Picture a bright blue ball
Just spinning, spinning free
Dizzy with eternity
Paint it with a skin of sky
Brush in some clouds and sea
Call it home for you and me
A peaceful place or so it looks from space
A closer look reveals the human race
Full of hope, full of grace, is the human face
But afraid, we may lay our home to waste
There’s a fear down here we can’t forget
Hasn’t got a name just yet
Always awake, always around
Singing ashes to ashes all fall down
Ashes to ashes all fall down
Now watch as the ball revolves and the nighttime falls
And again the hunt begins and again the blood wind calls
By and by again, the morning sun will rise
But the darkness never goes from some men’s eyes
It strolls the sidewalks and it rolls the streets
Staking turf, dividing up meat
Nightmare spook, piece of heat
It’s you and me, you and me
Click, flash blade in ghetto night
Rudie’s looking for a fight
Rat cat alley roll them bones
Need that cash to feed that jones
And the politician’s throwing stones
Singing ashes to ashes all fall down
Ashes to ashes all fall down
Commissars and pin-striped bosses role the dice
Any way they fall guess who gets to pay the price
Money green or proletarian gray
Selling guns instead of food today
So the kids they dance, and shake their bones
And the politician’s throwing stones
Singing ashes to ashes all fall down
Ashes to ashes all fall down
Heartless powers try to tell us what to think
If the spirit’s sleeping, then the flesh is ink, yeah
History’s page, it is thusly carved in stone
The future’s here, we are it, we are on our own
On our own. On our own. On our own.
If the game is lost then we’re all the same
No one left to place or take the blame
We will leave this place an empty stone
Or that shinning ball of blue we can call our home
So the kids they dance, they shake their bones
And the politicians, throwing stones
Singing ashes to ashes all fall down
Ashes to ashes, all fall down
Shipping powders back and forth
Singing “black goes south and white comes north”
And the whole world full of petty wars
Singing “I got mine and you got yours”
And the current fashions set the pace
Lose your step, fall out of grace
And the radical he rant and rage
Singing “someone got to turn the page”
And the rich man in his summer home,
Singing “Just leave well enough alone”
But his pants are down, his cover’s blown
And the politicians throwing stones
So the kids they dance they shake their bones
Cause its all too clear we’re on our own
Sing ashes to ashes, all fall down
Ashes to ashes, all fall down
Picture a bright blue ball just spinning, spinning free
It’s dizzying, the possibilities
Ashes to Ashes, all fall down (Ashes to Ashes, all fall down) [Repeat: x4]
Wo, fall down, (Ashes to Ashes, all fall down)
Wo, fall down (Ashes to Ashes, all fall down)
Ashes, Ashes all fall down (Ashes to Ashes, all fall down)
Wo, fall down, (Ashes to Ashes, all fall down)
Wo, fall down (Ashes to Ashes, all fall down)
Ashes, Ashes all fall down (Ashes to Ashes, all fall down) [Repeat: x3]
IÂ just had a great conversation with Grateful Dead Lyricyst, EFF Founder, and Algae Systems Vice President John Perry Barlow.
Algae Systems is really an amazing company with solutions for our bright blue ball, that can help save the environment, reclaim water, and reduce carbon in the atmosphere. Too good to be true? This is all proven, tested technology. The science is there, and it might be the miracle we’ve been waiting for…
And all of us on planet Earth need a miracle, everyday. Algae Systems needs a little help on the way… indiegogo.com
John Barlow and his brilliant team for his Algae Systems campaign, Prentiss Darden and Jerilyn Brandelius
I’ll put the full interview together for tomorrow, but meanwhile, here’s a few words from Barlow’s Facebook page…
Become a Better Ancestor: Save Our Technologies So They Can Save Your Descendents…
For the last 6 years, my colleagues and I have pursued a dream to address the most dangerous environmental problems we believe our descendants will face: poisonous drinking water, insanely variable weather, the end of the green revolution as we run out of mineable phosphates, offshore “Dead Zones” as more and more nitrogen and phosphorous is lost to the sea. 20 million dollars later we have proved it can be done. And done in a way that is consistent with our vision of closing the loop to turn wastes into resources.
Furthermore, we developed a method of photosynthetic energy capture much more efficient than solar cells and able to stand on its own without federal subsidies and using no land currently used to grow food.
But we have reached a surprising impasse with our strategic investor, the oldest company in Japan. They believed, with good reason, that they were investing in a company that would produce a green fuel that extracted more CO2 from the atmosphere than it returned when burned. But crude oil is now so cheap that they lost faith in their investment.
Moreover, we discovered that we had developed technologies along the way that could revolutionize wastewater treatment. As I’ve said, we recognized that we had created a sewage purification process that produces more energy than it uses. In addition, our unique HTL (Hydrothermal Liquefaction) process could transform noxious sewage sludge, currently being hauled to landfills at 30 million tons a month, into fossil equivalent crute oil and a nutrient rich biochar that can restore the millions of acres of depleted topsoil our grandchildren will confront.
But our strategic investor got out of wastewater treatment a decade ago and was unwilling to get back in, no matter how game-changing the technology. Our interests no longer aligned and they decided to withdraw support.
They offered us an opportunity to buy our company, including our plant and IP, for pennies on the dollar.
We saw this coming and had three investors lined up to cover the buyout, as well as the amount necessary to jump-start our operations in Alabama and commence building HTL skids we believe we can sell to enough wastewater treatment operators to make us profitable by 2017.
But one of our prospective investors developed cold feet and withdrew. Upon which the other two did as well. So we suddenly found ourselves looking at a January 17 buyout deadline to come up with the money. We decided to go long. Yeah, it’s nuts to think that we can raise this kind of money in a week, but we’re fresh out of alternatives. It’s a real Hail Mary, but we’ve been successfully hurling Hail Mary passes into the foggy future through the history of our company.
I pray you will look at our tech and see, as we do, the genuine prospect of a planet with life-support systems sufficient to provide for 7 billion passengers as they hurtle through space. We’ve developed an integrated system that can handle that. I personally endured this Sisyphean quest because I wanted, as ever, to be a good ancestor. My devout hope is that many of you will as well.
