Burnin’

Boston has always been a thinking person’s city. So it’s no surprise that innovative green products would surface there.

According to The Boston Globe, the city has placed 50 self-compacting, solar-powered trashcans known as The Big Belly in key locations thoughout Boston. They don’t spill. They smell less. And, they hold some 150 gallons of trash, about five times more than a standard city receptacle. There are now more than 200 of the bins worldwide, including in Vail, CO; Vancouver; Cincinnati; Queens, N.Y.; Needham; Newton; and Worcester.

In related news, Texas, a state known for its energy production, not the environmental values of its citizens, seeks to combine the two and become known for both in the process. According to USA Today, the Lone Star state is now the nation’s top producer of wind energy, bypassing California for the first time. Currently, wind makes up about 1% of the nation’s electricity.

You know you’re adjusting nicely to the South when you buy Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 1973 debut on iTunes. At $7.92 it’s hard to resist. My purchase today was in part motivated by an event I didn’t see coming. Last Friday we ate sushi with friends and then we went to Rider’s Lounge, where I encountered my boss, another co-worker and her husband, as well as a high school band from Bluffton known as The Gnomes.

Here’s what the Island Packet said about them last summer:

In a town where cover bands are about as common as drink specials and the strains of “Freebird” blend into the background noise like cicadas, it can be hard for a seemingly innocuous set of teenagers to gain a foothold, much less a following.

The best part of their show for me was a rendition of “Simple Man.” I stood back against the bar after downing a Jaeger bomb (not somethng I do much of), and took it all in. Namely, that three teens in this small South Carolina town know how to rip and they like to rip Skynyrd. They do pretty well by their musical idols, I’d say.

On a related note, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s biggest hit single, “Sweet Home Alabama”, was an answer song to Neil Young’s “Alabama” and “Southern Man”. The common belief that Ronnie Van Zant and Young were rivals is incorrect–they were actually fans of each other and considered collaborating together on several occasions.

Blilionaire blogger, Mark Cuban recently wrote, “The Internet is Boring. It’s old news.” Perhaps it is, but the people found therein are far from boring, or old news. By putting the power of the press directly in the hands of individuals with something to say, we no longer need rely on the filters–editors, agents, publishers and retailers–to access the material we seek.

Seattle writer, Ariel Meadow Stallings, reads over 100 blogs. She recently wrote, “Among my group of blog peers, there are very few of us who still write honestly on our blogs. In the Age of Google it can feel too risky to write about the juicy stuff, and with the number of trolls crawling around the web it can be pretty rough to bare your soul and make yourself vulnerable.”

I can relate, as I too keep my laundry mostly in the hamper. But there are others who air it out, and the more they do, the more addictive their writing becomes. Heather Armstrong is famous for presenting the minutae of her life, and the lives of her husband, dog and young child. In fact, she now makes her living by living as an open book.

Holly Burns is another writer not afraid to share. And like Armstrong, she’s wicked funny. Here’s a bit of her wit:

Q. What would you say to President Bush if you could speak to him for 30 minutes?

A. I’m not sure I could stand to be in the same room as him for 30 minutes. Could we do it behind glass, with one of those prison telephones? Because then I’d probably give him a whistlestop crash course in grammar, and hold up flash cards to quiz him on pronounciation. I’d tell him to just step down already, and I’d probably use the word “smarmy.” Maybe I’d also use one of my rudimentary Cantonese phrases. And not “please stop the bus.”

Here’s more of her prose styling:

My name is Holly Burns. I currently live in Charleston, South Carolina — though sort of by accident. It’s very pretty and the lemonade is good and I totally love how everyone is named after streets and has a set of monogrammed notecards, but I do sometimes look at my driver’s license and think OH MY GOD, I LIVE IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

Burns and her man recently left Charleston for San Francisco. The Palmetto State is now short one prolific and interesting voice.

Cuban’s provocative statement about the web being boring stems from what he sees as a dearth of earth shattering innovation. As an entrepreneur looking to make his next billion, he may be right. But I’m also right. The web is a delivery mechanism. Saying it’s boring is like saying telephone lines are boring.

Kottke points to some crazy numbers around reading habits, books and the publishing industry.

58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.

42% of college graduates never read another book.

80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.

70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

Startling, for sure. Yet these stats seem inconsistent with the following findings:

81% of the population feels they have a book inside them.

27% would write fiction.

28% would write on personal development.

27% would write history, biography, etc.

20% would do a picture book, cookbook, etc.

6 million manuscripts are making the rounds.

That last line is sobering in two ways. One, every writer faces immense competition. Two, while the majority of Americans think they can write, only two percent actually do.

Taking the above data in whole, it’s easy to see the number of literate people in this country is small. That scares me. How about you? What’s alarming is unless people are thinking critically “on their feet” (something reading engenders), it’s too easy to manipulate meaning on a massive scale via broadcast media and other insidious means, like using churches to do a political party’s bidding.

The number of worthy causes today makes one’s head spin. I have a bevy of personal favorites, with the environment and social justice being top-of-mind. Yet, education has to be addressed, and not just in the schools. Education needs to happen everywhere, all the time. It’s the fundemental building block, from which all else flows. To teach and to learn is a civic duty.

David Choquehuanca is Bolivia’s Foreign Minister. He is also an Aymara Indian, like Bolivia’s President, Evo Morales.

In yesterday’s paper, The Wall Street Journal examined the movements underfoot in Bolivia today.

Many Aymara intellectuals say they want to re-create in the 21st century the values of the communal Eden they believe existed before the conquest, a place without poverty or oppression.

I think the word “intellectuals” is wrong in this context. These people have a knowledge not learned in books.

Mr. Choquehuanca says he doesn’t turn to Western books for advice–indeed, he boasts of not having read a book of any kind in years because he doesn’t want to cloud his mind with European concepts. “We have been in the hands of people who have read books, and look what a mess the Earth is in,” he says. Far better to tap into the knowledge of Aymara elders. “When I say we have to read the wrinkles in our grandfathers’ brows, it’s to recover the wisdom that our grandfather’s still have,” he says.

Speaking to Indian Country Today last January, Choquehuanca further elaborates Bolivia’s indigenous ethic.

For 500 years we had ceased existing; we no longer were. We want to exist, to be, again. For 500 years we have lived in darkness, we have put up with exclusion, we have put up with humiliation, our natural resources have been plundered and we have just stood there watching. So after these 500 years, we said enough: We are human beings, we have rights, we have our territory, we have a culture, we have begun once again to value ourselves.

This is inspiring stuff for humanists to contemplate. Europeans have long thought they won in the Americas. But Europeans have not the patience of Indian people. Indians are still fighting, not with weapons, with better ideas and more generous spirits.