Green // The Daily Render by Nikolas R. Schiller

The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

|| 3/4/2010 || 2:48 pm || + Render A Comment || ||
“Representation, Reforestation” Was Selected For The DC Urban Forest Project

I’m looking forward to finding out where my “tree” will be “planted” in downtown DC. I should know sometime next month!

My Urban Tree Project Submission: Representation, Reforestation

From the AIGA DC Website: AIGA DC would like to thank the Washington DC community for contributing over 400 submissions to be judged for The Urban Forest Project Washington DC. We are excited to share with you the 100 artists whose artwork was selected to be exhibited this spring on street banners. In addition to the professional artists, the work of AIGA DC’s mentoring teams and the Corcoran College of Art and Designs students* will be included.

Please look for additional information regarding the exhibition date, online gallery and reception in a couple of months. In the meantime visit ufp-dc.com to see where the banners will be exhibited.

WINNING PROFESSIONAL DESIGNERS AND ARTISTS
Sandy Adams
Antonio Alcala
Milagros Arrisueno
Julia Ames
Ioana Balasa
Sarah Hitchcock Becker
Ed Bisese
Nancy Bratton
Jessica Blair Buchanan
Bryan Byczek
Craig Cahoon
Sarah Chamberlain
Danielle
Dominique Chirinciuc
Ryan Clennan
Ryan Cooley
Adriana Cordero
Cecilia Cortes-Earle
MIchael Crossett
Daniel Delli-Colli
Tara Detchemendy
Alex Diaz
Eileen Doughty
Ilfigenija Dupras
Alessandra Marie Echeverri
Lauren Emeritz
Jo Fleming
Liani Foster
Lara Fredrickson
Rachel Freedman
Doug Fuller
Alia Faith
Nathan Gomez
Francheska Guerrero
Nicole Hamam
Robin Harris
Rania Hassan
Sean Hennessy
Richard Lee Heffner
Allen Hopper
Marcie Wolf Hubbard
Alicia Jager
Ann Kerns
Minki Kim
Ethel Kessler
Phyllis Klein
Galen Lawson
Marni Lawson
Sara Lin
Patti Look
Betsy Martin
Jessica Menk
Jamie Mitchell
Kudirat B. Momoh
Phil Napala
Catherine Nichols
Phil Napala
Katie O’Brien
Julian Oh
Nicole Parente-Lopez
Michelle Thomas
Hillary Reilly
Elizabeth Renomeron
Jessica Reynolds
Karen Rose
Kerri Sarembock
Erika Satlof
Monica Servaites
Shikha Savdas
Nikolas Schiller
Alex Schultz
Carolyn Sewell
Lindsey Smith
Marri Stanback
Greg Stein
Randall Stoltzfus
Rachel Stone
Hermano Talastas
Shelby Tanase
Angela Terry
Julee Dickerson Thompson
George Travez
Joe Velasquez
Sarah Joy Verville
John Wehmann
Jessica Witmer

AIGA DC MENTORING TEAMS
William Jones + Erin Green
Dezae Precia + Nicole Hamam
Demetria Williams + Jane deBruijn

*Not listed are the selected Corcoran Art + Design students

THE JURORS
Sam Shelton, Kinetik
Jim Darling, Useful Studios
Rachel Dickerson, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities
Monica Lear, Urban Forestry Administration, DDOT
Linda Harper, Director of Cultural Tourism DC

ABOUT THIS PROJECT
This spring, The Urban Forest Project, a global public arts and environmental initiative, will plant 100 street banners designed by local designers and students in the downtown Washington DC. Each banner will use the form of, or metaphor for, a tree to make powerful visual statements about the environment. Together they’ll create a forest of thoughtful images in the heart of the nation’s capitol. Once the banners come down from the light poles, the artwork will be repurposed into tote bags for purchase. Proceeds from the sales of the tote bags will go to non-profit environmental efforts that will aid Washington DC in being a cleaner, greener and more sustainable city.

This project, conceived by Worldstudio, is being presented in Washington, DC by the District Department of Transportation (DDOT), in collaboration with the Corcoran College of Art and Design, AIGA DC and Downtown DC Business Improvement District. Seed funding for the project was provided through a grant from the USDA Forest Service with corporate sponsorship being sought to support implementation.

+Visit the DC Urban Forest Project Website

|| 9/15/2009 || 11:01 pm || 2 Comments Rendered || ||
Holy Cow, This Cleaning Product Is Not Organic

I was at a friends house two weeks ago and snapped these two photos when I was in their bathroom. I was intrigued because after my first glance at the bottle I thought the circular logo was from the USDA’s National Organic Program. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the designers of the product used a similar design in order to give the appearance that it was organic– specifically the use of boldface type for USDA within a circle. I wonder if people purchasing the product thought it was organic? Or if they might have equated the official organic seal with “Meets USDA Food And Safety Standards” like I did? No matter what, due to the popularity of the organic products and the USDA Organic Seal, I except to see similar uses of this type of deceitful labeling on other products.

|| 3/2/2009 || 11:49 pm || Comments Off || ||
Photos and a YouTube Video of the Capitol Climate Action at the Capitol Power Plant

Earlier today I attended the Capitol Climate Action on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Organized by Greenpeace and the Rain Forest Action Network for the Powershift09 conference, the demonstration was billed as a “mass civil disobedience” designed to shut down the Washington, DC’s biggest polluter, the Capitol Power Plant. Although I wasn’t able to stay for the entire demonstration, I was able to slice together some of the video clips I took from around 1pm to 3pm:

See the rest of the photos of the demonstration:

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|| 6/28/2008 || 5:55 pm || Comments Off || ||
YouTube Has Chosen For You! – Digital Scrapbooking Explicit Bipartisanship

Last month I snail mailed a letter to YouTube citing the fact that their political page was being explicitly partisan and did not include any third party politicians running for president. I have yet to receive a written reply. Instead YouTube gave the page’s layout a makeover, but still left out 3rd party presidential candidates. To document this flagrant bipartisanship, I decided to take a screen shot every day I was on-line this month.

Below you’ll see the candidates YouTube has tacitly endorsed during the month of June:

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|| 6/6/2008 || 12:37 pm || Comments Off || ||
Tonight! Art Party @ Capitol Hemp

If you haven’t been to Capitol Hemp yet, come & check it out tonight!

|| 5/28/2008 || 1:54 pm || Comments Off || ||
Face the (Corporate) Candidates on YouTube

Today I wrote YouTube, LLC (owned by Google, Inc) the following letter:

Dear YouTube, LLC,

Your “Face the Candidates” section ( http://youtube.com/youchoose ) needs to be updated to include all presidential candidates. Currently American voters are not being shown all the candidates for president of the United States of America and this prevents your users from making an informed decision on what presidential candidate to vote for in November.

As a member of the Green Party of the United States, I find your explicit bipartisanship to be counter to your parent company’s corporate philosophy. The link to the “Face the Candidates” page is titled “YouChoose” but in reality it could be written “We’ve chosen for you,” because the web editors have unfairly excluded a presidential candidate.

Please include Cynthia McKinney’s campaign channel ( http://www.youtube.com/runcynthiarun ) to your “Face the Candidates” page because she is running for president and deserves the same placement as her democratic & republican party counterparts.

Sincerely,
Nikolas R. Schiller

I wrote this out of general frustration regarding how controlled the American political system is. Even though I voted for Cynthia McKinney in the Washington, DC primary and she’s now acquired the majority of Green Party delegates, there has been absolutely no national media coverage of her campaign (don’t believe me, check the Washington Post & New York Times websites). This type of American Blackout is unpatriotic, nondemocratic, and downright wrong and with Google’s “do no evil” corporate philosophy in place, this letter is an attempt to challenge their web editors to do the right thing and include all presidential candidates regardless of political affiliation. Will they change the page? I doubt it, but I know that I’ve made an effort, albeit a small one.

|| 5/11/2008 || 10:07 pm || Comments Off || ||
#006900 Party [that's Green Party in Hexadecimal Color Code]

At the Artomatic opening night I spoke with someone close to Mark Jenkins about his #000000 POWER t-shirt concept that uses Hexadecimal Color Codes to reference the word’s color (aka BLACK POWER). In this geeky context I thought it would be funny to follow-up this meme by making my own HTML-based t-shirt.

After thinking through a bunch of different permutations, I came up with #006900 Party to represent the Green Party of the United States. I could have chosen from quite a few different combinations for the color Green, but I thought that the number 69 was the most widely understood numerical reference out of the possible permutations, with the exception of the number 42, a favorite number of mine that I found to be too dark.

I will be donating this design to the Green Party of the United States if they want to use it for their official merchandise.

|| 4/22/2008 || 1:41 pm || Comments Off || ||
NBC Universal is co-opting the Green Party of the United States this Earth Day

This Earth Day I am calling out corporate greenwashing being employed by NBC Universal . The calculated lie (below) is that they are not forming a new “Green Party,” rather they are subverting the existence of one of the few 3rd parties in American politics.

When this week is over, I sincerely wonder how many times will NBC Universal feature the Green Party’s presidential candidate on any of it’s stations? That is less of a question and more of a challenge. My null hypothesis is that there will be no mention of the Green Party of the United States, rather lots of tips on living green instead of empowering people that they have the option to vote Green in November.

NBC Universal is 80% owned by General Electric and this type of greenwashing is designed to help distance people’s concerns about General Electric’s nuclear reactor business operations. It’s ironic that it was protests against nuclear energy that helped propel the German Green Party into the political spotlight.

View the modified screen grab:

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|| 4/7/2008 || 12:53 pm || Comments Off || ||
D.C. to get it’s first hemp store: Capitol Hemp

Photograph by Gerald Martineau of The Washington Post. Mosaic by Jill Blankespoor

I’ve known about the store for some time now so it’s nice that it’s is getting some great exposure in today’s Washington Post article. The store is located near the intersection of 18th & Columbia NW below the Starbucks and should open soon. I’ve written about my antics & activism with. Adam over the years- from working on his last campaign for U.S. Shadow Representative to staging the first ever DC democracy lobbying effort on the Potomac and I’m looking forward to shopping at Capitol Hemp.

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|| 2/13/2008 || 1:17 pm || Comments Off || ||
My vote verified by a paper ballot

An infographic showing how to hack a Diebold Accuvote-TS unit

So yesterday I participated in the DC Statehood Green Party Primary. This election cycle I was offered the opportunity to keep the tab from my ballot. Compared to those generic “I VOTED” stickers, the paper ballot is a much better souvenir because it shows that not only did I vote, I was voter number 2 at the precinct. Here’s the scanned proof:

Judging by the DC Board of Elections and Ethics results for my precinct (below), I can verify that the ballot above was the second and last DC Statehood Green Party ballot given out yesterday. If you scroll down to the bottom of the image, it shows that there were 2 people who voted for Cynthia McKinney and since the ballot above is market 00002, I can only infer that the other voter has 00001.

Page 137 of the Pre-Certified Presidential Preference Primary Election Results – Precinct Report

It looks like Cynthia McKinney beat Ron Paul in my precinct (2 votes to 1 one). Only nine people voted republican compared to the two Statehood Green (one being me). Thats some hyperlocal politix.

Related 2008 Election Entries:

|| 2/12/2008 || 12:27 pm || Comments Off || ||
The M&M’s of Australia say Vote Green

An ad agency’s portrayal of the Green M&M

This subvertisement is from an Australian M&M advertisement campaign. I’ve seen the same type of campaign done in America, however this campaign employs revolutionary iconography to sell the colors.

Today, however, I didn’t vote for a corporation, instead I voted in the D.C. Statehood Green Party Primary for Cynthia McKinney.

Related Green Entries:

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|| 1/15/2008 || 4:00 pm || Comments Off || ||
2008 Green Party Debate [tonight on KPFA]

I am going to make every attempt to call in.

I haven’t posted much Green Party information in a long time. In December I stepped down from the steering committee of the DC Statehood Green Party. For the last two years I helped run Washington, DC’s official third political party (about 5,000 registered voters). My biggest accomplishment was helping the DC Statehood Green Party candidates receive more votes than the Republican Party’s canidates in the 2006 election by almost 2 to 1.

Lately, however, I’ve become completely disillusioned by the dog & pony show that is American corporate politics. The Washington Post has not even written one story this election cycle on my favorite Green Party candidate, Cynthia McKinney, instead they’ve run only one AP story, and it has already been removed (less than one month old!). By not mentioning other candidates or entire political parties it ensures that debate is silenced and alternative viewpoints do not become a threat to the electoral plutocracy. Frankly, I am quite sickened by it all. The American electoral process is controlled to the point where it’s become meaningless. However, I must remain hopeful.

|| 5/1/2007 || 7:33 am || Comments Off || ||
Special elections are today…

I am going to work a poll this morning on behalf of Renee Bowser. Should be fun!

===
update

She placed 4th. I am looking forward to seeing the price breakdown of votes per dollar. She didn’t spend nearly the amount that corporate contenders had. This election showed me how democracy is really all about the amount of money one can spend, not about issues…..

|| 11/30/2006 || 11:11 pm || Comments Off || ||
The #2 Political Party in Washington, DC

As one of the few people on the Steering Committee and a National Delegate, I am proud of this small election victory.

via NBC4′s Tom Sherman’s Notebook
source: http://www.nbc4.com/politics/10416500/detail.html

Going Green
The D.C. Statehood Green Party is patting itself on the back over the November election returns. The small party came in way behind Democratic winners in the big elections, but the party has gleaned a few nuggets of hope from Board of Election tallies.

Of five partisan races on the ballot Nov. 7, the party says there were 44,580 overall votes for Statehood Green candidates while there were only 29,776 Republican votes.
In the race for the city’s statehood lobbyist (Shadow Representative), the party says standard-bearer Keith Ware got 13 percent of the votes with 12,762 ballots while the Republican candidate got 8,839 or 9 percent.

Even mayoral candidate Chris Otten received 4 percent of the vote behind 6 percent for Republican David Kranich. Of course, Democrat Fenty got most of the rest.

I’d like to map the locations of where the 44,580 D.C. Statehood Green votes were cast. It would also be quite interesting to see where the 29,776 Republican votes were cast. I have a feeling the Republican votes would be found mostly in Wards 2 & 3. Sadly, I do not have the required software (ArcMap) needed to make these two maps :( Maybe I can get a friend to make it for me…

|| 9/27/2006 || 12:48 pm || Comments Off || ||
Is the DC Colonist a Netscape Celebrity?

Image links to the Netscape Celebrity Page

I found this last night while looking through my ip analysis… It looks like the D.C. Colonist is going places these days. But still he has no voice in Congress.

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Link is now dead…

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This photo was used in the Washington Post on November 19th, 2009.

The Daily Render By

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future.