Most Americans begin their financial security with their home. But unfortunetly with the out-of-control housing market spitting out cookie-cutter units at a frightening pace, that securtiy is evaporating. Hard working folk are finding that with so many houses now available theirs isn't worth what they've put into it. There is a simple solution to this problem. Stop building houses!
I propose a five year moratorium on homebuilding until the markets stabilize and proper equity returns. I understand that this will irk a lot of people who are making money hand-over-fist by building these eyesores, but it's better than nationalizing our entire financial industry.
In those five years we can study new environmentally and economically sound ways about how many houses can be built where and how fast. This just isn't something we should be leaving up to profit hungry developers with little care to the communitites they're destroying.
The Orb have and continue to make fantastic music, but one album in particular of theirs has consistantly been my most listened to cd. Orbvs Terrarvm was a departure for the Orb fellows who had until then been floating in the etherals of outer space. A returning to the Earth mother, the first two track titles say it well starting off with the spacious "Valley" and thick "Plateav," setting the tone for us. The marvelous Thomas Felhmann is all over this album and if you don't know who that is yet get to know him cause he's sweet. The closing track is a long hilarious/bizarre tale of slugs that must be heard to be fully appreciated, but then that is true for this entire effort. A true must listen if ever there was one. Check out the double-disc reissue with bonus material.
As so many pristine early generation soundboard and audience recordings are now instantly available from a variety of websites, it's now become easier than ever to amass once-unthinkable Grateful Dead show collections. What if you're one of those Deadheads who can't get enough of Europe 72 stuff? 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, get a 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.
Regardless of what Uncle Al says, Global Warming is less a scientific theory than it is a poppular notion. The Wall Street Journal has an article delcaring it to be "mass hysteria," which I'd say is a good a description of this nonsence as any I've heard yet.
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.
Phil and Friends ran through eight Grateful Dead albums in their entirety during their five night stand at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco. It started on May 13th with the Dead's self-titled release for the first set and Anthem of the Sun with special guest Bob Weir for set two. The following night was Aoxomoxoa and Live Dead for the two sets, including two stabs at St. Stephen, which appears on both records. Jambase has a more comprehensive review of these first two shows.
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.
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.
The Verve recently unleashed a tight, focused show to the faithful who braved the cold, wet night to see them. Psychedelic guitar genius Nick Mccabe, reluctant to tour for many years is back, working to attain the rock god status this band had for so long deserved. And it's true that the more people see the Verve live they more their awesomeness can spread.
With renewed energy the band explored choice album cuts while debuting two new songs. "Already There," a Storm in Heaven cut sounded lovely as well as a spontaneous "Gravity Grave," from the Verve EP. 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 the song. Just the type of interplay that shows when a band is enjoying themselves. The complete setlist is here.
With renewed energy the band explored choice album cuts while debuting two new songs. "Already There," a Storm in Heaven cut sounded lovely as well as a spontaneous "Gravity Grave," from the Verve EP. 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 the song. Just the type of interplay that shows when a band is enjoying themselves. The complete setlist is here.
Before we all lose our minds regarding articles proclaiming a global food crisis, let's calmly listen to what some science-types and most vegetarians have been saying for years. This is a very solvable problem as is this whole carbon emissions thing.
It's the cows. 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 these bovine eco-terrorists emit lots of pollution. To make matters worse, at this very 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 primarily to raise more cows which can eat up more of the world's food.
And Meat consumption is actually quite devastating to world finances. Unthinkable amounts of time and money is wasted in food cultivation and production for livestock, and then the vast meat production industry. Wasted transportation (as in millions of gallons of gas annually), massive recalls, and most crushingly the health care cost of the sick, debilitated and dying, of which poor diet is the number one killer. And the threat of mad cow disease is always looming.
A great start for anyone is to stop supporting the meat and dairy industry. There are plenty of vegan foods that taste wonderful and are superbly healthy. Instead of blaming gas prices for the food shortages, maybe the problem is just old habits. 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.
It's the cows. 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 these bovine eco-terrorists emit lots of pollution. To make matters worse, at this very 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 primarily to raise more cows which can eat up more of the world's food.
And Meat consumption is actually quite devastating to world finances. Unthinkable amounts of time and money is wasted in food cultivation and production for livestock, and then the vast meat production industry. Wasted transportation (as in millions of gallons of gas annually), massive recalls, and most crushingly the health care cost of the sick, debilitated and dying, of which poor diet is the number one killer. And the threat of mad cow disease is always looming.
A great start for anyone is to stop supporting the meat and dairy industry. There are plenty of vegan foods that taste wonderful and are superbly healthy. Instead of blaming gas prices for the food shortages, maybe the problem is just old habits. 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.
Space.com has an article about how NASA and the ESA are meeting to decide whether shell out the dough for a "flagship" mission either to Saturn or Jupiter. For one thing there is already a hugely successful mission currently at Saturn. It called Cassini, maybe some of you have heard of it? As for Jupiter, although the Galileo mission was admittedly flawed it still returned good science.
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.
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.
