Grateful Dead

Did you catch the news that Rapture is going to occur on May 21, official end of the world for those of us who don't make the Rapture cut to be on Oct 21? Most likely, birds falling from the sky and fish going belly-up are involved. But whatever happened to 2012 being the end of the world? Were the Mayans...wrong? And I feel fine...

I have a buddy who works for the the University of Arkansas. He travelled this week to LA for the bowl game, and suddenly birds are falling out of the sky there too. Personally, I'm blaming him. The other alternatives seem to be equally wacky, so why not? Frightening one way or the other...

This bird and fish kil-off Arkansas and now Louisiana seems very frightening. I think the unknown is what is most terrorizing. Discarding fie crackers and hail, It seems clear that these starlings and blackkbirds and fish have been exposed to something that May Be extrtaterresteria l. I say "May Be: so people won't think I'm a nut. What he hell is hapening an when miight it start hapening wih us? Is there a precedent for this. This is creepy.

It is the grim truth brother....The good news is that there is a growing network of conscientious recyclers that refuse send collected materials to processors that turn around and ship our problems to less fortunate places....

A story on NPR was quite shocking about the recycling of e-waste. Earlier this sumer I ws thinking bout buying a kindle and stp buying books to be more eco-friendly. Lilly reminded me about the waste created by these efforts. Well I just heard the story on NPR and I was truly shocked! Shocked! I don't know all the names and facts but got the gist. When you "recycle" (as a lot of us do) a full 80% is promptly shipped to China and Africa. In China there are whole mid-sized cities where they are cooking down the old components in big vats like soup and tobe in that atmosphere gives one immediate horrible headaches and the workers there are coming up with massive cancer clusters trying to leech out the valuable trace minerals from the circuit boards. I might have some of th tech stuff wrong, but the gist is horrifyingly correct.. In Ghana and other western african countries they are unvolvd in reproducing the old recycled product into a new product, advertising it as new! They get some of the motherboards with old information on them. Information thievery is pretty big over there and they used to get about $25 for an intact memory boards but now they have smartened up and are getting $300 for each one with the raw info intact. The good news? There s a caped crusader, whose name I forget, putting together a bunch of recyclers who won't just profit shipping this stuff offshore. They will have to meet rigorous and policed standards. The most crazy thing is that is it is highly toxic to make these things. It is not toxic during their useful lives (so far, that we know of) and it is is highly toxic at the recycling endpoint. And, yes, children are involved in the very end process, going through e-dumps and bashing old tubes for tiny bits of precious metals that remain. I know I didn't get this all right but it makes me think that I might not be so totally unhip without my kindle and I-pod and droid and blackberry, At least I'm not ruining the planet and creating cancer custers that could eventually kill off entire cities and turn my species into mutants. The whole story would be on the NPR archive 12/22. Merry Cristmas/Kwanzaa/etc. everybody. You don't need to call or text or buy me an e-pad. Lama-G wishes you a great holiday!

A link to Sen Tom Coburn's 2010 waste report, itself probably an example of wasteful spending. Interesting that the report cites the "net worth" of "two prominent band members" (Jerry and Phil) without noting that one of them has been dead for 15 yrs. Ahhhhh... http://coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=774a6c…

The whole interview, or just the excerpt on jambands.com? Sounded harsher to me in the out-of-context excerpt than it did in the full interview. But I'm with you, I don't agree with the Billy's assessment of Furthur (nor his apparently high opinion of Warren Haynes in the context of the Dead), but I think that he that should be well-pleased with 7 Walkers...one of my favorite studio albums of the year.

My favorite thing about Furthur is that they are completely unpredictable. Plus with a bunch of new songs that are really good, reviving old songs we haven't heard in decades, bringing in Dylan, RatDog, Phil and Friends, Ryan Adams and some other covers, I mean heck, to me that is doing some very "interesting things with the music". Same could be said with Rythm Devils and 7 Walkers. It's all great stuff and I am grateful we get all this awesome music still. Let's hope it continues strong into 2011 and beyond! "It's got no signs or dividing line and very few rules to guide"

i just read the death toll ts insane fighting fire with fire sure there has gotta be a better way.

Sobering statistics, no pun intended... http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/12/17/mexico.violence/ Stop the war!