One short mile away from downtown Detroit is Brother Nature Produce , a community supported farm run by Greg Willerer. Greg shows us around the farm and discusses his composting venture, which aims to create a closed loop of urban food waste being turned back into food that is healthy and locally produced. Broadcasting platform : Vimeo Source : MAKE: Blog Discovery Date : 02/12/2011 15:30 Number of articles : 2
Hot 107.9′s and Rickey Smiley Morning Show’s, Headkrack, talked to a variety of artists at the 2011 Soul Train Awards red carpet. Interviewed artists include Bobby Valentino, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Kel Mitchell, Naughty By Nature, Big Daddy Kane, Grandmaster Dee and more! Check out the interviews below.
‘I played him a song that I wrote and he really loved it,’ Gaga says on U.K. talk show. By Jocelyn Vena Lady Gaga and Elton John Photo: Kevin Kane/ WireImage Lady Gaga is wasting no time in working on her follow-up to Born This Way . Half a year after she dropped the chart-topping album, she is already crafting the sound for the next one. Over the weekend, Lady Gaga appeared on British talk-show host Alan Carr’s “Chatty Man” and teased what fans should expect for her follow-up to BTW. “My next duet, I believe, will be with Elton,” she said. “I’m already working on my next album, and I played him a song that I wrote and he really loved it. I don’t want to give anything [else] away!” Of course, Gaga and Elton have quite a backstory together. The two recorded the track “Hello Hello” for the “Gnomeo and Juliet” soundtrack, and Gaga is godmother to Elton’s son, Zachary. In addition to the chat, Gaga also cooked up some chicken Milanese and performed her latest single, “Marry the Night” in a bright pink dress and giant pink hair bow. Her performance was uncharacteristically simple, with Gaga simply sitting at a piano. Last week, she teased the video for the clip, which includes a nearly two-minute-long monologue about the nature of sanity and art. In other Gaga news, there was recently a shake-up in Gaga’s camp when creative director Laurieann Gibson departed . For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention for the last couple years, Gaga explained just how important the people who work with her are. “To explain really what it’s all about, me and my friends travel the world together and what we do, we all lay around in bed and we write down every idea that we have … it’s quite honestly the greatest dream of my life. We get to make art for the whole universe.” Related Videos MTV First: Lady Gaga Related Artists Lady Gaga Elton John
Would a man who says “Got all this stuff twirling around in my head” when asked about Libya and foreign policy be the right person for commander-in-chief?? Via NYTimes: HARD as it has been to watch, harder still to live through, the spectacle of Herman Cain’s dodging sexual harassment allegations is a real step up for the status of women. Their sexual treatment is now part of the open political process, rather than a smarmy rumor to be passed among cognoscenti in the dark. The fact that what several women have said might register in a presidential campaign — as if women’s sexual mistreatment at work might really matter — could be a potential game changer, even though the prevailing dynamics of sex, race and power that made sexual harassment so difficult to denounce in the first place are amply on display. The firestorm surrounding Clarence Thomas’s defense to Anita F. Hill’s allegations in his confirmation hearing for the United States Supreme Court 20 years ago not only falsely set up race and gender as mutually exclusive and opposing forces, but also framed subsequent defenses to sexual harassment charges by Bill Clinton and others as mere personal peccadillo or political fodder. Predictably, in this latest remix, political intrigue and racial grandstanding, combined with vicious attacks on the accusers, have obscured the principal inquiry: the leadership potential of a presidential candidate. Sexual harassment is not a Democratic or Republican issue, a liberal or conservative issue, or a black or white one, although those politics can shape it. As a consequence, it does not present a test of group loyalty but a chance to evaluate the reported behavior of someone who seeks to govern. Mr. Cain’s assertion that the public attention to these reports is “a high tech lynching” threatens to insulate his behavior from the deeper assessment it demands. Like Mr. Thomas, whose elevation to the Supreme Court was facilitated by this statement, Mr. Cain rides a wave of suspicion and empathy. It would be wrong to dismiss the appeal of his defense, given the common dimension of public sexual humiliation and how deeply “lynching” resonates as a metaphor for black men in the real context of the sexual politics of racial hierarchy. But neither Mr. Cain nor Mr. Thomas stands in the shoes of those crucified for offenses against the powerful. No one was, or will be, killed and hung from a tree for defending the prerogatives of the top 1 percent. And it is germane that women of all races face a specific kind of public sexual humiliation for reporting their abuse at the hands of those with power over their employment. This is a major reason that so many, rather than speaking out, have opted for silence, and in overwhelming numbers still do. Simply put, women do not want to be pornography. Remarkably but not atypically, Ms. Bialek’s Republicanism and her personal respect for Mr. Cain remain intact. Women who come out of the shadows, like Ms. Bialek and Ms. Hill before her, are not silenced as others can be, including by confidentiality agreements routinely forced on them by companies as the price of relief. These women want and expect the harasser to man up: acknowledge what he did, genuinely apologize, and change, meaning never do it again. And the failure of a candidate to do so should not be considered a winning political strategy but instead regarded as presumptive evidence of unfitness to lead. That would be a step toward real progress. Our leaders owe us nothing less. Thoughts on this??? Peep the video above of your boy Herman “Black GOP” Cain getting all flustered when asked about Libya… “Okay, Libya,” Cain said — then paused, looking downward. “President Obama supported the uprising — correct? President Obama called for the removal of Qaddafi. Just want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing before I say, yes I agreed, or no I didn’t agree.” “I do not agree with the way he handled it, for the following reasons — No, that’s a different one. (Pauses) I gotta go back, see. (Pauses) Got all this stuff twirling around in my head. Specifically, what are you asking me, did I agree or not disagree (sic) with Obama?” “I’m a much more deliberate decision-maker,” Cain said. “That is a point that I keep coming back to. Some people want to say, well, as President you’re supposed to know everything. No you don’t. I believe in having all of the information, as much of it as I possibly can, rather than making a decision or making a decision about whether I totally agreed, and didn’t agree, when I wasn’t privy to the entire situation. There might be some things that might cause me to feel differently. “So I’m not trying to hedge on the questions. That’s just my nature as a businessman. I need to know the facts as much as possible. I need to hear all of the alternatives (takes a sip of water). For example, someone — you might have mentioned that even in the administration, there were different views. I would want to hear all of those views, look at all the information, and then I make the decision as the Commander-in-Chief. So this is the whole point I’m trying to make.” Discuss… Source
Ashley Greene has been playing Alice, an unwaveringly supportive sisterly friend to Kristen Stewart ‘s Bella, since the beginning of the Twilight series. In Breaking Dawn — Part 1 the psychic Alice serves as wedding planner and all-around helpful vampire girl, but also faces a sudden inability to help Bella by seeing her future, or that of the child she’s carrying. Greene talked about Bella’s well-being, the nature of relationships and the film’s intense birth scene.
(vimeo link) Ridiculous? Yes. Eye-catching? Certainly! This ad is for the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. -via the Presurfer Broadcasting platform : Vimeo Source : Neatorama Discovery Date : 12/11/2011 17:06 Number of articles : 2
What can be said about The Roots that hasn’t already been said? Everyone knows they are the go to band for rappers wanting to experiment with live instrumentation. Need we remind you of their performances with Jay-Z for his Unplugged show in 2001 and his Fade to Black concert film? The Philadelphia bred hip-hop musicians are posted behind Hov. Though many know the drummer, Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson , for his wild afro, some might not know dude has a serious record collection. Some might even venture to say he’s drifting into hoarding territory. The Urban Daily spoke with Questo yesterday where we discussed his support for Occupy Wall Street, the new Roots album, and why Black Thought should sing more often. TUD: I’m excited to do this interview because if there was any musician’s music collection I would want to raid, it would be yours. I feel like you have every record known to man. Your apartment must be full of records. QL: My library is just so overwhelming that a lot of people would love to raid my music collection. I have some property in Philadelphia and one of the main criteria for moving out of that house was I was always running out of space. Plus, when Q-Tip had a fire back in ’97, that scared me. I thought about getting another house for my records. One of the setbacks of having an apartment in Manhattan is I’m far away from my record collection. A little bit at a time I’m sneaking records to my apartment and I find myself getting back into dangerous territory. That’s not really dangerous territory. It’s just a lot. You don’t know me, bro. Guests that are frequent are like, “Okay, this used to be where the dining room table was.” Now, it’s become a turntable station. See, that sounds like a good time to me. I love places like that. Yeah, I love it too. That’s not sexy when your girl comes over though. That’s true. I hear The Roots are working on an exclusive track for the upcoming Captain Morgan ‘Life Love and Loot’ campaign. How did you guys link up? They approached us about doing music for the campaign and the thing was having been familiar with the visual campaign, the challenge was to make the song match the visual. When you think of pirates and the sea, the normal Roots backdrop of music isn’t necessarily what comes to mind. They told us we could take the liberty to make a song we wanted. The Roots wanted to make sure we stepped out of our comfort zone to fit the spirit of the campaign. The real challenge was having to make this song with only three instruments-a guitar, tuba, and a drum. Did you guys come up with the track jam session style, like a lot of your records are known for? Absolutely. We prepared for three days. We tried seven or eight different sketches of the song. Once we came up with the sketches, we played them for our Captain Morgan liaison and he decided he liked one over the others. Then, we went into the studio and fleshed it out. It took about eight takes to get it right. Was is it a conscious decision to have Black Thought sing instead of rap on this song? It wasn’t in the beginning, but because of the nature of the song, just to yell out the lyrics didn’t feel natural. Since he is a singer as well…it’s kind of hard for me to coax him to sing. I don’t know why he’s shy about it, but Black Thought sings as good as he raps. That’s always been a head scratcher for me as to why he won’t get his male Lauryn Hill on. I told him it would sound much more natural with him singing it as opposed to him rhyming it. He did both and the singing does have better energy than him not singing and that’s what we went with. Will the Captain Morgan track be available for download? Yes. It will be available for download on the Captain Morgan USA Facebook page. People can also see the making of it there. They can see some clips and photos of us recording it and jamming out. When you heard about the whole ‘Life Love and Loot’ campaign, what did you take away from it? What did it mean to you? We decided that the campaign is pretty much our thing. I guess that would make us pirates too. [laughs] We had to put ourselves in that position and define it for ourselves. If anything, we’ve been pirates too. We’re always on the road, always working to survive, and loving what we do. We’re also running a business. That’s what so many people tend to forget because we’re having so much fun doing what we do. We run a very tight business as well. But usually when we are given a set of perimeters, we just put ourselves in that position and see how it applies to us. The Roots have a new album, undun, coming out soon. Does the sound d of this Captain Morgan track reflect the sound you’re working with on the album? Nah. We finished our record at 4:30 this morning. It’s being mastered right now. We actually did this track at the same time we recorded our album and one of the advantages of doing this track was it provided us a relief because the sound of the album is very somber and serious. There really wasn’t a high adrenaline moment on the album. Doing this on the side kind of scratched that itch for us. Besides being on Jimmy Fallon, the new album, and the song for the ‘Life Love and Loot’ campaign, what are you guys doing to stay busy? That’s a big list you just gave right there. [laughs] I heard it myself and was like, “Whoa! When am I going to sleep?!” We’re really trying to focus on the album. Fallon is everyday so there’s no escaping that, but our priority is with the new album, undun . The Roots have worked with a very wide range of artists. Who haven’t you worked with that you want to work with? I’ll be honest with you. As far as the studio is concerned, John Legend and D’Angelo are the two artists under the age of 50 I enjoy working with. I enjoy working with Erykah Badu whenever she wants to collaborate. As of late, I’ve been having a ball doing these soul records. As soon as Al Green gives us the word, we’ll probably work on his next record. We just did Betty Wright’s record. Her album comes out in December also. It sounds incredible. The Roots have always been more of a politically conscious band. What are your thoughts on the whole Occupy Wall Street movement? Yeah, I’ve been down there a few times to support them. It’s taken 99% of the people long enough to finally wake up and see the power that they hold in their hands. A lot of people think revolution and change will be the next man’s fight. They want to hang back and see what happens and it doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to get your hands and knees inside the mud. You have to be apart of the change you want to see. We’ll see what happens because this is just the beginning. Related Posts: ?uestlove Says He’s Back In The Studio With D’Angelo Top 10 Lauryn Hill Songs Lauryn Hill Has Butchered [ORIGINAL] D’Angelo, Raphael Saadiq, ?uestlove & Ali Shaheed Muhammad “Lady” [THROWBACK]
NFL and Reality star was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital last week. He’s been going through alot. From financial problems to being stressed about ever playing in the NFL again. Officials are not saying the nature of the emergency, but he’s been released since then. In 2006, T.O was hospitalized after he ingested 35 pills and later denied the claims. Rumors are already swirling that he tried to overdose or commit suicide. I don’t necessary believe rumors unless it comes from the horses mouth. You can form your own opinion, on TMZ’s report: “ Terrell Owens was hospitalized in L.A. last week — after someone called 911 to report a medical emergency at an apartment where the football player had been staying … TMZ has learned. An ambulance was sent to the apartment at 11:02 PM Thursday night — and police arrived soon after. Officials are not disclosing the nature of the emergency — or explaining why cops were called to the scene. We’re told T.O. had already been rushed away by ambulance by the time cops arrived to the apartment, so they followed up with the football star at the hospital. He has since been released from the hospital. We placed calls to T.O.’s reps for comment — so far, no response”. Do you think this is a cry for help or a publicity stunt? Thoughts?
Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo performed at Wales show, but Jennifer Hudson dropped out at last minute. By Gil Kaufman Prince Jackson, Blanket Jackson and Paris Jackson at the “Michael Forever” concert in Cardiff on Saturday Photo: Dave Hogan/ Getty Images “Michael Forever,” the Michael Jackson tribute concert in Cardiff, Wales, on Saturday featured sets from Christina Aguilera , Jamie Foxx, Cee Lo Green and Ne-Yo, with a special surprise appearance from the late King of Pop’s three children, Prince Michael, Paris and Prince Michael II (a.k.a. Blanket). Paris, Prince and Blanket introduced the video tribute to MJ from one of the night’s biggest stars, Beyonc
Ever wonder what makes a Qaddafi? Here’s a thought: It is exactly the same component in you and me that thinks I am better than person A and not as good as person B. It is the deeply entrenched program and social training to be better than – and one up on – the next person, rather than simply to excel for its own sweet sake. Ever diss someone, or judge someone harshly? Ever diminish someone or have someone seek to diminish you? Ever get seriously on your own case with “not good enough” about this or that? Underlying that behavior is the judgmental and separation program the culture has immersed you in since you were born. It is a way of looking at the world that is NOT universal. It is simply endemic in hierarchal societies – and unfortunately most of the earth’s human population lives in such societies. As I explain in detail in the Free Download here, the core of the mind training here is a sense of being separate from others – just like Mr. Qaddafi. What does this have to do with earthquakes and hurricanes? Well, when you aren’t mentally and emotionally trained from birth in how to experience yourself as connected to the world and are instead trained in feeling separate from and either better or worse than others, you are automatically denied the experience of a startlingly different and healthier sense of reality. This happens to include how you would view and relate to the natural world. We are not better or less than nature; we are in symbiotic connection with it. And when you cannot “live” that truth, then what takes hold is the false human belief that nature does not react to the human species in a major way. Otherwise that false belief would be a thought your mind would never entertain. In this other reality, there would be no Rick Perry’s or Sarah Palin’s denial of the human contribution to global warming (which has accelerated hurricanes) and even to earthquakes as we drain oil resources from the substrata, blow up the substrata by “fracking” for natural gas, dig deep wounds into the seabed, eliminate entire mountain ranges for mining purposes, and so forth. Such denial would literally be unthinkable. Without judgmental and separation conditioning by the society, there would also be no wars, only collective thinking on how best to raise the quality of life for humanity without harming other species or each other. What a paradise, you say? You bet…except that the gap to get there is immense and is the same that causes you to think person A is better or worse than person B – and causes Quaddifi to be Qaddafi , who is just a more extreme expression and example of that core separation mind training. How did that gap come about? The short version is that we innately very wise and sensitive human beings get diverted from our true selves by the nature of what we experience from childhood on. Few of us experience unconditional love, unconditional and open communications, and unfettered education in and permission for our feelings. Few of us are nurtured in a way that we retain the sense of connection with which we came in or in a manner that allows us to feel 100% safe, fully seen and appreciated, and free to express ourselves, including our emotions. Instead, we deal with the shock of not getting this nurturing experience by developing the coping mechanisms I detailed in my earlier blogs and by developing a chattering, judgmental mind infused in us by the society. We also develop strong negative emotions that look for outlets, such as venting on someone we judge against. All this separates us from our real selves – and so we try to make up a “self.” Psychologists call this the creation of the “Idealized Self” – a picture of ourselves that we think will work in the world and which we form up roughly from the age of 3 up to teenage years. The deep and wrenching problem is that this false self – this “double” as they call it in the East – is trained in competition between humans to be one up or one down – it is not trained in experiencing and creating connection. It is a purely reactive self-image that we want the world to salute – and beware if the world doesn’t. In fact, it somewhat does and at the same time most of us are busy jumping on other people’s cases and on our own and vice versa. Just think of how you behave in relationship when you think you’ve been slighted and you get a sense of how vulnerable you are when your self-image is challenged. This one-up, one-down stuff runs a huge amount of human affairs. It accounts for much of our anxiety and all of our repression and societal rip-offs. The gangs on Wall St. who rigged the political and financial system at the expense of hundreds of millions of people around the world, love the top dog role all that money and power brings. They are completely separate from the consequences of their behavior – basically disconnected in their mental realities. The bigger truth is that none of us get off lightly on the up-manship mentality. We clique up in HS with in and out groups. We huddle up ethnically and racially. We clique up politically and decide our team is better. We clique up over sports and as nation states – and God forbid a politician should suggest that the U.S. is not top dog, the absolute bestest and mostest and most innocent and most extraordinary do-gooding thing ever. As top dog we can justify bombing to death 2 or 3 million peasants in South Asia who don’t want us in their country, or destroying Iraq. That disconnected mind set has no bounds. The Nazis said the Germans were better than the Jews and, accordingly, had the right to mass murder them. Many Jews and most Israelis say the Jews are better than the Palestinians and therefore the Jews have the right to steal Palestinian land by force of arms and brutally suppress any resistance. You get it. Just think of the groups or people you put over others – and then recognize that the very process of your doing so is and defines separation thinking. Out of that destructive way of framing the world, you get every form of poverty and oppression as the” winners” constitute themselves as separate from those below on the class and cash scale and manipulate the system to their advantage. Or maybe you just strive to be cooler than everyone else. This way of thinking has a profound effect on individual lives. It is at the root of disrupted lives, anger, depression, and dysfunctional behavior of every stripe. It creates social injustice. And it is the root of the sense that your own life might not be working as well as you’d like. Fact is it can’t work as well as you’d like unless you retrain yourself to live and express from your authentic self and not from your programmed, separated, Idealized Self. It is the work of Life Coaches like myself to train people to get their false selves (and their childhood training in creating disconnection) out of the way so they can experience the fullness and joy and true success of a connected life. That leaves the only major question for any individual. When do I start? **** J ay Levin, the founder and former Editor-in Chief of the LA Weekly newspaper, has been a highly successful life and relationship coach and trainer for 12 years. He recently made the core of his work available as classes in Life Rehab and Mastery and in Relationships. See relationshipcounselingtoday.com Here is the original post: Hurricane Ilene, Earthquakes and Libya…..The Separation State of Humanity