America
Lonely People


Bread/David Gates
Everything I Own
Please forgive the sound quality...beautiful song...


Gerry Rafferty
Baker Street

"Being quiet and meditating on sound is something completely different and will be discovered very soon by a lot of people who feel that the visual world doesn’t reach their soul anymore."
— Karlheinz Stockhausen

You can get your own clock (and other interesting devices) at Poodwaddle.com.


Poodwaddle.com

Spencer Davis Group "I'm a Man"
Steve Winwood is only 19 here.



The Small Faces "Tin Soldier"
Favorite Small Faces song.

One more reason to elect leadership who support sustainable living...before it's too late to bounce back.

Scientists: 1 in 4 mammals faces extinction
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer

October 6, 2008

WASHINGTON - Conservationists have taken the first detailed look at the world's mammals in more than a decade, and the news isn't good.

"Our results paint a bleak picture of the global status of mammals worldwide," the team led by Jan Schipper of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in Gland, Switzerland, concluded.

"We estimate that one in four species is threatened with extinction and that the population of one in two is declining," the researchers said in a report to be published Friday in the journal Science. The findings were being released Monday at the IUCN meeting in Barcelona, Spain.

"I think the bottom line is, what kind of a world do you want to leave for your children," Andrew Smith, a professor in the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, said in a telephone interview.

"How impoverished we would be if we lost 25 percent of the world's mammals," said Smith, one of more than 100 co-authors of the report.

"Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live," added Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN director general. "We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives."

The IUCN describes itself as the world's oldest and largest global environmental network. It is made up of more than 1,000 government and nongovernment organizations and almost 11,000 volunteer scientists in more than 160 countries. The research for the report took five years and involved more than 1,700 scientists around the world.

The report updates the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species, which overall includes 44,838 species, of which 16,928 are threatened with extinction. Of these, 3,246 are in the highest category of threat, critically endangered, 4,770 are endangered and 8,912 are vulnerable to extinction. The IUCN estimated that 76 mammal species have gone extinct since 1500.

While the new report estimated that one-in-four mammals is threatened with extinction, the actual numbers listed were 1,141 out of 5,487 species. That comes out to 20.8 percent, closer to one in five.

However, the researchers noted that there were several hundred species about which they don't have enough data to classify. They believe that the lack of information about those animals indicates that they exist in such small numbers that many could be endangered, raising the total to 25 percent or higher, Smith explained.

Among the mammals particularly in danger are primates, used for bush meat in parts of Africa and facing major loss of habitat in Southeast Asia, Smith noted.

The report also notes unusually high threats to tapirs, hippos, bears, pigs and hogs, while among the less threatened are moles, opossums and free-tailed bats.

In general, larger mammals were found to be more threatened than smaller ones. Larger species tend to have lower population densities, grow more slowly and have larger home ranges.

For land species, habitat loss is a major threat across the tropics, including deforestation in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Hunting is having devastating effects in Asia, but African and South American species are also affected.

For marine mammals the major threat is accidental death, especially fisheries by-catch and vessel strike.

Climate change is also affecting sea ice dependent species such as polar bears and harp seals.

Even though most of the world has been explored, new mammal species continue to be discovered. This year's species total of 5,487 is up 19 percent since 1992.

Many newly discovered species are among those that are not well documented, living in regions in need of future research such as tropical forests in West Africa and Borneo. Marine mammals are not as well studied as land mammals and are more difficult to survey.

While it raises concerns, the new analysis isn't all bad news. It found about five percent of currently threatened mammals showing signs of recovery.

The black-footed ferret moved from extinct in the wild to endangered after a successful reintroduction by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in eight western states from 1991-2008. Also, wild horses moved from extinct in the wild in 1996 to critically endangered this year after successful reintroductions started in Mongolia in the early 1990s.

In addition to raising concern about mammals, new additions to the IUCN Red List include:

• Indian tarantulas, sought by collectors and threatened by the international pet trade.

• The Rameshwaram parachute spider has been listed as critically endangered due to habitat loss.

• The squaretail coral grouper from the coral reefs of the Indo-Pacific has been listed as vulnerable because it has become a luxury food.

• In Costa Rica, Holdridge's toad moved from critically endangered to extinct, as it has not been seen since 1986 despite intensive surveys.

• La Palma giant lizard, found on the Canary Island of La Palma and thought to have become extinct in the last 500 years, was rediscovered last year and is now listed as critically endangered.

IUCN also said it is issuing a Sampled Red List Index, developed in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London. The index takes a random sample of species from a taxonomic group to calculate the trends in extinction risk within that group. It can be used to calculate trends much like an exit poll from a voting station.

___

Associated Press writer Daniel Woolls in Madrid, Spain, contributed to this report.

Article on the history and eco-vision for Arcosanti, a futuristic community in the desert.
I'm here this week for Different Skies...
It's indescribable, magical!!!!!

http://www.guardian .co.uk/artanddes ign/2008/ aug/25/architect ure.ethicallivin g

The man who saw the future
In the 1970s, visionary architect Paolo Soleri built an extraordinary eco-city in the Arizona desert. Did it work? Steve Rose tracks down a guru who now finds himself back in demand

Steve Rose
The Guardian, Monday August 25 2008
Article history

The round window in the Crafts III building at Arcosanti, the eco-city that Paolo Soleri built in the Arizona desert in the 1970s. Photograph: GE Kidder Smith/Corbis

Wind-bells tinkle and cypresses sway in the breeze. The sun casts sharp shadows across an undulating landscape. There are strange concrete forms everywhere: giant open vaults, painted half-domes with strange crests, an amphitheatre ringed by buildings with giant circular openings, little houses sunk into the hillside. Healthy-looking, vaguely hippy-ish people, young and old, stride about in dusty jeans and T-shirts. Beyond are the scrub-covered hills of the Sonoran desert. This not your typical American settlement. In fact, it's not your typical Earth settlement. For one thing, there are no cars or roads. Everything is connected by winding footpaths. Nor are there shops, billboards, or any other garish commercial intrusion. It looks like the set of a sci-fi movie designed by Le Corbusier. Round the next corner, you might expect to bump into Luke Skywalker, or Socrates, or a troupe of dancers doing Aquarius.

This is Arcosanti, 70 miles from Phoenix, Arizona. It's a curious taste of what an environmentally friendly US town could look like, but probably never will. It was designed by Paolo Soleri, an Italian-born architect, who originally came to Arizona to work for Frank Lloyd Wright, but soon set off on his own idiosyncratic path. Soleri is a genuine visionary architect. In the early 1970s, his designs and fantastical writings made him a big-hitter in architectural circles, up there with other postwar sci-fi modernists such as Buckminster Fuller. Then he all but disappeared, becoming, for the past 30 years, little more than an obscure curiosity. Yet today, as the world wakes up to the grim realities of climate change, peak oil and sustainability, Soleri's path looks less idiosyncratic. In fact, he's now something of a guru: in demand on the lecture circuit and, recently, offering sage advice in Leonardo DiCaprio's "how can we save the world?" documentary The 11th Hour.

Soleri invented "ecotecture" before the word even existed. In the 1960s, he derived a similar term, "arcology", to describe low-impact, environmentally oriented design. But Soleri's arcology went beyond mere architecture. He developed an entire philosophy of civilisation, laid out in his 1969 book, The City in the Image of Man. It is a wondrous tome, full of lucid rhetoric, almost impenetrable diagrams and spectacular drawings of "arcologies": fantasy cities of the future intricately rendered. Rather than inefficient, land-hungry, low-rise, car-dependent cities (like nearby Phoenix), Soleri's arcologies are dense, compact, car-free, and low-energy. Their gigantic structures leave nature unspoilt and readily accessible. Some are hundreds of metres high, designed to accommodate six million people; others are built on top of dams, or form artificial canyons, or float in the open sea.

Four decades on, Soleri is still happy to expound on the state and the fate of the city. He welcomes me to Arcosanti, then gets straight down to business, explaining what he tried to set up here by first rounding on his old mentor Frank Lloyd Wright for glamorising suburbia. This, says Soleri, actually leads to the breakdown of the city, as what he calls "the hermitage" begins: "Instead of people gathering to develop a culture, they want to escape from other people. Individuals believe they can reach a level of self-sufficiency that can isolate them - or their family - in an ideal place. Then they somehow expect the civilisation that has made them to serve them. It's a parasitic kind of life."

In the 1970s, Soleri's vision of an alternative drew hundreds of student volunteers from all over the world to build Arcosanti, a prototype arcology with a projected population of 5,000. They worked for free in the sweltering heat, sleeping outside and learning from the master - who, judging by the photos, was usually to be found in swimming trunks and a short-sleeved shirt, digging alongside them. "It was not a community for community's sake, eating tofu and giving each other back rubs," says Roger Tomalty, who oversaw construction. "It was the opposite of the hippy scene: a community of construction workers. If you were going to be here, you were going to work - harder than you'd ever worked in your life."

In the 1950s, Soleri built a base in Scottsdale, a desert town that has since been engulfed by Phoenix. He still lives there now. Named Cosanti, it was the prototype for Arcosanti: a complex of experimental, sculptural buildings born of low-energy construction methods such as "earthcasting": build a mound of earth, pour a layer of concrete over it, take away the earth and, hey presto, you've got a dome. Curiously, Soleri's main source of income was not architecture but windbells. Soleri wind-bells, cast from ceramic and bronze, still sell well. The windbell money, combined with lecture circuit cash, meant Soleri could buy the land for Arcosanti outright.

"It was very exciting," says Tomalty. "Paolo was central to everything. He was an unbelievably dynamic speaker. Everywhere he went, his energy was obvious. Through word of mouth, a steady stream of people came. We had to send people away in the end. The kitchen couldn't cook more than 1,000 meals a day." Many of these people are still here. Tomalty's wife, Mary, for example, is Soleri's assistant; there's Carri, who does the guided tours; and Sue, who manages the archive, which contains vast scroll paintings by Soleri, one chronicling the intellectual evolution of mankind. It's 170ft long. Here, too, are sketchbooks, masterplans, essays, photos and press cuttings. One clipping is from the Guardian, recording Soleri's 1973 visit to London. "It may all sound impossibly utopian," the reporter writes of his arcological doctrine, "but at least Soleri is having a try."

Unfortunately, Arcosanti doesn't seem to have got much further since. Only 3% of the original design has been built; the rest doesn't look likely to spring out of the desert any time soon. Arcosanti never quite achieved the critical mass it needed. Its population reached a peak of about 200 in the mid-1970s, but today is lower than 60. That 1970s idealism gave way to 1980s "me generation" priorities and people moved on to "proper jobs", Tomalty says. A regular flow of students still passes through, but they treat it more as a five-week work experience than an open-ended lifestyle experiment.

Soleri has slowed as well. Already in his 50s when he started Arcosanti, he is now 89, still fit and articulate, but that once hypnotic voice is now a hushed murmur, barely audible above the desert wind. "The main fault is me," he says when I ask him why Arcosanti has not been completed. "I don't have the gift of proselytising. For years and years, they responded to me like, 'That crazy guy, what is he doing out there?'"

Inevitably, the real reason for Arcosanti's incomplete state is money. Visionary he might be, but Soleri never seems too bothered with finance. Did he really expect to be able to build a city by selling wind-bells? Soleri laughs. "I was driven by emotions. I never sat down and said, 'What am I going to do now?' I was too busy." But, I ask, is it possible to build a utopia without money?

"Uh-oh," says Mary. Soleri mimes a curtain coming down and a bell chiming, as if the interview has ended. I've said the u-word, clearly in breach of house rules. But wouldn't Soleri describe himself as a utopian? "Oh Jesus!" he says, as if affronted that I've repeated the word. "Utopia is a pretty stupid notion. It says if any group anywhere develops some ideal condition, this condition is legitimate. And I say, 'Forget it!' If you are surrounded by all sorts of demeaning or painful conditions, then 'utopia' is just an arrogant notion that has no room for evolution."

But is Soleri guilty of a little arrogance himself? Utopian or not, his vision was never particularly practicable. Rather than addressing the problems of the existing urban realm, Soleri wants to build a new world, to his masterplan. This was always going to be a challenge, especially with limited cash.

The tragedy is that, judging by the buildings completed at Arcosanti, Soleri was a terrific architect. These are mostly bare-faced concrete, but they incorporate wood, murals, tiles and intricate details that lend them a homely, handbuilt quality, like the best of Le Corbusier's later work. They might have taken a long time to build, but they possess a spatial richness and geometric coherence that most modern boxes lack, both inside and out. And they are exemplary in their incorporation of simple, low-tech environmental principles.

Concrete apses are oriented to capture the heat and light of the low winter sun, yet also provide shade when it is at its highest in summer. And the roads, of course, are relegated to the perimeter. Later phases in Arcosanti's design would have called for 25-storey towers, transforming the village-like settlement into a dense city. They wouldn't be difficult to construct. If this was China, you could probably complete Arcosanti in about a year. But what exists there already is rather compelling - a persuasive alternative to current urbanism. In fact, it could represent the kind of sustainable, low-energy lives we are belatedly coming to realise we should have been living all along.

Rather than a "crazy guy" ranting in the wilderness, Soleri has proved to be a voice of reason. Nobody wanted to hear his diagnosis of the ills of US society, but it has been proved right - the car-centric, inefficient, horizontal suburban model has left us in poor shape to cope with climate-change problems. Yet Soleri is sceptical of new-found admirers of his philosophy. "They take a very shallow understanding of it," he says. In Soleri's view, we need to reformulate, rather than simply reform, our strategy for civilisation. His outlook is not hopeful. "Materialism is, by definition, the antithesis of green," he says. "We have this unstoppable, energetic, self-righteous drive that's innate in us, but which has been reoriented by limitless consumption. Per se, it doesn't have anything evil about it. It's a hindrance. But multiply that hindrance by billions, and you've got catastrophe."

Soleri long ago came to terms with the fact that Arcosanti will not be completed in his lifetime. What will happen after his death is up for debate. Some trustees of the Arcosanti Foundation want to see it completed to his original vision; others think it should be opened up to other architects, or even turned into a health spa to generate revenue. Soleri suggests it could be sold to a university or architectural research organisation. Whatever happens, Soleri's ideas could well be of benefit to future architects, if not as a wholesale solution, then at least as a source of inspiration.

Perhaps Soleri was simply too far ahead of his time. "I've put quite a lot of work into this," he says, looking out over his domain. "But there's no point in sitting and moaning".

· This article was amended on Friday August 29 2008 to correct spelling errors in two names.