This is probably the stupidest thing I've seen to date. As in my entire life. “It will do for skiing what ‘Jaws’ did for swimming.” Oh, will it? Or will it be an epic waste of your time, money and soul? How a movie like this even made it to production is beyond me. I'd rather sit in a dark bathroom with only a jar of fingernails to eat than sit through this, probably the worst movie of 2010...
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Waxing Poetic
With the end of 2009 coming ever more near I've seen some pretty cool montage videos summing up the main events that occurred during this roller coaster year. You know what though? Montage videos can suck it. Ain't nothin' more back to the basics than sitting down in your favorite chair and kicking back with a good book. On that note, I found this recap of the last decade to be very interesting and a great read. Maybe you will, too.
A decade that left a mark on U.S. History
By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY
The decade began with a national sigh of relief — no Y2K terrorist attack or computer meltdown. A traveler named Luis Salcedo, boarding a flight in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2000, summed it up: "Nothing to worry about now."
Not with the lowest unemployment rate in nearly 30 years and a stock market that had just closed at a historic high. Not in the world's only superpower.
But it wasn't going to be that smooth — not America's trip through the next 10 years, nor Salcedo's trip to Washington.
After takeoff, the 727 developed a hydraulic system leak and had to land using a backup system. Emergency vehicles were waiting at Washington Dulles International Airport and followed the plane as it rolled to a stop at the end of a runway. "Last time I'm booking a flight on the first," Salcedo said.
So began a decade when America experienced its worst attack by foreigners and its worst natural disaster; its second-deadliest domestic plane crash, and the most divisive, protracted presidential election since 1876.
DECADE GALLERY: A look back at the last 10 years
There were two wars, both longer than World War II; two stock market crashes; and two recessions, including the worst since the Great Depression.
The first African-American president was inaugurated in a city where, 60 years earlier, Barack Obama's father couldn't have sat at the same lunch counter as a white man.
Americans learned that there was water on the moon and that Tiger Woods wasn't perfect.
Wikipedia, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Skype and Hulu all debuted, as did the iPod, the iPhone and iTunes. Books were joined by e-books. Television broadcasting moved from analog to digital, and TV viewing from cathode ray tubes to flat screens.
In Boston, the Curse of the Bambino that had hung over the Red Sox for the better part of a century was broken.
An interstate highway bridge collapsed, a space shuttle exploded and Michael Jackson died young. Ted Kennedy died knowing that 45 million people in the USA had no health insurance.
The price of oil rocketed from less than $25 to almost $150 a barrel, before dropping to half that.
Deranged gunmen slaughtered the innocent and unsuspecting in places that seemed safe, including a suburban shopping mall, a college campus and an Army post. Scandal erupted almost everywhere, from an Iraqi military prison to Wall Street to K Street.
For the first time, foreign carmakers captured more than half the U.S. market, and two of the Big Three automakers — modestly renamed the Detroit Three — filed for bankruptcy.
Diversions from 21st-century cares were plentiful: American Idol and Lost, Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers, Call of Duty and Halo. Mad Men began; Friends ended.
The general lexicon gained words (unfriend, reality TV, hoteling, waterboarding), expressions ("axis of evil," "toxic assets") and slogans ("No credit? No problem!").
What kind of decade was it? How big? How bad? Historians will tell you it's too soon to pass judgment. But what strikes many of them is the sheer pace of change.
Paul Boyer, who recently updated the last chapter of the U.S. history college textbook he co-authors, The Enduring Vision, is amazed, for example, at how quickly America went "from a remarkable moment of unity after 9/11 to the most intense political factionalism."
To appreciate how tumultuous a decade it was, go back to that first day, when Pluto was still a planet and a typical cellphone weighed 7.7 ounces, twice as much as today.
At the start
We know how the decade turned out; this is how it began.
Shortly after midnight CT, Jose Ramierez-Saucedo, a 19-year-old Mexican, wades across the Rio Grande, where he becomes the decade's first illegal immigrant arrested on the Texas border.
About an hour later Marcus Perlas is born in the heart of Silicon Valley. As the first baby of 2000 at Mountain View's El Camino Hospital, he wins 10 shares of Silicon Graphics stock (worth $96.90 at the time) and a single share of Yahoo (worth $432.69). "We're going to keep it in the baby's portfolio," says his mom. "He's a born businessman, I guess."
It's a Saturday. When the sun rises in the east at a bit after 7, Americans still have not agreed on what to call the new decade. The Oughts? The Naughts?
The headline on page one of Denver's Rocky Mountain News proclaims: WORLD FINDS Y2 IS OK AROUND THE PLANET.
It's a time of dial-up computer connections, foldable road maps and 5-pound phone books. When people want to trade a stock or make a reservation, they pick up the phone. They also lick stamps, check answering machines, flip Rolodexes and insert floppy discs.
For most, times are good. According to a USA TODAY-Gallup Poll, 69% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the country. More than three-quarters of those in the work force say it's a good time to look for a job, and only 14% of Americans are extremely or very worried about their economic situation.
The previous week new unemployment claims fell by 9,000 to 274,000. General Motors, the world's largest automaker, is planning to create 1,000 jobs in North Carolina at a new call center for its OnStar in-vehicle information service.
The only potential problem is a diminishing supply of workers: Some jobs are going unfilled for lack of qualified applicants.
The No. 1 TV series is Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The No. 1 millionaire is Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, worth $91 billion.
Enron, the seventh-biggest U.S. corporation with annual revenue of $101 billion, has been named "America's Most Innovative Company" by Fortune magazine four straight years. Its chairman, Kenneth Lay, received compensation in 1999 worth $42.4 million.
Barack Obama, an Illinois state senator from Chicago, has declared his candidacy for the congressional seat held by a fellow Democrat, a four-term-incumbent. Sarah Palin, re-elected with 74% of the vote, begins her second term as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.
Vermont legislators face an order issued Dec. 20 by the state Supreme Court: Grant gay and lesbian couples the right to marry or craft an alternative system to provide them with equal rights.
The USS Cole, having won a holiday light decoration award at its Navy base in Norfolk, Va., prepares for maneuvers in the Atlantic.
Almost 2 million people are in prison. None is named Jack Abramoff, Dennis Kozlowski, Jeffrey Skilling, Bernard Ebbers or Bernard Madoff.
Warning signs missed
The SEC has just investigated a complaint that Madoff's investment firm is hiding customers' orders from other traders. Madoff has agreed to take corrective measures.
A project to strengthen New Orleans' hurricane defenses, started after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, is years behind schedule. Projected completion date: 2015. Future FEMA director Michael Brown is working for the International Arabian Horse Association.
Toyota is promoting its high-mileage hybrid, the Prius, on sale in the USA this summer. GM, sensing a lack of demand for such cars, is about to cancel work on the Precept, a prototype model that can get 80 miles a gallon.
It has been 81 years since the Boston Red Sox won the World Series and 80 years since they sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees. The team's last heartbreak came in October, when the Yankees beat them in the American League championship series.
Baseball's biggest hero is Mark McGwire, who in 1998 broke the single-season home run record and who last season hit 65 home runs — followed, as in '98, by Sammy Sosa, who hit 63.
Rachael Ray is working at a gourmet market in Albany, N.Y., where customers' reluctance to cook has given her the idea for a course, book and local TV segment called 30 Minutes Meals.
Miley Cyrus and Nick Jonas are 7 years old.
Osama bin Laden, named to the FBI's Most Wanted List six months ago and under indictment for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, is somewhere in Afghanistan. He recently has given Khalid Sheikh Mohammed approval to proceed with a plot to hijack U.S. airliners and fly them into buildings. A group of the plot's participants has arrived in Afghanistan from Germany, including a man named Mohamed Atta.
A year after U.S. missile strikes on Iraq, Saddam Hussein clings to power; his police state has become more like a prison state. One lockup, Abu Ghraib, has as many as 15,000 inmates.
In Green County, Pa., Chuck Graner is a prison guard at the state prison, where he's been accused of mistreating black and Muslim inmates. In West Virginia, Frankfort High School junior Lynndie England is a new member of the Army Reserve. Both will become U.S. military guards at Abu Ghraib, and for their crimes there wind up behind bars themselves.
About 10 a.m., a man in Muhlenberg Township, Pa., calls 911 to report that he shot his family. Police find the bodies of Henry Peffer, 46, his wife and three children from her previous marriages.
Over the next decade, Peffer's successors in mass murder will explode across the nation, from Fort Hood to an Omaha shopping mall to Virginia Tech.
Nidal Hasan is a student at the U.S. military's medical school in Bethesda, Md.
At 11, Robert Hawkins of Omaha already has suffered through five years of psychological problems, including hospitalization for depression.
Seung Hui Cho, 15, a middle school student in Centreville, Va., has been diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder and depression.
On this placid New Year's Day 2000, so much else is happening beneath the surface.
FBI agent Robert Hanssen has re-established contact with the SVR, one of Russia's successors to the Soviet-era KGB, with the intention of resuming an epic spying career that will end in his arrest the following year.
Bruce Ivins, a scientist at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick in Maryland, is studying the potential use of anthrax as a biological weapon. It's an expertise he'll allegedly put to deadly use in the fall of 2001. When the FBI finally closes in seven years later, Ivins will kill himself with nothing more exotic than a common pain reliever.
In Minneapolis, it's been 10 years since the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi River was rated "structurally deficient" because of corrosion in its bearings.
No one's too worried; tens of thousands of other bridges in the nation have the same federal classification.
Full of promise
For better or worse, the future is ripe as the decade begins.
Craig Newmark, founder of an online network with free classified ads, incorporated last year and plans to expand into nine more U.S. cities this year. He calls his site Craigslist.
Later in the year, Sony will release Play Station II and 'N Sync will release No Strings Attached. The TV series Survivor and Curb Your Enthusiasm will premiere.
AOL, the world's largest online service, will buy Time Warner. Federal agents will take 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez from a relative's home in Miami and hand him over to his father, who will take the boy back to Cuba.
In two weeks, the Dow Jones average will peak at 11,723; after that, the dotcom bubble will burst. But that won't stop the information revolution.
Chad Hurley, who will co-create YouTube, has just graduated from college in Pennsylvania and joined PayPal, where he's been asked to design a logo for the online payment service.
Jack Dorsey, who will create Twitter, has dropped out of New York University and moved to the San Francisco Bay area, where he's about to start a business that will use Internet messages to dispatch taxis, couriers and emergency vehicles.
Mark Zuckerberg, who will create Facebook, is in middle school in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., where he's started to develop computer programs.
For many, the day ends with college football. Led by quarterback Tom Brady, Michigan — making its 33rd consecutive post-season bowl game appearance — stages a come-from-behind, 35-34 overtime victory over Alabama in the Orange Bowl.
Virginia Tech and Florida State, both 11-0, meet Tuesday for the national championship. Tech's freshman quarterback seems to have a bright future. His name is Michael Vick.
Ten years later, we look back at the wild ride and wonder what it meant.
After the historian's disclaimer — "still too early to say" — Michael Stoff of the University of Texas suggests that even the decade's disasters might serve a purpose. The 9/11 attacks and global warming, for example, showed that problems such as terrorism and climate change are too broad to be solved by one nation.
"I'm always struck by how bad things look close-up," he says. "They look different when your nose isn't pressed up against the mirror."
Contributing: Adam Silverman of TheBurlington (Vt.) Free Press; Kathleen Gray of the Detroit Free Press; Associated Press
A decade that left a mark on U.S. History
By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY
The decade began with a national sigh of relief — no Y2K terrorist attack or computer meltdown. A traveler named Luis Salcedo, boarding a flight in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2000, summed it up: "Nothing to worry about now."
Not with the lowest unemployment rate in nearly 30 years and a stock market that had just closed at a historic high. Not in the world's only superpower.
But it wasn't going to be that smooth — not America's trip through the next 10 years, nor Salcedo's trip to Washington.
After takeoff, the 727 developed a hydraulic system leak and had to land using a backup system. Emergency vehicles were waiting at Washington Dulles International Airport and followed the plane as it rolled to a stop at the end of a runway. "Last time I'm booking a flight on the first," Salcedo said.
So began a decade when America experienced its worst attack by foreigners and its worst natural disaster; its second-deadliest domestic plane crash, and the most divisive, protracted presidential election since 1876.
DECADE GALLERY: A look back at the last 10 years
There were two wars, both longer than World War II; two stock market crashes; and two recessions, including the worst since the Great Depression.
The first African-American president was inaugurated in a city where, 60 years earlier, Barack Obama's father couldn't have sat at the same lunch counter as a white man.
Americans learned that there was water on the moon and that Tiger Woods wasn't perfect.
Wikipedia, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Skype and Hulu all debuted, as did the iPod, the iPhone and iTunes. Books were joined by e-books. Television broadcasting moved from analog to digital, and TV viewing from cathode ray tubes to flat screens.
In Boston, the Curse of the Bambino that had hung over the Red Sox for the better part of a century was broken.
An interstate highway bridge collapsed, a space shuttle exploded and Michael Jackson died young. Ted Kennedy died knowing that 45 million people in the USA had no health insurance.
The price of oil rocketed from less than $25 to almost $150 a barrel, before dropping to half that.
Deranged gunmen slaughtered the innocent and unsuspecting in places that seemed safe, including a suburban shopping mall, a college campus and an Army post. Scandal erupted almost everywhere, from an Iraqi military prison to Wall Street to K Street.
For the first time, foreign carmakers captured more than half the U.S. market, and two of the Big Three automakers — modestly renamed the Detroit Three — filed for bankruptcy.
Diversions from 21st-century cares were plentiful: American Idol and Lost, Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers, Call of Duty and Halo. Mad Men began; Friends ended.
The general lexicon gained words (unfriend, reality TV, hoteling, waterboarding), expressions ("axis of evil," "toxic assets") and slogans ("No credit? No problem!").
What kind of decade was it? How big? How bad? Historians will tell you it's too soon to pass judgment. But what strikes many of them is the sheer pace of change.
Paul Boyer, who recently updated the last chapter of the U.S. history college textbook he co-authors, The Enduring Vision, is amazed, for example, at how quickly America went "from a remarkable moment of unity after 9/11 to the most intense political factionalism."
To appreciate how tumultuous a decade it was, go back to that first day, when Pluto was still a planet and a typical cellphone weighed 7.7 ounces, twice as much as today.
At the start
We know how the decade turned out; this is how it began.
Shortly after midnight CT, Jose Ramierez-Saucedo, a 19-year-old Mexican, wades across the Rio Grande, where he becomes the decade's first illegal immigrant arrested on the Texas border.
About an hour later Marcus Perlas is born in the heart of Silicon Valley. As the first baby of 2000 at Mountain View's El Camino Hospital, he wins 10 shares of Silicon Graphics stock (worth $96.90 at the time) and a single share of Yahoo (worth $432.69). "We're going to keep it in the baby's portfolio," says his mom. "He's a born businessman, I guess."
It's a Saturday. When the sun rises in the east at a bit after 7, Americans still have not agreed on what to call the new decade. The Oughts? The Naughts?
The headline on page one of Denver's Rocky Mountain News proclaims: WORLD FINDS Y2 IS OK AROUND THE PLANET.
It's a time of dial-up computer connections, foldable road maps and 5-pound phone books. When people want to trade a stock or make a reservation, they pick up the phone. They also lick stamps, check answering machines, flip Rolodexes and insert floppy discs.
For most, times are good. According to a USA TODAY-Gallup Poll, 69% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the country. More than three-quarters of those in the work force say it's a good time to look for a job, and only 14% of Americans are extremely or very worried about their economic situation.
The previous week new unemployment claims fell by 9,000 to 274,000. General Motors, the world's largest automaker, is planning to create 1,000 jobs in North Carolina at a new call center for its OnStar in-vehicle information service.
The only potential problem is a diminishing supply of workers: Some jobs are going unfilled for lack of qualified applicants.
The No. 1 TV series is Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The No. 1 millionaire is Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, worth $91 billion.
Enron, the seventh-biggest U.S. corporation with annual revenue of $101 billion, has been named "America's Most Innovative Company" by Fortune magazine four straight years. Its chairman, Kenneth Lay, received compensation in 1999 worth $42.4 million.
Barack Obama, an Illinois state senator from Chicago, has declared his candidacy for the congressional seat held by a fellow Democrat, a four-term-incumbent. Sarah Palin, re-elected with 74% of the vote, begins her second term as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.
Vermont legislators face an order issued Dec. 20 by the state Supreme Court: Grant gay and lesbian couples the right to marry or craft an alternative system to provide them with equal rights.
The USS Cole, having won a holiday light decoration award at its Navy base in Norfolk, Va., prepares for maneuvers in the Atlantic.
Almost 2 million people are in prison. None is named Jack Abramoff, Dennis Kozlowski, Jeffrey Skilling, Bernard Ebbers or Bernard Madoff.
Warning signs missed
The SEC has just investigated a complaint that Madoff's investment firm is hiding customers' orders from other traders. Madoff has agreed to take corrective measures.
A project to strengthen New Orleans' hurricane defenses, started after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, is years behind schedule. Projected completion date: 2015. Future FEMA director Michael Brown is working for the International Arabian Horse Association.
Toyota is promoting its high-mileage hybrid, the Prius, on sale in the USA this summer. GM, sensing a lack of demand for such cars, is about to cancel work on the Precept, a prototype model that can get 80 miles a gallon.
It has been 81 years since the Boston Red Sox won the World Series and 80 years since they sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees. The team's last heartbreak came in October, when the Yankees beat them in the American League championship series.
Baseball's biggest hero is Mark McGwire, who in 1998 broke the single-season home run record and who last season hit 65 home runs — followed, as in '98, by Sammy Sosa, who hit 63.
Rachael Ray is working at a gourmet market in Albany, N.Y., where customers' reluctance to cook has given her the idea for a course, book and local TV segment called 30 Minutes Meals.
Miley Cyrus and Nick Jonas are 7 years old.
Osama bin Laden, named to the FBI's Most Wanted List six months ago and under indictment for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, is somewhere in Afghanistan. He recently has given Khalid Sheikh Mohammed approval to proceed with a plot to hijack U.S. airliners and fly them into buildings. A group of the plot's participants has arrived in Afghanistan from Germany, including a man named Mohamed Atta.
A year after U.S. missile strikes on Iraq, Saddam Hussein clings to power; his police state has become more like a prison state. One lockup, Abu Ghraib, has as many as 15,000 inmates.
In Green County, Pa., Chuck Graner is a prison guard at the state prison, where he's been accused of mistreating black and Muslim inmates. In West Virginia, Frankfort High School junior Lynndie England is a new member of the Army Reserve. Both will become U.S. military guards at Abu Ghraib, and for their crimes there wind up behind bars themselves.
About 10 a.m., a man in Muhlenberg Township, Pa., calls 911 to report that he shot his family. Police find the bodies of Henry Peffer, 46, his wife and three children from her previous marriages.
Over the next decade, Peffer's successors in mass murder will explode across the nation, from Fort Hood to an Omaha shopping mall to Virginia Tech.
Nidal Hasan is a student at the U.S. military's medical school in Bethesda, Md.
At 11, Robert Hawkins of Omaha already has suffered through five years of psychological problems, including hospitalization for depression.
Seung Hui Cho, 15, a middle school student in Centreville, Va., has been diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder and depression.
On this placid New Year's Day 2000, so much else is happening beneath the surface.
FBI agent Robert Hanssen has re-established contact with the SVR, one of Russia's successors to the Soviet-era KGB, with the intention of resuming an epic spying career that will end in his arrest the following year.
Bruce Ivins, a scientist at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick in Maryland, is studying the potential use of anthrax as a biological weapon. It's an expertise he'll allegedly put to deadly use in the fall of 2001. When the FBI finally closes in seven years later, Ivins will kill himself with nothing more exotic than a common pain reliever.
In Minneapolis, it's been 10 years since the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi River was rated "structurally deficient" because of corrosion in its bearings.
No one's too worried; tens of thousands of other bridges in the nation have the same federal classification.
Full of promise
For better or worse, the future is ripe as the decade begins.
Craig Newmark, founder of an online network with free classified ads, incorporated last year and plans to expand into nine more U.S. cities this year. He calls his site Craigslist.
Later in the year, Sony will release Play Station II and 'N Sync will release No Strings Attached. The TV series Survivor and Curb Your Enthusiasm will premiere.
AOL, the world's largest online service, will buy Time Warner. Federal agents will take 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez from a relative's home in Miami and hand him over to his father, who will take the boy back to Cuba.
In two weeks, the Dow Jones average will peak at 11,723; after that, the dotcom bubble will burst. But that won't stop the information revolution.
Chad Hurley, who will co-create YouTube, has just graduated from college in Pennsylvania and joined PayPal, where he's been asked to design a logo for the online payment service.
Jack Dorsey, who will create Twitter, has dropped out of New York University and moved to the San Francisco Bay area, where he's about to start a business that will use Internet messages to dispatch taxis, couriers and emergency vehicles.
Mark Zuckerberg, who will create Facebook, is in middle school in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., where he's started to develop computer programs.
For many, the day ends with college football. Led by quarterback Tom Brady, Michigan — making its 33rd consecutive post-season bowl game appearance — stages a come-from-behind, 35-34 overtime victory over Alabama in the Orange Bowl.
Virginia Tech and Florida State, both 11-0, meet Tuesday for the national championship. Tech's freshman quarterback seems to have a bright future. His name is Michael Vick.
Ten years later, we look back at the wild ride and wonder what it meant.
After the historian's disclaimer — "still too early to say" — Michael Stoff of the University of Texas suggests that even the decade's disasters might serve a purpose. The 9/11 attacks and global warming, for example, showed that problems such as terrorism and climate change are too broad to be solved by one nation.
"I'm always struck by how bad things look close-up," he says. "They look different when your nose isn't pressed up against the mirror."
Contributing: Adam Silverman of TheBurlington (Vt.) Free Press; Kathleen Gray of the Detroit Free Press; Associated Press
Monday, December 21, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
GoPro
My roommate and I picked up a GoPro Hero Wide HD camera a couple weeks ago. These things are actually pretty fun to mess around with. Excited to see what other nonsense we can come up with as the season goes on. Here's a quick edit Ty put together from the footage we got last Sunday at Brighton.
Early Season Pow - Brighton, UT 12.2009 from Joe Penacoli on Vimeo.
Monday, December 14, 2009
The Snowbird Syndrome
I feel bad. I have no pics with which to enhance this short post.
So, the 'Snowbird Syndrome,' as recently coined this weekend while skiing at Brighton, is a fear for skiing where, technically, you shouldn't.
In short, at Brighton, as long as there isn't a 'closed' sign posted, you can duck ropes and get to the good stuff. At Snowbird you risk losing your pass for this 'bad behavior.'
This doesn't excuse the fact that you still need to make wise decisions when skiing out of bounds. Have fun.
So, the 'Snowbird Syndrome,' as recently coined this weekend while skiing at Brighton, is a fear for skiing where, technically, you shouldn't.
In short, at Brighton, as long as there isn't a 'closed' sign posted, you can duck ropes and get to the good stuff. At Snowbird you risk losing your pass for this 'bad behavior.'
This doesn't excuse the fact that you still need to make wise decisions when skiing out of bounds. Have fun.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
A Struggle
Sometimes that's what this blog is. A struggle. Not in the sense that I lose sleep over, but in the sense that I'll ignore it at times, let it go by the wayside and when I do finally catch up with myself I have a hard time committing to making updated posts. Tough, right? Enough introspection.
Life is full of unknowns - I think these two photos I took express this fact in their own ways.
My buddy Josh, a fisheye, his palm and the obvious.
The depth of field on this makes it a little hard to read, but Calvin is spot-on with his philosophy. "Well, each decision we make determines the range of choices we'll face next." Well put, little buddy.
Life is full of unknowns - I think these two photos I took express this fact in their own ways.
My buddy Josh, a fisheye, his palm and the obvious.
The depth of field on this makes it a little hard to read, but Calvin is spot-on with his philosophy. "Well, each decision we make determines the range of choices we'll face next." Well put, little buddy.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Older Stock
Tina gave me an external hard drive for my birthday at the beginning of this month. I was in the process of moving photo files onto it and came across these two shots of Mike and Jerry playing around on some dirt jumps outside of Park City last summer.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The Following Was Brought to You By...
The Yankees beat the Phils in a super-star six-game World Series. Old news. I know. And I lost my $50 bet with a co-worker. Maybe next year. Until then, New Yorkers have something they can smile about while sitting in traffic wondering, "Why...why do I live here...why do I pay thousands of $$$ for rent each month...why do I pay tolls....why don't I move to New Jersey?" Maybe. Anything's possible. Just don't move to Philly, in which case you run this risk.
On a better note, there are tons of murals in Philadelphia. Some really good, some not so great. Like this one.
Paul likes to exercise his constitutional right of coloring outside the lines.
Switching gears with a trip to the Aquarium, here's a picture of a jelly fish doing it's thing.
And a fish, just chillin'.
Moving on...
On a better note, there are tons of murals in Philadelphia. Some really good, some not so great. Like this one.
Paul likes to exercise his constitutional right of coloring outside the lines.
Switching gears with a trip to the Aquarium, here's a picture of a jelly fish doing it's thing.
And a fish, just chillin'.
Moving on...
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Climbing and Wagers
I climb. Not like I ski. But I like to dabble. A group of us from the workplace were down at the Swell this past weekend. It was a blast. On the wager side, the Phillies are in the World Series. Again. A buddy of mine at work put $50.00 on the Yanks....I shook his hand and accepted the bet. Now I've got to watch some baseball...
Here's a photo dump of the climbing pics. Sorry, no route info. We were in the Buckhorn Wash area of the Swell...
Click on this one (above), then 'all sizes' to do it justice...
B&W shoutout..
Here's a photo dump of the climbing pics. Sorry, no route info. We were in the Buckhorn Wash area of the Swell...
Click on this one (above), then 'all sizes' to do it justice...
B&W shoutout..
Friday, October 23, 2009
Weekend
Back from a little jaunt on the Right Coast - wedding, family, food, stocking up on fat reserves for the winter; you know the drill.
Heading to the Swell for the weekend with a motley crew from work. Should be a rowdy time. Will report on happenings when we return.
For now, here's a shot of a roadside waterfall up Big Cottonwood.
Heading to the Swell for the weekend with a motley crew from work. Should be a rowdy time. Will report on happenings when we return.
For now, here's a shot of a roadside waterfall up Big Cottonwood.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Littering And....
No, not smoking the reefer. Super Troopers is a damn good movie, though.
If you've ever been to Las Vegas, I'm sure you'll agree that place is the litterbox of the US. It's probably the filthiest city I've ever been to. Even driving into Nevada, as soon as you cross over the border from UT into NV, the pavement turns to crap and you begin seeing garbage scattered about the sides of the road and tangled in the weeds in the median. How is it that people still think it's ok to toss waste out the windows of their vehicles?
The other day I was heading up I-80 to Park City. I checked my rear view mirror and noticed a kind fellow riding my ass, in his Audi Allroad. My standard reaction in this instance is to begin coasting, generally slowing down once I take my foot off the gas pedal. Usually, this frustrates the tailgater, prompting them to swerve into another lane, slam on the gas pedal (decreasing their MPGs, ooooh checkmate suckerz...) and leave me in their dust.
Now, even though I shouldn't, I give them the obligatory stare as they pass me and I'll typically just smile or wave, hoping to see them pulled over at some point on the side of the road. However, in this particular instance, while the driver was laying on the horn his ugly girlfriend decided to toss her beverage from McDoo out the window as they passed me - spraying backwash and ammo-dumping ice cubes onto the pavement at breakneck speed. Please also note that I was going 75mph in a 65mph zone; so these goodies were probably going 80mph or faster when they passed me displaying their utmost class. No, I didn't write down their plate number. No, I didn't tail gate them back. But I made sure to pick up the next piece of trash I saw later on that day and toss it out. I'm such a boyscout.
The point of this blurb is to say thanks to my Mom for instilling in me the fact that littering gets us nowhere. I remember riding home after Mom took me through the drive-thru at, ironically, McDoo's, when I was a wee sprout (probably four or five years old). I had finished my drink and went to toss the cup out the car window. Mom caught me in the middle of this terrible act I was about to commit just before I was able to release my excited hands - dropping the cup on the ground as we drove down the road. She told me I better not drop that cup or I'd be in for it when I got home. Instead, Mom let me know that I could instead throw the cup into the street from our driveway. A great compromise.
I sat patiently for the rest of the car-ride home. I was prepping myself, getting ready to throw this cup as far as I possibly could from the edge of the driveway. As soon as we pulled into the driveway and the car was stopped, I jumped out of the car, sprinted to the end of the driveway (probably 10 feet), spiked the cup on the ground like my child-hood hero, John Elway, and stomped it flat like a pancake. I proceeded to peel the cup off the pavement, grinning at my destruction, and hail-married that thing into the center of the neighborhood road.
The crushed cup sat in the middle of the road while I stared at it from the end of my parent's driveway. It wasn't transforming into something magical, it wasn't changing colors, it wasn't getting up and walking away on it's own. It just sat there. I became severely bummed. In the experience I had gained in my four or five years of life, I thought littering was the cool thing to do. Mom was smart - inadvertently teaching me a lesson without me knowing. Shortly after realizing the cut wasn't going to do any good in the street, I went a picked it up and tossed it in the garbage.
That's me; the litterbug.
Thanks, Mom.
If you've ever been to Las Vegas, I'm sure you'll agree that place is the litterbox of the US. It's probably the filthiest city I've ever been to. Even driving into Nevada, as soon as you cross over the border from UT into NV, the pavement turns to crap and you begin seeing garbage scattered about the sides of the road and tangled in the weeds in the median. How is it that people still think it's ok to toss waste out the windows of their vehicles?
The other day I was heading up I-80 to Park City. I checked my rear view mirror and noticed a kind fellow riding my ass, in his Audi Allroad. My standard reaction in this instance is to begin coasting, generally slowing down once I take my foot off the gas pedal. Usually, this frustrates the tailgater, prompting them to swerve into another lane, slam on the gas pedal (decreasing their MPGs, ooooh checkmate suckerz...) and leave me in their dust.
Now, even though I shouldn't, I give them the obligatory stare as they pass me and I'll typically just smile or wave, hoping to see them pulled over at some point on the side of the road. However, in this particular instance, while the driver was laying on the horn his ugly girlfriend decided to toss her beverage from McDoo out the window as they passed me - spraying backwash and ammo-dumping ice cubes onto the pavement at breakneck speed. Please also note that I was going 75mph in a 65mph zone; so these goodies were probably going 80mph or faster when they passed me displaying their utmost class. No, I didn't write down their plate number. No, I didn't tail gate them back. But I made sure to pick up the next piece of trash I saw later on that day and toss it out. I'm such a boyscout.
The point of this blurb is to say thanks to my Mom for instilling in me the fact that littering gets us nowhere. I remember riding home after Mom took me through the drive-thru at, ironically, McDoo's, when I was a wee sprout (probably four or five years old). I had finished my drink and went to toss the cup out the car window. Mom caught me in the middle of this terrible act I was about to commit just before I was able to release my excited hands - dropping the cup on the ground as we drove down the road. She told me I better not drop that cup or I'd be in for it when I got home. Instead, Mom let me know that I could instead throw the cup into the street from our driveway. A great compromise.
I sat patiently for the rest of the car-ride home. I was prepping myself, getting ready to throw this cup as far as I possibly could from the edge of the driveway. As soon as we pulled into the driveway and the car was stopped, I jumped out of the car, sprinted to the end of the driveway (probably 10 feet), spiked the cup on the ground like my child-hood hero, John Elway, and stomped it flat like a pancake. I proceeded to peel the cup off the pavement, grinning at my destruction, and hail-married that thing into the center of the neighborhood road.
The crushed cup sat in the middle of the road while I stared at it from the end of my parent's driveway. It wasn't transforming into something magical, it wasn't changing colors, it wasn't getting up and walking away on it's own. It just sat there. I became severely bummed. In the experience I had gained in my four or five years of life, I thought littering was the cool thing to do. Mom was smart - inadvertently teaching me a lesson without me knowing. Shortly after realizing the cut wasn't going to do any good in the street, I went a picked it up and tossed it in the garbage.
That's me; the litterbug.Thanks, Mom.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Greenday
I was 12, in the sixth grade (1994) and didn't know much about anything (still don't). I had just gotten a stereo with CD player one year before and the first two CDs that were given to me will remain un-mentioned.
With some money from Christmas that year I went and purchased Greenday's first commercially-produced album, Dookie. A couple of my buddies in the neighborhood also got it, but their parents took it away from them once they learned how many times the F-word was used in the lyrics.
My parents didn't ever really ask or seem to concerned about any of the music I've listened to, especially when I was growing up. I guess it pays to be a good kid sometimes.
I still have the Dookie CD and pop it in every now and then; Welcome to Paradise brings me back to living in Delaware, hating life and not knowing much about anything. All great feelings to be reminded of on a given day.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Pee Chee Folders
Man - At the beginning of each school year I was perhaps most excited about getting a new fleet of Pee Chee folders. Their soft colors and generic sports illustrations were way ahead of their time, that's for sure. Another great quality of the Pee Chee is that the folder's pockets run vertically, so if you pitch the folder upside down, all your crap stays neat and organized inside and doesn't come sliding out the top of the folder.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Bro Brah Ra Cha
Shaka bra...BRO!!! Man, I'm psyched when people are psyched. Like this surfer dude.
Chaa!!! Yeaaah!!! This guy watched too many Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a kid.
On another note, I believe I have a cyber stalker. The individual refers to themself as DINGO. DINGO, meet my readers - readers, meet DINGO. DINGO refuses to reveal his/her real identity to me, but knows a surprising amount of information dating back to when I was (or we were?) in college. DINGO frequently leaves comments on my blog - all of which I refuse to verify for posting because they're nonsense b.s. DINGO may be reached at m.burest@gmail.com (some other faux identity as I don't recognize that name, either) if you have any questions, comments or concerns regarding their obsession with bugging the sh*t out of me.
Oh yeah, how about that sufer dude? Watch that clip above again - and forget about DINGO.
Chaa!!! Yeaaah!!! This guy watched too many Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a kid.
On another note, I believe I have a cyber stalker. The individual refers to themself as DINGO. DINGO, meet my readers - readers, meet DINGO. DINGO refuses to reveal his/her real identity to me, but knows a surprising amount of information dating back to when I was (or we were?) in college. DINGO frequently leaves comments on my blog - all of which I refuse to verify for posting because they're nonsense b.s. DINGO may be reached at m.burest@gmail.com (some other faux identity as I don't recognize that name, either) if you have any questions, comments or concerns regarding their obsession with bugging the sh*t out of me.
Oh yeah, how about that sufer dude? Watch that clip above again - and forget about DINGO.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Hey Subaru - You Done F#%&@D Another Car Up
My first blog post was back in October of 2007 - when Subaru gave the Impreza hatchback an unnecessary facelift. Look at that thing. Makes you wanna puke, doesn't it?
Well, as we all know (or at least those that know...know..), Subaru re-upped the Forrester and turned it into a BMW X3-wannabe. I'm not even going to post a picture because I can't stand how terrible the new Forrester looks. Look it up on your own if you really want to see one, or maybe check your neighbor's driveway. Here, this is the old-style (at it's peak):
Badass, right? Well, the new one is the exact opposite of the old style.
It doesn't end here, folks. The boys at Subaru are at it again and they've done ruined another, formerly, great looking automobile, the Subaru Outback. Like the new Forrester, I refuse to post any pictures of the 2010 Outback. It's hideous. It makes me want to crawl back into the womb. It's a terrible sign of things to come. Along with my '92 Loyale blowing up (see a few posts below), I'm officially disenchanted with Subaru as a whole and am shopping another Japanese car brand to turn my current two-wheel situation (bike) into a four-wheel situation (car). Tina, babe, I still like your Impreza....
Oh, and if you want to puke, check out the new Outback here: PUKE
Well, as we all know (or at least those that know...know..), Subaru re-upped the Forrester and turned it into a BMW X3-wannabe. I'm not even going to post a picture because I can't stand how terrible the new Forrester looks. Look it up on your own if you really want to see one, or maybe check your neighbor's driveway. Here, this is the old-style (at it's peak):
Badass, right? Well, the new one is the exact opposite of the old style.
It doesn't end here, folks. The boys at Subaru are at it again and they've done ruined another, formerly, great looking automobile, the Subaru Outback. Like the new Forrester, I refuse to post any pictures of the 2010 Outback. It's hideous. It makes me want to crawl back into the womb. It's a terrible sign of things to come. Along with my '92 Loyale blowing up (see a few posts below), I'm officially disenchanted with Subaru as a whole and am shopping another Japanese car brand to turn my current two-wheel situation (bike) into a four-wheel situation (car). Tina, babe, I still like your Impreza....
Oh, and if you want to puke, check out the new Outback here: PUKE
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
About Ben
Ben and I go way back. My first memory of this guy dates back to the 6th grade in study hall. We didn't know each other at the time and I was sitting up front like a nerd. Ben was cooler than me at this point in time - he was sitting in the back - making jokes about the teacher and laughing with a buddy. I thought they were making fun of me and I tried my hardest to not let their antics bug me for those next 45 minutes. The next year Ben and I were in the same language arts class. We instantly became friends. I can easily say that a grand amount all of my memories from middle school and most of high school involve Ben. So much fun, so many jokes, so much b.s., such good friends.
Even though Ben and I live 2,500 miles away I always make a point to hang out with him when I visit back east. It always seems we pick right up where we left off the last time we saw each other. We also keep in pretty good touch through emails and the like.
Here's a pic of Ben (left) and I and another buddy of ours, Andrew (on the right) on a trip to New York City just before our junior year of high school. Damn....nearly 10 years ago.
Now, back to the main reason for this post. Ben is raising money for a 5K walk that he will be participating in which will be held in Philadelphia, PA on August 23. This is a fundraiser for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I made a donation, and so should you. Everything helps. You may donate to Ben here.
Even though Ben and I live 2,500 miles away I always make a point to hang out with him when I visit back east. It always seems we pick right up where we left off the last time we saw each other. We also keep in pretty good touch through emails and the like.
Here's a pic of Ben (left) and I and another buddy of ours, Andrew (on the right) on a trip to New York City just before our junior year of high school. Damn....nearly 10 years ago.
Now, back to the main reason for this post. Ben is raising money for a 5K walk that he will be participating in which will be held in Philadelphia, PA on August 23. This is a fundraiser for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I made a donation, and so should you. Everything helps. You may donate to Ben here.
Monday, July 20, 2009
This One Bit the Dust
My 1992 Subaru Loyale has officially bit the dust. The timing belt has gone and I'm throwing in the towel. It'll cost more for me to fix than I want to pay forward, so I've posted this link on craig's page. Pay it a visit. Laugh. Cry. Make me an offer on my non-operable car. It was great transportation, especially in the winter.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Lost on Mt. Olympus? Fk That - Let's Go for a Rally-Ride!
I have to be honest, this post was going to be about a group of "special" hikers who got lost on Mt. Olympus right outside of Salt Lake earlier today (read - are you fking kidding me????). Well, if you want to know a little more about their embarrassing fiasco, go toKSL.com, probably Salt Lake's premier online news source. If you live in Salt Lake and know Mt. Olympus, you know how ridiculous it is that these people got "lost" and had to call for "rescue."
Now, regarding what this post is really about. One of the guys from the British motorhead show, Top Gear got to sit in on a whirlwind rally-ride with bad-ass rally-racer Ken Block. Go get some tissues for the cleanup, this gets messy:
Ugh. Are your pants wet yet? If not, head over the face-tube and look this guy up...
Oh yea, and since this blog is great and I'm too lazy to figure out how to fit a wide-screen vid on here, you can view this clip in all it's glory on face-tube.
Now, regarding what this post is really about. One of the guys from the British motorhead show, Top Gear got to sit in on a whirlwind rally-ride with bad-ass rally-racer Ken Block. Go get some tissues for the cleanup, this gets messy:
Ugh. Are your pants wet yet? If not, head over the face-tube and look this guy up...
Oh yea, and since this blog is great and I'm too lazy to figure out how to fit a wide-screen vid on here, you can view this clip in all it's glory on face-tube.
Monday, July 6, 2009
How to be Uncool
Sure, when my buddies and I were younger we thought it was fun to race our red wagons down the hill that was our street, luge-style. We'd race each other and then crash into the bushes in my parent's front yard since we didn't have any brakes on our rigs. We were way cooler than these guys (turn off your sound unless you understand un-English):
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
New Name
I changed the name of my blog. You may recall it as Everything Under the Sun. Honestly, I can't tell you how sick I became of that name shortly after creating this little plot on the world wide web wheneverago; I've wanted to change it's name ever since but never did anything about it, dig? That changed today. From here on out, I'm calling my blog Hype Machine. Now that's a nice, ambivalent name for a weblog. I see that you agree. Wonderful.
Now get a load of this. Since I decided to hold off on getting that sweet RIP 9 bike a few posts down, my lust for a 29er was egged towards Santa Cruz Bicycles shortly after I heard rumors of them putting out a 29-inch bike this coming season. Well, a quick read on their blog and here it is - a real-life sample of what the bike will look like when it hits the market:
Well there it is. My new lust-interest. Not.
They're making this thing outta carbon fiber, according to their blog, which is fine, if you want (i.e. can afford) carbon fiber. I, on the other hand, don't necessarily want a carbon fiber bike, nor do I want to afford (i.e. go broke) one. Granted, the Niner is sweet. But Santa Cruz has been doing bikes for-ev-er and I was over-psyched to hear they're putting out a 29er. But guys? C'mon.....carbon fiber? Fkna.
Now get a load of this. Since I decided to hold off on getting that sweet RIP 9 bike a few posts down, my lust for a 29er was egged towards Santa Cruz Bicycles shortly after I heard rumors of them putting out a 29-inch bike this coming season. Well, a quick read on their blog and here it is - a real-life sample of what the bike will look like when it hits the market:
Well there it is. My new lust-interest. Not.
They're making this thing outta carbon fiber, according to their blog, which is fine, if you want (i.e. can afford) carbon fiber. I, on the other hand, don't necessarily want a carbon fiber bike, nor do I want to afford (i.e. go broke) one. Granted, the Niner is sweet. But Santa Cruz has been doing bikes for-ev-er and I was over-psyched to hear they're putting out a 29er. But guys? C'mon.....carbon fiber? Fkna.
Monday, June 29, 2009
What's the Happs?
Lately in the month of June:
Tina and a lazy Sunday.
Ty wrastles a pebble.
Josh reeling it in.
Half-time.
Tina having a go.
Oh snap. Breakfast and Sunday comics.
The eggs - they were incredible.
Tina and a lazy Sunday.
Ty wrastles a pebble.
Josh reeling it in.
Half-time.
Tina having a go.
Oh snap. Breakfast and Sunday comics.
The eggs - they were incredible.
Friday, June 19, 2009
No Cheats
I'll admit that I read a ton of blogs during the day. You typically find some pretty random, useless stuff on blogs (like mine) and then others have content that hits you like a brick. I perused Sage Cattabriga-Alosa's blog this morning and he had posted a paragraph from the University of Portland's commencement speech by a fellow named Paul Hawken. I read the paragraph and though, hmmm, that's cool. Then there was a link at the end to Paul's entire speech. I copy and pasted it below. Please, do yourself, and the world, a favor and read it.
Commencement Address to the Class of 2009
University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009
When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was "direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful." No pressure there.
Let's begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.
This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don't poison the water, soil, or air, don't let the earth get overcrowded, and don't touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.
There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn't bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn't afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here's the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.
You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.
There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. "One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice," is Mary Oliver's description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.
Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown -- Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood — and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of
people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.
The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.
The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a "little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."
So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.
This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn't stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn't ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn't make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it. (end of speech)
Now, I couldn't tell you who delivered the commencement speech at my graduation from university in May of 2006, and I certainly don't remember how it made me feel inside. But Paul's comments in this speech are some of the most realistic ideas, principles and outlooks that we could all benefit from. I guess skiing isn't the only thing worth living for.
Enjoy this sunset pic I snapped a few weeks ago.
Commencement Address to the Class of 2009
University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009
When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was "direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful." No pressure there.
Let's begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.
This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don't poison the water, soil, or air, don't let the earth get overcrowded, and don't touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.
There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn't bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn't afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here's the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.
You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.
There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. "One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice," is Mary Oliver's description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.
Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown -- Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood — and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of
people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.
The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.
The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a "little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."
So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.
This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn't stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn't ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn't make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it. (end of speech)
Now, I couldn't tell you who delivered the commencement speech at my graduation from university in May of 2006, and I certainly don't remember how it made me feel inside. But Paul's comments in this speech are some of the most realistic ideas, principles and outlooks that we could all benefit from. I guess skiing isn't the only thing worth living for.
Enjoy this sunset pic I snapped a few weeks ago.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Bike Sike
Sike...like decided to wait on the bike. Obligatory sad face :( I could use money in other areas right now and will wait until next spring to get this, or perhaps a cooler, bike. It'll taste even sweeter then, I figure.
It's been raining like crazy the last couple weeks. Unlike anything I've ever seen in Utah before. Aside from that, I've been dying to make another trip up to the Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake. Tina and I went up there this past weekend and, well, it rained. Time for an obligatory photo dump:
Tina had fun, too.
Back at the home front Hobbes wanted in on some of the camera action. Here he is, psyched as always, and in great form.
Seriously...how do you punish this kid for picking through the garbage when you aren't home?
It's been raining like crazy the last couple weeks. Unlike anything I've ever seen in Utah before. Aside from that, I've been dying to make another trip up to the Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake. Tina and I went up there this past weekend and, well, it rained. Time for an obligatory photo dump:
Tina had fun, too.
Back at the home front Hobbes wanted in on some of the camera action. Here he is, psyched as always, and in great form.
Seriously...how do you punish this kid for picking through the garbage when you aren't home?
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Mix Tape
I found some old mix tapes the other day while cleaning out my closet. They're probably from high school. It's kind of terrible that I don't have tape deck to listen to these on - apparently cassette tapes are as far out the door as, hmmmm, 8-tracks.
Regarding what's coming in....a Niner R.I.P. 9. I'll be building it from the ground up. I'm pscyhed and will be po' for a while. Hope to have this thing done and ridable by the end of July. Swoll.
Regarding what's coming in....a Niner R.I.P. 9. I'll be building it from the ground up. I'm pscyhed and will be po' for a while. Hope to have this thing done and ridable by the end of July. Swoll.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The Tramp
I had the privilege of house sitting for some friends of mine over Memorial day weekend. They have a pretty cool house and a great kitchen. Check the tuna fish sando I made on Saturday afternoon!
Oh, so good!
Another fun thing about staying at this house is that they have an in-ground trampoline. What a blast....
Tina boosting.
Oh, so good!
Another fun thing about staying at this house is that they have an in-ground trampoline. What a blast....
Tina boosting.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Spring
As I was brushing my teeth this morning I decided to take a stroll over to the front of my apartment and peek out the window to do a spot-check on the weather. I was barely able to see the sun as I tried to squint through all the dirt on the windows. Might be time to clean them again.
Grass in the front "yard."
Also, I discovered my D200 has an image overlay function to create double exposures. Here's a poor example of one taken of the street lamp by my casa.
Grass in the front "yard."
Also, I discovered my D200 has an image overlay function to create double exposures. Here's a poor example of one taken of the street lamp by my casa.
Friday, April 17, 2009
It Has a lot to do With the People You're With, The Music Being Played & The Shoes On Your Feet
Yeah, all that and more. I was digging through a couple pics of me doing a few of the things I've loved or love. Enjoy this shameless eyecandy.
I haven't snowboarded since the 04/05 season. A favorite picture of me caught at Brighton in 2001. Lame boost.
I've kept a longboard on hand in one capacity or another and really enjoy getting out on it when the weather is nice. Get low.
I picked up freeheel skiing in 2004. This was taken in June of 2008 at Snowbird. No cheats.
This is a repost of an image caught in March of 2008 in the Brighton backcountry. It was a deep day, but I've seen deeper.
The 08/09 season brought about many changes. One of them was me picking up alpine skiing again - something I learned to do when I was two years old (thanks, Dad). Just another day at Brighton - crushing it.
Maybe I'll post some more sweets later. Have a great weekend, everyone.
I haven't snowboarded since the 04/05 season. A favorite picture of me caught at Brighton in 2001. Lame boost.
I've kept a longboard on hand in one capacity or another and really enjoy getting out on it when the weather is nice. Get low.
I picked up freeheel skiing in 2004. This was taken in June of 2008 at Snowbird. No cheats.
This is a repost of an image caught in March of 2008 in the Brighton backcountry. It was a deep day, but I've seen deeper.
The 08/09 season brought about many changes. One of them was me picking up alpine skiing again - something I learned to do when I was two years old (thanks, Dad). Just another day at Brighton - crushing it.
Maybe I'll post some more sweets later. Have a great weekend, everyone.
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