I've only been writing this blog for a couple of weeks, but already I feel a little internal pressure to write something substantial or thought provoking, yet time never seems to find itself. With all the pressures from study, life, etc... it's tough coming up with something fresh and original, although the ideas are all in there... stay tuned...

But, tonight I was listening to "Waiting on a World to Change" by John Mayer and I decided to sit down and learn the tune. So, I googled some tabs and checked out one of his live videos on youtube, and there you have it, a rough version for my "repertoire". Anyway, I checked out John's blog while browsing his site and came across something that I basically had been meaning to write myself. I was just waiting on a world to change I guess...

Peace,
Grant


From the heart of John Mayer:


I need to write this.

I've been traveling alone in Japan for the better part of three weeks now, and It's been so remarkable an experience for me that I can't book a ticket home yet. I haven't spoken very much out loud these days, but I've been thinking to myself in what feels like surround sound. I can see so many things clearly, and feel so connected to myself and the world around me that I need to share the perspective with you.

I'm already aware that when I sing, say or write anything, 50 percent of the response will be in support of it and the other 50 will want to discount it. This blog, though, is directed to 100 percent of people reading it. If my blog truly does have any cultural effect, then it should be used for more than just pictures of sneakers and funny youtube videos. (If you don't think my blog has any effect, than you can't by definition be reading this right now and therefore don't have to respond to it in any way. Isn't that tidy?)

What I'm about to write isn't about fame or success or celebrity or the media. That's my business.

This is about us all.

This is about a level of self consciousness so high in my generation, that it's actually toxic.

This is about the girl in her bedroom who poses in front of the camera she's awkwardly holding in her outstretched hand. She'll take a hundred photos until coming up with one she's happy with, which inevitably looks nothing like her, and after she's done poring over images of herself, will post one on her myspace page and then write something like " I don't give a f*ck what you think about me."

This is about the person trying out for American Idol, who while going off about how confident they are that they were born ready to sing in front of the world, are trembling so badly they can hardly breathe.

This is about me, the guy who walks through a throng of photographers into a restaurant like he's Paul Newman, but who leaves a "reject" pile of clothes in his closet so high that his cleaning lady can't figure out how one man can step into so many pairs of pants in a week.

This is about a young guy who maintains a celebrity blog that subsists on tearing other people down but who has wrestled with a lifelong battle for acceptance as a gay man.

This is about us all. Every one of us. Who all seem to know deep down that it's incredibly hard to be alive and interact with the world around us but will try and cover it up at any cost. For as badass and unaffected as we try to come off, we're all just one sentence away from being brought to the edge of tears, if only it was worded right. And I don't want to act immune to that anymore. I took the biggest detour from myself over the past year, since I decided that I wasn't going to care about what people thought about me. I got to the point where I had so much padding on that, sure, I couldn't feel the negativity, but that's because I couldn't feel much of anything. And I think I'm done with that.

I'm not the first person to admit we're all self conscious, Kanye was. But what I want to do is to shed a little light on why we're all in the same boat, no matter the shape of the life we lead: because every one of us were told since birth that we were special. We were spoken to by name through a television. We were promised we could be anything that we wanted to be, if only we believed it and then, faster than we saw coming, we were set loose into the world to shake hands with the millions of other people who were told the exact same thing.

And really? Really? It turns out we're just not all that special, when you break it down. Beautifully unspectacular, actually. And that truth is going to catch up with us whether we want to run from it or not. The paparazzo following me to the gym ain't gonna be Herb Ritts and the guy he's following ain't gonna be Bob Dylan. It's just a matter of how old you are once you embrace that fact. And for me, 30 sounds about right.

What now, then? I can only really say for myself: Enjoy who I am, the talents and the liabilities. Stop acting careless. In fact, care more. Be vulnerable but stay away from where it hurts. Read. See more shows. Of any kind. Rock shows, art shows, boat shows. Create more art. Wear hoodies to dinner. Carry a notebook and hand it to people when they passionately recommend something and ask them to write it down for me.

Root for others.

Give more and expect the same in return, but over time.

Act nervous when I'm nervous, puzzled when I don't know what the hell to do, and smile when it all goes my way. And never in any other order than that.

And when it's all over, whether at the end of this fabulous career or of this life, which I hope takes place at the same time, I should look back and say that I had it good and I made the most of it while I was able. And so should you.

I'm going quiet now.

John

Today, April 22nd, is Earth Day. So, in honour of our only home I present a little something to reflect on. The following was written by Carl Sagan shortly before he died:

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Picture taken from the Voyager spacecraft before leaving our solar system, some 6 billion km away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth

Google Earth: http://earth.google.com

Peace on Earth,
Grant

Dan, glad to know you are blogging more again. I was missing your regular insights into life. Nice videos by the way... the time lapse traffic ones are appalling, conscious raisers. And, so, our mind numbed, instant oatmeal, get-something-for-nothing society is still quite in the dark about how things are going to change in the next decades. With record oil profits, "peak oil" is getting a little more in the mainstream news, so that's good. I figure in a few short years, the phrase may be as common as "global warming", indeed it should be, because the two are not mutually exclusive, and are quite inextricably linked. On the one hand oil prices are at record highs, even adjusting for inflation, and on the other, Saudi Arabia is saying, don't worry, we are not running out of oil (wink, wink... nudge, nudge), there's lots of oil! http://www.reuters.com/article/hotStocksNews/idUSSYD3274320080410

Energy
But, here's the catch, we are NOT running out of oil; that is uniformly misunderstood. We are just at or near the peak of how much we can pump out in a day, and demand is going up, but supply is leveling off. Oil in a well is a little like molasses in a big thick slice of bread. Now, take the molasses soaked bread and stuff it at the bottom of, let's see, a Pringles can. Fill the Pringles can with more bread and really pack it down there on top of the molasses bread. Pack in more bread until you can't pack any more. Now, suppose you wanted that molasses... mmmmm, yummy.... but the only way you can get at it is with a thin plastic straw. Ok, so, assuming you can even get the straw down there, without breaking it, maybe the molasses is now under enough pressure from the overlying bread that it might just shoot out, or at least ooze out of the Pringles can (I haven't tried this, just a thought experiment, but maybe worth a try), then you understand what is involved getting oil out 4km below the surface. Nowadays, they are drilling even deeper because all the "good stuff" is gone. Mostly the sticky, gunky stuff remains. My point is that it's not just in a big empty cavern down there that can be sucked out at will. Most of the good, easy to get molasses is out, maybe half of the total still remains.

So, what do we do? If we are smart and I have no doubt that we are, and we can work together (not so sure about that), we can make a smooth transition to a low energy future (low, because it will likely never be as high energy as it has been on oil). In its most basic sense, energy just allows us to do things. It allows us to organize society, which can be thought of as a system of related and unrelated events that tends toward disorder (natural systems have this tendency because there are many more "disordered states" than "ordered ones", keeping in mind that "order" is not completely subjective). Patterns exist in nature, which is "order" but this order is not the natural tendency, but simply because we live with a effectively limitless supply of energy from the sun. But, higher levels of organization such as society and high-tech, for instance, required something more, oil. But, what IS possible is that we can still influence the system positively within our realm of control. But, a smooth transition is more likely than not, a pipe dream, I am afraid. There will be bumps in the road, so we should accept that, but meanwhile also accept having a fulfilling, yet low energy future. It is, therefore abundantly subjective, what "fulfillment" means to you. If that means high-tech, you might be out of luck, but if you are happy with good food, good family and friends you will discover that fulfillment is all around you, you just need to look for it. For this reason, I really like the "Transition Culture" idea... a very positive message and sustainable way forward: http://transitionculture.org/


The Climate is Changing in Spain
Here, in Catalonia, Spain we are going through a severe drought, the worst in 6 decades. Basically, there is a water ban on most non-essential water usage... and it is just April... at this rate, August will be critical. Let me explain. Last week I saw the headline in Barcelona's newpaper, El Periodico, which showed the current state of the reservoirs in the Pyrenees. They are at 21%, or just above the critical level. Normally, at this time of the year, they are in the 70% full range. Just about the only thing Franco did right however, was to build scores of dams in the mountains, which double as hydroelectric plants. But, this year they are just about run dry and they are usually what gets us along for the summer... The snow pack and glacier run off, as well as the generally rainy Mediterranean winter, fills the reservoirs, and much of northern Spain relies on this for summer water, through the damn dam system. So, of course, we have this water ban... there's no point in complaining. This is an urgent situation. If we don't conserve now, it will be much worse in August when it is in the high 30's. Among other things, we cannot water gardens or green zones, public or private, fill swimming pools (6000€ fine!), wash your cars, even run certain types of air conditioners. Now, the second problem of course is that these reservoirs are running those hydroelectric plants. So, the energy grid is being forced to take up the slack by using, more coal burning plants, which of course, in the long run, exacerbates the problem by contributing to heating up the atmosphere, further inducing droughts and so on. However, other parts of Spain are doing fine, and so this is evidence of the type of things that climate change induces, not just general warming, but the related affects and how the planet (indeed, those very same wonderful laws of physics) respond to warmer temperatures. So, Catalonia has resorted to shipping in water. Yes, you read right. See here: http://www.euronews.net/index.php?page=info&article=478946&lng=1 This is the epitome of unsustainable and the Catalan government (The Generalitat) knows this, so there is a plan in place to build a desalinization plant. Just hope it's not run on a coal fired electricity plant.

More evidence of the changing climate is that the glaciers in the Pyrenees are just about gone... maybe one or two more years. I saw a picture from 1980 and one from 2004 and it is absolutely shocking, when you realize that this glacier had been there for 10,000 years. Kind of brings tears to your eyes, except that you want to save them in a jar in case you get thirsty. The bears couldn't even hibernate this year in some parts of the Pyrenees, it was so mild... So, their social and reproduction patterns are out of whack.

The Universe is so complex and we have evolved only to be able to perceive it with OUR senses... basically, medium sized objects moving at medium sized speeds. There is so much happening at so many levels, all around us, but many of us seem to assert this so called "god-given right" to dominate the world around us, and our recent discovery of oil has led us to believe that we can do just about anything (ie. go to the moon, etc..., just think what an ego boost that must have been!) A famous physicist, Richard Fenyman, once commented that "if you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don't understand quantum mechanics". Quantum mechanics is brilliant mathematically, but we simply didn't evolve to comprehend it, conceptually. Perhaps, mathematics is even the "mind of god", to overuse a metaphor. It's like, well, ok, we think of an electron as a point particle, but in fact, it's not, its more like a statistical probability... a probability cloud of sorts... because if it is a point particle, elementary in nature, then it has no size, yet... it has a measurable mass... what's more, recently there has been some talk about when the new CERN particle accelerator gets going later this year, there is the possibility of observing the Higgs Boson, which is, as of now, a theoretical particle that if it exists, would give the mechanism by which particles acquire mass. This would be revolutionary in physics! Here is a great definition of the Higgs Boson: http://www.phy.uct.ac.za/courses/phy400w/particle/higgs2.htm
So, what would the existence or not of the Higgs Boson do for us? It may lead to future technological or philosophical discoveries, but more importantly, I think, it would for certain test the limits of what we know or, for that matter, CAN know.

So, the truth is all around us and we have proven that we are a "super-species", we have done some change for bad, but we can choose to also make a change for the good. Much has been said about how "fighting climate change is an industrial challenge" or "it will hurt the economy", well, let me stress, that conserving is always cheaper than spending. We many times underestimate the power of conservation. So, conserving is necessarily good for the economy. And, those areas that will be negatively affected by the changes necessary to move forward will be offset by those that are needed to move us forward to begin with. Building windmills and insulating houses creates jobs. CO2 gas sequestration creates jobs. Finding better, sustainable ways to feed the planet creates jobs. There is no single answer, there is every and all answers. We just have to do the job.

Peace,
Grant