee Wood puts on conferences and I said at the end of The End of the World Tour we should put on a conference together and he agreed.
Then I recognized the customer at the next cash register and he's a CU Physics Professor who wants to join The Truth About Everything Advisory Board and have me speak to the CU Physics Department. Not that they're smart or anything.
We picked up the slides (in sleeves and on a CD) of Sarah's that you see below, shared a strawberry shortcake at an outdoor bistro (Okay, a fast food chain called Good Times), came home and Sarah posted the pictures on this blog, expertly positioning the lettering over the darkest part of the picture in a few minutes when it had taken Eric and I half an hour to do the same thing on an earlier picture.
Just as I was on edge with Sarah, I was on edge with Patti also. I think I'm so anxious about all these different media coming together and at the very least starting to make a living wage from all this that my anxiety boils over into inappropriate anger and I'm trying to learn to control and eliminate that, which isn't easy, because my family anger goes back so many generations it's survived the die-offs 65 and 248 million years ago, and the one we're creating now.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
A Fish Rides a Bike from the Mountains to Shakespeare
Physics Professor Emeritus and one of the world's foremost population experts Al Bartlett has agreed to my podcast interview, as has NCAR's Bob Henson, who wrote "The Rough Guide to Climate Change" and who has as complete an overview of the totality of climate change as anyone this side of Al Gore, who's become so big he's developed a small glacier on his north side.
In each case we have so much to talk about that we might be doing two half-hour podcasts with each of them. We'll let you know where and when those will appear when we get those set up.
It also appears that I might be giving my talk, visiting friends and potential sponsors (actually my friends use the word "potential" to describe our friendship) in Portland (for sure), Seattle (probably), Bend (possibly), San Francisco (perhaps) and L.A. (prematurely perhaps possibly probably).
In addition to looking forward to seeing my angels (My mom, sister Carol and brother-in-law Frank), I've got a ton of friends in Portland, though only about a dozen of them put together make up a ton. I won't mention any names. Actually now that I mention it they're all quite fit.
Jeff Anderson was my best friend in the first grade and we've stayed friends ever since.
My best friends from Grade and Grad school are both in Bend, John Breeden and Cam Davis.
My best friends from Junior High and High School are in Portland and I see Matt Brewster, Clay Davidson, his wife Liz Case-Davidson, Tom Sims, Rich Wilhelmi and Jeff Lavey every time I go home.
Maybe my most consistent friend from the 1st through the 12th grades was Peter Neupert, who's been a senior vice president since 1987 at a small start-up computer company called Microsoft. His stock options might've done better than my Atari and 8-Track stocks. Our lives have been remarkably similar in that he's been a huge success and I haven't.
My best friend from film school is also in Seattle, Jeff Thomas, as is climbing and backcountry skiing buddy Pat Lathrop.
My best backpacking, climbing (easy stuff because of me, not him), backcountry skiing and overall buddy Jed Morrow is in the Bay Area, as are fine artists Brooks Anderson and Chris Evans, who was the head matte artist for George Lucas for many years. Chris painted the five bathrooms on walls in Lucas' home, and George ran into the wall every time he tried to go to the bathroom.
The only funnier building practical joke was when my architect friend Steve Dodd had a dump of a house because he knew he was going to scrape it and build his showcase dream home and he spent about five years planning it and over a year having it built. Then when Steve and his family went on vacation I tore down his dream home and rebuilt the old dump. The look on his face when they came back home was worth more than the home. The old dump of a home, anyway.
(You can tell when I'm telling the truth and joking, right? Al Gore's glacier and Lucas running into walls are jokes. You get that, right? Rebuilding Steve's old house is real.)
In L.A. I want to see another best friend, screenwriter Frank Deese (The Principal, Josh and Sam, many others) and screenwriter friends Marian Treger, Ron Birnbach, David Titcher (Around the World in 80 Days), Neal Jimenez (River's Edge) and Director Duane Clark (Dick Clark's son).
Today, as promised, I swam in Boulder Creek on a 90-something degree day to cool off before biking up 1200 vertical feet (one-tenth of the way from Everest base camp to the summit, only more secluded) to Brian Ridley's house.
I wore a light grey cotton t-shirt taking a dip (And bystanders said, "Look at that Dip!") in Boulder Creek and it kept me drenched, dripping and cool all the way up there (I resoaked it halfway up in a smaller creek). I'd bike past people and say, "I'm really sweating," and they feared for my safety because I looked like Albert Brooks when he got his epic case of flop sweat as he got his one shot at weekend anchor in "Broadcast News," only moreso.
Cotton can kill you if you wear it on extended adventures in mountains like the Cascades that get lots of rain and snow, but today it kept me cool because it dries so much more slowly than the synthetic materials I usually wear. The fact that it was tight-fitting and long sleeve meant that it kept moisture against my body and in key areas like the wrists, where the blood vessels are closer to the surface.
I also soaked a special Performance baseball cap that kept water next to my temples, the key place to keep cool on the entire body.
I'm speaking to potential sponsors who are developing such products like cooling vests and headbands to keep the temples cool, and I honestly believe that when energy prices get to where they're going, and when we come to our senses and continually reduce the burning of coal if we want a recognizable planet, that such cooling will be infinitely more efficient than air conditioning an entire large home or building.
We're approaching sponsors about having the "Ultimate System" for my 10,000 miles of biking on my year-long "End of the World Tour"and for other outdoor sports. Also, we'd like to launch a line called "Captain Safety" because everything I wear when I bike is that flourescent lime green that is my favorite color. Even my dental fillings are that color.
I often ride the 1200 vertical feet back down from Brian's at night on steep dirt roads without mountain bike tires or suspension and I have so many bright and flashing lights (two white lights in the front, three in the rear, flashing vest on me, etc, etc) that I look like a fully lit Christmas tree riding another fully lit Christmas tree.
So tonight I met Patti and almost a dozen other friends at the CU Shakespeare Festival and we saw an amazingly funny production of Bill's "Midsummer Night's Dream."
Only in Boulder. . .
. . .would somebody ramble on for so long about so little.
In each case we have so much to talk about that we might be doing two half-hour podcasts with each of them. We'll let you know where and when those will appear when we get those set up.
It also appears that I might be giving my talk, visiting friends and potential sponsors (actually my friends use the word "potential" to describe our friendship) in Portland (for sure), Seattle (probably), Bend (possibly), San Francisco (perhaps) and L.A. (prematurely perhaps possibly probably).
In addition to looking forward to seeing my angels (My mom, sister Carol and brother-in-law Frank), I've got a ton of friends in Portland, though only about a dozen of them put together make up a ton. I won't mention any names. Actually now that I mention it they're all quite fit.
Jeff Anderson was my best friend in the first grade and we've stayed friends ever since.
My best friends from Grade and Grad school are both in Bend, John Breeden and Cam Davis.
My best friends from Junior High and High School are in Portland and I see Matt Brewster, Clay Davidson, his wife Liz Case-Davidson, Tom Sims, Rich Wilhelmi and Jeff Lavey every time I go home.
Maybe my most consistent friend from the 1st through the 12th grades was Peter Neupert, who's been a senior vice president since 1987 at a small start-up computer company called Microsoft. His stock options might've done better than my Atari and 8-Track stocks. Our lives have been remarkably similar in that he's been a huge success and I haven't.
My best friend from film school is also in Seattle, Jeff Thomas, as is climbing and backcountry skiing buddy Pat Lathrop.
My best backpacking, climbing (easy stuff because of me, not him), backcountry skiing and overall buddy Jed Morrow is in the Bay Area, as are fine artists Brooks Anderson and Chris Evans, who was the head matte artist for George Lucas for many years. Chris painted the five bathrooms on walls in Lucas' home, and George ran into the wall every time he tried to go to the bathroom.
The only funnier building practical joke was when my architect friend Steve Dodd had a dump of a house because he knew he was going to scrape it and build his showcase dream home and he spent about five years planning it and over a year having it built. Then when Steve and his family went on vacation I tore down his dream home and rebuilt the old dump. The look on his face when they came back home was worth more than the home. The old dump of a home, anyway.
(You can tell when I'm telling the truth and joking, right? Al Gore's glacier and Lucas running into walls are jokes. You get that, right? Rebuilding Steve's old house is real.)
In L.A. I want to see another best friend, screenwriter Frank Deese (The Principal, Josh and Sam, many others) and screenwriter friends Marian Treger, Ron Birnbach, David Titcher (Around the World in 80 Days), Neal Jimenez (River's Edge) and Director Duane Clark (Dick Clark's son).
Today, as promised, I swam in Boulder Creek on a 90-something degree day to cool off before biking up 1200 vertical feet (one-tenth of the way from Everest base camp to the summit, only more secluded) to Brian Ridley's house.
I wore a light grey cotton t-shirt taking a dip (And bystanders said, "Look at that Dip!") in Boulder Creek and it kept me drenched, dripping and cool all the way up there (I resoaked it halfway up in a smaller creek). I'd bike past people and say, "I'm really sweating," and they feared for my safety because I looked like Albert Brooks when he got his epic case of flop sweat as he got his one shot at weekend anchor in "Broadcast News," only moreso.
Cotton can kill you if you wear it on extended adventures in mountains like the Cascades that get lots of rain and snow, but today it kept me cool because it dries so much more slowly than the synthetic materials I usually wear. The fact that it was tight-fitting and long sleeve meant that it kept moisture against my body and in key areas like the wrists, where the blood vessels are closer to the surface.
I also soaked a special Performance baseball cap that kept water next to my temples, the key place to keep cool on the entire body.
I'm speaking to potential sponsors who are developing such products like cooling vests and headbands to keep the temples cool, and I honestly believe that when energy prices get to where they're going, and when we come to our senses and continually reduce the burning of coal if we want a recognizable planet, that such cooling will be infinitely more efficient than air conditioning an entire large home or building.
We're approaching sponsors about having the "Ultimate System" for my 10,000 miles of biking on my year-long "End of the World Tour"and for other outdoor sports. Also, we'd like to launch a line called "Captain Safety" because everything I wear when I bike is that flourescent lime green that is my favorite color. Even my dental fillings are that color.
I often ride the 1200 vertical feet back down from Brian's at night on steep dirt roads without mountain bike tires or suspension and I have so many bright and flashing lights (two white lights in the front, three in the rear, flashing vest on me, etc, etc) that I look like a fully lit Christmas tree riding another fully lit Christmas tree.
So tonight I met Patti and almost a dozen other friends at the CU Shakespeare Festival and we saw an amazingly funny production of Bill's "Midsummer Night's Dream."
Only in Boulder. . .
. . .would somebody ramble on for so long about so little.
Friday, June 22, 2007
KARMA, THE DEVIL AND GLOBAL WARMING
Well, the last posting got two rave reviews, one from my completely objective sister Carol and the other from my slightly more objective brother-in-law Frank.
Blogging this meant that I didn't have to send them both e-mails.
Someday my audience will skyrocket above two to include my Mom.
Carol and Frank are the angels helping me set up my podcast with Eric Barendsen and the devil.
Speaking of Karl Rove, I'm not saying he's the devil, but the devil's relationship with him is identical to Rove's relationship with Bush.
So I woke up this morning dreaming about my first podcast, brilliantly titled "High School Math Class." Who wouldn't want to listen to that? Besides a few million high school students?
The podcast made perfect sense in the dream but has me (and you) mystified now.
However, Bob Henson, the longtime NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research, here in Boulder) writer and author of "The Rough Guide to Climate Change" has agreed to be interviewed for my podcast.
I just e-mailed another friend, 90-year-old University of Colorado (CU) professor emeritus of physics and population expert Al Bartlett about being another interview subject.
Al is one of the world's foremost experts on how the population explosion will implode at some point. He's given his famous talk on this subject 1,645 times, so I've warned him that I have only 1,639 more "Truth About Everything" talks of my own to go to tie him.
Al recently gave his talk at Oregon State, Carol's alma mater, last year gave the talk in Australia and New Zealand, and his given it before Congress, who paid such rapt attention that they've never once mentioned population on the Senate or House floors, and regard population as the political third rail where they should all be pushed.
I've talked with Bob and Al many times and I promise they'll be excellent guests and that I'll be a sub-standard host.
I was so excited about my dream (which contained no high school girls, although the round, hairy Kazakstani producer in "Borat" was sitting naked in the front row, which is disturbing) that I went right to work finishing my book, which is now around 1000 pages. Now I have to edit it down to 300 pages.
Of course all this content, the podcast content and the book (and material is swapped between each of these mediums) is copyrighted and I gratefully respect your respecting that. I had a national figure steal material from me like Milton Berle (he didn't steal Milton Berle, they both stole material) and this intellectual dishonesty gives the thief the worst karma they can have in any creative field. Thank you for respecting the intellectual property I've literally worked decades to develop.
What, you're back after that paragraph?
Tomorrow I bike 1200 vertical feet up to my good friend Brian Ridley's house in 99 degree heat, if it's as hot as today was. I don't do well in heat (not that I'm in heat that often) so I'll be taking a swim in Boulder Creek on the way up while wearing a tight-fitting (this is not meant to be arousing) cotton t-shirt that will stay wet much longer than any of my bike jerseys.
And yes, the likelyhood of heat waves like the one we're in right now, with at least a handful of record high temperatures for the date, goes up as the overall temperature averages go up due to global warming. Scientists expect heat waves like the one that killed over 50,000 Europeans in the summer of 2003 could average every other year by 2050 and ramp up to annual events not long after that (this is from Bob Henson's book).
Even though I'm biking tomorrow, I'll be paying the price for my own bad karma of driving too much in the past.
(Great, funny closing sentence goes here.)
Blogging this meant that I didn't have to send them both e-mails.
Someday my audience will skyrocket above two to include my Mom.
Carol and Frank are the angels helping me set up my podcast with Eric Barendsen and the devil.
Speaking of Karl Rove, I'm not saying he's the devil, but the devil's relationship with him is identical to Rove's relationship with Bush.
So I woke up this morning dreaming about my first podcast, brilliantly titled "High School Math Class." Who wouldn't want to listen to that? Besides a few million high school students?
The podcast made perfect sense in the dream but has me (and you) mystified now.
However, Bob Henson, the longtime NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research, here in Boulder) writer and author of "The Rough Guide to Climate Change" has agreed to be interviewed for my podcast.
I just e-mailed another friend, 90-year-old University of Colorado (CU) professor emeritus of physics and population expert Al Bartlett about being another interview subject.
Al is one of the world's foremost experts on how the population explosion will implode at some point. He's given his famous talk on this subject 1,645 times, so I've warned him that I have only 1,639 more "Truth About Everything" talks of my own to go to tie him.
Al recently gave his talk at Oregon State, Carol's alma mater, last year gave the talk in Australia and New Zealand, and his given it before Congress, who paid such rapt attention that they've never once mentioned population on the Senate or House floors, and regard population as the political third rail where they should all be pushed.
I've talked with Bob and Al many times and I promise they'll be excellent guests and that I'll be a sub-standard host.
I was so excited about my dream (which contained no high school girls, although the round, hairy Kazakstani producer in "Borat" was sitting naked in the front row, which is disturbing) that I went right to work finishing my book, which is now around 1000 pages. Now I have to edit it down to 300 pages.
Of course all this content, the podcast content and the book (and material is swapped between each of these mediums) is copyrighted and I gratefully respect your respecting that. I had a national figure steal material from me like Milton Berle (he didn't steal Milton Berle, they both stole material) and this intellectual dishonesty gives the thief the worst karma they can have in any creative field. Thank you for respecting the intellectual property I've literally worked decades to develop.
What, you're back after that paragraph?
Tomorrow I bike 1200 vertical feet up to my good friend Brian Ridley's house in 99 degree heat, if it's as hot as today was. I don't do well in heat (not that I'm in heat that often) so I'll be taking a swim in Boulder Creek on the way up while wearing a tight-fitting (this is not meant to be arousing) cotton t-shirt that will stay wet much longer than any of my bike jerseys.
And yes, the likelyhood of heat waves like the one we're in right now, with at least a handful of record high temperatures for the date, goes up as the overall temperature averages go up due to global warming. Scientists expect heat waves like the one that killed over 50,000 Europeans in the summer of 2003 could average every other year by 2050 and ramp up to annual events not long after that (this is from Bob Henson's book).
Even though I'm biking tomorrow, I'll be paying the price for my own bad karma of driving too much in the past.
(Great, funny closing sentence goes here.)
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Baby says his first Podcast! Sounds like Mmmama!
It's late and I'm pooped (not my pants, not this time) but hopefully my defenses and hype mode batteries are worn down to the point where I can be honest about what's going on.
What's going on is that nothing is going on with my career, at least in terms of payment, and nothing has been going on for far too long.
I've shown great promise as a comedian (I was part of the Mime Scare of the Seventies, producing my own comedy shows in 500-seat theaters at 19), filmmaker (I got my BA and MFA from UCLA film school), screenwriter (I won the Jack Nicholson Award for Screenwriting and was last produced by HBO), magazine writer (working with Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly on dozens of projects for over a decade), newspaper op-ed writer (for The Christian Science Monitor in my twenties), photographer (I won prestigious photo contests), etc, etc, blah, blah, blah.
All that and 50 dimes will get me a cup of latte.
I took my retirement to be my daughter Sarah's primary caregiver and now I'm desperately trying to unretire (with, not surprisingly, a new wife - maybe I shouldn't have constantly referred to my first wife as "my first wife" in public).
Since I was about 19 I've tried to almost do what I feel I should be doing, but now I'm trying to get back the courage, chutzpah and hair I had when I was 19 and do exactly what I feel my calling is.
And thus I've written the book and launched this blog and podcasts and documentary and one year, 11 province, 50 state, 300 talk and 10,000 miles of biking tour, all with this same humble, modest title, "The Truth About Everything."
The Tour is starting January 1, 2008 and ending December 31, 2008 or quite possibly later. If we get enough sponsorship money we'll just do the tour over again beginning February 2, 2009.
Bill Murray relived the same day over and over in that classic movie "Groundhog Day." We'll be living the same year over and over until we get it right.
Please follow our progress, or lack thereof, on this blog and on our website and podcasts, which are being created right now. In fact we recorded our first podcast at the home of physicist (a professor emeritus from the University of Colorado), neuralscientist (officially an amateur, he's mapped his own brain to discover the reasons for and treatment of his Huntington's and Parkinson's diseases) and generalist genius Brian Ridley, pictured above (below?).
My wife Patti will join me on the trip, and hopefully her son (my stepson) Isaac and my daughter Sarah will join us.
Also joining us will be my collaborator in every medium, Eric Barendsen. Together we're all like the "before" dinner in "Little Miss Sunshine" and hope to end up dancing to "Superfreak" at a child's beauty pageant before we're done.
I'm sorry this is so long and rambling. I'll trying to be longer and more rambling next time. Thanks for reading this, and I'd love to hear from you.
What's going on is that nothing is going on with my career, at least in terms of payment, and nothing has been going on for far too long.
I've shown great promise as a comedian (I was part of the Mime Scare of the Seventies, producing my own comedy shows in 500-seat theaters at 19), filmmaker (I got my BA and MFA from UCLA film school), screenwriter (I won the Jack Nicholson Award for Screenwriting and was last produced by HBO), magazine writer (working with Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly on dozens of projects for over a decade), newspaper op-ed writer (for The Christian Science Monitor in my twenties), photographer (I won prestigious photo contests), etc, etc, blah, blah, blah.
All that and 50 dimes will get me a cup of latte.
I took my retirement to be my daughter Sarah's primary caregiver and now I'm desperately trying to unretire (with, not surprisingly, a new wife - maybe I shouldn't have constantly referred to my first wife as "my first wife" in public).
Since I was about 19 I've tried to almost do what I feel I should be doing, but now I'm trying to get back the courage, chutzpah and hair I had when I was 19 and do exactly what I feel my calling is.
And thus I've written the book and launched this blog and podcasts and documentary and one year, 11 province, 50 state, 300 talk and 10,000 miles of biking tour, all with this same humble, modest title, "The Truth About Everything."
The Tour is starting January 1, 2008 and ending December 31, 2008 or quite possibly later. If we get enough sponsorship money we'll just do the tour over again beginning February 2, 2009.
Bill Murray relived the same day over and over in that classic movie "Groundhog Day." We'll be living the same year over and over until we get it right.
Please follow our progress, or lack thereof, on this blog and on our website and podcasts, which are being created right now. In fact we recorded our first podcast at the home of physicist (a professor emeritus from the University of Colorado), neuralscientist (officially an amateur, he's mapped his own brain to discover the reasons for and treatment of his Huntington's and Parkinson's diseases) and generalist genius Brian Ridley, pictured above (below?).
My wife Patti will join me on the trip, and hopefully her son (my stepson) Isaac and my daughter Sarah will join us.
Also joining us will be my collaborator in every medium, Eric Barendsen. Together we're all like the "before" dinner in "Little Miss Sunshine" and hope to end up dancing to "Superfreak" at a child's beauty pageant before we're done.
I'm sorry this is so long and rambling. I'll trying to be longer and more rambling next time. Thanks for reading this, and I'd love to hear from you.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
A test
This is a test. This is a test. Testing. . .one. . .two. . .three. . .test. A test. Did you hear me? A test! Hey BACONBURGERBREATH! I SAID A TEST!
Welcome to The Truth About Everything (TTAE)
While we want to get in on the ground floor of the doomsday industry (definitely a growth industry), we also want to save the world, one person at a time. We only have 6.6 billion to go - starting with ourselves.
I say “we” because I’m working with my wife Patti, (mostly) platonic friend Eric Barendsen and dozens of Advisory Board members that include top scientists and scholars, Pulitzer Prize-winning and IPCC report authors, and now you.
Soon you’ll be rushing to be the first person to buy the first copy of The Truth About Everything book and to be the first to hear our first TTAE podcast, because you're already reading our first TTAE blog. Ultimately you’ll be the first of millions, or at least minions.
I say “we” because I’m working with my wife Patti, (mostly) platonic friend Eric Barendsen and dozens of Advisory Board members that include top scientists and scholars, Pulitzer Prize-winning and IPCC report authors, and now you.
Soon you’ll be rushing to be the first person to buy the first copy of The Truth About Everything book and to be the first to hear our first TTAE podcast, because you're already reading our first TTAE blog. Ultimately you’ll be the first of millions, or at least minions.
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