Posts
Let's say you're one of those Deadheads who can't get enough of 1972. Well than Project 1972 is a dream come true. Not only can you get all the shows from that year, but how about multiple sources from each night.
And to help navigate this new treasure trove of Dead material now available, get a hold of the Deadhead's Taping Compendium. Full of show reviews and interviews with members of the Grateful Dead family such as Dick Latvala of Dick's Picks fame. It's hard to read and not want to go straight to the tapes.
In some recent encouraging vegetarian related news, Oprah Winfrey has committed herself to a vegan diet during a three week "cleanse." Sure, three weeks isn't much, but when this lady speaks people listen.If she so much as turns 1% of her audience into vegans, that 74,000 less people straining the environment with their diets. How cool is that! For now though all us vegan will be watching to see how this whole thing goes.
After a day off came the lovely pairing of Workingman's Dead first set and American Beauty for set two. These albums were released back to back so it makes sense to see them together in a show.
The second self titled Dead album otherwise known as "Skullfuck" or "Skull and Roses" followed on the next night. For the second set Phil skipped ahead a decade for a little Dead Set. Go to etree to get aud copies of these shows, although Phil is likely to release soundboards of the whole Warfield run as he has for other multi-night stands in the past.
I think most people have heard for so long that there is a human overpopulation problem that they take it for granted. While this theory, that there are too many people on the planet, or there will be unless measures are taken, seems to be utterly without merit. In fact the exact opposite may be true, that there is an underpopulation problem.
Most developing countries with the exception of the US have below replacement birth rates, yet I still hear some people talk about how they don't want children because there are "too many people." China is a great example of this paranoia in action, with their infamous one child policy. That's managed to upset the gender balance causing many more boys to be born than girls, but it hasn't done much to change their already declining birth rate.
Certainly there are large cities that have population issues to deal with such as transportation, education, etc, but these problems are only related to organizational and logistical shortcomings of governments. Logically populations migrate to areas with more opportunities and better resources, so instead of trying to control the amount of people on the planet, we should make it more attractive for them to move to areas where they are needed and respected.
This show featured a Verve with renewed energy, exploring choice album cuts while debuting two new songs. "Already There," a Storm in Heaven cut was on the menu as well as a spontaneous "Gravity Grave," from the Verve EP. For this one lead man extraordinaire Richard Ashcroft already had the acoustic guitar on for "Drugs Don't Work" but bassist Simon Jones, clearly enjoying himself played a bit of the "Gravity Grave" bassline drawing anxious pleas from the audience. Ashcroft picked up on it saying how Simon wanted to play a "15 minute" version. He handed his acoustic back to the roadies and they were off into "Gravity Grave." Just the type of interplay that shows when a band is enjoying themselves. Excellent show all around, for the complete setlist go here.
It's simple. Cows eat many times the amount of the amount of food they will eventually become, and they consume a whole lot of fresh water. And if you think automobiles emit a lot of greenhouse gasses, guess how much greenhouse gases these bovine eco-terrorists emit? A whole lot. Worse yet, at this moment, vast swaths of pristine, virgin rainforest are being cleared to make room for more livestock to graze. These acres of ancient trees, which help soak up carbon-dioxide, are being slashed and burned so more cows can eat up more of the world's food.
At a time when the economy is faltering, meat consumption is devastating to world finances. An unthinkable amount of time and money is wasted in food production for livestock, meat production, transportation (as in millions of gallons of gas annually), massive recalls, and most crushingly the health care cost of having everyone sick, debilitated and dying. Poor diet is the main cause of heart disease which is the still the number one killer of Americans. As the threat of mad cow disease is always looming.
Eating meat and dairy products is a choice, the same as driving a gas-guzzling SUV. There are plenty of vegan foods that taste wonderful and are as healthy as can be. Instead of blaming gas prices for the food shortages, maybe the media should look a little closer. This problem has been a long time coming and even electric cars aren't going to stop us from using cows to kill us all.
Now Uranus on the other hand, has only been visited once, if you call a flyby at 80,000 km a visit. And that mission with Voyager 2 didn't do justice to what is arguably the most unique planet and moon system in our solar system. The planet is tilted 90 degrees on it's axis, how sweet is that. Instead of spending more money retreading the familiar paths, let's blaze a new trail all the way out to mysterious Uranus and see what this planet is really all about.
