Rock Band Tours by Bike

Great music, great idea, and great execution. Check out this 4 minute video. As Kipchoge Spence, the person behind this idea, wrote me:

"In 2007, the Ginger Ninjas became the first band in the history of rock and roll to tour by bicycle, unsupported by automobile. On a 5000 mile odyssey from their home in Northern California to the pyramids of Southern Mexico, they promoted transportation cycling while also exploring the frontiers of pedal-generated electricity, using their own bikes to power a hyper-efficient sound system. The audience took turns getting on stage to pedal the bikes to make the sound, taking crowd participation to a new level. Originally conceived as a one-time adventure/statement/experiment, the band became addicted to low-impact touring, and now does so exclusively.

The Ginger Ninjas' mobile human-power stage is the first of its kind in history. Coupling super efficient digital amplifiers, lightweight components, and generators attached to working bicycles (as opposed to purpose-built stationary bikes), the system allows a band to play off-grid anywhere, wall outlet or no, and to also carry the system to a gig on the same bicycles (Xtracycle sport utility bicycles). This enables a new kind of completely self-sufficient bicycle touring, sans automobile support. On the band's most recent tour, the system and touring style enabled them to avoid generating close to 60,000 pounds of CO2, or 95% of what a similar sized band creates in a similar tour."

We're hoping GoLoco can partner with them on their next tour in the U.S.

http://www.gingerninjas.com/
great 4 minute video describing 2007 tour

How to reduce US CO2 emissions by 10% this month

There was an article in the Boston Globe today about Gas costs forcing drivers to cut back.

"Until then, Stone said, she hadn't thought much about gas prices or filling the tank of her Acura, which she did a least twice a week. Now Stone, 55, a teacher, limits her gas budget to one fill-up or no more than $25 a week. She carefully plans her travel, sticking to the shortest route and avoiding spur-of-the-moment side trips.

When she fills a prescription, she shops for food at a supermarket around the corner. Other times, rather than driving across town, she walks to the small grocery store near her home. When she needed light bulbs and other items recently, she stopped at a hardware store along her route and spent a little more, rather than driving farther to a supermarket where prices were lower."

In just a matter of weeks, not only has Ms. Stone got her household budget under control, she has also halved her CO2 emissions. If everyone in America followed her example, we would reduce US CO2 emissions by a whopping 10% ! This month. We would also reduce the trade deficit, dramatically improve our “energy security,” and eliminate the endless debate over drilling in the Alaska Wildlife Refuge.

What I found interesting in the article was that there was no talk about how cutting back had required difficult sacrifice. Rather, those interviewed talked about adjusting their habits to take efficient travel into account.

"Towle, 44, now limits herself to one fill-up a week. She puts off buying more milk until she needs a bigger shopping trip. She used to drop her 13-year-old daughter off at basketball practice, make the 15-minute drive back home, then return to pick her up at the end of the 90-minute session. Now, she waits at the school."

Ridesharing, going loco, is another tool for the adjustment, and a pleasant one at that. I know my 14-year-old finds the carpool to and from her rock-climbing practices a valued part of her social life.

The Face-off: Prius vs GoLoco

And the winner is, GoLoco!*

When you drive a hybrid, sure you get more miles to the gallon, but it turns out most people drive more miles since it costs them less. The net reduction in CO2 emissions is about 3% for every 10% better mileage the vehicle gets.

In contrast, when you GoLoco, you:

• dramatically reduce CO2 emissions
• dramatically improve passenger miles per the gallon
• reduce congestion
• reduce road wear and tear
• reduce demand for parking
• reduce the number of car accidents (fewer cars means fewer accidents)
• reduce sprawl

GoLoco!

*Individual results may vary depending on percent of trips taken solo versus loco.

Source: Todd Littman, Victoria Transport Policy Institute
"Efficient Transportation Versus Efficient Vehicles" ( http://www.vtpi.org/cafe.pdf )

GoLoco on Facebook

By now you may have heard that we're running GoLoco on Facebook Platform (for some weird reason the PR people at Facebook insist on the absence of the word "the"). We're excited about the opportunities this provides, and, as engineers, we are having a lot of fun working on the GoLoco on Facebook Platform.

Why Facebook? We've been watching them for a while, and we've been impressed with how well they manage the whole online social network thing. Rather than build a whole parallel social network just for GoLoco, it just made sense to build on theirs.

From the developer's point of view, Facebook Platform is well designed with an intuitive API that provides just what we need. And from all we can tell, they've only just begun. Since they introduced the platform barely two months ago they've had regular weekly updates and the features just keep coming. A recent update enabling javascript support will mean that we can make some performance and usability improvements, so stay tuned.

And we're looking forward to scaling more easily now -- with their investment in robust systems for handling millions of users we can concentrate on making GoLoco easy to use and adding features.

But what about all those people who aren't using Facebook yet? Yes, there are quite a lot of them, but not for long by my calculations.

Facebook Singularity?

According to Ray Kurzweil, the computing power of the human brain will be matched by PCs by the year 2020. However, long before then, if current rates of growth continue, we will reach the Facebook Singularity by January 2011. "What's that?," you ask. And how did you calculate it?

According to the CIA (isn't this where everyone gets their facts?), the world population is growing at 1.167% per year. If growth continues at this rate then the world population will be 7 billion by January 2011.

Facebook reports adoption is growing at the rate of 3% per week. If adoption continues at this rate then the number of Facebook users will be 7 billion by January 2011.

You can calculate the point of singularity yourself if you like. When does World Population = Facebook Population? Facebook's weekly growth rate of 3% is an annualized 1.03 to the power of 52 (don't you love the magic of compound growth? Ben Franklin would be all over this), 1.03^52 = 4.65.

If you plug in the current populations and growth rates we get:

6,600,000,000 * 1.0167^N = 33,000,000 * 4.65^N

where N is the number of years.

Take the log of both sides and solve for N and you get:

N = (log(6,600,000,000) - log(33,000,000))/(log(4.65) - log(1.0167))

Put the right hand side of that equation into google
and you get N = 3.48 years, or around January 1, 2011.

What does this mean? Well, you'd be able to "Facebook poke" every man, woman and child in the world by January 2011.

I know what you're thinking, "no way will that happen because I know my mother's never going on Facebook." Guess again, Poindexter, if your mother isn't on yet, she will be soon.

-- Roy [Russell]

NOTE from Roy's wife and children: (yawn) ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Al Gore is a Hero

And it's not because he looks good in blue spandex wearing his underwear outside his pants. That would actually be disturbing. He is a hero because Google’s trend line for US searches on the term “global warming” shows a doubling in 2006. It proved to be a watershed year for American’s awareness of the issue. Suddenly, it appeared on the covers of Wired, Vanity Fair, Business Week, and Time Magazine. I think Al’s movie (can I call him Al? Super Al perhaps?) “An Inconvenient Truth”, which was released in May, had a lot to do with it. And it looks like this trend will double again in 2007.

Last September, John Holdren, Director of the Woods Hole Research Center and Chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told me that we had about five years to start on the downward path of CO2 emissions worldwide if we wanted to prevent the current “severe” effects of climate change from becoming “catastrophic” ones. James Hansen, NASA's Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies was in the news giving a “less than ten years” time frame. Here is an excerpt from his talk to the National Press Club in February, 2007:

“If we do follow the “business as usual” path, even for another ten years, it guarantees that we will have dramatic climate changes that produce what I would call a different planet… It's likely that a large fraction of the species could go extinct.”

These two men are among America’s leading climate scientists. When they talk, I listen. Unlike batman who responded to the bat projected into the sky, these heroes are projecting a call to arms for us, the people. Unlike batman who could stop runaway trains, these men realize that the problem is not one an individual can solve.

Since then, every single talk I give has referred to this important 5 to 10 year window of opportunity. All of us need to transform the public’s awareness of global warming as one problem among many into one of highest urgency. Senate's energy legislation that all but ignored the number one issue – that all energy plans must be evaluated in the context of their CO2 output --illustrates the horrifying disconnect between scientists, the public, and therefore our public servants. It is a fantasy to imagine that tiny tweaks and innuendo can accomplish what is needed.

This last Sunday, Al Gore wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times. It was beautifully done. Here are some excerpts:

"Our home — Earth — is in danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is not the planet itself, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings...If we don't stop doing this [producing CO2 emissions] pretty quickly, the average temperature will increase to levels humans have never known and put an end to the favorable climate balance on which our civilization depends...To this end, we should demand that the United States join an international treaty within the next two years that cuts global warming pollution by 90 percent in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy Earth."

I so admire the subtlety of his language with phrases like "hospitable to human beings" and "in time for the next generation" that let him give the hard truth in a not-quite terrifying, and not-quite time specific way. Perfect for the mainstream media and mainstream America. I'm inclined to directness: if we don't stop, and fast, the human species will be reduced to a shell of its current population, and what is needed here in the developed world is a 90 percent reduction in CO2 emissions within 15 to 20 years.

Attend a Live Earth local event, watch the 7 concerts on 7 continents broadcast live on Saturday to be energized, feel the local and global embrace. Then start telling your friends and leaders that you are ready to do what is needed. It’s time for us all to become heroes. Hybrid batmobiles won't cut it; it's time to go loco in all the ways that matter.