The Vinyl Experience – 10.16.15

VE 145 Songs About Other Songs

Blotto: We Are The Nowtones

The Richie Family: The Best Disco In Town

Arthur Conley; Sweet Soul Music

Generation X: Ready Steady Go

The Animals: The Story Of Bo Diddley

Jimmy Eat World: A Praise Chorus

Peter Paul & Mary: I Dig Rock And Roll Music

Simon And Garfunkel: A Simple Desultory Phillipic

John Mellencamp: R.O.C.K In The USA

Glenn Miller Orchestra: Juke Box Saturday Night

Stevie Wonder: Sir Duke

The Dead Milkmen: Instant Club Hit (You’ll Dance To Anything)

Weezer: Heart Songs

Righteous Brothers; Rock And Roll Heaven

Everclear: AM Radio

Reunion: Life Is A Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me)

Today On the VE….Some songs about songs…and other artists.

Each one will mention someone else. Or two….or twenty. You gotta have the right heroes.

It’s All About Food – Joel Bourne, The End of Plenty – 10.06.15

Part I: Joel Bourne, The End of Plenty

Joel Bourne is an award-winning journalist and former Senior Editor for the Environment at National Geographic. He’s covered major environmental issues for the magazine, including the global food crisis of 2008, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and California’s recurrent water woes. With a degree in agronomy, Bourne frequently reports on the global food system. Most recently he contributed two articles to National Geographic‘s ground-breaking eight-part series, “The Future of Food,” reporting on the agricultural land rush in Africa, as well as new sustainable methods of aquaculture being practiced around the world. His first book, The End of Plenty: the Race to Feed a Crowded World, will be published by W.W. Norton in June 2015.

Bourne has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, including CNN’s American Morning, CNN International, the National Geographic Channel, and the Diane Rehm Show. He has been a keynote speaker and moderator at major conferences in Washington, D.C., Denver, Chicago, London, Beijing, Moscow, and Bahrain, among other venues. Prior to his tenure atNational Geographic, Bourne’s work appeared in National Geographic Adventure, National Geographic Traveler, Audubon, Science, Outside, and many other publications. He lives with his wife and three children in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Catey Hill – Report: 43% of U.S. homes are at high risk of natural disaster

Four hurricanes are currently brewing in the Pacific and Atlantic. Wildfires have ravaged more than 8 million acres in the U.S. in 2015 alone. And in just the first two weeks of May this year, nearly 150 tornadoes touched down in the U.S. Many American homeowners might still be surprised at the risk their home faces of getting hit by …

Sarah Lazare – ‘Perilously’ Outdated Voting Machines Threaten 2016 Election, Report Finds

Electronic voting machines in 43 states are at least a decade old, “perilously close to the end of most systems’ expected lifespan,” and could pose a risk to the 2016 election, a new study from the the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law finds. After a 10 month probe that included interviews with over 100 …

The war on drugs has reached into the womb – and threatens abortion rights – Jessica Valenti

What does the war on drugs have to do with the war on abortion? More than you’d think: the anti-choice movement has been successfully using drug laws to give fetuses legal personhood rights for years. Today, 18 states consider drug use while pregnant to be child abuse – a standard that not only punishes pregnant women who need help, but that has …

Our Jihadis and Theirs By Tom Engelhardt

Consider this paragraph a holding action on the subject of getting blown away in America. While I write this dispatch, I’m waiting patiently for the next set of dispiriting killings in this country. And I have faith. Before I’m done, some angry — or simply mentally disturbed — and well-armed American “lone wolf” (or lone wolves) will gun down someone …

Laws to Shut People Up on Animal Abuse, Now Used to Cover Up Day Care & Nursing Home Abuse – John Vibes

First they came for the animal rights activists….. A recent report pointed out that laws which are used to prevent animal rights activists from exposing inhumane practices at factory farms, can also be used to prevent whistleblowers that attempt to expose corruption at other facilities, like daycare centers or nursing homes, for example. The controversial ag-gag laws do not just …

Walmart’s black mark – Alice Cuddy and Mom Kunthear

Cambodian workers producing garments for global retail giant Walmart say they are subjected to a slew of workplace abuses ranging from forced labour to sexual harassment. Employees at numerous Walmart supplier factories across the country have made the allegations, which were compiled in a recent study exposing the brand’s “heinous abuses” in three of the major countries in its Asian …

ISIS Colonel Was Trained by Blackwater and U.S. State Department for 11 Years By Cassius Methyl

A former police commander from Tajikistan was featured in an ISIS video recently where he admitted he was trained by the U.S. State Department and former military contractor Blackwater all the way up until last year. At a Blackwater facility in North Carolina, Col. Gulmurod Khalimov received “counter-terrorism training.” “From 2003-2014 Colonel Khalimov participated in five counterterrorism training courses in the United …

America Is #1 in Police Killings Among Western Democracies, Yet We’re Only Just Discovering How Bad the Situation Is By Terrell Jermaine Starr

Even before the Washington Post [3] published its startling report this weekend on the astronomically high number of Americans shot and killed by police in the first five months of 2015, the U.S. was already easily number one. Number one among highly advanced western democracies with fully developed economies for police killings of citizens: at least 400 people a year, according to a …