Goldman Sachs: Brent crude will hit $130 via FT.com

FT.com: A few weeks after Goldman’s bearish call, commodities suffered one of their sharpest one-day falls on record, with oil falling by up to $12 a barrel in a day.
On Tuesday, however, Goldman reversed that call. In a note to clients, the bank argued that the correction in prices since the start of the month had created a “good entry point for long positions”.

Goldman’s commodity strategists said: “The recent pull back in commodity prices brings the market back towards levels more consistent with the global growth story that was being priced in before events in Libya forced all the financial markets into pricing a supply shock environment.”
They raised their forecast for Brent crude oil to $120 a barrel by the end of 2011 and $130 in 12 months, from current levels of $111. Copper would rise to $11,000 a tonne in 12 months from the current $8,923, they said.

The bullish call brings Goldman in line with other leading commodities banks. Morgan Stanley on Tuesday raised its forecast for the average Brent price to $120 a barrel for this year and $130 for next year.
Hussein Allidina, head of commodities strategy at the bank, argued that a failure by Opec, the producers’ cartel, to raise output at its next meeting on June 8 would lead to a sharp drawdown in inventories.
He said: “Although higher prices will temper demand, without an increase in Opec production, the loss of some 1.5m b/d of Libyan production and still-firm demand in the emerging markets will contribute to tightening inventories meaningfully.”

JPMorgan is forecasting an average Brent price of $120 this year while Barclays Capital predicts $112.
Goldman also recommended buying copper and zinc, arguing that the current soft patch in the Chinese market was near an end. It pointed to a drawdown in copper inventories in the country and a narrowing of the price differential between the global copper market and Chinese prices.

The bullish calls helped lift sentiment towards commodity markets on Tuesday morning. Brent crude, the benchmark, was by mid-morning in London trading $1.18 higher at $111.28 a barrel; copper, the industrial bellwether, was up 1.3 per cent at $8,923 a tonne and zinc was 1.6 per cent stronger at $2,159 a tonne.

SHOOT: I agree with the $130 price for oil, but don't think it will take 11-12 months.  I reckon we'll see $130 this June or July in a repeat of what happened in 2008.

The Unbearable Lekkerness of Being Single

This is why these storybooks are dangerous. They always end in a magical land of naked bars and being allowed to wear your favorite jeans, but they never tell you about staying up till 3 AM drinking alone while creating fake Facebook profiles because your ex blocked your real one thanks to one little comment you posted when she changed her relationship status. Don't chase the fairy tale, gentlemen. In real life, every story ends when two people decide to settle. (Via Reddit)

The Milky Way over the desert in Utah

pictures by Bret Webster

The Milky Way stretches across the night sky behind a rock arch in Arches National Park, Utah. Bret Webster uses the night skies of the national parks of his home state of Utah as his canvas to create images that highlight the relative insignificance of the Earth in the cosmos.
Picture: BRET WEBSTER / BARCROFT USA

"I feel a deep affinity for the Utah desert and I have always been in awe when visiting the Arches National Park and Canyon Lands," said Bret, who has worked for 27 years as a rocket engineer and solid fuel propellant specialist for US defence firm Northrop Grumman.
A long fragile arch in Arches National Park, Utah backdropped by the Milky Way galaxy

These photographs are all the more remarkable because Bret, 51, has only been taking pictures for three years. "I took my wife’s new Nikon camera three years ago and I have been a return visitor to the national parks of Utah I know where some of the best spots are," he said.
The Milky Way galaxy is glimpsed above a slot canyon in the San Rafael Swell, Emery County, Utah

"For me, the pictures that manage to bring in the ancient American native rock paintings and the Milky Way are the most powerful," Bret said. "Some of these paintings are believed to have been made by an ancient people called the Western Archaic Culture and could be anywhere up to 8,000 years old. In my pictures, I like to make it clear that the view when these paintings were made would have been similar 8,000 years before, and will be similar 8,000 years hence. Our existence is just part of this huge Milky Way."
The Holy Ghost Panel rock painting in the Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands National Park in San Juan, Utah, with the Milky Way in the background

Bret enjoys the natural elements that remind him of the passage of geologic time and tries to bring this out in his pictures. "I see the universe at work all around in the canyons," said Bret. "The erosion of the rocks, the wind that blows through the canyons, and the wildlife that roam the plains. I am just trying to capture a little piece of the story."

The Milky Way over a collection of hoodoos in Goblin Valley National Park in Green River, Utah

"To see our place in the scheme of things is what makes my spine tingle when I take these pictures," he said.
The Milky Way rises above the famous Landscape Arch with very clear air after a cold November storm in the Arches National Park, Utah

 

 

Pilot error in Air France crash

– Mon May 23, 10:44 pm ET

(Reuters) – Preliminary findings from the recorders of an Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 have found that the pilots became distracted with malfunctioning airspeed indicators and failed to properly manage other critical systems, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The crew did not follow standard procedures to maintain air speed and keep the aircraft's nose level after the Airbus 330 encountered some turbulence and unexpectedly high icing at 35,000 feet, the paper said.
Air France and Airbus were unavailable for comment outside business hours.

The Journal said the cockpit recorders show that the pilots apparently became confused by the alarms blaring from their instruments and despite trying to systematically respond to each warning, were unable to sort out the chaos and maintain a steady course.

The findings from the recorders, which are to be released on Friday, are expected to show that the twin-engine jet slowed dangerously after the autopilot disengaged.
The crash killed all 228 people on board Flight 447, which was on a scheduled flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

SHOOT: Pilot error?  Sounds like a cop out for Airbus' malfunctioning gadgets. But the unusual icing sounds...unusual.

Doomsday's Deadly Consequences

SHOOT: Doomsday is popular because subconsciously people acknowledge the reality that we're in a lot of trouble, and our troubles are converging at an alarming rate.  Whether you express these anxieties in a religious context or in news headlines or ordinary despair, the underlying fear is still based on reality. Some of that reality is a perceived reality, but some of it is experiencial. The better response to these disheartening signals is a practical one.  Rather than being emotional, we should do something about our common circumstances, which worsen while we wait for an uncertain end game.

 

Benjamin Radford, LiveScience Contributor,
LiveScience.com Benjamin Radford, Livescience Contributor,
livescience.com – Mon May 23, 11:31 pm ET

Harold Camping, the 89-year-old leader whose study of the Bible convinced him and his followers that the world would end, has been described by his wife as "flabbergasted" that the apocalypse didn’t start over the weekend. There are some red faces out there. And if that's all it had been, then one could argue no great harm had been done.

But while Camping and his followers try to figure out what went wrong (or right) — with news Monday night that he now says Judgment Day will come on Oct. 21 — the failed prophecy did more than just damage Camping's credibility: It also appears to have caused death and serious injury to true believers.

A California woman named Lyn Benedetto was one of millions who heard Camping's message, and became concerned that her daughters would suffer terribly in the coming apocalypse. She allegedly forced her daughters, 11 and 14, to lie on a bed and then cut their throats with a box cutter. She then tried to kill herself, though police arrested Benedetto and all three survived.

Others were not so lucky. An elderly man in Taiwan reportedly killed himself on May 5 ahead of the Rapture by jumping out of a building. He had heard that doomsday was imminent, and had taken recent earthquakes and tsunamis as early warning signs.

There were other unconfirmed reports of doomsday-related suicides around the world as well.
This is of course not the first time that failed doomsday predictions have led to tragedy. The most famous pre-apocalypse suicides in recent times occurred in 1997 when the Heaven’s Gate Christian UFO group came to believe that the comet Hale-Bopp was a sign that Jesus was returning, and the world would end soon. Prompted in part by scripture, rumors, and late-night radio talk shows, the group's fanaticism led to nearly 40 deaths.

Camping's failure holds an important cautionary lesson, because doomsday predictions are not going away. Many people, especially those in the New Age community, believe that 2012 will bring global cataclysm. It's easy to dismiss and ridicule failed prophets as modern-day harmless Chicken Littles misleading the gullible, but apocalyptic visions can have deadly consequences —even when they are wrong.
Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirerscience magazine and author of "Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries." His Web site is RadfordBooks.com.

James Kunstler on Entropy Made Visible

Interview by Simmons B. Buntin

About James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler.
Photo by Charlie Samuels.

James Howard Kunstler says he wrote The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape, “Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work.”

Home From Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century was a continuation of that discussion with an emphasis on the remedies. A portion of it appeared as the cover story in the September 1996 Atlantic Monthly. His next book in the series, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, published by Simon & Schuster / Free Press, is a look a wide-ranging look at cities here and abroad, an inquiry into what makes them great (or miserable), and in particular what America is going to do with its mutilated cities.

This was followed by The Long Emergency, published by the Atlantic Monthly Press in 2005, which is about the challenges posed by the coming permanent global oil crisis, climate change, and other “converging catastrophes of the 21st Century.” His 2008 novel, World Made By Hand, was a fictional depiction of the post-oil American future. The sequel to that book, The Witch of Hebron, was published in fall of 2010.
The Atlantic Monthly Press also published his novel Maggie Darling in 2004.
Kunstler is also the author of eight other novels including The Halloween Ball and An Embarrassment of Riches. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times Sunday Magazine and Op-Ed page, where he has written on environmental and economic issues.
Kunstler was born in New York City in 1948. He moved to the Long Island suburbs in 1954 and returned to the city in 1957 where he spent most of his childhood. He graduated from the State University of New York, Brockport campus, worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, and finally as a staff writer for Rolling Stone. In 1975, he dropped out to write books on a full-time basis. He has no formal training in architecture or the related design fields.
He has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT, the University of Virginia, and many other colleges, and he has appeared before many professional organizations such as the American Institute of Architects, American Planning Association, and National Trust for Historic Preservation.
 

Interview

Terrain.org: Terrain.org readers were introduced to your fiction with a series of short stories beginning in our first issue. While your first eight books were fiction, your nonfiction—particularly The Geography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency—have garnered the most discussion. Many writers, however, believe that fiction can serve as the largest change agent. What do you think? What have been the responses to your post-oil novels The World Made by Hand and The Witch of Hebron and your 2010 play Big Slide? What should the responses be?

James Howard Kunstler: I am far less interested in serving as a change agent than in functioning as a prose artist, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. I won’t deny the polemical elements in my work, but they are less in the service of attempting to reform human behavior than the delighted exercise of my rather malicious sense of humor—especially vis-a-vis the horrifying everyday environment we have produced for ourselves. These mall-scapes, burb-scapes, urban wildernesses, starchitect stunts, and other toxic contexts for our daily lives express about every human vice, stupidity, and blunder that it is possible for a society to make. It all leads, really, to a psychological place where only comedy or despair make sense. They are, of course, two sides of the same coin. As Sam Beckett liked to say: “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.”

Terrain.org: In the opening chapter of The Geography of Nowhere you write, “Eighty percent of everything ever built in America has been built in the last 50 years, and most of it is depressing, brutal, ugly, unhealthy, and spiritually degrading.” Your ongoing “Eyesore of the Month” photo series depicts just some of these “architectural abortions from around the world (and sometimes other miscellany infecting the landscape).” Is aesthetics of architecture, and let’s say streetscapes and skylines, a surface problem, or is something deeper and more problematic going on? Can we have an ugly streetscape that nonetheless succeeds from a “land use” perspective, or is beauty an essential element of any successful place?

James Howard Kunstler on TED: The Tragedy of Suburbia
February 2004 : Monterey, California : 21:42

James Howard Kunstler: It’s a huge mistake to suppose that these are merely aesthetic problems. The aggressive incoherence of our common surroundings can be described as entropy made visible. The way we have disposed things on the landscape leads us in the direction of disorder and death. They are categorically evil. These dispositions are destroying our only home-planet and other organisms that share it. They defeat our need to care about where we are and the things in place there. They prompt us to feel that civilization is not worth carrying on. They rob us of our identity and our will to live. These things are not about personal taste or style.

Terrain.org: The Long Emergency presents a compelling but alarming argument that oil and natural gas production have peaked and our oil-based society is accordingly headed for a freefall. Despite the book’s clarity, and prior substantiation in the critical 2005 report Peaking of World Oil Production by Robert Hirsch, Roger Bezdek, and Robert Wendling, there seems to be little governmental response, particularly by our federal government. Why? What kind of change will it take for a legitimate, nationwide response, and will that happen?

James Howard Kunstler: The feeble government response to these predicaments is probably due to the fact that there are no appetizing “solutions.” In fact, most of our proposed “solutions” are idiotic, for instance the Rocky Mountain Institute’s “hypercar” program to develop a car that gets supernaturally great gas mileage. All it really does is promote the idea that we can continue being car-dependent, which is insane. It’s pure techno-grandiosity. When even the highest-level environmentalists have their heads up their ass about these things, the situation is pretty grave.
Of course, anyone who studies the energy predicament understands its connection with the operations of capital—and by this I do not mean capitalism as an ideology, I mean the behavior of acquired wealth and its deployment for productive purpose. (A lot of educated idiots don’t understand this, and we waste a lot of time blathering about capitalism.) What we face is a comprehensive contraction of our activities, due to declining fossil fuel resources and other growing scarcities. Our failure is the failure to manage contraction. It requires a thoroughgoing reorganization of daily life. No political faction currently operating in the USA gets this. Hence, it is liable to be settled by a contest for dwindling resources and there are many ways in which this won’t be pretty.    
Terrain.org: In your November 2010 interview with Chris Martenson, you lay out your energy plan if “you were President and had free reign,” including the consideration of increased nuclear power, repairing the national passenger railroad system, and putting an emphasis on walkable communities. We’ll explore some of these in detail below, but let’s expand your presidential powers beyond the energy plan. What are some other critical directions you would set as president?  
James Howard Kunstler: The task we face is reorganizing the systems we depend on for daily life in a way that is consistent with the realities coming down at us. We have to grow our food differently because industrial farming will soon end. That means growing more food locally on smaller farms with more human attention. We have to do commerce differently because the WalMart system of big box chain retail will soon die. This means rebuilding local main street economies (networks of local economic interdependency). We have to make some things for ourselves because the conveyer belt from China is doomed (this process is known as import replacement). We have to do transportation differently, because mass motoring and even commercial aviation will soon be over. We have to inhabit the landscape differently because both suburbia and the metroplex mega-city will be obsolete, so we will have to return to a more traditional disposition of things in smaller urbanisms associated with productive agricultural hinterlands.

Now, it’s arguable how much you can legislate or even autocratically direct these changes. But you can prepare for them, both psychologically and practically. And we are doing nothing. For instance, we’re still promoting stupid wasteful behavior in agribusiness—everything from ethanol production for cars to genetically modified crops. In commerce just about everything we do politically is in the service of WalMart and the systems tied to it. In transportation, we could, for instance, have compelled General Motors to produce railroad rolling stock as a condition of their bail-out, but we didn’t do that. Instead, we’re chasing the phantom of electric cars—and, believe me, we are going to be mortally disappointed how that works out.
Most likely the changes that I’m outlining will happen emergently, with a great deal of “noise,” conflict, and suffering. In the meantime, government at all levels in the USA right now is engaged in a quixotic campaign to sustain the unsustainable. We’re determined to run WalMart, Disney World, the Interstate Highways, suburbia, and an imperial military by other means than oil. We’ll squander a lot of dwindling resources in the process.

Terrain.org: Alternative energy doesn’t seem to get much of a shake in The Long Emergency, in part because of its current dependency on the fossil fuel industry. Do you believe that the development of alternative energy resources such as solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal power should nevertheless be bolstered in the hopes that they can help offset the use of fossil fuels? Is nuclear power the most realistic “quick to market” possibility for the U.S.?

Peak oil projection by region, using geophysicist M. King
Hubbert's 1956 formula for projecting an approximation of
the production rate of a resource over time.
Graphic courtesy Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas.

James Howard Kunstler: I believe we are deluded about alternative energy. The key is, whatever we do, we’re going to have to do on a very modest scale. It’s all about scale. We’re not going to build giant wind farms with Godzilla-sized turbines all over the place. That’s a fantasy. We could do some household and neighborhood or town wind energy. But even this will run up eventually against the problem of needing an underlying fossil fuel economy to fabricate the hardware. Same with photovoltaic (solar) energy. We’re going to be disappointed by what these things can do for us.
All these fantasies are symptomatic of our current techno-rapture and its constituent grandiosity and triumphalism, which is further exacerbated by the pernicious bullshit of business and advertising. Win-win! We’re number one! There’s a reason I titled my novel about the future World Made By Hand. By the way, I was not a hard-liner against nuclear, because I viewed that as perhaps the only way we might keep the lights on another 25 years. But lately I am on board with Nicole Foss’s argument that we will not have the capital or even the social cohesion to build anymore nuke plants.

Terrain.org: Several years ago I attended a lecture on the possibility of alien life forms contacting humans—part of the University of Arizona’s “Astrobiology and the Sacred” series. The presenter noted that if humans ever were contacted, we either wouldn’t have the intelligence to recognize it or the form of the contact would be technological in nature. That is, the contact would probably not be by an organic life form but by a machine of their making. Technology here at home is part of the problem of the long emergency, though, isn’t it—not just the confusion of technology as a substitute for energy, but also the byproduct of technology production as environmental devastator? How do we counteract our zealot-like yearning for and subordination to technology?

James Howard Kunstler: I’ve already described the psychological problems of our techno-rapture. As perhaps an aside, I do not believe we will get to Ray Kurzweil’s proposed “singularity” in which human minds meld with machines to produce, in effect, synthetic human evolution. Our basic problems with maintaining the electric grid argue against that fantasy. But to get back on track with your question, I believe our techno-zealotry will be moderated by sheer circumstance. We will do what reality compels us to do, not necessarily what our fantasies propose.

Of course, the toxic bullshit of incessant advertising and show biz for nearly a century has stripped us of cognitive abilities for dealing with reality that used to be part of the normal equipment of adulthood—for instance, knowing the difference between wishing for stuff and making stuff happen. We bamboozled ourselves with too much magic. The Long Emergency will be chiefly characterized as a “time out” from technology. It could plunge us into a dark age of superstition. My guess is that we will lose a lot of knowledge and skill. But I also believe the human race desperately needs this “time out.”

Kunstler's "Eyesore of the Month" for November 2010: the
Classroom Laboratory Administration Building on the
campus of Cal Poly Pomona, which though built in 1993 is
scheduled to be demolished. Click the image to read the
full "review."
Photo courtesy James Howard Kunstler.

Terrain.org: Your latest annual forecast calls “2011 as the turning point in the global growth of the middle class” because “[t]here just isn’t enough stuff left in the world.” Can you explain that a bit more? Is it possible that without more and more things to purchase, the middle class might instead invest in the places they live by building more walkable communities, planting gardens for local produce, and reinvigorating transit systems?

James Howard Kunstler: I think the eco-utopian picture you present is an unlikely outcome. I generally avoid over-population arguments. But there’s no question we’re in population overshoot. The catch is we’re not going to do anything about it. There will be no policy. The usual suspects: starvation, war, disease, will drive the population down. There’s little more to say about that really, and it’s certainly an unappetizing discussion, but it’s probably the truth. In any case, we’re in overshoot and we face vast resource scarcities. That’s it. The “usual suspects” are already doing their thing as worldwide food prices go up and peoples on the margin begin to suffer and starve.
This is not to say that we in the still-wealthier societies could not respond intelligently to the fact of contraction, as I stated earlier. I’m all for walkable communities, but few besides the New Urbanists in the USA want to even talk about. The “Green” community, the enviro people, are preoccupied with running all the cars differently. Our techno-grandiosity has us gibbering about high-speed rail—which we don’t have the capital for anymore—but nobody is interested in repairing the existing rail system, which would be far less costly and hugely beneficial for us. In short, we are acting cluelessly. And life is tragic. The clueless usually suffer.

Terrain.org: You’ve noted that repairing the national passenger rail system should be our highest priority. As Kate Johnson’s article in the current issue of Terrain.org details, people are just as resistant to having a regularly running passenger rail system adjacent to their homes and farms because of concerns over noise and the like as they are because of a disbelief in (or ignorance of) the decline of oil. Or perhaps those are related, subconsciously or otherwise. It seems that overarching federal policy is needed to fund the rail system resuscitation, but could you foresee a fix led by local communities or regional transit authorities? What otherwise will it take, from the perspective of governmental and economic initiatives, to bring back a thriving passenger rail system?

James Howard Kunstler: The situation Kate Johnson describes is just plain dumb NIMBYism. Well, societies get what they deserve, not what they expect (the Law of Perverse Outcomes). People don’t like railroad tracks near them? We’ll see how they feel when the percentage of U.S. citizens who can afford to drive a car goes way down, as it will. Believe me, there’s a tipping point for this kind of infantile nonsense. It is true that we need a consensus to go forward with restoring passenger rail in America, and often a consensus is formed by political action, via government. That is all true. But we have no such consensus, and no one in government or politics these days has the will or the force of personality or perhaps even the understanding of the situation to get on with job of forming a consensus supporting rail.

Terrain.org: You’ve long advocated for the New Urbanism. How far can that town and regional planning approach take us in our efforts to localize? Retrofitting suburbs and just repairing urban areas will take a lot of resources, diminishing resources—how do we braid the need for walkable communities with rapidly declining resources? What are our best North American models?

The Holiday Neighborhood in Boulder, Colorado, is a New
Urbanist redevelopment that incorporates community
gardens, recycled and energy-efficient building materials,
and easy pedestrian access to the city's extensive transit
system.
Photo by Simmons Buntin.

James Howard Kunstler: In our current frame of mind, or paradigm, or whatever you want to call it, we like to think that marshalling government policy is the way to get things done. Look, we’re not going to reform our moronic land-use laws, which mandate suburban sprawl one way or another. They’re simply going to be ignored when it becomes self-evident that we cannot build stuff that way anymore. Also, your question implies an assumption that such a reform program would be carried out by creatures we call professional planners. I’m pretty sure we will be so short of capital, so broke, that we will no longer have any municipal planning offices of the kind we’re familiar with.
A resolution of these things will be a matter of a social consensus, too. We are currently in a period of gross confusion. But for now, perhaps indefinitely, very little is being built—in particular more strip malls or McHouse subdivisions.

My own opinion is that the suburban project is over. We are done. We don’t know it yet. For about five years or so the people who deliver all that crap—developers, realtors, various money people—have kicked back waiting for the system to get going again, to resume all their accustomed behavior. They wait in vain. They just haven’t figured out that we face a new disposition of things.
The New Urbanists understand that and they are a far more radical group in their leadership core than even their opponents realize. I don’t know if they will earn a living going forward, but our society ought to thank then for the work they did the past 20 years in retrieving lost skills and principles. The fortunate and successful New Urbanists will be the ones who can find local infill projects in small towns and small cities associated with farming, water transport, (perhaps rail too) and water power. I do not believe personally that we will retrofit much of suburbia in the way many people wish we might. The capital won’t be there, and I’m rather convinced that the population is headed down—though this will be a lagging effect, because even starving people have sex.
Most of suburbia will end up in three ways: ruins, slums, salvage yards for materials.

Terrain.org: While many people now look back on the Y2K scare as a kind of joke, I remember working in the electric industry then and it was anything but funny, not just because of the millions of dollars invested in fixing or replacing computers and related hardware, but because of the real possibility of whole-scale electric system failure. Rather than a joke, you have noted that it was indeed a “legitimate potential catastrophe that was averted.” Does the response to 2YK provide not just a lesson but a kind of blueprint for responding to the looming peak oil catastrophe? What are the essential lessons learned that we can apply now?

Two recent paintings by James Howard
Kunstler: "Dead Pontiac (Spring)," top, and
"The Bridge at Clark Mills (with Factory
Ruins)". Click an image to view full gallery.
Images courtesy James Howard Kunstler.

James Howard Kunstler: The Y2K situation was not a joke. I’ve had many conversations with programmers who worked their asses off to correct the problem. The thing is, it was a single discrete problem and they succeeded in fixing it. No, I don’t think it provides a blueprint for the peak oil problem because it’s a compound problem of overlapping complex systems and there is not a “fix” for it, no rescue remedy. At the heart of our misunderstanding and infantile behavior is the wish for a miracle cure. Y2K was a mechanical problem, really. Peak oil is already upon us. It is destroying our banking system, that is, our system for marshalling capital, and that is about to put us out of business-as-usual. So, we have to carry on with business-not-so-usual. This could mean anything from your children finding careers in farming (rather than show biz or plastic surgery) to reorganizing households differently to traveling from New York to Boston by boat.

Terrain.org: Let us return to beauty and art: You are a prolific painter, and several of your landscape scenes reflect the atrophied places of our own making: a dead and overgrown Pontiac, factory ruins along a river, the ruins of a trolley bridge. Does painting even these scenes provide a kind of catharsis that writing cannot? If fiction, as the first question alluded to, can be perhaps the best literary change agent, what about visual art—whether paintings or photographs, or video perhaps? Have you worked in video as a medium and, given its widespread appeal—two billion videos are accessed on YouTube per day—is that another avenue you may use for reaching the masses? At what point does the art become the technology we caution against?

James Howard Kunstler: I’ve been painting since childhood and went to New York’s High School of Music and Art, so I got a little bit of training—though I became a theater major in college (go figure). Painting allows me to use other portions of my brain pleasurably. Irony plays no part in what or how I paint. I paint the particular subject matter not to make polemical points but because I am interested in the human imprint on the landscape. I paint the landscape of my time and place with the stuff in it. The upper Hudson Valley happens to contain a wealth of industrial ruins and wreckage, and a lot of it is embedded in very arresting topography. I am a sur le motif painter, always in-the-field, with a French easel that folds up into a box, with backpack straps on it. Many of the sites I haunt are desolately beautiful. Few other people go there. I am gloriously alone, unmolested, and absorbed in attempting to see what I am looking at. My skills are not of the highest caliber, but I know a thing or two, and I occasionally produce a painting that contains passages of truth and beauty.


Terrain.org: What’s next for James Howard Kunstler?

James Howard Kunstler: I’m finishing an original spec screenplay at the moment and I’m under contract to produce a nonfiction book about techno-grandiosity.  I intend to write two more installments of World Made By Hand—Winter and Spring—so the series covers all four seasons. I have a pretty sturdy to-do list, and it’s darn interesting to watch events play out as they are doing.

James Howard Kunstler on TED: The Tragedy of Suburbia

Why oil prices will spike again soon

SHOOT: Ultimately energy prices can only trend higher. Will we see The Big Spike in June? It probably doesn't matter when exactly it comes, that's linear thinking, a style we need to graduate out of. What's more important is knowing what to expect and adapting ourselves in the meantime. Do you know anyone who is? Are you?

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By Colin Barr May 23, 2011: 6:37 AM ET
How long till the next oil shock?
Energy prices have been coming down this spring as fears of a Middle East blowup fade. But persistent global demand, tepid supply growth and easy money mean it may not be long till the next damaging spike, Goldman Sachs economists say.

Higher and higher
Oil prices could surge again by the end of 2012, economists Jan Hatzius and Andrew Tilton wrote in a note to clients this past weekend. They say the snail-like pace of global oil supply expansion – which Goldman projects at 1% or so annually – can't keep a petroleum-addicted world economy rolling without prices rising, perhaps sharply.

So don't get too used to paying a mere $3 and change for gasoline. Higher prices are on the way soon enough, thanks to stretched supplies and a Federal Reserve spigot that is likely to remain wide open for years to come.

"The fundamental story of increased oil scarcity is unchanged, and our commodity strategists now see distinct upside risks to their current forecast of $120/barrel for Brent crude by late 2012," Hatzius and Tilton write. "So the impact of scarcer oil and higher oil prices on economic activity remains at the top of our list of worries."

What makes higher oil prices almost inevitable is the depth of the jobs deficit in the United States. Unemployment is officially 9% but is more like 13% if you consider the low rate of labor force participation, says Bernstein Research strategist Vadim Zlotnikov. That number has fallen this year to levels not seen since 1985.

High joblessness and weak inflation will keep the fed funds rate near zero at least through next year and perhaps longer, Hatzius and Tilton write. That should help keep pushing unemployment slowly toward its long-run average of around 6% -- but at the expense of further dollar depreciation, stronger global demand and, ultimately, higher oil prices.

So the selloff that has taken the crude price down to $100 or so in New York and $112 in Europe, where Brent is traded, may persist through much of 2011. But it won't last forever, Goldman warns.
"The only way to bring both the labor market and the oil market into equilibrium is likely to be through a further increase in the real oil price," the Goldman economists write. "This would presumably increase oil supply by making exploration and production more attractive, and reduce oil demand by increasing energy efficiency."

They add that this policy trade-off is often unfairly portrayed as transferring income from the poor to the rich. The Goldman economists concede that those in the bottom fifth of the U.S. income distribution spend more of their funds on gas than do those in the top fifth, by 4.6% to 3.5%.
But they note that those losses by the poorest consumers are offset by the job creation enabled by the loose Fed policy, which "will lead to significant gains in real income for a subset of households drawn disproportionately from the lower end of the income distribution."

And while no one is likely to turn cartwheels about higher oil prices, Hatzius and Tilton point out that there's an obvious way for the United States to turn that trend in its favor: By imposing higher taxes on energy use.

In doing so the government could both hold down consumption (through higher prices) and boost federal revenues (which could use some boosting nowadays, you may have noticed), mostly at the expense of foreign governments that are at best our frenemies. But needless to say, something that makes that much sense has about as much chance of seeing daylight in the current Congress as the return of dollar-a-gallon gas.

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Annie Jacobsen and Area 51

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ANC digging SA's grave: Right here, right now in SA

Source Code – review [THE GUARDIAN]

Peter Bradshaw: Altered minds, altered states and bags of style – this sci-fi thriller is a superb follow-up for Duncan Jones

5

Future shock ... Michelle Monaghan and Jake Gyllenhaal. Photograph: Photo By Jonathan Wenk/Photo: Jonathan WENK
With his debut movie Moon, Duncan Jones made a mighty leap; now with this superb follow-up, he has hit the ground sprinting. Source Code is a terrifically exciting and hugely enjoyable sci-fi thriller, written by Ben Ripley. For pure entertainment, there's nothing around to touch it.
1. Source Code
2. Production year: 2011
3. Country: Rest of the world
4. Cert (UK): 12A
5. Runtime: 93 mins
6. Directors: Duncan Jones
7. Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jeffrey Wright, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga
8. More on this film
Source Code is about conspiracies, altered minds and altered states, far-fetched in the most elegant and Hitchcockian way, and the sheer outrageousness of it all is muscular and streamlined. The film is about modified reality and inner space, and there are points of comparison with Christopher Nolan's Inception. But the world of Source Code seems to me more interesting, and more able to incubate real drama, real suspense and even some real humour. At its centre is Colter Stevens, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, a US army helicopter pilot who has crashed in Afghanistan. When he comes to, he finds himself in civilian clothes aboard a crowded commuter train arriving slightly late into Chicago on a glorious summer morning. He appears to be in someone else's body: that of a suburban teacher. Opposite him sits Christina (Michelle Monaghan) who behaves as if a brief nap has merely interrupted their highly flirtatious conversation, but she is then increasingly alarmed as Colter, wild-eyed and panicky, demands to know what is happening and what is going on. After eight minutes, a catastrophic event then hurls Colter back into a situation that is in some ways even more perplexing. He is in uniform, injured and immobilised in what appears to be part of a wrecked military aircraft. Is this real? Or is it the train that's real? Through a video monitor, he must communicate with a woman who is evidently now his commanding officer. Goodwin, played by Vera Farmiga, treats him with the same unreadable solicitousness as Kevin Spacey's robot-voice did with Sam Rockwell in Moon. Without consenting, Colter has evidently been dragooned into a new mission using futurist technology known as "source code"; he has been brought back from Afghanistan – or has he? – and ordered to relive the past eight minutes on a Chicago commuter train over and over again until he discovers vital information. Ripley and Jones show how each metaphysical go-around discloses more clues; each makes Colter fall for Christina a little more, and each makes the thought of losing her seem more unbearable. With its train setting and Chris Bacon's score imitating the jagged clamour of Bernard Herrmann, the movie is clearly indebted to the Hitchcock of North By Northwest and Strangers on a Train. But it's also a particularly tense and fraught kind of Groundhog Day, and just as in that film, repetition endows banal, forgettable events with an eerie familiarity and inevitability. Yet in the Bill Murray movie, our hapless hero had all the time in the world, an infinity of time, as many Groundhog Days as he needed, to learn the piano until he was at the level at which he could casually appear to be a brilliant pianist to impress a woman. Making an impression on a woman is not wholly absent from Colter's mind either, but he can't just repeat his eight minutes ad infinitum, because the security situation is pressing and time is running out. Each time he starts again, his own physical condition in the mysterious cockpit deteriorates, and Goodwin and her shadowy boss Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright) are keeping secrets from him. Source Code is glitzy and hi-tech in a 21st-century way, but also has something from an earlier age: it is a story from the Twilight Zone, with hints of Philip K Dick, and traces of the television world of The Prisoner and The Fugitive. With its weird deployment of playing cards in one scene, Jones has channelled The Manchurian Candidate – perhaps specifically through Jonathan Demme's Iraq-themed remake – and the overall effect is smart and to the point. In its own way, Source Code also aspires slightly to the status of comedy, and Colter's increasingly wan and desperate conversations with Goodwin from his mysterious pod reminded me a little of David Niven's radio conversations with Kim Hunter's June in A Matter of Life and Death – as he plummets to his certain death, Niven's character exploits his prerogative as a dying man to flirt with this radio operator. This isn't exactly what is happening here, and Colter's affections are engaged with Christina, not Goodwin – but equipoised with the action and thrills, there is a serio-comic sense of fantasy and romance that have been endangered by this terrifying situation in one sense, but in another sense made possible by it. Source Code is absurd, but carries off its absurdity lightly and stylishly. It is a luxuriously enjoyable film. Jones has put himself into the front-rank of Hollywood directors, the kind who can deliver a big studio picture with brains. With twists and turns, and at breathtaking speed, this film runs on rails.

World’s best cycling routes

Via Lonely Planet.com

There’s no better way to explore a place than by bike. May is National Bike Month in the US, but we see no reason that bike travel shouldn’t be celebrated worldwide. In honour of our favorite two-wheeled travel companion, here are 10 trips around the world that should be on every cyclist’s wish list.

1. Isle of Wight, England

The Isle of Wight is a cycling paradise that is home to some of the UK’s most varied terrain: lush velvet hills rolling into the sea, narrow lanes through tidy hedgerows, deep and mysterious green gullies, and the island’s most striking feature, the ridge of white chalk cliffs stretching across its breadth. Although cyclists have been enjoying its outdoor pleasures for decades now, it’s only been in recent years that Wight has started to attract young and trendy Londoners looking for a romantic weekend by the sea with a buzz – which gastropubs, slick hotels and a calendar full of festivals now provide.
Wightlink passenger ferries sail from Portsmouth to Ryde pier throughout the day; fares vary for the 18-minute crossing but bikes are free.

2. West Coast, Tasmania, Australia

By right, Tasmania should be too small to have huge pockets of wilderness, but untouched and untamed lands stretch along its fierce west coast. Cycling land this wild should not come easily and it doesn’t, with the hill climbs queuing one after the other – you will notice them but not as much as the scenery, which takes in Tasmania’s most famous mountain (Cradle Mountain), its cutest coastal town (Strahan), its highest waterfall (Montezuma Falls) and its most beautiful lake (Lake St Clair), all on highways that feel at times like back roads.
Tasmania is covered in detail in an excellent series of four maps produced by the state government’s Information and Land Services Division.

3. Luberon and Mont Ventoux, Provence, France

Tackling hilly Luberon with a touring load might seem crazy, but several hundred kilometres of well-signed bike paths render it very enjoyable, as do ancient Roman ruins, medieval chateaux and ambrosial wines. This sun-drenched corner of Provence is a mix of manicured vineyards and ancient villages tumbling haphazardly down rocky slopes. Cool pine forests and blue fields of lavender stretch away on either side of the road. But the real goal here is legendary Mont Ventoux, scene of several Tour de France dramas, dominating the landscape and silently luring cyclist pilgrims to its summit.
Mont Ventoux is usually snow-covered above 1300m from December until May. The summit road is accessible only during the summer months.

4. San Juan Islands, Washington, USA

The ferry conveying you and your trusty steed from Seattle or Anacortes weaves its way calmly, the perfect introduction to the slow, peaceful character of these islands. Awaiting you are forested shorelines, secluded coves, bucolic vistas and quiet roads. The three largest islands, Lopez, Orcas and San Juan, each have their own distinctive charm, with historic sites and art galleries. The terrain is hilly, but each can be cycled in a day, including plenty of time to watch for seals, otters, sea lions and the odd orca, or black-tailed deer and eagles further inland.
Washington State Ferries provides the main transport link between Anacortes and the islands. The Victoria Clipper runs from Seattle to Friday Harbor.

5. County Clare, Ireland

Beginning in fertile lowlands flanking the Shannon estuary, this route rolls past golden-sand beaches to the dramatic Cliffs of Moher facing the Atlantic. Next come the music hotbed towns of Milltown Malbay and Doolin, where you enter a pub only if you’re in for the long haul – leaving before the last song is sung seems a monstrous breach of etiquette. From here progress to the relentlessly grey, yet captivating, limestone expanse of the Burren, reminiscent of a lunar landscape. Then take a sojourn into Yeats’ country before sauntering back in a loop through County Clare’s gentle patchwork countryside.
May and June are best for wildflowers in the Burren, while some accommodation opens only from June to August. Book well ahead during July and August.

6. La Farola, Cuba

Fascinating Cuba is a delight at helmet level. Try the spectacular 9km descent along the La Farola highway, from the crest of the Baracoa Mountains down to the south coast. The highway clings to cliffs hung in tropical vegetation, with guard rails protecting you from drop-to-nowhere gorges, before sweeping from one giant limestone ledge to the next, each turn providing a closer vista of wild open ocean. Built by the Revolutionary government, this magnificent mountain highway is an irresistible challenge for cyclists. Traditionally, the first stage of the Vuelta Ciclista Cuba (Cuba’s answer to the Tour de France) is run over this route.
Food options are minimal: be prepared to eat out of your panniers. It’s also essential to carry your own bike equipment and first-aid supplies.

7. National Highway 1, Vietnam

This iconic road runs the length of the narrow country from north to south. It is the most popular cycling route in Vietnam, a long but immensely rewarding trip along the best parts of Vietnam’s coastline. The route has some reasonable hills, climaxing in the mighty Hai Van Pass (496m) – with a breathtaking descent as pine-clad mountains loom to the west and the South China Sea vanishes into the east. Take the time along the way to gaze at networks of lush rice fields blanketing the hidden valleys below; fish, snorkel or dive the turquoise waters of the coast; and soak up the atmosphere of delightful rural hamlets.
The Indochina Trekking Company, based in Hanoi, offers a variety of cycling adventures in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand.

8. Otago Peninsula, New Zealand

With the first half decidedly laid-back and the second portion anything but, the mix of scenery and sweat make this one of the best one-day rides in the country. Starting from university-town Dunedin you soon shed the trappings of the city and succumb to the lure of the open road. The serpentine route twists pleasantly along the shore, providing tremendous ocean views, and the terrain is made for cycling. Then suddenly there’s a sharp turn to the right and you’re gaining altitude like a climbing fighter-jet. Get ready for steep climbs, fast descents and the odd albatross to keep you company. The route should be negotiable year-round whenever conditions are dry. However, you’re less likely to suffer frozen extremities on descents outside June to August.

9. Cape Breton Island, Canada

This justifiably renowned cycling route is best-known for the scenery – breathtaking rocky coastlines, the crystal clear Bras d’Or inland sea and the soaring ridges of the Cape Breton Highlands – especially in their autumn colours. But adventure-seekers will also be satisfied as gently rolling hills become invigorating mountains with some tough climbs and heart-thumping descents. Combined with local wildlife (such as beavers, moose and deer), quaint fishing villages, an intriguing Gaelic culture grown from French-Scottish roots and plenty of fresh ocean breezes, Cape Breton is the whole package.
The Celtic Colours roving music festival makes October a superb time to visit.

10. Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy

By cycling the often overlooked, yet spectacular, far reaches of the northeast corner of Italy, you have the opportunity to intimately discover this earthy region. Along roads that make for easy pedalling, Slovenian farmers tend their fields in the strong sun, rows of vines cling to voluptuous hill country, and you smell the freshly tilled earth and feel the wind cool the sweat from your face. Then in the evenings, relax in a piazza to sample the region’s famous white wines and join the laidback locals for a chat. The route’s icing on the cake is the final scenic jaunt down the Istrian coast.

The View from my Bicycle [COLUMN]

Run With It - by Nick van der Leek

On Saturday morning, in the dark, I walked with a friend over a damp school field.  Ahead was a traffic jam of people chattering raucously.  It resembled a scene at a touristy bar, it should have been 7pm with everyone starting to get tipsy and uninhibited.  But we were all here for something quite different.  Running.

What you immediately notice, looking around you, is how good everyone looks.  Everyone is fit and chirpy and smiling, and it's infectious.  I remark to a friend of mine that a 20-something runner looks perfect.  Her hair and skin is shining, she is slim, her eyes shine, she has that cautious shyness of a gazelle.  Utter perfection.

When our bunch mobilises the bruised skies are a lighter gray at least.  My legs complain once again.  They're used to sitting, and the transition to running is asking too much.  Can we at least walk?  No.  My plan is to run 5km under 30 minutes.  Is that too much to ask?  Yes.  Shutup and move.

 I pull up alongside 'Utter perfection' and in the slightly more light of the morning now I see my mind was playing some elaborate tricks on me.  Her leotard is dark purple, not black, her legs are kind've bandy, like Zola Budd's, and she has slightly blotchy skin.  It's not a case that I am disappointed because she's not 'perfect', I'm somewhat miffed at myself for seeing things in the dark. 

When my feet scrunch onto the soggy pitch of the school once more about 24 minutes have passed.  Which means this race was about 1km short.  I sit down and watch the others come in.  A little girl of barely 8 years old.  A little boy says to someone next to me, "Let's run, come on let's run."  No one answers him so I say, "Do you see that treee?" (There are about twenty trees bordering the school fence).  "Run there and back quickly!"  Without a moments hesitation the little rascal sprints off - almost ploughing into the ground on his sixth step - but collects himself and runs in a great arc until I can't see him anymore.  We sometimes need to be more like that.  All of us.

This afternoon in the gym I was swimming in a triangle of sunlight.  The sun was catching on my blond arm hairs, swaying underwater.  My leg lit up when I kicked into this blue, glowing quadrant.  Bright rainbow lines traced the contours of my body.  Underwater, I became aware of the reality of life.  All of us, will die.  If we find happiness, perhaps it will be more painful to die.  If we are sad, perhaps we will welcome it.  But whatever we do, we're trapped in this story where we all face a tragic destiny.  Please don't tell me it isn't tragic!  Death for the dead is always tragic.  It is only those who are alive who will care to couch the whole affair in heroism or destiny or legend.  The dead don't care.  They're not there to care. 

What interests me, is that while we are alive, we may experience pain.  Sometimes, excruciating pain.  Especially involving unrequited love, and loss.  But what encourages me, for example, is a film like The Holiday, that reminds us to be the leading man or leading woman in our own story.  To not become infatuated with shadows in the dark that we can hardly see.  To be strong, assertive protagonists, living in absolute clarity, and in pursuit of something concrete within the context of a narrative that we are writing, and making up as we go along.  If you are in a narrative that you don't like, change it.  If your protagonist is weak, or vulnerable, or doomed to failure, rewrite yourself, change those aspects that you know are not part of what a leading man or woman should be.  Write your own story and be an active participant in it.  Don't just stand there.  Run along and catch up to the real you, before the write you can get ahead of your self.

The Fall of Book Publishing: The Rise of New E-Book Business Models

in: Analysis, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Experimenting Our Way to Success – Reinventing Publishing Models

Futurist Thomas Frey:  Amazon revolutionized book reading in 2007 when it introduced its Kindle book reader. Within the past three years, the explosive sale of book readers has caused a massive surge in the sale of e-books, already outpacing the sale of hardcover books, with a prediction by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that they will outsell paperbacks within the next year.

We are witnessing a major transformation of this industry. Within five years, the vast majority of all books sold will be e-books. Big box retailers like Barnes & Nobel and Borders will have shuttered most of their storefronts. The printing press industry, along with the craftsmen of ages past who have made a fine art of applying ink to paper, will be mothballing their machines. And the media, almost in unison, will begin writing the eulogy for this 500-year old industry.
But before we focus too much on what we’ve lost, we need to pay close attention to the other side of the equation. Digital book publishing will be an exciting new industry with truly amazing potential for growth.
Digital publishing does not mean fewer books or fewer readers. Rather, it paves the way for lower cost publishing, new forms of “books,” more authors, more titles, and a host of new opportunities. Most importantly, it will set the stage for experimentation as inventive young minds help redefine the form and nature of books.

In January, Deb and I attended the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where we saw no fewer than 20 new e-book readers being introduced into the marketplace. In addition to these, the number of other mobile devices such as tablets, laptops, and game consoles, with e-book reading capabilities, were something like 10-20 times as many.

These readers, along with the breakneck million-a-month pace being set by Apple’s iPad, are driving the ubiquity of digital reader access for every possible piece of written material that becomes available.
Competition will be fierce. So fierce, in fact, that the cost of book readers will begin to plummet. Within 5 years, some will reach prices as low as $20, maybe less. They will become as commonplace as calculators and virtually everyone will have one.

Two-Way Flow of Information

People today tend to resent the one-way flow of information. For most of history our technology has only allowed information to flow in one direction, and businesses have capitalized on this limitation.
For centuries people have used one-way information flows to establish themselves as the undisputed expert on a topic simply because there were so few options for voicing a dissenting opinion.
Today the rules are different. Information flows quickly and in many different directions. Anyone voicing their ideas can expect to have either direct or indirect feedback on it.
Most forums have comment sections. People now expect to be able to interact with the author. Their comments fuel other comments, and if some article does not have a comment section, opinions are stated on social media sites, with or without the author being aware of what’s going on.
Interested people want to immerse themselves with ideas, and they will to do this through comments, author interaction, wiki forums, and other forms of topical conversations.
Books have traditionally been the epitome of one-way information, but digital books are changing all that. Not only do they accommodate good interaction, some go out of their way to promote it.
Readers who become engaged with the information in an e-book will become evangelists for it. They will not only tell others, they will broadcast it to the world.
Emerging New Business Models
Interactive book forums are setting the stages for publishers to experiment with entirely new business models.
Rather than focusing on selling large numbers of books to become profitable, eBooks may very well become loss leaders, setting the stage for a series of other pricier products and services surrounding the author’s area of expertise.

Keeping in mind the time scarcity that most authors have, the cost of the services will increase along with the amount of time the author has to commit.
These types of services will vary greatly depending on the type of books, personality of the authors, and the timeliness of the topics.

In much the same way the music industry has shifted to selling concerts rather than records, the publishing industry will look for new ways to monetize the performances of its talent base.
Yes, people will still pay to purchase books, but they may be willing to pay far more for a variety of other ways to engage on the topic. Hosted mastermind sessions, subscription newsletters, interactive telepresence calls, one-on-one consulting, and paid appearances and speaking gigs are all options that next-gen publishers will consider as they calculate the value of a new unpublished work.
Much of this already goes on today, but continued experimentation will pave the way into virgin territory.
Some books will include ads, both in-text and display ads to help the bottom line. A few will experiment with product placement strategies, affiliate marketing, and other ideas for cross-promoting products.

Pushing Costs Back Onto the Authors

At the same time, as we move into an era of uncertainty, book publishers will invariably begin to shift many of the costs back onto the authors. The cost of reviewing manuscripts, content strategy sessions, layouts, and editing may be charged up front before any sale takes place. Along with shouldering more of the upfront costs, authors may also be presented with a cafeteria-style menu of promotional packages for every form of media to help improve awareness and increase the chances of landing a next-generation best-seller.

To compensate, publishers may opt for a smaller piece of sales initially. These pay-to-play models will virtually eliminate the industry’s upfront costs, so the big profits will come when “freemium” and premium services get added into the mix.

Rest assured, publishers will retain their role as the credentialing authority, to maintain the quality in their brand and control the exclusivity of their talent. In doing so, they will also command a premium price for their premium services.

Digital E-Book Readers are Only Phase One

When our only systems for creating books involves applying ink to paper, we are very limited in our capabilities. Adding color has been difficult and expensive. Images and photos have required special processes. Inserting a video has been impossible as were animations and any other form of movement.
Pages on a printed book are static. They don’t move. The progression of events has to be linear – one page after another – with no chance for hyperlinks, mouse-overs, informational pop-ups, or any other non-linear decision trees.
E-books, however, are opening the door to all that and much more.
Once we get past the notion that books have to be framed around a device that makes them look and feel like a traditional book, we can begin to experiment with some truly novel story-telling systems. Here are a few of the many possibilities:

• Non-Linear Thinking – Storytelling will no longer have to be sequential or even logical. Some stories may involve such things as treasure hunts, game interludes, or even intelligent systems that write the story on the fly.
• Movement – Rather than static characters and images on a page, a digital book may include animations, video clips, movable charts and graphs, touchable interactions, voice clips, note-taking modules and much more.
• Augmented Reality – In its current state, augmented reality can easily add three-dimensionality to any page, image, or idea through the use of a head-mounted or spatial display. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface on this type of technology.
• Holography – Stepping beyond augmented reality are other forms of holography, a science that so far has not lived up to its full potential. But new and better holographic systems will undoubtedly come, and they will unleash more than a little creativity into the storytelling process.

Books that tell a story will have an entirely new palette of options for bringing their masterpiece to life.

Some Final Thoughts

Much like transitioning from LPs to cassettes to CDs in the music industry, moving from printed books to digital books will alter the publishing industry and change the way money is made.
The key to this emerging business world will be agile minds and nimble leadership. Stiff competition will come from small players and consumers will undoubtedly become bewildered by all the options.
Attention spans will become an increasingly precious commodity.
As a rule of thumb, the decay rate for old content is increasing nearly as fast as the creation rate for new content. Since there are physical limits to how much the human brain can absorb in a day, the pool of active content can only grow as long as we develop faster absorption rates and grow the number of Internet users.

Eventually we will see old content stagnating as fast new content is being created. (Probably within the next 10 years.) For this reason, the economic lifecycle of books and information products will continue to shorten along with the ease of new content creation systems.
Yes, we will hear lots of grumbling from the publishing world and even see some bizarre legal and legislative attempts to slow the transition.
But this is an exciting time for both authors and readers alike, as storytelling and information products shift into an entirely different gear.

David Kramer - Fracking is not an Option

Press watchdog looks to regulate journalists' Twitter activity

The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) is to begin a consultation which could result in it regulating journalists’ and newspapers’ Twitter feeds.

Journalists could be monitored on Twitter by the PCC. Photo: ALAMY

By Emma Barnett, Digital Media Editor 8:00AM BST 07 May 2011

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The PCC is assessing whether journalists’ and newspaper Twitter feeds just should come under its remit and be considered as part of the newspaper’s editorial content.

The move would significantly increase the PCC’s remit and would be the first time the media watchdog had included any form of social media content under its jurisdiction.

Many journalists working for a newspaper or media organisation say that they are tweeting their own thoughts and not their employer’s, but Iain Connor, a partner at media and entertainment specialist law firm Pinsent Masons, said this defence was weak.

“I think given the interest [in most journalists’ Twitter feeds’] is likely to arise because of their journalist profession, it would be difficult to argue that they are genuinely tweeting in a personal capacity and that’s probably the reason why the PCC is considering this extension to its remit.”

He added: “I think we might find that the PCC is being proactive by considering this extension in order to prevent wider regulation [of the media’s expression on Twitter] which would be more prohibitive.”

The PCC’s plan is to try and separate out a journalists’ public and private tweets. All newspaper’s official Twitter feeds are expected to be fully regulated.

According to The Guardian the PCC wants every newspaper to create a ‘Twitter policy’ which lets every reporter know which accounts are considered to be part of its editorial output.