From the Autumn ‘05 issue

The below talk was given at elephant’s benefit for the Boulder Co-op, elephant:live.

Those of you out there who practice music know that it has many different facets. Most people regard music as a performance art, where entertainment is the focus, as opposed to a vehicle for communication, or even a ceremonial process.

I went to Naropa [University] for many years. I did the 10-year program [Laughter]. Before I graduated I was in the Psychology department and was practicing forms of meditation, martial arts and was involved in Native American spirituality; the Sun Dance and the Sweat Lodge, and so on.

I probably wouldn’t have Read the rest »

• 0 views
• Comment!
•  Email This Post
• Share on Facebook
• (No Ratings Yet)
  
   Loading ...

While it may not be entirely accurate, this one’s entertaining. Gender Analyzer asks, “man or woman – who is writing that blog?” According to the site it was created simply out of curiosity and uses artificial intelligence (what does that mean exactly?) to determine if a homepage was written by a guy or gal. Read the rest »

• 26 views
• Comment!
•  Email This Post
• Share on Facebook
• (No Ratings Yet)
  
   Loading ...

The New Captains of Industry

Author’s Note:  This ended up coming out more like a Feature Story rather than a Blog post or a straight interview, there was so much important context for the meeting that I didn’t feel comfortable losing some of those important details, so please forgive its length.  The interviews with Kris Wiesenfeld and Kevin Geminiuc, the Organizers of Colorado Green Tech, are below the cut.  Cheers!

I stood over by the cheese and beer tray chatting with two young gentlemen about this book I was reading: Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson.  Not many people know about this book outside of the Geek-chic elite, so I hope you, dear reader, will forgive my mention of this seemingly mundane detail.  These two gentlemen, Manish and John, also talked about business, and I had a chance to test out some of the questions I planned to ask of two other gentlemen at later point in the evening.  My questions were about Ethics–the Good Life–and how its relation to the Free Market.
Manish and John mentioned that they were looking to start a business, and that they would be selling a solution to help companies reduce their energy consumption.  Twenty years ago, we would never have heard of such a thing: where the profitable and the marketable met the ethical.   It was an idea where the right thing to do (helping companies reduce their energy consumption) would be the profitable thing to do.
Who knew that you could make money saving the world?

Read the rest »

• 27 views
• Comment!
•  Email This Post
• Share on Facebook
• (No Ratings Yet)
  
   Loading ...

Photo via NY TIMES

From the Autumn ‘05 issue

For 33 years, I have worked with the habitual patterns of my mind through the path of meditation. For 12 years, I have volunteered in prisons, presenting the insights of meditation to prison inmates. There is a great similarity between my own path and the path of the inmates with whom I work. As human beings, we share the ability to appreciate our life’s circumstances as a vehicle for the spiritual journey. The whirl of thought-based confusion that we project upon our world can imprison all of us. Likewise, we all possess the capability and means to realize fundamental freedom.

This is live work. From the moment one enters Read the rest »

• 20 views
• Comment!
•  Email This Post
• Share on Facebook
• (No Ratings Yet)
  
   Loading ...

Michelle Munro wrote at 3:56pm:

Happy hello from cold Halifax! I was just wondering if you have any recommendations for “green” toys this holiday season? I get Mothering magazine and Read the rest »

• 42 views
• 2 Comments
•  Email This Post
• Share on Facebook
• (No Ratings Yet)
  
   Loading ...

(photos by Michael Levin of zoobird.com unless otherwise noted)

“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.” — Mother Teresa of Calcutta

The HomeVan is a local Gainesville, FL organization that passes out food and supplies to homeless people. It’s been organized for years by Gainesville locals Bob and Arupa Freeman. Read the rest »

• 44 views
• Comment!
•  Email This Post
• Share on Facebook
• (No Ratings Yet)
  
   Loading ...

The new president-elect stepping off his plane

(the plane factor not so cool but I can understand the guy is very busy)

My last letter post from my good buddy Garrison.

By Garrison Keillor
Nov. 12, 2008

Be happy, dear hearts, and allow yourselves a few more weeks of quiet exultation. It isn’t gloating; it’s satisfaction at a job well done. He was a superb candidate, serious, professorial but with a flashing grin and a buoyancy that comes from working out in the gym every morning. He spoke in a genuine voice, not senatorial at all. He relished campaigning. He accepted adulation gracefully. He brandished his sword against his opponents without mocking or belittling them. He was elegant, unaffected, utterly American, and now (Wow) suddenly America is cool. Chicago is cool. Chicago!!!

We threw the dice and we won the jackpot and elected a black guy with a Harvard degree, the middle name Hussein and a sense of humor — he said, “I’ve got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I’ve got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher.” The French junior minister for human rights said, Read the rest »