Gaia Community: Jon's Blog

Gin, Television and Social Surplus

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:17:50 -0000

This is one of the most interesting articles I've read this year:

Gin, Television and Social Surplus

Fascinating implications for just about, well, everything.

Kate Earl

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:45:27 -0000

I have so many hours of dreaming logged in at my parents gas station in Chugiak, Alaska. Ring up a customer- dream, stock the shelves-dream, mop the floors- dream, plow the snow-dream... I had spent my whole life in this remote town asking the question "what am i gonna do with myself if i stay here?" so as soon as i had saved enough for a ticket and a guitar I moved to LA.

I needed to find out... my Dutch/Welsh father dropped out of 6th grade to survive the Great Depression by picking cotton for bowls of beans until he lied about his age to serve during the Korean War to support his parents... he was a self made man...he built our gas station with his own hands...he taught me to follow my bliss... my Filipino mother who left her parents to board in another town and walked miles in the rain with a banana leaf for an umbrella to go to school, having sewed her own uniform and cooked her meals on a little fire as a child, beleived in the american dream and made a new life in alaska with greater possibilities for her children...she taught me that wit, intuition, resolve and improvisation can go a long way...the rest is left to fate or luck or the combustion of our individual spark.

with common sense, hard work and manual labor my upbringing at the gas station, pursuing music was a luxury, it was not hard for me to save a lump of change and go to the city...did the Hollywood thing hittin the streets with the demo i made at my friends house...at the time those were the only songs i had written...I mean I had played piano and sang in church since I was yay high but I was going by the seat of my pants, figuring out my sound as I wrote...since Fate Is The Hunter I have been developing my sound under the guidance of Tommy Mottola...I'm in good hands, after all he is " the architect of dreams ".

http://www.myspace.com/kateearl

Inside Nairobi, the Next Palo Alto?

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:01:22 -0000

If this doesn't give you goosebumps...

Consider Wilfred Mworia, a 22-year-old engineering student and freelance code writer in Nairobi, Kenya. In the four weeks leading up to Apple’s much-anticipated release of a new iPhone on July 11, Mr. Mworia created an application for the phone that shows where events in Nairobi are happening and allows people to add details about them.

Mr. Mworia’s desire to develop an application for the iPhone is not unusual: many designers around the world are writing programs for the device. But his location posed some daunting obstacles: the iPhone doesn’t work in Nairobi, and Mr. Mworia doesn’t even own one. He wrote his program on an iPhone simulator.

Inside Nairobi, the Next Palo Alto?

Fact of the day

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 19:12:59 -0000

Americans today use nearly a billion additional gallons of gasoline each year, compared with 1960, solely because they weigh more.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4333

Wow.

food

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 05:39:42 -0000

not pretty to look at but important.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2008/jun/13/ethiopia.internationalaidanddevelopment?picture=334992148

i think there are four major (and inter-connected) problems in this world:

education, energy, food and health care

looking forward to devoting as much of my life as possible to helping provide solutions to them.

Tony Melendez

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 03:27:39 -0000

bad ass.

we're capable of so much more than we realize.

Mouth Revolution

Wed, 14 May 2008 05:25:13 -0000

Pretty darn awesome.

Most inexpensive sources of DHA

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:12:44 -0000

Been doing a lot of reading today on DHA and the impact it has on so many things. Strongly (strongly strongly strongly) recommend you do some research yourself on the impact that DHA (or lack thereof as is so often the case with SAD) can have on the human body. Decided to calculate the cost of various forms of DHA tonight. Pretty interesting. Here's what I found:

$13.59/43.2 G of DHA Nature Made Fish OIl (Costco.com) = $0.31/G

$11.25/12 G of DHA NOW Omega Supreme (NutritionGeeks.com) = $0.94/G

$40/40 G of DHA Vital Choice Sockeye Salmon Oil = $1.00/G

$20/12 G of DHA Omega Zen-3 (Sunfood.com) = $1.67/G

$25.19/6 G of DHA Neuromins (SmartBomb.com) = $4.20/G

$89/9.63 G of DHA Vital Choice Wild Alaskan Salmon = $9.24/G

These were calculated by taking the recommended dosages or serving sizes and multiplied by the amount of DHA per dose/serving. On a per cost/gram basis Fish Oil from Costco is less than a third as expensive as the next leading contender. However, I'm a little dubious as to how that's sourced and if you're looking for a vegan form of DHA it looks like NOW's Omega Supreme oil might be the way to go. I've heard a lot about Omega Zen-3 but compared to Omega Supreme it's almost twice the cost per gram. Neuromins is over four times the cost so unless I'm missing something here I'm not sure why you'd want to go that way.

And the worst choice (at least on a cost/gram basis)? Salmon itself. Almost 30 times more expensive than Costco fish oil and about 10 times more expensive than NOW Omega Supreme. Seems like a pretty inefficient way to get your DHA...

Now I'm not sure all of the other things that go into this analysis and I'd love to hear thoughts on this form of analysis. At the end of the day it seems like we all should get more DHA in our diet and given that this can get pretty expensive I hope this data helps some people make better choices!

The Devil Came on Horseback

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 04:35:04 -0000

You owe it yourself to watch this movie. Hell, you owe it to the world to watch this movie.

Crazy that we let something like this happen...again (remember Rwanda?).

Crazy that so much of the stuff we consider *important* simply pales in comparison with things like this.

At a minimum, please help to raise global consciousness about something like this by educating yourself.

35 firms OK'd to bid on Iraq oil deals

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:27:24 -0000

What did the Church Lady use to say...isn't that conveeenient???

35 firms OK'd to bid on Iraq oil deals

Quote of the Day

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:05:04 -0000

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.

-Daniel Burnham

applebee's - this is crazy

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:36:20 -0000

watching the bruins play right now and was forced to watch a commercial for applebee's (i fucking hate commercials). for shits and giggles i thought i'd check out nutritional info for some of the stuff applebee's sells. wow...

http://www.calorie-count.com/calories/item/113225.html
http://www.calorie-count.com/calories/item/113222.html
http://www.calorie-count.com/calories/item/113217.html (that's a salad!!!)

of course this is convenient...

We provide nutritional information on all of our Weight Watchers® items, including fat, fiber and calorie counts and Weight Watchers Points® values. We do not provide nutritional information on other Applebee's® items - with approximately 1,900 locations in the U.S. alone there are many different vendors, which makes it extremely difficult to obtain nutritional information for our items.

unbelievable.

10 day juice feast has started!

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 07:43:24 -0000

Been inspired by a few people to give this a shot.

10 days...nothing but juice (and a few assorted oddiities like hemp oil and bee pollen!)

You can see more @ JuiceFeasting.com or if you're like me and can't figure out how to give that site your money just check the web for a myriad of juice feasting blogs. Here's a great one!

http://rawfoodrightnow.blogspot.com/2008/01/heidi-announcement-i-am-juice-feasting.html

Fantastic quote

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:35:28 -0000

The biggest mistake people make in life is not trying to make a living at doing what they most enjoy.
-Malcolm Forbes

How to go raw

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 03:35:46 -0000

I'm not 100% raw yet and not sure I'm going to be. But I am eating a lot more raw food these days and noticing all sorts of benefits including a lot more energy, less need for sleep, etc. Haven't been sick in forever (despite almost everyone around me being sick this winter) and have noticed a marked increase in thought quality. Most everyone who goes totally or mostly raw experiences these things so I think it's probably a little more than a coincidence. :)

Anyway, just got done composing an email for someone who is thinking about doing the "raw thing" so I thought I'd share it here so y'all can benefit. I'm far (far!) from an expert in this world but hopefully this will be a good start for some people.

****************

here you go:

#1 - if you wanna go raw read a ton of raw food blogs. great ideas and inspiration to eat better vs. crap that most people eat. my favs:

welikeitraw.com (great social net at giveittomeraw.com started by same peeps)
lovingraw.com
rawmodel.com

and here are over 200 more: http://rawfoodrightnow.blogspot.com/2007/07/ultimate-list-of-raw-food-blogs.html

#2 - youtube videos. another great way to learn and stay motivated. search on "david wolfe", "green smoothie", "raw food", etc. you'll find lots.

#3 - i'm not a real big fan of most of the raw/vegan restaurants in the area. i *love* rfd but haven't been able to fall in love with rawvolution, juliano's, etc. i think you might be better off just buying stuff and doing it at home. salads + smoothies are my mainstays these days and can give you pretty much everything you need.

#4 - i don't have a ton of raw food books yet but there's a lot out there. tons of cookbooks although many of the raw recipes take a bit of work and require special stuff like dehydrator, etc.

at the end of the day the most important things are to minimize/eliminate consumption of animal products (cholesterol issues should disappear) and try to eat as close to nature as possible (unprocessed = good, uncooked = better). a lot of people make it more complicated than that but it really doesn't need to be.

-j

The Church

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:33:28 -0000

"If the Church doesn’t respond to this, the Church will be made irrelevant. It would [be] like the way you heard stories of people watching the Jews get put on the trains during the Holocaust. We will be that generation who watched our African brothers and sisters get put on the trains.”

From Relevant Magazine.

Amen. The world needs more places like Glide and All Saints.

Shocked that more pastors, priests, etc. aren't speaking out on all the things that are going on in this world.

Hoping that they will start. Soon.

Nipun Mehta Speaks at Stanford

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:13:42 -0000

Fantastic. The whole thing really. But I really love the part around 5 minutes where we talks about Gandhi 2 weeks prior to the Salt March. Unbelievably profound.

Nipun Mehta Speaks at Stanford

The forces of mediocrity

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 04:38:12 -0000

There's a myth that all you need to do is outline your vision and prove it's right—then, quite suddenly, people will line up and support you.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/03/the-forces-of-m.html

Fantastic...

Eulogy of Bobby Kennedy

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:00:49 -0000

Amazing.

Eulogy of Bobby Kennedy

Save a tree...or an acre...

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:12:41 -0000

Saves trees, reduces forest destruction for cow pastures. Between 1960 and 1985 alone, nearly 40 percent of all Central American rain forests were destroyed to create cheap grazing land for cows later served on North American and European plates. Going vegan saves one acre of forest every year. (Who knows what else we are losing while creating desserts out of forests.)

Reasons to be Vegan

(not there yet, getting closer every day...)