Ken Cheetham is an animal residing on a tiny planet hurtling through space. He has existed for the last 65 of the universe's several billion years. Ken's current goals are to work to increase corporate profits for another several years, see the important movies on the weekends, and then be dead forever.
Ken also maintains A San Francisco Bay Area Progressive Directory and is the author of some random cruft.
See CheeLinks for an extensive network of links to selected web pages on pertinent topics.
Ken is the author of SongSprouter, a fun algorithmic music composition app. It runs on Windows and is free to download.
email: flarnbird@gmail.com
For wonderful hiking right on the edge of Berkeley, you may want to check out the open space in Strawberry Canyon, Hamilton Gulch, and Claremont Canyon in Oakland on the East side of Berkeley. The mouth of Strawberry Canyon is only a little over a mile east of downtown Berkeley, within walking distance of BART. Here's my shorter sequence of some favorite photos, a longer sequence, and even a ridiculously complete sequence of many of the canyon photos that I've kept.
UC Berkeley may still be planning a major tree cut and ongoing herbicide applications here (though FEMA has redirected its fire prevention funding away from tree-cutting). Groups opposing the plan include Save the East Bay Hills, Death of a Million Trees, the Hills Conservation Network, the TreeSpirit Project, the Coalition to Defend East Bay Forests, and East Bay Pesticide Alert.
My photos of some of the threatened trees are at bapd.org/treestalk.html. For an outline of arguments against the cuts, see bapd.org/treenotes.html.
Music! Here are a few songs of mine. Click a song name in the list below to play it. (You can also click the song name again to stop and rewind it, or click another song name to interrupt it.)
The first two are newer recordings of very old songs. The other three are older recordings of less old songs, with somewhat lower-quality mixes.
Under
is a straightahead fun funky number.
Fnoo
is a jazzy classicalish work in a fast three.
Boof
is rude on the outside but somewhat mellow in the middle.
Wake Up
is a song for waking up to gradually in the morning.
Urnk
is hard-hitting and then spacy.
Under
Download the songs for keeps here:
https://bapd.org/songs/Under.mp3
https://bapd.org/songs/Fnoo.mp3
https://bapd.org/songs/Boof.mp3
https://bapd.org/songs/WakeUp.mp3
https://bapd.org/songs/Urnk.mp3
These recordings are free for any not-for-profit use. The songs and recordings are copyright Ken Cheetham.
Video! Here's my video of the Occupy Oakland demonstration at the Port of Oakland on Wednesday, November 2, 2011.
The middle of the video demonstrates the human microphone (Mic Check!) being used to pass instructions back through the huge crowd, one block at a time. The end features a splendid drumming & chanting happening back in downtown Oakland.
The following six videos cover some large protest demonstrations in San Francisco and Oakland, California, shortly before and just after the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Parts 1 through 3 are planned permitted marches before the invasion, while parts 4 through 6 are impromptu protest just after the invasion, on Friday and Saturday, March 21 and 22, 2003. Part 4 covers a mass arrest for walking in the street without a permit. Parts 5 and 6 feature interesting interplay with police attempting to keep the protesters out of the streets. This is raw video heavily edited down into short clips to keep it moving along. The footage focuses on drumming and other music in the streets.
For busy people, here are super-compressed versions (about 48 seconds each):
Parts 1 & 2 (2003-02-15, pre-invasion)
View on YouTube
or Download for keeps (36 mb)
Parts 5 & 6 (2003-03-21, post-invasion)
View on YouTube
or Download for keeps (39 mb)
And here are the full-length versions (about 55 minutes total):
Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OskTW3VPlT4
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkhfdxWyqsA
Part 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQFTOhXv7HE
Part 4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs7uqK6Vg2k
Part 5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKrKXb2zPzs
Part 6 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8M7ifYEm4c
One product makes you stylish And one product makes you score But the ones that we keep buying Quickly turn into a bore Go ask Darwin Why we thirst for More And if you go chasing status Well you know you're going to fail Cause a cigar-smoking corporate feller Is holding a phantom grail Call Darwin Or send him email When the men in the boardroom Get up and tell you what you need And you've just been watching television And the Joneses look in the lead Go ask Darwin I think he'll know When your genes only want to pass themselves on After you've fallen sloppy dead And they've tricked you into an endless rat race Though like the Red Queen you can't get ahead Remember What your gut once said Ease your dread Ease your dread
