When Dan came home from school today, I noticed he was wearing a Fender Since 1946 tee-shirt. This triggered a memory I hadn’t thought about in years.

In the early 1940’s, two men formed an Orange County partnership called Kauffman & Fender. Leo Fender and Clayton “Doc” Kauffman initially made “Hawaiian” lap steel guitars and later experimented with solid body prototype electrics of the Broadcaster and Precision Bass. Kauffman left the company and Leo renamed it “Fender Electric Instrument Company.”

When I was growing up in Orange County (circa 68-71), I would bring my 1958 Fender Stratocaster to Doc for “tune-ups.” In reality, I just enjoyed hanging out with him. He had stories about electric instruments dating back to the 1920s, designing guitars for Rickenbacker in the 1930’s, and so much more. He never failed to remind me that the tremolo arm on my Strat was his patented design.

Doc would take me into his garage and walk me through all the steps of setting up a Stratocaster on his workbench - which I already knew. It was the only way I could hear more stories. One day, probably the last time I visited him, he grabbed on old piece of plastic – I think it was one of the newer (at that time) plastic milk cartons. He cut out a piece of plastic in the shape of a guitar pick.

Then, with a conductors hole punch, he punched three small holes in the shape of a triangle. He handed it to me and said, “this is the Doc Kauffman pick.” Daniel’s tee-shirt reminded me about the Doc Kauffman pick. I remember years ago putting it in my Yamaha 12-string electric case, along with a broken Kluson low-E tuning machine from the 58.  A moment ago, I dug into my cases - and found it!

Clay “Doc” Kauffman was the technical guru behind the first Fender guitars, some of which remain in production today (P-bass, Tele). I think it’s just too cool that, as a kid, I had a chance to hang with the man behind many of today’s most popular instruments.

Wikipedia lists Doc’s passing in 1990. Apparently (I’ve not seen it) Doc has a section devoted to him in (Microsoft founder) Paul Allen’s Experience Music Project under the Space Needle in Seattle.

I’ve played guitar since I was seven. That’s about 45 years, with some of those early years actually making a living at music, or playing in HS and college big-bands. I’m a huge fan of prog-rock and fusions of classical music with contemporary instrumentation. When I play, I’m not thinking about music theory, but rather the geometry of sound. I think of the guitar in geometric patterns. I harness geometry to evoke a musical experience.

British inventor Peter Davies began thinking about sound geometry in the 1980’s when he patented the Note Tracker, a kind of “slide rule” based on musically geometric patterns, and manufactured briefly in the early 1990s. Later, Peter’s idea grew into a 156 key prototype geometrical controller called the “M-Box.” Around 2005, the M-Box had morphed again into something called the Minima, and finally in 3Q08, a true production-level device called the Axis is now shipping.

After 500+ years of keyboard design (organs, harpsichords, piano-forte, etc.), little has changed to the fundamental single-axis western keyboard layout - white keys, black keys, arranged in a long single row of half-tone steps. I believe the Axis multi-dimensional music keyboard signals a catalytic event in musical history.

Rather than try to explain the details of this brilliant invention, I would encourage you to watch prog keyboardist Jordan Rudess give a hands-on demonstration. If you have any interest at all in music, this is not to be missed. Welcome to the new era of musical keyboards, and what I think will be the beginning of an entirely new paradigm of musical performance based on the fundamental geometry of western music.

My friend Scott sent me this great video of John Coltrane’s Giant Steps with typewriter-like musical notation. For whatever reason, the notes appearing on-screen remind me of emerging theological conversations - a complex string of notes (ideas) put together to make music, to be enojyed as beauty and truth in the moment.

Ultimately, music isn’t meant to be captured and studied like a lab animal. Nor, I would offer, is spirit. Both should be practiced and enojyed in the flow of the eternal present. And while certain elements of music, like theology, can be parsed and catalogued, the truly life-changing experience given by both music and spirit transcends rational understanding and touches a common place in us all - the shared ecclesia.

It occurred to me that my son’s kids will reach driving age around decade 2040. They will never (directly) use fossil fuel to power their personal transportation. They may ask, “grandpa, what’s a gas station?” This makes me very happy.

I will even go so far as to predict that within 15 years, the majority of light passenger automobiles being built will be EVs. Enjoy this 7 minute video on Martin Eberhard’s new baby.

EV LINKS

http://www.teslamotors.com/

http://www.zapworld.com/electric-vehicles/electric-cars/zap-alias

http://www.zenncars.com/

http://www.aptera.com/

http://www.autobloggreen.com/tag/electric-car/

http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/

http://www.lionev.com/Vehicles.html

http://www.teslambo.com/

Not spending much time around the blogosphere this summer.

Today’s Klein article on Chinese Olympic security is a must-read.

Camping, hiking. That’s about it.

There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment. The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more — if more should be required — the future of human civilization is at stake.

I don’t remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously. Our economy is in terrible shape and getting worse, gasoline prices are increasing dramatically, and so are electricity rates. Jobs are being outsourced. Home mortgages are in trouble. Banks, automobile companies and other institutions we depend upon are under growing pressure. Distinguished senior business leaders are telling us that this is just the beginning unless we find the courage to make some major changes quickly.

…Yet when we look at all three of these seemingly intractable challenges at the same time, we can see the common thread running through them, deeply ironic in its simplicity: our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges — the economic, environmental and national security crises. We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that’s got to change. …The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels. - Al Gore, July 2008

While I somewhat prefer the perspective of Bjorn Lomborg to Al Gore on climate change issues (both are TED’sters), I unreservedly agree with Gore’s call for swift and relentless investment in sustainable forms of energy. Wholesale reliance on petro-energy has created a temporary, unsustainable acceleration of population and overheated prosperity, leading to the illusory notion that our fossil-fueled lifestyle is permanent.

A recent Scientific American study estimates that an investment of $480 billion will be required to sustainably generate 2/3 of our electricity by 2050. But if we have truly reached the “bumpy plateau” of global oil production, we simply don’t have forty years to make a relatively painless transition. We have maybe five to ten years at best.

All systems self-correct, and though we’ve tried very hard to bend nature into our will, nature will always reclaim its immutable rhythms. We are, after all, not separate from nature, but simply a tiny part in its grand holism. Yet we live as though we are somehow aloof from nature’s inescapable laws.

For too long, we have defined ourselves as consumers of goods and services, rather than enlightened stewards of a fragile and unfathomable creation. Every day, more people are “getting it” - realizing how terribly out-of-balance we have become from the earth’s natural rhythms. SF Chronicle writer Erica Etelson shares her own epiphany in yesterday’s issue. I encourage you to read it.

Huntington Beach mayor Debbie Cook summarizes what many of us have been saying for years about energy issues, “It’s such an incredible challenge, yet it’s so under the radar screen. How could the government not be screaming from the mountaintops?”

The CEO’s of most major U.S. airlines have just signed a letter calling for the U.S. government to revisit margin trading on fossil fuels. As I blogged earlier, energy price run-up’s are due in part to speculative trading - investors who never see the commodity. Oil speculators purchase at least 66 percent of all oil futures contracts (that percentage reflects just the transactions that are known).

Speculators buy up large amounts of oil and then sell it to each other again and again. A barrel of oil may trade 20-plus times before it is delivered and used; the price goes up with each trade and consumers pick up the final tab. Some market experts estimate that current prices reflect at least $30 per barrel in unnecessary speculative costs - possibly much more. The oil trading environment is so complex and loopholed that nobody knows.

Established by a consortium of private and public interests, StopOilSpeculationNow.com is petitioning Congress to revisit margin investing laws as they apply to essential commodities. Please visit their website and send a letter of support to your representatives using their fast political e-mail bot.

One of my personal heroes has died. John Templeton, founder of Templeton Mutual Funds and the Templeton Foundation, passed away yesterday. He was also a trustee on the board of Princeton Theological Seminary for 42 years and served as its chair for 12 years. A pioneer in financial investment and philanthropy, John spent a lifetime encouraging open-mindedness. “How little we know, how eager to learn” is the motto that he set for his Foundation.

For the last 30 years, John was a philanthropic lightning rod engaging life’s biggest questions. Those questions ranged from explorations into the laws of nature and the universe to questions on the nature of love, gratitude, forgiveness, and creativity. He saw no ultimate disconnect between spirituality and scientific research.

Templeton did not claim to be a theologian, but he was determined to support the work of those who might deepen our “knowledge and love of God.” The annual Templeton Prize grew out of the philanthropist’s belief that an honor equivalent to a Nobel Prize should be bestowed on living innovators in spiritual action and thought. He mandated that the Templeton Prize would always be larger in value than the Nobel Prize.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta was the first Templeton Prize Laureate in 1973, followed later that decade by the evangelist Billy Graham and the writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In recent years, the Prize has been awarded primarily to physicists, cosmologists, and philosophers, including Freeman Dyson, Paul Davies, Ian Barbour, John Polkinghorne, George Ellis, Charles Townes, John Barrow, Charles Taylor, and Michael Heller. Representatives of all of the world’s major religions have been on the panel of nine judges throughout the prize’s history, and recipients have included Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus.

John created the Foundation to exist in perpetuity. With roughly $1.1 billion in assets, it gives out over $60 million in annual grants. His vision was long-term, once saying “[I am aware] that the purposes of the Foundation could be difficult to achieve and will require decades or centuries of work.”

From the Foudation’s board:

We take seriously Sir John’s contrarian spirit. We look for ways to avoid the popular trend or the status-quo, recognizing that those who seldom make mistakes seldom make discoveries. The scientists and scholars we support are those best qualified to conduct rigorous research in fields related to our Core Themes.

The Templeton Foundation welcomes proposals from all major world religions including research involving non-Christian and non-Western perspectives: a philanthropic vision focused on the sponsorship of objective research involving interactions of religious thought and practices with pertinent scientific research methods.

John wrote,

“Whatever you do in life-whether you get married, bring a case to a law court, operate on a child, or buy a stock-you should open with prayer. And that prayer should be that God will use you as a clear channel for His wisdom and His love.”

I think Templeton is among the most important research foundations today. Many of the foundation’s “core themes” echo my own life’s focus. Please take a few minutes to to browse around the Templeton web site and enjoy the fruit of a life well lived.

• Creativity
• Curiosity
• Emergence
• Entrepreneurship
• Evolution
• Forgiveness
• Freedom & Free Will
• Future-Mindedness
• Generosity
• Gratitude
• Honesty
• Humility
• Human Flourishing
• Infinity
• Mind & Intelligence
• New Concepts of God
• Prayer & Meditation
• Progress
• Purpose
• Reliability
• Science and Religion
• Self-Control
• Spiritual Capital
• Spiritual Development
• Spiritual Transformation
• Spirituality & Health
• Thrift
• Ultimate Reality
• Unconditional Love
• Wisdom
• Worship

It’s looking like recent oil prices are not simply a reflection of margin speculators (something I pondered a few weeks ago). It appears we have hit a fundamental supply / demand bottleneck. Peak Oil researchers have been warning of this for years, and we have probably “officially” entered the era of energy scarcity.

At this week’s world energy summit in Madrid, comments were made by highly placed energy officials that indicate a  global energy crisis.

IEA chief Nobuo Tanaka said “We are clearly in the third oil price shock” – referring to 1970’s and 1980’s as the first and second shock. He notes that the first shocks “forced consumers into saving oil and oil companies to look for new wells, but now the biggest energy savings have been made and the easy oil, outside of a few countries, has been found.“

The IEA estimates that global estimated daily oil needs would rise from 86 million barrels this year to 94 million barrels in 2013. But many energy researchers are wondering if we can meet these goals. President Bush’s energy advisor Mat Simmons says that world oil supplies simply won’t allow for more than 90M bbls per day, and maybe less from here on. Simmons believes that Saudi Arabia has reached their supply limit.

OPEC chief Chakib Khelil identified the main drivers of energy prices as (1) a weak U.S. dollar, (2) the subprime crisis in America, (3) geopolitical tensions, and (4) increased emphasis on U.S. bioethanol production, which he suggested diverted diesel production and led to shortages.

Christophe de Margerie, CEO of France’s #1 energy company (Total), said the world must now brace for a “really big reshuffle in energy expectations.” He expects oil production to plateau in 12 years at 94 million barrels a day — less than 10 million barrels more than available today. He also said his forecast is optimistic. “We will have to fight against the natural decline of today’s oil fields. It will not go smoothly.”

In a related development, on June 27 the Vice President of Kuwait’s national oil company gave a talk to a group of energy industry who’s whos. He claims:

(1) “By 2010, the production of the fuel that has driven the world’s economy will start to rapidly decline. This will conflict with the steadily increasing demand for oil. The collision of these two trends will lead to shortages and increased prices, providing a strong incentive to shift to alternative fuel resources…Due to unequal distribution through the world of oil and gas supply and consumption, [the upcoming] transition will result in significant shifts in global power and wealth.”

(2) the world will “hit an oil production wall at 90 million barrels per day by 2010.”

(3) “a moderate rise in OPEC production will be partially offset by decreasing production in the Rest of World, with FSU production steady. A production peak of ultradeep water fields will allow the “peak” to be a “plateau during the coming decade, followed by a sharp fall. An increase in production of unconventional oil and natural gas liquids can add 5 million b/day during the coming decade. The current supply-side crisis is due to peak oil reached in the Rest of World in 2003, combined with a cessation of significant production growth in Russia after 2004.

(4) “We are nearing World Peak Oil, with resulting high prices and associated political and economic disruptions….What I have presented is a most-likely scenario.”

Energy drives everything. Facing supply limitations, we enter into a new social paradigm never before seen, and to which we are unprepared. Energy limitations impact economic growth in every respect. The most energy intensive luxuries will be the first to fall, such as imported speciality foods, gas guzzling vehicles, unessential travel, etc..

The next few years will bring bankruptcies among unprepared automakers, airlines, travel sectors, and energy-intensive luxury industries. This will ripple through the economy, taking down many related service and supply businesses.

There’s irony in this. We will all be simplifying our lives due to new economic realties. This is a very healthy transition in many respects. But with simplification comes lower economic expectations. Economists will call this “recession” or perhaps “stagflation” or worse – jobs will be lost, families will be dislocated, and lives will be changed.

Life in the peak oil era will be not be business as usual.