The Daily Show juxtaposes George W. Bush’s 2000 acceptance speech with John McCain’s and exposes striking similarities.
On its final night of “covering” the Republican National Convention, The Daily Show kicked off the final 59 days of this election with two masterpieces of video archiving and editing. First, Steward cuts together a clip that shows McCain repeating many of the same empty promises that were made by George W. Bush in 2000 on issues like changing the tone of Washington D.C., fixing our failed education system, and bipartisanship. McCain even echoes Bush’s smaller details like a promise to share credit with the Democrats for all of the great things he plans to do.
The second is a mini-documentary that tells the story of McCain’s tragic fall from a free thinker to a partisan drone, starting in 2006 when he embraced the very same hate mongers he’d once referred to as “agents of intolerance”. He panders to the base by changing (some might say flip-flopping) his positions on both abortion and Bush’s tax cuts. And he contradicts himself about the Iraq war.
McCain has appeared on The Daily Show many times. Stewart clearly respects him, and you can see hints of reluctance after the first clip. McCain has sacrificed his integrity and succumbed to the dark side of partisan, neoconservative politics, all of which is driven by blind ambition. He must be defeated in November. If the economy is any indication, the Democrats should have it in the bag. Then again, no party is better at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory than the Dems.
The global phenomenon known as Green Drinks is a lot like social networking, only in the real world. How crazy is that?
It often seems like Max Gladwell exists not at the nexus of social media and green living but rather in the parallel worlds. We often attend networking events for each of these markets, and it’s more often the case that we get blank stares when it comes to discussing one world or the other. The techies are so wrapped up in the online environment that the actual environment is just that place where you raise money and do business. The greenies are so busy saving the world that they haven’t realized the organizational power of this virtual world. If you’re reading this, then you’re probably not among this group. In our experience out in the real world, though, you’d be the exception.
We make this observation for a couple reasons. First, we’d like to organize networking events that bring these worlds together. They’d have to start in Santa Monica, where we’re based, so let us know if you have any thoughts or ideas. Secondly, it sets up our first Green Drinks post.
Green Drinks is a global, social-networking phenomenon. We see it as a manifestation of the social web without actually being a part of the social web. In other words, it’s a Web 1.0 online environment that has given birth to a Web 2.0 offline environment. These analogies aren’t perfect, so let us explain
It’s described as “an organic, self-organizing network.” Green Drinks is almost completely decentralized into autonomous chapters in every locale. Each has its own logo. Many now have blogs and a few use online social networking, but it’s primarily a simple email subscription model, and there’s almost zero interconnection. The main Facebook group has all of 2,100 members, which seems scant considering there are chapters in 402 cities worldwide. We were aware of a company that was trying to bring all chapters into a single, online social network last year, but it doesn’t appear it ever went live. We also heard about a documentary project that was going to travel the world to film the Green Drinks culture but have heard nothing since. Other than its very simple and non-interactive website, Green Drinks has no way to tie all 402 cities and chapters together, which could be very powerful.
The Daily Show and The Colbert Report deliver superb, award-winning commentary and satire. But don’t call it news.
It’s no secret that we’re big supporters of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert. In fact, WebEcoist recently featured Max Gladwell among its 25 Best Green Blogs, noting that “you’re as likely to read about The Daily Show or the election as you are to read about water saving myths and green social sites.” We’re also known to live Twitter the shows, which usually end up being time delayed via TiVo.
We qualify ourselves as supporters of the shows as opposed to fans because it’s more about the medium and what it represents. We support the role they play in echoing the thoughts, frustrations, and absurdities of mainstream news and politics in ways that make us laugh. If laughter is the best medicine and the Bush Administration is a disease, then Stewart and Colbert are the cure.
What prompted us to finally write this homage was last night’s show and how a particular clip has gone viral on the social web.
Water scarcity tops the presentations in the SlideShare World’s Best Presentation Contest.
SlideShare is YouTube for PowerPoint presentations. It’s a fantastic social tool for sharing presentations, discussing them, voting on them, and ultimately learning from them. Of course, we’re actually Keynote users because it’s a superior product, but that’s beside the point.
From the author: “This is an educational presentation exploring humanity’s water use and the emerging worldwide water shortage. It is designed to act as a stand-alone presentation.”
Guy Kawasaki was a judge provided us with the tip. There are many others worth a view.
Toyota Prius and hybrid versions of Chevrolet Malibu, Chevrolet Tahoe, Ford Escape, Saturn Vue, and Toyota Camry pay back price premium after one year.
YONKERS, NY — With gas prices soaring, Consumer Reports’ latest analysis of owner costs shows that drivers can save anywhere from $500 to $4,250 over a five year ownership period by choosing selected hybrids rather than similar conventional gasoline–powered vehicles.
Six of the 12 hybrids CR experts looked at — Toyota Prius and hybrid versions of the Chevrolet Malibu, Chevrolet Tahoe, Ford Escape, Saturn Vue, and Toyota Camry — can save consumers about $500 to $4,250 even without tax credits, and pay back their price premium after only one year. For several of these hybrids, owners can save even more by taking advantage of federal tax credits.
Opinions and observations about the 2008 presidential campaign.
Now that the Democratic and Republican tickets are complete, we’re prepared to offer our humble opinions about this most historic presidential contest between Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin. Though most of our political writings are in the context of social media and sustainability, this is the rare exception. We’re daring to join the chorus of pundits who’ve already put their stamp of punditry on this 2008 race. Here is ours.
Our political compass points neither left nor right, and we can hardly be described as centrists. Our politics is an individual viewpoint grounded in the principles of reason, morality, freedom, capitalist democracy, and the American Constitution. It is libertarian in so far as the free market is the most efficient type of economic system for a free and democratic society; it is liberal in so far as the free market lacks morality and requires government to regulate it accordingly. This is a delicate balance, which tends to skew one way or another when lobbyists and special interests get involved.
We reluctantly submit that there is very little choice in this two-party system. Each is ultimately controlled by special interests, though as Bill Maher once noted, “The Democrats are controlled by a slightly less scary group of special interests.” Two of the more damaging entities that come to mind: Big Oil and the Teachers’ Union. Each wields undo influence to the exclusive benefit of its constituency and to the detriment of the rest of society. Big Oil helps keep us enslaved to a toxic and unsustainable energy source; the Teachers’ Union keeps us enslaved to a broken and inefficient education system that is last among developed, first-world nations. Both of these compromise our national security and should be dealt with accordingly. And these are but two of a long list of examples.
It’s through this type of political lens that we look at the two candidates and their respective running mates.
Raz Godelnik provides salvation to an industry that wastes as much as it enlightens. Books, trees, and a blog to tie it all together.
Eco-Libris is the best kind of idea: simple. Offset every book by planting a tree, thus restoring harmony to the forests and publishing industry. We sat down with founder Raz Godelnik to learn more about this growing international effort.
Eco-Libris works with book readers, publishers, authors, bookstores, and others in the book industry to balance out the paper used for books by planting trees. About 30 million trees are cut down annually for virgin paper to be used for the production of books sold in the U.S. alone.
1. How did the idea for Eco-Libris come about?
It all started when I was thinking about paper and the environmental impact of its production. I realized that it might take a while to get to the point where eco-friendly alternatives like recycled paper will replace virgin paper. So what do you do in the meantime? I talked with some friends about the idea of giving people the opportunity to balance out their paper consumption by planting trees and got some good feedback.
The decision to focus on books was made after learning that less than 10% of the paper used for printing books is made of recycled paper and because most books don’t have an online, eco-friendly alternative like magazines and newspapers. It seemed to me only natural to offer book lovers a new alternative to make their reading greener–planting trees for the books they read.
Max Gladwell is featured in the Idealist.orgBlog Day 2008, where bloggers pay homage to five of their brethren. So we’re paying it forward.
If you’re a blogger, we encourage you to participate. This is about connecting people with quality sources of independently produced content.
The following are in no particular order, though it’s written as a countdown. We read so many great blogs. These are by no means the top five…if it were even possible to rank them as such. They’re just five good ones that you should know about.
Twitter can be many different things to many different people. For Max Gladwell, it is a channel for communicating, marketing, listening, and most of all interacting. This last part implies a two-way relationship. In Twitter terms, this means following and being followed.
When we get an alert via email that someone is following Max Gladwell, nine times out of 10 we follow back. The exceptions are for spam and others who have followed thousands of people before generating a mere handful of followers. We won’t go so far as to call this etiquette because it’s perfectly acceptable to be followed and not follow back. After all, just because we read your blog doesn’t mean you have to read ours. Nevertheless, it’s our personal preference to be followed by those we follow, if for no other reason than a simple way to cut down the noise.
Yesterday, we proceeded to un-follow all of our non-followers, and the truth is that it was cathartic. We cut loose over 900 from the follow column and immediately noticed it was easier to engage exclusively with our mutual followers…those with whom we can have two-way conversations, both privately and in the public feed. Because that’s how we prefer to use Twitter.
We still follow a handful that don’t reciprocate. Most of these are news feeds where there actually isn’t a person on the other end, which is fine. Because that’s another way to use Twitter. It’s a great way to keep an ear to the ground.
So this Tweets of the Week focuses on the 2008 Democratic National Convention (DNC) and Barack Obama’s historic speech at Mile High Stadium. This is one for the history books. Only with the benefit of many years of hindsight will we truly be able to appreciate how significant it was. When Obama enters the White House in January, we’ll start to mend our economy, our foreign policy, our energy policy, and countless other train wrecks left by Bush and Cheney. Looking back, the difference between August of 2008 and August of 2009 will appear eons apart in terms of the mood and morale of America. We’ll be back on the path of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, having strayed as far from it as was possible in an eight-year period.
And so these Obama-Biden 2008 Tweets are exclusively from the Tweeps we follow and who graciously follow us back.
As water gets the attention it deserves, the issue can be framed in terms we understand all too well. Here are the 10 ways that freshwater and carbon dioxide are two sides of the same coin.
Water is the new oil. This is certain to be repeated ad nauseum in the coming months and years. But is it? Does it make any sense to compare water with oil? Not really. The more accurate way to understand the impending freshwater crisis is in terms of its atmospheric counterpart, CO2.
Scarcity and abundance. Get used to it. We’ve got too much water and not enough water. Too much pollution and not enough oil. Too many fat people and not enough food. Too many drugs and not enough medicine. Too many people and not enough of the basics for human survival. We’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately, per this fall’s Pop!Tech conference where the theme is…scarcity and abundance.
At first glance these terms appear at odds. But as the above examples show, they can be two sides of the same coin: thesis and antithesis. Put them together, and you get synthesis. That’s quite possibly the way we should view water and carbon.
First, let’s dispense with the oil-water analogy, as they literally do not mix. The comparison appears to make sense on the surface because the common challenge is scarcity. This gives way to the competing forces of supply and demand, pushing up the respective values, which drives profits and puts power in the hands of those who control supply. But this is where the comparison ends.
Oil is not a fundamental component of life. We don’t need oil to live. And while both resources are finite, water is uniquely and infinitely renewable. Whereas water gives life and has purifying qualities, oil causes cancer through its polluting qualities. To be clear, oil can be a fantastic natural resource. It’s just been poorly used and managed. But in the big picture, petroleum doesn’t hold a candle to water. Carbon does.
Indeed, water and carbon are the building blocks of life. We are carbon-based life forms composed primarily of water. Photosynthesis occurs when H2O and CO2 mix in the presence of light. One of its products is oxygen. The problem with these basic molecules of life, however, is that they’re out of balance. Scarcity on one hand, abundance on the other. It’s too little and too much of two good things.
In the following we outline the ten ways carbon and water are more alike than dissimilar, despite this distinction between scarcity and abundance.
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Eco-Libris
