• Should we tinker with plants genes. Includes a couple insightful letters the blogger, Pamela Ronald, received after writing an op-ed in the NY Times. She makes a couple great points about contradictions in what we consider organic agriculture and why we need to disentangle the ideas of genetically engineered crops and ownership of seed by big agribusiness: “So a small farmer that uses GE papaya to protect her crop from a devastating disease that cannot be controlled by any known method, developed in a university lab by a local Hawaiian using government funds (not for profit), cannot be certified organic.In contrast, a large grower that purchases Monsanto seed and plants a monoculture can be certified organic.”
• Moonshine or the kids? A controversial read from the NY Times that points out that poor families are just as prone to making poor financial decisions as the rich. Aid critic Bill Easterly has an interesting commentary on this article as well as change.org.
• Living in denial: why sensible people reject the truth. One of the New Scientists’ recent issues is devoted to exploring denialism, when people choose to believe something with little to no evidence over established “truths”. If you’re interested in this kind of thing you should check out Michael Spectre’s book Denialism and you can catch him in podcast form at Point of Inquiry.
• Though I’ve found that TED talks have been rather disappointing recently, here is a great one by Esther Duflo (whose research, incidentally, is talked about in the NY Times op-ed mentioned above):

Shenton turns out to have resolutely mainstream views on most issues. The 33-year-old American, ­originally from Virginia but now living and working in London, is happy with the work of Charles Darwin. He thinks the evidence for man-made global warming is strong, and he dismisses suggestions that his own government was involved with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Cool. This guy seems to have his head screwed on right. Evolution? Check. Global warming? Check. I wish it ended there:

…when Shenton rides his motorbike, he says it is not gravity that pins him to the road, but the rapid upward motion of a disc-shaped planet. Countries, according to him, spread across this flat world as they appear to do on a map, with Antarctica as a ring of mountains strung around the edge. And, yes, you can fall off.

Meet David Shenton, President of the Flat Earth Society. I didn’t even think this society existed anymore but David Adam covers this guy’s story on The Guardian’s website. Check it out. It’s worth it.

This polka based ballads are literally songs sung in Spanish about cocaine, marijuana, street toughs and the like.  This music dates back to the 1970′s when pioneers, Los Tigres Del Norte burst on the scene with such hits as Contrabando y Traicion” (“Contraband and Betrayal”) and “La Mafia Muere” (“The Mob Dies”).

Mexican Congress is trying to pass a law banning musicians to sing NarcoCorridos.  Essentially throwing singers in jail for singing any song in this genre. Ridiculous. Forget salsa music, this is now the most popular music in Mexico. Not only that, most of the music is recorded in the U.S. and is equally as huge in the southern states.

If the history of this music interests you and you want to read more about the rise of Los Tigres or about Chalino Sanchez-who got into a gun fight with an audience member during his own show (!) check out Elijah Wald’s book, “Narcocorrido A Journey Into The Music of Drugs, Guns and Geurillas“.

Also,  they made this sweet video for Air’s “Sing Sang Sung” off of last year’s Love 2 album. It’s a psychedelic trip back to the sixties, but like Air-it’s not too psychedelic, just perfect.

Lhasa passed away on New Year’s day from breast cancer.

Find out about her.

I know she changed many, many people’s lives.

Condolences to family and friends.

Here is part of Vincent Moon’s “FiumeNights” with Lhasa de Sela.

LHASA_LIVE IN MONTREAL 2009, part 6 from vincent moon / temporary areas on Vimeo.

LHASA_LIVE IN MONTREAL 2009, part 2 from vincent moon / temporary areas on Vimeo.

Dublabs.com is also amazing. They are a web radio collective that plays awesome music, takes awesome photos, make awesome live videos.  Both tUnE-YaRdS and dublabs are showcased in this video below:

tUnE-YaRdS “Hatari” from dublab on Vimeo.