It’s all connected

02007-05-28 | Environment, News

What if climate destabilization is the business plan? | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist
This Washington Post story suggests that the airline industry is not being led by dumb people who just don’t get it. No, the darling of the industry, the best and the brightest, the folks heading the industry vanguard, aren’t stupid. They get it. They just don’t care. They believe that personal wealth will protect them and their children and grandchildren.

I don’t think that attitude is limited to the airline industry and climate change. It is old-fashioned thinking that is deeply ingrained in our culture. Who cares what happens over there – if it makes my life over here more comfortable. Just think of some real estate developments or strip mining and there are many more examples.. Well, the world is shrinking and what we do over there will affect our life over here… it catches up with us eventually.

Take this story for example. The author comments on a National Geographic story about melting glaciers and writes:

A point which I personally hadn’t considered is the widespread fallout of mountain glacier melting:

And the millions of people in countries like Bolivia, Peru, and India who now depend on meltwater from mountain glaciers for irrigation, drinking, and hydropower could be left high and dry.

Our CO2 output over here will endanger the drinking water supply of millions of people – over there…

Nine Years Ago

02007-05-27 | Music

On June 2nd our compilation ‘Rumba Collection 1992-1997’ will be in the stores. There are songs from our albums ‘Solo Para Ti’, ‘The Hours between Night + Day’, and ‘Opium’, and a couple of previously unreleased versions.

There is a funny story about the new ‘Speed Merengue’ version of ‘Barcelona Nights’. A few years ago I flew to Miami to play guitar on a song for Nestor Torres, a fantastic flute player. I spent the evening before the recording with the producer of the song, driving down Ocean Boulevard. We were listening to latin radio stations and they were playing these really fast Merengue songs that were very popular. I called it ‘Speed Merengue’, which had the producer and his friend laughing hard. I told them it was the latin version of Speed Metal music. They said it was really something to watch people dance to that music, but we didn’t go to a club to find out that night. Anyway, I started singing ‘Barcelona Nights’ to the fast Merengue rhythms coming from the radio and decided that I should record a ‘Speed Merengue’ version of the song. When Epic asked me to put together this compilation I had a chance to release the song. See how you can dance to it!