Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

via fearlessrevolution.com

Phone2Food.org has partnered with buymytronics.com an an effort to raise money for famine releif in Africa. You can read more about the effort here and on their site. Right now we have a couple hundred envelopes on the Fearless Cottage porch so come by and pick up a few. Many of us have old phones lying around and they can easily be converted to food with these postage paid envelopes. It costs you nothing but a little time and the money raised is really significant. You mail in a phone. Somebody doesn't starve. It's that simple.

FearLess Cottage,
645 Walnut St, Boulder, CO

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

I met john Zimmer a couple years ago and I've been a big fan of Zimride.com and Zimmer ever since. You may be surprised to know that Zimmer did not name Zimride after himself. In fact, although he had created a very similar service in college it turned out that Zimride was a competing service that Logan Green had started. The two eventually joined forces and Zimmer became part of Zimride. I'm a big fan of Logan too.

Today these guys gave me a chance to look under the hood an see what makes Zimride the leader in ride share. Car share, as you probably realize, has been popularized by services like Zipcar and in the peer to peer space by services like Getaround. Zimride and ride share as a category is about sharing seats not vehicles. So as a user you post the routes you normally drive or where you would like to get a ride to and then you get matched. It's digital age hitchhiking all vetted through Facebook so you know lots about your potential commuting partner.

Recently, Zimride which was focused on creating programs for closed communities like universities has begun to open their service to the general public and they've begun opening routes. One of the first routes, SF to LA is already generating a hundred ride matches a day. When you consider that is just a single route you quickly realize the enormous potential of this platform. If you've done the math already you would not be alone. John recently closed their A round with a 6 million dollar

raise as investors scramble to make their mark on this collaborative consumption space that has created mega hits like Airbnb.

John and my wife Ana and my daughter Nadia and I popped over with John to check out the new ride he treated himself to after closing the latest round. But instead of pulling into a Porsche dealer we pulled into Mission Bikes and John threw a leg over his sweet new single speed townie. He's going to use it to commute to work. When he's not using Zimride of course.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

via occupydesign.org

Sweet site that let's you download infographics for signs, presentations, wallpaper or whatever. Don't see a graphic you need? Make a request and maybe they'll build it for you. occupydesign.org

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

via occupygeorge.com

These Occupy infographics and website are bank. occupygeorge.com

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

via fearlessrevolution.com

Like any occupation, #occupywallstreet needs food and other provisions. You can go to their site to see what they need most. Yesterday we sent 50 FearLessLoveMore t-shirts, a whole lot of delicious and nutritious Justin's Nut Butter and our FearLess Cottage megaphone.

Put on a shirt, have a PB&J for energy and speak into the megaphone. It takes important ideas and makes them louder. And it has brought us good luck in the past.

Although a lot of us can't be there in the flesh it feels good to get connected in some small way. We wish the occupation a safe and productive day. Hang in there. Keep being FearLess and let us know how we can help.

Love,
The FearLess Crew

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

April 9, 1947, was a day when the sky over the town of Woodward, Oklahoma, was full of dark clouds. It wasn't unusual for April, so nobody was much concerned. As the skies opened up, most people went inside to get out of the rain. It was so dark that there wasn't much to see. Then suddenly there was that sound. Off in the distance, but coming. The sound that is most often described as the sound of a freight train. Families in this part of the world have storm cellars and those who could make it ran toward them. But for many the storm moved too fast and there wasn't time. This storm was moving 45 miles an hour as it swept toward toward a tiny white house. There was only time for the family to get under the kitchen table. A man wrapped himself over his wife and two girls to try to keep the family together. A second later the roof was ripped off and that little house was never to be seen again. And as the walls began to fall in on them, something miraculous happened. The kind of miraculous thing that only happens inside a tornado. The two walls caught each other just as they were about to come down on that table and that family, eyes clenched shut and praying, underneath.

If those walls hadn't caught I wouldn't be writing this. When the winds died down, my grandfather poked his head up and looked out at the devastation of what is still to this day the fifth deadliest tornado to hit the U.S. In an instant he knew that they were among the lucky. The house next door was completely gone. Only the foundation remained. After he was sure my mom, her sister and his wife were okay he must have realized he would not be sleeping for a long time. He was the sheriff in Woodward and would have to help his extended family, too. The whole town. More than a hundred people died. And more than 1000 were injured. In a town of just 5,000. The storm path was over a mile wide and leveled 100 city blocks. He didn't talk about it much, but as a kid I heard some of the stories of the dead and the injured. There are two that are etched in my mind. One, of a man wrapped in wire that died in my grandfathers arms as they tried to cut him free. The other, too horrible for me to write.

So tornados are part of our family history and as Ana and I recently found ourselves driving through northern Georgia on the evening of the Alabama storms, we found ourselves scanning the skies and praying for those in the storm path.

But this is the south. This isn't the home of the F4s and F5s. Florida has more storms than any state in the nation but they're not the Wizard of Oz variety. Those storms are reserved for Tornado Alley. That evening it became obvious that these recent storms were the worst of the worst. And on the following day as we drove through Tuscaloosa to get to Greensboro, we saw what my family had lived through so many Aprils past.
Listening to the radio, it was obvious that the newscasters and the victims were struggling to explain how storms like this had come to the south. But another struggle seemed obvious on the part of the mayors and governors. How to explain such odd weather without bringing up climate change. And the press seemed at a loss in how to bring it up. It was the elephant in the room in every interview.

The weather and the climate are two different things. And although no single weather event can be attributed to climate, most climate scientists will say that today most weather events are now affected by the warmer climate. With 4% more moisture in the atmosphere today it would be hard for them not to be. But it was obvious to all involved that this storm and the Joplin storm, the Tennessee floods, etc, etc just seem odd. Too many "1000-year" storm and flood events piling up too fast.

So for this idea to enter the conversation maybe we just need a name. A name for weather that has been affected or altered or possibly intensified by climate change. Ana suggested "dirty weather" on the drive and it certainly has been a sticky phrase with friends and family.
Dirty Weather. Weather events linked to the CO2 pollution from fossil fuels that are warming the climate. And although we can't know for sure what the linkage might be we can at least begin to ask the question. In fact, it's irresponsible not to ask the question.

So are we having a string of 1000-year weather events? Or was that Dirty Weather?

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

<p>DON'T EXPERIMENT WITH YOUR BABY from NO GMO on Vimeo.</p>

Crops that have been genetically modified to produce their own pesticides have been a concern for some time. After all, who would want to eat pesticide? But the GMO industry has long suggested that the pesticide will break down in the digestive system and could not persist. It seems that this financially motivated wishful thinking is about to be severely challenged. A study coming out of the University of Sherbrooke, Canada, found Bt toxin, the pesticide component of most genetically-modified crops, in human blood samples for the first time.

This is huge news that could be a tipping point in consumer awareness of GMOs in our food supply.

In the study a group of women with standard Canadian diets (As in lots of GM food just like the US) were tested and BT toxin was found in the blood of 93 percent of maternal samples. And if that is not troubling enough, 80 percent of fetal blood samples also contained the toxin.

More news on the study posted here and the study abstract posted here.

I'M posting a new video from Jeffrey Smith that's especially relevant here. DON'T EXPERIMENT WITH YOUR BABY that was produced prior to this new study but being careful about your diet is never more important than when you're pregnant.

Feel free to share, post and embed.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Over the last several months, we've been working on a New Consumer Bill of Rights. The call we put out to the community generated a tremendous response and a lot of work went into gathering and categorizing that input and those ideas. We are grateful and humbled by the thinking that went into all of the input we received. It was thoughtful and nuanced, and it made our job monumental as we tried to distill it down to the essential points and find language that worked in a document such as The Consumer Bill of Rights. The original work done by John F. Kennedy and team was a towering achievement and it was never our intent to start from scratch. In fact, it was our intent to change the original is little as possible while still expanding and updating the rights. Most changes are less of an oversight or lack of vision by the original drafters of the CBoW and more to cover changes to the consumer landscape that in 1964 did not exist and could not have been predicted. In fact, the spirit of the original document if followed by government agencies and corporations would and will vastly evolve the relationship between consumer and corporation.

Our amendments are to three of the current five rights. (Clinton added a fifth right during his administration that we included in ours.)

1) The right to safety: We made two additions to the language that we believe represents the expectation that today's consumer should have as part of an exchange with any enterprise. First, we added "and services" to goods that we are to be protected from that may be hazardous to our health. At the time services like cellular phone service and wifi didn't exist. As exposure to these low doses of radiation is being studied, it makes sense that we expect companies to take every precaution as their beams move through us even when we are not using that product. We also extended our safety to the "safety of our future." As we are beginning to understand the cumulative and combined effects of toxins that in a single generation have little risk but over time are becoming environmental triggers of disease and new-found epidemics that seems to require a longer term expectation to safety.

2) The right to be informed: This section saw the biggest changes probably based on two factors: the power of transparency to empower consumers and the newfound access now possible through the creation of the Internet. An asymmetry of information in which more information is in the hands of the producer than in the consumer's puts the consumer at the mercy of the producer. Moving toward symmetry of information empowers the consumer and encourages good behavior by all in the economic dialog. The first amendment is small but important with the removal of "grossly" that preceded misleading. We felt that misleading information should not be tolerated, whether it is "grossly misleading" or just your standard everyday misleading. Our second amendment was to remove the "the facts he needed" as it was oddly sexist and unnecessary. Finally, we add several more specific pieces of language.

Additions represented here in italics:

"to be protected against fraudulent, deceitful, or misleading information, advertising, labeling, or other practices, and to be given, by all goods and service providers, unrestricted access to the complete information needed to make an informed choice, including but not limited to ingredients, materials, origin, labor conditions, life cycle, and political activity."

These amendments were made to represent our new understanding that what is in our products can be as dangerous as what is in or on our foods. A new consumer expectation that called for knowing what was sprayed on our food as well as material listings for what is in the products we buy is in the spirit of what we now know about pesticides and chemicals. If a producer is going to use pesticides we have the right to know. Just as we have the right to know if BPA is in our plastic baby bottles.

We also included language here about "labor conditions" with the belief that although all consumers look for a low price there are many who would not buy at that price if they were aware that it was at the expense of another individual.

There was a time not too long ago when we just expected that people wouldn't make a product and then make it our problem. Bottle laws are a good example of this. If you put a product in a bottle we expected you would collect those bottle and reuse and recycle. Then we somehow allowed that plastic bottle to go from being the producer’s problem to our problem, society's problem to recycle and dispose of and pay for the cost of it all. So "life cycle" has become an information requirement for a consumer to make the informed choice Kennedy wanted for us all. Simple enough.

And finally and very specifically we included "political activity" in the list of information needed for consumers to make an educated choice. When the original CBoW was written, corporate campaign financing was a tiny fraction of the now unrestricted money flowing into our political system from special interests. Most of which are corporate special interest. That money combined with money spent lobbying are a critical data point for today’s consumer/citizen and an expectation of transparency would sharply change both consumer behavior and soon after that corporate behavior for the better.

3) The right to choose: This right saw two important amendments. The first is the removal of the phrase "whenever possible" preceding our right to "access to a variety of products and services at competitive prices” We see no reason why this would ever be impossible. We then added the parenthetical phrase, (as long as those prices do not come at the exploitation of others. At the time of the original framing of the CBoR our own laws to protect our own labor force was all we had to consider because American corporations didn't look offshore for cheaper labor. Tariffs made it a fruitless endeavor since a tariff would be added to anything produced more cheaply abroad than we could produce here with our own labor. Today the consumer buys from producers foreign and domestic that employ labor in countries that haven't developed any standards for workers. Progressive companies and activists have worked to step in to create standards where none exist. But there are still abuses and today's consumer is often left wondering if what they bought helped or harmed others. We suggest in this right that we have the right to great prices as long as that right doesn’t deny or impede somebody else’s right to health, liberty and happiness.

We made no amendments to the 4th or 5th rights. Below is what we refer to as the New Consumer Bill of Rights. We'd like to distribute these as far and wide as possible. Any help and further suggestions would be most welcomed. We'd also like to get progressive companies, of which there are thousands, to sign these new Consumer Bill of Rights along with consumers. To stand shoulder to shoulder in support of a new relationship of trust, transparency and mutual support between we the people and our corporations.

(1) The right to safety--to be protected against the marketing of goods and services that are hazardous to health, life, or the safety of our future.

(2) The right to be informed--to be protected against fraudulent, deceitful, or misleading information, advertising, labeling, or other practices, and to be given, by all goods and service providers, unrestricted access to the complete information needed to make an informed choice, including but not limited to ingredients, materials, origin, labor conditions, life cycle, and political activity.

(3) The right to choose--to be assured access to a variety of products and services at competitive prices (as long as those prices do not come at the exploitation of others); and in those industries in which competition is not workable and Government regulation is substituted, an assurance of satisfactory quality and service at fair prices.

(4) The right to be heard--to be assured that consumer interests will receive full and sympathetic consideration in the formulation of Government policy, and fair and expeditious treatment in its administrative tribunals.

(5) The right to service--the right to privacy, courtesy, and responsiveness to consumer problems and needs and all steps necessary to ensure that products and services meet the quality and performance levels claimed for them (Clinton, 1994).
 
Kennedies original 4 if you care to do more comparing and contrasting:

(1) The right to safety--to be protected against the marketing of goods that are hazardous to health or life.
(2) The right to be informed--to be protected against fraudulent, deceitful, or grossly misleading information, advertising, labeling, or other practices, and to be given the facts he needs to make an informed choice.
(3) The right to choose--to be assured, wherever possible, access to a variety of products and services at competitive prices; and in those industries in which competition is not workable and Government regulation is substituted, an assurance of satisfactory quality and service at fair prices.
(4) The right to be heard--to be assured that consumer interests will receive full and sympathetic consideration in the formulation of Government policy, and fair and expeditious treatment in its administrative tribunals.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »