Greg

Legendary Rocker Neil Young Will Release an Entire Album to Boycott Monsanto

Rock and roll has always been steeped in defiance of authority, and it has also been used as a tool for social change and protest for decades as well.

While most musicians choose to protest topics like illegal wars and occupations, or specific problems and injustices in certain songs, rarely if ever do they devote an entire album to protesting a single corporate entity.

But that’s exactly what one legendary rock star is planning to do by mid-June 2015 with the release of a new album titled ‘The Monsanto Years.’

Neil Young Boycott Against Monsanto Continues

First dipping his toes into the water by announcing a switch to organic cotton t-shirts and a boycott of GMO cotton ones, Neil Young, the rock star in question, is now going all-in with his new LP.

The album will feature Willie Nelson’s sons Lukas and Micah as well according to this report from Rolling Stone, and it will be released on June 16 th with an accompanying tour set to kick off on July 5 th at the Summerfest in Milwaukee, Wis., titled the Rebel Content Tour.

Nelson is a co-founder of Farm Aid, a concert series which helps support small farmers, the very kind that have been under attack from Monsanto via lawsuits and false promises attached to their genetically modified seeds and agricultural chemicals.

Nelson’s sons currently are members of a band called Promise of the Real, which will join Young for the album.

Among the Promise of the Real’s newest tracks are titles like ‘Seeds,’ ‘Rock Starbucks,’ and ‘Monsanto Years,’ which Rolling Stone reported could be part of the joint album especially considering their titles which seem to be hand-crafted for inclusion on ‘The Monsanto Years.’

Previously, Young has also called for a boycott against Starbucks for being a part of the Grocery Manufacturers Association which sued the state of Vermont over its GMO labeling law.

The Starbucks boycott was met by a considerable amount of media coverage, showcasing yet again the power of the celebrity in finally bringing certain issues to the mainstream.

For more information or for Young’s upcoming tour dates, you can check out the article here. Also, check out the video below of a secret show Young played with Promise of the Real in California on April 16, via the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

Sometimes Newer Isn’t Always Better

Some tools are just timeless classics. We often assume that a more modern version of a tool is superior to some of the older, but tried and true, models. This isn’t always the case, as you can see here.

The scythe is:

  • Inexpensive
  • Quiet
  • Faster at clearing tall weeds
  • Badass

VS

The weedwacker, which is:

  • Incredibly noisy, contributing to noise pollution
  • Gas powered, which contributes to air pollution
  • Slower
  • More expensive
  • Harder to repair

Let’s not assume newer is better. Give the classics another try.

1,000-year-old onion and garlic eye remedy kills MRSA

A 1,000-year-old treatment for eye infections could hold the key to killing antibiotic-resistant superbugs, experts have said.

Scientists recreated a 9th Century Anglo-Saxon remedy using onion, garlic and part of a cow’s stomach.

They were “astonished” to find it almost completely wiped out staphylococcus aureus, otherwise known as MRSA.

Their findings will be presented at a national microbiology conference.

The remedy was found in Bald’s Leechbook – an old English manuscript containing instructions on various treatments held in the British Library.

Anglo-Saxon expert Dr Christina Lee, from the University of Nottingham, translated the recipe for an “eye salve”, which includes garlic, onion or leeks, wine and cow bile.

Experts from the university’s microbiology team recreated the remedy and then tested it on large cultures of MRSA.

Tom Feilden, science editor Today Programme

Analysis

The leechbook is one of the earliest examples of what might loosely be called a medical textbook

It seems Anglo-Saxon physicians may actually have practiced something pretty close to the modern scientific method, with its emphasis on observation and experimentation.

Bald’s Leechbook could hold some important lessons for our modern day battle with anti-microbial resistance.

In each case, they tested the individual ingredients against the bacteria, as well as the remedy and a control solution.

They found the remedy killed up to 90% of MRSA bacteria and believe it is the effect of the recipe rather than one single ingredient.

Dr Freya Harrison said the team thought the eye salve might show a “small amount of antibiotic activity”.

“But we were absolutely blown away by just how effective the combination of ingredients was,” she said.

Dr Lee said there are many similar medieval books with treatments for what appear to be bacterial infections.

She said this could suggest people were carrying out detailed scientific studies centuries before bacteria were discovered.

The team’s findings will be presented at the Annual Conference of the Society for General Microbiology, in Birmingham.

Bald’s eye salve

Equal amounts of garlic and another allium (onion or leek), finely chopped and crushed in a mortar for two minutes.

Add 25ml (0.87 fl oz) of English wine – taken from a historic vineyard near Glastonbury.

Dissolve bovine salts in distilled water, add and then keep chilled for nine days at 4C.

France decrees new rooftops must be covered in plants or solar panels

Rooftops on new buildings built in commercial zones in France must either be partially covered in plants or solar panels, under a law approved on Thursday.

Green roofs have an isolating effect, helping reduce the amount of energy needed to heat a building in winter and cool it in summer.

They also retain rainwater, thus helping reduce problems with runoff, while favouring biodiversity and giving birds a place to nest in the urban jungle, ecologists say.

The law approved by parliament was more limited in scope than initial calls by French environmental activists to make green roofs that cover the entire surface mandatory on all new buildings.

The Socialist government convinced activists to limit the scope of the law to commercial buildings.

The law was also made less onerous for businesses by requiring only part of the roof to be covered with plants, and giving them the choice of installing solar panels to generate electricity instead.

Green roofs are popular in Germany and Australia, and Canada’s city of Toronto adopted a by-law in 2009 mandating them in industrial and residential buildings.