Here is some of the stuff I wrote about the site as I started pimping it on misc boards:

Hi guys,
I thought I’d refer some of my friends from Mud over to a newish community I started called “Hazard Assembly” – Hazard Assembly – The Ultimate Place for Dirtbag Adventuring. It is more oriented towards the guy who sort of does all sorts of adventures so the cruiser is sort of “the tool” rather than the being and the idea is we’ll have skiers and kayakers and MTBers and ideally lots of good times. It’s sort of eco focused to an extent and is really about just having a good time. I figure as the site takes off we should start seeing some really good stories and interesting or hopefully riveting adventures… The irony is we probably have about a couple dozen cruiserheads there already. The whole site is on an old New Mexico license plate… I’ve met a lot of you at particularly Cruise Moab, guys like Beno . I figured it would be right up the alley of a bunch of us…

Hazard Assembly – The Ultimate Place for Dirtbag Adventuring

We also have a gear giveaway going on. Post in this thread.

Cheers, Andre

And here is some misc Hazard Assembly photostream. A little bit of everything…

What is a TBIC site?

Hazard Assembly is the first of a few sites I plan to develop called “TBIC” sites, short for “topic by Internet Community.” It’s basically a publishing platform powered by lots of people, not just a few.  In the case of Hazard Assembly, it is simply a blog that has several users, but the community provides the bulk of the data.  In the long term TBIC will be a software platform that extracts quality data for publishing.

Since September 2002, a grid of 167 solar panels on the roof of a maintenance shed has been delivering electricity to the White House grounds. Another solar installation has been helping to provide hot water. Yet another has been heating the water in the presidential pool.

I bring it up because of my buddy Brian Gulatta’s blog post about Earth Days, yet another absolutely killer Sundance Film Festival movie we saw about the history of the environmental movement, and how it was basically shut down at the end of the 70′s with Reagan in office.  He ran on a platform that is alot like what is argued in the famous article Death of Environmentalism, that states that many modern day environmental tactics go against the grain of “what’s American” (which, as an environmentalist, I actually agree with). 

As we know, Reagan really kicked Carter’s ass, largely related to this in my opinion (besides the fact Carter sort of ran the country into the ground):

 
 
Through the early-mid 70′s Congress, under leadership of Nixon (of all people), the country passed some of the most sweeping environmental reform we’ve seen.  Endangered species, establishment of the EPA, etc. etc.   Environmentalism didn’t have it’s enemies like it has now — back then it was a common collective to think who doesn’t want clean air?  It is a long, complicated story why this fell apart (just as much the enviro’s fault as anyone else’s in my opinion).  It turns out the first earth day (April 22, 1970) had over 22 million people come out, for the largest single gathering nationwide in U.S. history.    They even closed down 5th Ave in New York for it:

So it’s funny that solar panels became a White House preference.  Carter invisioned they’d last forever, as a symbol.   Reagan tore them right down…

It is always funny to hear about the little things of the operations of the White House and how different Presidents have different approaches to running it.  This is why there are so many awesome books about life inside the White House, it’s curiously interesting.  This awesome article came out today in the NY Times about President Obama’s method of running things in comparison with Bush.  Bush actually sounds like a real stick-in-the-mud, versus this at least: 

From the article, comparing life at the Whitehouse between Bush II and Obama:

WASHINGTON — The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket.

Thus did an ironclad rule of the George W. Bush administration — coat and tie in the Oval Office at all times — fall by the wayside, only the first of many signs that a more informal culture is growing up in the White House under new management.

And a little more…

Although his presidency is barely a week old, some of Mr. Obama’s work habits are already becoming clear. He shows up at the Oval Office shortly before 9 in the morning, roughly two hours later than his early-to-bed, early-to-rise predecessor. Mr. Obama likes to have his workout — weights and cardio — first thing in the morning, at 6:45. (Mr. Bush slipped away to exercise midday.)

He reads several papers, eats breakfast with his family and helps pack his daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, off to school before making the 30-second commute downstairs — a definite perk for a man trying to balance work and family life. He eats dinner with his family, then often returns to work; aides have seen him in the Oval Office as late as 10 p.m., reading briefing papers for the next day.

“Even as he is sober about these challenges, I have never seen him happier,” Mr. Axelrod said. “The chance to be under the same roof with his kids, essentially to live over the store, to be able to see them whenever he wants, to wake up with them, have breakfast and dinner with them — that has made him a very happy man.”

In the West Wing, Mr. Obama is a bit of a wanderer. When Mr. Bush wanted to see a member of his staff, the aide was summoned to the Oval Office. But Mr. Obama tends to roam the halls; one day last week, he turned up in the office of his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who was in the unfortunate position of having his feet up on the desk when the boss walked in.

“Wow, Gibbs,” the press secretary recalls the president saying. “Just got here and you already have your feet up.” Mr. Gibbs scrambled to stand up, surprising Mr. Obama, who is not yet accustomed to having people rise when he enters a room.

Under Mr. Bush, punctuality was a virtue. Meetings started early — the former president once locked Secretary of State Colin L. Powell out of the Cabinet Room when Mr. Powell showed up a few minutes late — and ended on time. In the Obama White House, meetings start on time and often finish late.

Too funny…

And finally, George W. Bush’s plates:

If there is one thing Mr. Obama has not gotten around to changing, it is the Oval Office décor.

When Mr. Bush moved in, he exercised his presidential decorating prerogatives and asked his wife, Laura, to supervise the design of a new rug. Mr. Bush loved to regale visitors with the story of the rug, whose sunburst design, he liked to say, was intended to evoke a feeling of optimism.

The rug is still there, as are the presidential portraits Mr. Bush selected — one of Washington, one of Lincoln — and a collection of decorative green and white plates. During a meeting last week with retired military officials, before he signed an executive order shutting down the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Mr. Obama surveyed his new environs with a critical eye.

“He looked around,” said one of his guests, retired Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, “and said, ‘I’ve got to do something about these plates. I’m not really a plates kind of guy.’ ”

I don’t think I’m much of a “plate guy” either…

Make sure you turn it up!

Here is a snippet from there blurb/bio on their website:

The Los Angeles based ensemble is based in deep funk, soul, jazz fever and musical friendships. A Breakestra show is about dancing and swinging — eight men on stage getting loose, playing serious grooves. Think James Brown. Watching the Breakestra live is a tour de force. As Miles says, “What are the first three letters of FUNK?”

The Breakestra began as the house band for the legendary club called the Breaks. Egon from Stonesthrow Records further explains the etymology of their name: “Break. As in “breakbeat.” That ten second slice of percussive magic in the middle of a funk song that, when looped together by progressive South Bronx DJs in the 1970s, became the basis of the hip-hop movement. Arkestra. Out-there jazzer Sun Ra’s funkafied concept of the stuffy classical orchestra.” When we combine the two concepts, you have the Breakestra or in other words an orchestra that plays breaks. Back in 1999, Stonesthrow first introduced the world to the Breakestra with a few 12” releases and soon after the full-length album Live Mixtape Part Two.

“The Breakestra should become a class or a 4-year graduate program for funk musicians. Playing with the Breakestra is a great way to get a degree in funk,” says former longtime keyboardist Carlos Guaico. Indeed it is a way to get your degree in funk because the Breakestra have played an A to Z of funk classics. James Brown, Jimmy Smith, all the way to the endless breaks sampled by Gangstarr and A Tribe Called Quest. The Breakestra have played so many covers of the aforementioned grooves that the only way a musician could be in the group is if they really knew how to play.

Not a lot of people know about water issues in the west.  The combination of population growth and some environmental issues, and then human practices like agriculture and drinking water tactics is restricting water flow to rivers and replenishment to important lakes and drinking water sources, and even places like The Great Salt Lake.

Take a look at the map to the west and see how this Western Nevada/Utah/California drainage basin effects nearly everyone in the west, all the way down to Southern California.   If you are looking for the next “oil-like” battle that is going to occur, this is it.   Unfortunately, water=life.  I consider water to be the most powerful substance on the planet.

On the evening of Monday Feb 9, an organization I participate with called the Wasatch Back Environmental Alliance will be having a guest speaker from the Great Basin Water Network, Steve Erickson.  If anyone is interested please come and check it out. (Open to the public).   Click here for more information.

Little did I know that I’d made it on some New York Times blogs, be it years ago.  In both cases the original bloggers directly responded to my question/inquiry and in one case even included my original post in the blog itself.

Once in a blue moon I Google myself to see what the world according to Google says about me.  Hey, I admit it.  And everyone does it (or if you don’t, you should — you may not know what the Internet says about you, your habits, & what sites you frequent, etc.).  But it is funny because it truthfully it doesn’t offer much more insight as it pulls extremely diverse data.  In my case I made a post, back in college in 2001 or maybe earlier, about the effectiveness of some sort of device called “beer goggles” meant as a marketing tool to prevent drinking to underage youth.  I said they were counter-productive of course: what college kid wouldn’t strap then on and say “cool!” 

Anyway, several pages in I found two entries I’d made on the New York Times site; one in 2006 and another early this year.  These were comments I made on their blogs. 

The first was a question and response from Andrew Revkin, the Times’ increasingly famous environmental reporter on topics about global warming, the environment.  I was curious about his opinion on a free market approach to solving global warming as at the time, I actually possibly believed Bush about the issue and thought a legislative-down approach might not be the best idea.  This idea had actually been beaten into me from arguing about global warming skeptics on the Expedition Portal vehicle enthusiasts social media site.  Something about car enthusiasts sites yields about 60% fierce conservatives on average, who are usually “non-believers” of global warming policy. However, Revkin shot this I idea down pretty quickly.

The second post intrigued me as the blogger went back and actually added my comments to the blog itself:  Here is The Blog (The Lede on NY Times – big blog!), and the comment. I called out some fully-erroneous reporting by the Los Angeles Times about the premier of Morgan Spurlock’s new film Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden.  Really, was the guy even there?  Did he fall asleep?

Speaking of which, I was lucky enough to quickly meet Spurlock at a party for another film at Sundance Film Festival.  He is an incredibly nice guy and is also very down to earth.  

If you get a chance, also check out Spurlock’s show 30 Days, on the F/X channel.  F/X is putting a lot of really interesting stuff on the air that violates “everything we hate about TV,” aka, it’s “not crap.”   One that comes to mind is Dennis Leary’s awesome, gritty NY comedy/drama, Rescue Me. On Spurlock’s show, he is crazy enough to lock himself up for 30 days for example, just to show what it’s like.  And the last is the critically acclaimed It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia with Danny deVito.  I haven’t seen it, but I hear it’s also raw and gritty, full of curses and sexual content and all sorts of other stuff, a lot Rescue Me though it’s solely a comedy.

An awful pic; I know…

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