Monday January 30, 2012

'Gunpoint' lets you hack into buildings, computers and guns

Duncan Geere
Wired.co.uk

Gunpoint is a slapstick infiltration indie game that tasks you with sneaking into carefully-guarded facilities, securing data, and high-tailing it out again without getting shot.

You're a freelance spy and you've been given a set of missions. In order to complete them, you get to use an arsenal of tools to rewire buildings, crash through plate-glass windows and endlessly confuse security guards.
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Monday January 30, 2012

How Google's New Privacy Policy Could Affect You

Leslie Meredith and TechNewsDaily
Scientific American

Google will merge data from the products you use and then analyze it to make new assumptions

You’re on the way to a meeting. Traffic seems to be slowing.

A text comes in: “You’re going to be late. Take the next exit for alternate route.” It’s from Google.
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Monday January 30, 2012

Supermarket Meat Comes From Sick Animals

Tom Philpott
Mother Jones

At Maverick Farms, we keep a flock of chickens for eggs. It seems axiomatic to me that the happier and healthier the birds are, the better the eggs will be.

So if a salesperson showed up pitching a product that would, say, boost egg production by 5 percent, while making our birds sick, but just healthy enough to keep laying, I'd send him packing.
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Monday January 30, 2012

After the Battle Against SOPA—What's Next?

Lawrence Lessig
The Nation

January 18, 2012, could prove to be an incredibly important day, and not just for copyright policy or the Internet.

On that day, two critically important things happened. First, with its 6-2 decision in Golan v. Holder, the Supreme Court shut the door, finally and firmly, on any opportunity to meaningfully challenge a copyright statute constitutionally.
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Monday January 30, 2012

Do Harsh Pot Laws Create a Dangerous Drinking Culture? 5 Reasons to Get Stoned Instead of Drunk

Kristen Gwynne
AlyerNet

Myths about marijuana convince people that alcohol is safer, but science shows pot is the healthier choice.

Alcohol kills approximately 70,000 people per year. Prescription pills, which have helped overdose become the leading cause of accidental death in America, result in more than 20,000 deaths per year.
Marijuana has never killed anybody.
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Monday January 30, 2012

Mysteries of Data Pool 3 give Rupert Murdoch a whole new headache

The Guardian

The arrest of four Sun journalists threatens to open a fresh phase of the scandal surrounding News International

On Saturday morning, the police arrested four journalists who have worked for Rupert Murdoch. For a while, it looked as though these were yet more arrests of people related to the News of the World but then it became clear that this was something much more significant.
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Monday January 30, 2012

How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’

George Lakey
Waging Nonviolence

Scandinavian workers realized that, electoral “democracy” was stacked against them, so nonviolent direct action was needed to exert the power for change.

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice.
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Monday January 30, 2012

European Parliament Official In Charge Of ACTA Quits, And Denounces The 'Masquerade' Behind ACTA

wow dept
TechDirt

This is interesting. Kader Arif, the "rapporteur" for ACTA, has quit that role in disgust over the process behind getting the EU to sign onto ACTA.

A rapporteur is a person "appointed by a deliberative body to investigate an issue." However, it appears his investigation of ACTA didn't make him very pleased:
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Monday January 30, 2012

Robin Hood Tax Gains Traction

Adbusters

US and UK still the holdouts.

As Occupy gears up for the American Spring, our European counterparts will soon have one OWS victory to put in their cap. In France this past week, lawmakers put their backing behind a bill for a Robin Hood (Tobin) Tax.
read full story

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Monday January 30, 2012

FBI developing social networking spy app

Antony Savvas
Computerworld UK

Application would crawl Twitter and Facebook

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is planning to develop an application that can track the public's postings to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, in order to aid how it predicts and reacts to criminal behaviour, including public disorder and terrorism.
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Monday January 30, 2012

Doll 'protesters' present small problem for Russian police

Miriam Elder
The Guardian

Police in Siberian city ask prosecutors to investigate legality of protest involving display of toy figures holding miniature placards

Russian police don't take kindly to opposition protesters – even if they're 5cm high and made of plastic.
read full story

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Monday January 30, 2012

Eyewitness Identification Has 50% Error Rate? How We Throw People in Prison Based on False ID

Patricia J. Williams
The Nation

From Sacco and Vanzetti to Troy Davis, witnesses to crime scenes get it wrong too often. So why did the Supreme Court just make it harder to challenge such evidence in court?

“We see what we want to see,” my grandmother used to say. This insight visited me recently after I ran across the mall chasing a woman I thought was my cousin.
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Monday January 30, 2012

Part 1: Migration - a Product of Free-Market Reforms

David Bacon
Americas Program

A political alliance is developing between countries with a labor export policy and the corporations who use that labor in the global north.

Many countries sending migrants to the developed world depend on remittances to finance social services and keep the lid on social discontent over poverty and joblessness, while continuing to make huge debt payments.
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Monday January 30, 2012

Inside Apple's Hidden Factories. Finally.

Kiera Butler
Mother Jones

Almost everyone I know owns something made by Apple, and while most of us spend a fair bit of time obsessing about our gadgets—which apps are worth paying for?

Is Siri useful or annoying?—rarely do we talk about where they came from.
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Monday January 30, 2012

Castration for Sex Offenders Triumphs

Pavol Stracansky
Inter Press Service

The Czech government has defied calls from international human rights groups to stop the "degrading" practice of surgically castrating sex offenders.

Announcing a raft of new health care legislation earlier this month, Prime Minister Petr Necas said the government would not be putting an end to the controversial practice, defending castration as an efficient method of stopping recidivism among sexual offenders.
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Monday January 30, 2012

Privacy vs. digital age: Where’s the balance?

John Fontana
ZDNet

What has become of privacy?
There was a time when just drawing the window shades ensured a private sanctuary.

But the digital age is less shade and more glaring light, and it is shining brightly on personal data.
read full story

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Monday January 30, 2012

McDonald’s discovers social media can backfire when people hate you 56

Jess Zimmerman
Grist

When McDonald’s tried to launch the #McDStories Twitter campaign, they clearly envisioned a bunch of fond memories from Big Mac lovers, interspersed with behind-the-scenes glimpses into the McDonald’s “food”-making process.

(They kicked it off with a link to “some of the hard-working people dedicated to providing McDs with quality food every day.”)
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Monday January 30, 2012

Why Spend Billions on an Unnecessary Nuclear Weapons Facility?

Dana Liebelson
Truthout

By all accounts, the cold war came to an end more than 20 years ago.

Gorbachev rose to power, intermediate-range missiles were eliminated, the Berlin Wall toppled and the Iron Curtain lifted. Unfortunately, it looks like no one told the Department of Energy (DOE).
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Monday January 30, 2012

Apple malware became more sophisticated in 2011

John E Dunn
techworld

Rogue antivirus targets Macs for first time

Malware aimed at Macs is still insignificant compared to Windows but Apple users should to pay careful attention to the growing threat from social engineering attacks, a report has found.
read full story

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Monday January 30, 2012

Three hours' extra work a day doubles risk of depression

Nina Lakhani
Independent

People who work for 11 or more hours a day are twice as likely to suffer from major depression as those working the standard eight-hour day, research has shown.

More than 2,000 middle-aged civil servants were studied for nearly six years and a robust link was found between regular overtime and depression – even after factoring in risks related to lifestyle, physical health and alcohol.
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Monday January 30, 2012

Orange to provide Wikipedia free in Middle East and Africa

The Guardian

Phone operator to waive data charges for users in Middle East and Africa to access Wikipedia on mobile devices

Orange has struck a deal with Wikipedia to make its digital encyclopaedia available free of data charges to millions of mobile phone users across the Middle East and Africa.
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Friday January 27, 2012

Autism can be detected in babies, say scientists

Press Association

Researchers used sensors placed on babies' scalps to measure the brain's response when the infants were shown faces

Signs of autism can be detected in six-month-old babies by measuring their brain activity, research has shown.
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Friday January 27, 2012

Arab Spring Gives Way to Military Chill

Cam McGrath
Inter Press Service

When Egypt’s dictator was ousted during a popular uprising last February, the military leaders who assumed control of the country pledged to "protect the revolution" and ensure a swift transition to civilian rule within six months.

One year later, the ruling generals appear to have hijacked the transition to preserve the military institution’s economic autonomy and secure their own political future.
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Friday January 27, 2012

Britain facing boom in dishonesty

Andrew Grice
Independent

New study reveals dramatic decline in private integrity; Public trust in politicians and business leaders hits fresh low

The British people are becoming less honest and their trust in government and business leaders has fallen to a new low amid fears that the nation is heading for an "integrity crisis".
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Friday January 27, 2012

Rooted in Politics, Austerity Worsens the Greek Tragedy

Paul Krugman
Krugman & Co.

The Washington Post recently published a heartrending story on the suffering being imposed on ordinary Greeks. So much for the doctrine of expansionary austerity.

I do have a small bone to pick, however.
read full story

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Friday January 27, 2012

Anonymous Tricks Bystanders Into Attacking Justice Department

Quinn Norton
Wired

After Wednesday’s unprecedented unified online yelp against SOPA and PIPA, Thursday saw a new milestone: the first direct and public activist malware from Anonymous.

A version of Anonymous’ voluntary botnet software, known as LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Canon), was modified to make it not so voluntary, drafting unwary bystanders, journalists and even anons who don’t support DDoS tactics into attacks on the U.S.
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Friday January 27, 2012

EU to enforce 24-hour data breach disclosure

John E Dunn
Techworld

Draft regulations due this week

Companies suffering data breaches will have 24 hours to tell the relevant authorities or risk legal action and large fines, EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding has confirmed.
read full story

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Friday January 27, 2012

Once they were blind, now they see. Patients treated with cells from human embryo

Steve Connor
Independent

Controversial medical breakthrough restores vision – now doctors hope to repeat the success

Two blind people have shown signs of being able to see again – despite having incurable eye disease – following a revolutionary operation involving the transplant of stem cells derived from a human embryo.
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Wednesday January 25, 2012

Google user data to be merged across all sites under contentious plan

The Guardian

New privacy policy means Google could log browsing habits on YouTube or Google+ to sell targeted ads in Gmail or search

Google is under fire for plans to collect data on individual users across all of its websites and merge the information into a single profile that can be used to alter the person's search results and target them with advertising and services.
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Wednesday January 25, 2012

Deep impact: The toll your protein takes on the Earth

Christy Harrison
Grist

Now that we’ve touched on how much protein we need, let’s talk about how the production process behind high protein foods impacts the environment.

First, the big picture: While meat consumption has gone down slightly here in the U.S. in recent years, the rest of the world appears to be on the opposite track.
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Wednesday January 25, 2012

Who Buys All Those Google Ads? An Infographic Breakdown

John C Abell
Wired

Google cleared $37.9 billion in 2011 revenue, which equates to more than $3 billion a month, mostly from those little text ads next to your search results that neither you or anybody you know will admit to ever clicking on.
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Wednesday January 25, 2012

AntiSec hack US government online security website OnGuardOnline.gov

John Ribeiro
Techworld

Hackers threatened further retaliation if controversial legislation is passed in the US

Hackers under the AntiSec banner appeared to have hacked the website of OnGuardOnline.gov, the US federal government's online security website, in protest against controversial legislation yesterday.
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Wednesday January 25, 2012

US Supreme Court rules GPS tracking requires a warrant

Paul Marks
New SCientist

Stand down those GPS jammers, Americans. The justices of the US Supreme Court have ruled that the police will indeed continue to need a search warrant to install a GPS tracker on a suspect's car.

The decision means police cannot treat GPS tracking as a simple extension of "tailing" someone, which does not require a warrant.
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Wednesday January 25, 2012

The Corporate State Will Be Broken

Chris Hedges
Truthdig

I spent Friday morning sitting on a wooden bench in a fourth-floor courtroom in the New York Criminal Court in Manhattan.

I was waiting to be sentenced for “disturbing the peace” and “refusing to obey a lawful order” during an Occupy demonstration in front of Goldman Sachs in November.
read full story

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Wednesday January 25, 2012

Revealed: the secret to an enduring sex life - cups of tea

Celia Dodd
Independent

Making love with a long-term partner is less about sex toys and snatched passion and more about sharing time, intimate moments – and cups of tea, says the marital therapist Andrew G Marshall. He explains how couples can keep the spark alive

Sex life a bit lacking? Take heart: the answer lies not in scary-sounding toys or tantric techniques, but a nice cup of tea.
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Wednesday January 25, 2012

Part of Earth’s mantle shown to be conductive under high pressure and temperatures

MaxWild
KipNews

Scientists studying the rotation of the Earth have long known that our planet doesn’t have a perfect spin.

Most models researchers have developed however agree that in order for the planet to wobble the way it does, the mantle would have to respond to the magnetic tug of the core. The problem with this though, is that the mantle is made mostly of rock, not metal, which means it’s not supposed to be conductive.
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Wednesday January 25, 2012

How Can Communities Defend Themselves From Corporate Interests?

Rose Aguilar
Truthout

Why isn't activism working? It's not for lack of trying, says self-described recovering environmental attorney Thomas Linzey.

The environmental community has created a slew of environmental laws and launched an alphabet soup of environmental regulatory agencies, but what do they really do?
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Wednesday January 25, 2012

Anti-employee Control Fraud

William K. Black
New Economic Perspectives

Apple has released a report on working conditions in its suppliers’ factories, highlighting a form of control fraud (fraud in which the head of a company subverts it for personal gain) that criminology has identified but rarely discussed.

I write overwhelmingly about accounting control fraud because it drives our recurrent, intensifying financial crises.
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Wednesday January 25, 2012

Drug guidelines suggest lighter sentences for 'social dealers'

Alan Travis
The Guardian

People who buy drugs to share with friends could avoid prison under guidance that also recognises medical use of cannabis

Recreational drug users who naively buy small quantities to share with their friends could avoid jail under sentencing guidelines for drug offences published on Tuesday.
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Posted in: by bubblejam at 08:16 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Wednesday January 25, 2012

EU retailers must take back used electronic equipment without charge

Jennifer Baker
Techworld

New EU law will force electronic stores to process waste electronic equipment

The European Parliament has apporved plans to force large electronic retailers to take back old equipment.
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Posted in: by bubblejam at 08:14 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Wednesday January 25, 2012

A slice of Britain: Thousands flock to crown king of pigeons

Emily Dugan
Independent

Fanciers from across the country pack into Blackpool's Winter Gardens for their annual show, but many fear the traditionally working-class hobby has become too high-flying for its own good

Pigeon number 3007 is wearing a superior expression.
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Tuesday January 24, 2012

Mayans Demand Voice in "Doomsday Tourism" Boom

Emilio Godoy
Inter Press Service

The indigenous people of southeast Mexico are demanding to be included in the official programmes planned for 2012 to take advantage of the world's interest in the "Mayan prophecy", while at the same time fearing a "doomsday tourism" that could damage and contaminate their sacred sites.
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 08:56 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Tuesday January 24, 2012

Magic mushrooms may help with depression, say leading scientists

Sarah Boseley
The Guardian

Active ingredient could allow sufferers to relive happier times, says team including former government adviser David Nutt

A drug derived from magic mushrooms could help people with depression by enabling them to relive positive and happy moments of their lives, according to scientists including the former government drug adviser, Professor David Nutt.
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Tuesday January 24, 2012

Is Your Garden Pesticide Killing Bees?

Tom Philpott
Mother Jones

For a while now, I've been writing about the threat to honeybee populations from Bayer's neonicotinoid pesticides, which are synthetic derivatives of nicotine that attack insects' nervous systems.

Here's last week's post on new USDA-funded research that indicts Bayer's product.
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Tuesday January 24, 2012

The Age of Consequences

David Abram
Adbusters

Gaia in turmoil.

Today, as Earth shivers into a fever – the planetary climate rapidly warming as oil-drunk civilization burns up millions of years of stored sunlight in the course of a few decades – clearly the felt temper of the atmosphere is shifting, becoming more extreme.

As local weather patterns fluctuate and transform in every part of the globe, the excessive moodiness of the medium affects the mental climate in which creatures confront one another, lending its instability to human affairs as well.
read full story

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Tuesday January 24, 2012

Thousands of women could be at risk from 'silent Thalidomide'

Sarah Morrison, Jaymi McCann
Independent

A drug intended to prevent miscarriage is blamed for causing cancer in the daughters – and possibly even granddaughters – of women who took it decades ago.

Tens of thousands of British families are to be asked if they are victims of a drug given to pregnant women which can cause fatal illness in the second, and possibly even third, generations.
read full story

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Tuesday January 24, 2012

Gang pulls off $5.2 million bank job via remote access

John E Dunn
Techworld

Glaring IT weaknesses scupper South African bank

Criminals in South Africa have carried off a cunning remote access heist that has left one of the country's banks nursing a stunning $5.2 million (42 million Rand) loss.
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Tuesday January 24, 2012

The SECRET FACEBOOK OF POWER used by global premiers at G20

Anna Leach
The Register

Need to be a major-nation finance minister to get on

"It wasn't secret, we just didn't need to tell anyone about it" said Sid Heaslip, Programme manager at Opentext discussing the TOP SECRET FACEBOOK OF POWER that his company made for the G20 summit in 2010, exclusively for the leaders of the world's most powerful nations to network with.
read full story

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Tuesday January 24, 2012

Undercover police had children with activists

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
The Guardian

Disclosure likely to intensify controversy over long-running police operation to infiltrate and sabotage protest groups

Two undercover police officers secretly fathered children with political campaigners they had been sent to spy on and later disappeared completely from the lives of their offspring, the Guardian can reveal.
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Tuesday January 24, 2012

Islamist Parties to Abide by Camp David – For Now

Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
Inter Press Service

The Islamist landslide in recently concluded parliamentary polls has led to fears in some quarters of an impending paradigm shift in Egyptian foreign policy.

Most local analysts, however, dismiss the likelihood of any sea changes, especially when it comes to the sensitive issues of Palestine and the Camp David peace agreement between Egypt and Israel.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

Sugar High: The Dark History and Nasty Methods Used to Feed Our Sweet Tooth

Jill Richardson
AlterNet

Sugar is now 20 percent of the American diet, but it's not just our health that suffers from its pervasiveness.

Americans think an awful lot about sucrose -- table sugar -- but only in certain ways. We crave it and dream up novel ways to combine it with other ingredients to produce delectable foods; and we worry that we eat too much of it and that it is making us unhealthy or fat.
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Sunday January 22, 2012

Iranian coder faces execution 'for building smut websites'

John Leyden
The Register

Supreme court backs death penalty for photo upload tool

A programmer faces imminent execution in Iran after the country's supreme court upheld his conviction for "developing and promoting pornographic websites".
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 10:02 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 22, 2012

No Debate: Kids Can Learn By Arguing

Melinda Burns
Miller-McCune

Columbia professor Deanna Kuhn says teachers should foster some debate to help kids learn the lost skill of thinking critically.

Let’s not “agree to disagree,” says Deanna Kuhn. The Columbia University professor of psychology and education wants to bring back serious debate in America — in sixth grade, if not sooner.
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Sunday January 22, 2012

7 Foods You Should Never Eat

Drew Kaplan
Health Freedom Alliance

Food scientists are shedding light on items loaded with toxins and chemicals–and simple swaps for a cleaner diet and supersized health.

Clean eating means choosing fruits, vegetables, and meats that are raised, grown, and sold with minimal processing.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

Bradley Manning, Washington and Civilian Deaths

Chase Madar
Counterpunch

Who in their right mind wants to talk about, think about, or read a short essay about… civilian war casualties?

What a bummer, this topic, especially since our Afghan, Iraq, and other ongoing wars were advertised as uplifting acts of philanthropy: wars to spread security, freedom, democracy, human rights, gender equality, the rule of law, etc.
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 09:56 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 22, 2012

NASA Relents: Apogee of Fear, First Sci-Fi Film Shot in Space, Will Be Released

Matt Blum
Wired

Good news! Following many reports over the last few days that the first-ever science fiction film to actually be filmed in space was being kept from release by NASA, there is now word that the space agency has relented and that Apogee of Fear will see the light of day after all.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

Insomnia: Are we sleepwalking into a crisis?

Jeremy Laurance
Independent

A quarter of us have problems sleeping – and our 10 million prescriptions for pills aren't helping

We are a nation of insomniacs. One in four people is dissatisfied with their sleep and one in 10 suffers from a sleep disorder.
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 09:51 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 22, 2012

Rick Falkvinge: the Swedish radical leading the fight over web freedoms

Carole Cadwalladr in Stockholm
The Observer

The tech entrepreneur launched the Pirate party to fight online censorship. Now, it is Europe's fastest growing political group

With his polished shoes, and formal three-piece pinstriped suit, Rick Falkvinge looks like the kind of man you might meet to discuss your tax affairs, or the finer points of your investment portfolio.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

PC sales drop in Europe as consumers lose interest

John E Dunn
Techworld

Mobile devices move in

European consumers are rapidly losing interest in PCs according to new figures from IDC which show heavy sales falls during 2011.

The numbers suggest that the death of the PC (including on operating systems other than Windows) has not after all been greatly exaggerated.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

The chips that are good for your health

Steve Connor
Independent

Pharmacy to sell edible microchips that will alert doctors if patients are not taking right medicines.

An edible microchip that records the precise details of a patient's pill regime will be available in Britain by the end of year following a commercial deal that opens the door to an era of digital medicines.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

Scientists Discovered New Carnivorous Brazilian plant

Wikileaks

In the kind of discovery seldom seen in modern biology, scientists say they have discovered a carnivorous Brazilian plant that uses sticky, subterranean leaves to catch and digest worms—an evolutionary strategy for acquiring nutrients that has never before been observed in the plant kingdom.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

China’s Reforestation Programs: Big Success or Just an Illusion?

jon r. luoma
e360

China has undertaken ambitious reforestation initiatives that have increased its forest cover dramatically in the last decade. But scientists are now raising questions about just how effective these grand projects will turn out to be.

In China, major environmental degradation caused by deforestation was apparent even 2,000 years ago, when the great waterway once simply called “The River” was visibly transformed.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

Future Possibilities For OWS

Adbusters

An interview with Adbusters Editor-in-Chief Kalle Lasn.

Earlier this month, reporters from Canadian Business sat down with Adbusters Editor-in-Chief Kalle Lasn to ask his thoughts on what Occupy might look like in 2012. Here’s what he had to say.
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 06:43 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 22, 2012

Politicians Kissing Babies: A Short History

Dave Gilson
Mother Jones

From Andrew Jackson to Barack Obama, a cheeky timeline of a revered and reviled American political custom.

Richard Nixon thought that doing it would make him look like a "jerk." Geraldine Ferraro said it spread germs and lipstick, but she did it anyway. Andrew Jackson suckered his secretary of war into doing it for him.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

Understanding the US Trade Imbalance

Will Van’t Veld
The Epoch Times

Shale gas, devalued currency could help improve the picture

Could the American economy finally be turning the corner? Private sector hiring is up and some commentators are even predicting that the beleaguered housing market has begun to strengthen.
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 06:38 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 22, 2012

25,000 troops and police to protect London during Olympics

Agence France-Presse

Around 25,000 troops and police officers will be deployed in London during the Olympic Games to prevent attacks, a Scotland Yard official told AFP on Thursday.

“The whole purpose of our policing operation is to try and deter terrorists, to deter those wish to do ill to the Games,” Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison said during a security demonstration on the River Thames.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

Facebook registers mysterious fBoriGin domain names

Kelly Fiveash
The Register

Is Zuck's network about to get in online family tree game?

Facebook registered a curious bunch of domain names yesterday with the moniker fBoriGin.

It's unclear what the domain names, spotted by blog ubergizmo, will be used for.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

SOPA Getting a Face-Lift: How Evil Will It Be?

David Kravets
Wired

The House version of the Stop Online Piracy Act, the proposed anti-piracy legislation that drew a planned and widespread internet revolt Wednesday, is likely to undergo a radical overhaul to muster passage.

The measure, along with the Senate’s proposed Protect IP Act, faces an uncertain future given newfound widespread legislative opposition to the proposals in their current form.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

The World War on Democracy

John Pilger
Truthout

Lisette Talate died the other day. I remember a wiry, fiercely intelligent woman who masked her grief with a determination that was a presence.

She was the embodiment of people's resistance to the war on democracy.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

Since when did obedience become the epitome of good parenting?

Annalisa Barbieri
The Guardian

We all want impeccably behaved children, right? Well maybe not, says Annalisa Barbieri. Here, she questions why there is such a fashion for taming our youngsters

Two stories caught my attention recently. One was a report that breastfed babies are more challenging in their behaviour and the other was about a new book called French Children Don't Throw Food: about how French children apparently behave really well, in restaurants and just generally.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

How the Drug War Spread Across the Entire World

Emily Dickinson
Washington Daily

Colombia’s incredible turnaround strategy has become a rare success story in the drug war, as well as its most formidable brand and export. It is, however, problematic.

The sun was barely setting over a colonial villa in rural central Colombia as Álvaro Uribe Vélez, by any measure Colombia’s most transformative modern president, recited lines of poetry to a small crowd beside a courtyard fountain.
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Sunday January 22, 2012

Scientific Evidence that the Entire Universe Is a Holographic Projection around the Earth

MaxWild
Kipnews

German scientists have been trying to understand why theirequipment that measures gravitational waves has been picking up a particular sound.

One possible answer that they’ve come up with is that the entire universe is a holographic illusion:
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

Implant danger extends to all medical devices

Jeremy Laurance
Independent

Expert warns that European kitemark system is flawed and does not protect patients

The scandal of substandard breast implants placed in thousands of British women is symptomatic of a wider regulatory failure affecting all medical devices, an expert on patient safety said yesterday.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

GMO’s Move Out

Ignacio Chapela
Counterpunch

This week BASF announced that it is moving its GMOs out of Europe. Will the English-speaking media lose its nerve and write about it?

Based on past experience, my wager goes to the habitual policy of silence, and I expect that the news will continue all but unrecorded in English. Most of us will not celebrate as we should.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

Egypt Follows Israel, Eyeing U.S. Aid Without Pre-Conditions

Thalif Deen
Inter Press Service

The United States, the largest provider of military aid to Israel, has rarely, if ever, succeeded in using its leverage to get the Jewish state to abandon its continued repression of Palestinians or halt illegal settlements in occupied territories.

Since 1949, and through 2010, Israel has received a staggering 105 billion dollars in U.S. aid, of which 61.3 billion dollars went as outright military grants - gratis and non-repayable.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

Apple's mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement

Ed Bott
ZDNert

I read EULAs so you don’t have to. I’ve spent years reading end user license agreements, EULAs, looking for little gotchas or just trying to figure out what the agreement allows and doesn’t allow.

I have never seen a EULA as mind-bogglingly greedy and evil as Apple’s EULA for its new ebook authoring program.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

Marijuana doesn’t harm the lung function, study found

Wikileaks

Smoking a joint once a week or a bit more apparently doesn’t harm the lungs, suggests a 20-year study that bolsters evidence that marijuana doesn’t do the kind of damage tobacco does.

The results, from one of the largest and longest studies on the health effects of marijuana, are hazier for heavy users — those who smoke two or more joints daily for several years.
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Sunday January 22, 2012

Abramovich, Berezovsky and the real story of Russia's lost billions

Alexander Lebedev
The Guardian

The glitz of two squabbling multimillionaires grabs the headlines but distracts from the high price ordinary Russians have paid

It has been bizarre to watch, from the safe distance of Moscow, how the British press has reported the court case between Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

Why Robot Maids Won’t Do the Dishes

Steven Pinker
Miller-McCune

How hard is it to design a humanlike robot? Harvard’s Steven Pinker highlights how simple human accomplishments represent formidable robotics challenges.

People often think of psychology as the study of the weird, the abnormal, the striking — of prodigies and psychotics, saints and serial killers.
read full story

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Sunday January 22, 2012

4 New Ideas for a Bicycle Planet

Kate Malongowski, Jennifer Kaye
Yes Magazine

A school bus pedaled by kids, the world’s largest bike-share, and other innovations that are changing how we cycle.

Dutch School Bus is a Bicycle Built for Ten

Some lucky Dutch schoolchildren can now put their seemingly endless energy to good use, by powering their own school bus. Dutch company De Café Racer produced an eco-friendly bicycle-bus that is steered by an adult and ­pedaled by up to 10 children.
read full story

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Friday January 20, 2012

Why Did Life Begin to Produce Oxygen?

MaxWild
KipNews

A turning point in the history of life occurred 2 billion to 3 billion years ago with the unprecedented appearance and dramatic rise of molecular oxygen.

Now researchers report they have identified an enzyme that was the first – or among the first – to generate molecular oxygen on Earth.
read full story

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Friday January 20, 2012

Composer Seeks to Turn His Hallucinations Into Music

Olivia Solon
Wired

Alexis Kirke will create music based on hallucinations in Insight, his upcoming iPad-fueled audiovisual composition.

Composer Alexis Kirke aims to turn his hallucinations into sound live in front of an audience, accompanied by a flute. The audiovisual composition, called Insight, uses an iPad camera app designed to help express hallucinatory disturbances.
read full story

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Friday January 20, 2012

Your iPhone Was Built, In Part, By 13 Year-Olds Working 16 Hours A Day For 70 Cents An Hour

Henry Blodget
Business Insider

We love our iPhones and iPads.
We love the prices of our iPhones and iPads.
We love the super-high profit margins of Apple, Inc., the maker of our iPhones and iPads.
read full story

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Friday January 20, 2012

The Lull Before the Russian Storm?

Boris Kagarlitsky
Counterpunch

The global political crisis — a natural outcome of the continuing economic crisis — finally made it to Russia in December before getting derailed by the country’s traditional hibernation in early January.

Nothing ever happens in Russia between Dec. 31 and Jan. 13 — and particularly not a revolution.
read full story

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Friday January 20, 2012

Autofocus and the importance of 'defocusing'

Killian Fox
The Observer

The human eye's ability to focus is a complex function even advanced cameras struggle to replicate. Not for much longer…

We take it for granted, but the human ability to focus instantly on particular objects in our field of vision, near or far, is a remarkable skill. As camera manufacturers have learned, it is not easy to replicate artificially.
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Friday January 20, 2012

Facebook to name and shame Russian Koobface gang

John E Dunn
Techworld

Researchers publish identities in face of police inaction

Facebook could be about to take the unprecedented step of distributing the names of the Russians it believes were behind the Koobface worm that waged an infamous botnet campaign against the site’s users from 2008 onwards.
read full story

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Friday January 20, 2012

Thousands of horses abandoned by owners last year

Tim Rich and Jonathan Owen
Independent

Charities say they cannot house any more starving animals, many of which are being sold off as meat to zoos

Thousands of horses are being abandoned or tied up and left to starve, many by desperate owners unable to afford the costs of keeping them.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

Sopa and Pipa would create a consumption-only internet

Clay Shirky
The Guardian

You may not care about the US bills aimed at censoring the net but you should – they could stop you participating online again

There are many reasons to dislike Sopa and Pipa, the pair of internet censorship bills working their way through the US Congress.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

China counts more than 500 million Internet users

Michael Kan
Techworld

Majority of users connect with mobile device

China's Internet population passed the half billion mark at the end of 2011 after the country added 28 million new users during the second half of the year.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

SOPA Is Baaaack!

Ernesto
TorrentFreak

That didn’t take long.

A few days ago the news broke that the pending Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was put on hold until consensus was reached.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

US to Force Drug Firms to Report Money Paid to Doctors

Robert Pear
The New York Times

To head off medical conflicts of interest, the Obama administration is poised to require drug companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment.

Many researchers have found evidence that such payments can influence doctors’ treatment decisions and contribute to higher costs by encouraging the use of more expensive drugs and medical devices.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

Health chiefs prepare campaign to prevent epidemic during Olympics

James Meikle
The Guardian

'Surveillance system' set up to alert medics to first signs of unusual diseases this summer

A massive public health campaign in the UK and up to 200 countries around the world is being prepared by health chiefs to help guard against epidemics of infectious diseases during the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics this summer.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

War on Iran: It’s Not A Matter of “If”

Alexander Cockburn
Counterpunch

The world’s press is choc-a-bloc with “if” questions about Iran and war. Will Israel attack?

Is Obama, coerced by domestic politics in an election year, being dragged into war by the Israel lobby? Will he lunch the bombers?
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

The Brotox Era: Does Male Vanity Even the Playing Field, Or Condemn Us All to Unreachable Beauty Standards?

Sarah Seltzer
AlterNet

Instead of all of us accepting our flaws, are men facing new pressure to be ageless and perfect?

It was only a matter of time before the unfortunate term “Brotox” became a cultural catchphrase. This lovely new concept was broadly introduced to the nation on Good Morning America this week in a story about the spike in new clientele for cosmetic surgery: men.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

Exposed: University bosses' lavish expense claims

Brian Brady, Kunal Dutta
Independent On Sunday

investigation reveals subsidies for global travel and entertainment as colleges face swingeing cuts and student fees treble

British university chiefs are paid generous expenses to cover worldwide travel and lavish entertaining on top of salaries that are eight times the national average.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

Microchipped ID wristbands heading for UK festivals

Greg Cochrane
BBC News

Festival-goers have seen new microchipped wristbands in action at a major event in Europe ahead of the summer festival season.

Designers say the wristbands wipe out ticket fraud and touting, and can be loaded with cash to pay for goods on site.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

Copper thieves battled with new anti-theft telecoms cable

John E Dunn
Techworld

Drastically cuts amount of valuable copper in cable

The epidemic of telecom cable thefts has prompted a US company to develop a new design that drastically cuts down the copper content in a bid to deter metal thieves.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

Science's "most beautiful theories"

Sharon Begley
Reuters

From Darwinian evolution to the idea that personality is largely shaped by chance, the favorite theories of the world's most eminent thinkers are as eclectic as science itself.

Every January, John Brockman, the impresario and literary agent who presides over the online salon Edge.org, asks his circle of scientists, digerati and humanities scholars to tackle one question.
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Wednesday January 18, 2012

Stop the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Rethinking Schools

“Every man in my family has been locked up. Most days I feel like it doesn’t matter what I do, how hard I try - that’s my fate, too.”
-11th-grade African American student, Berkeley, California

This young man isn’t being cynical or melodramatic; he’s articulating a terrifying reality for many of the children and youth sitting in our classrooms—a reality that is often invisible or misunderstood.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

IBM researchers cram a bit of data into 12 atoms

Mark Brown
Wired.co.uk

Nanotechnology engineers at IBM's research lab have demonstrated the ability to store a single bit of computer data -- a binary 0 or 1 -- in just 12 atoms.

For the sake of comparison, typical computer hard drives require almost one million atoms to store a bit. This research could therefore pave the way to much smaller, faster and more energy-efficient hard drives.
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Wednesday January 18, 2012

Micro-mech chips to free phones from 'grip of death'

Tony Smith
The Register

RF MEMS to the rescue

In the summer of 2010, Apple's marketing was forced to move from the offensive into a defensive mode. The successful launch in June of the iPhone 4 had been quickly followed by 'Antennagate', the controversy surrounding claims that holding the handset in a certain way would kill its ability to communicate with mobile phone networks.
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Wednesday January 18, 2012

Global Internet Voting Firm Buys U.S. Election Results Reporting Firm

Bev Harris
Black Box Voting

In a major step towards global centralization of election processes, the world's dominant Internet voting company has purchased the USA's dominant election results reporting company.

When you view your local or state election results on the Internet, on portals which often appear to be owned by the county elections division, in over 525 US jurisdictions you are actually redirected to a private corporate site controlled by SOE software, which operates under the name ClarityElections.com.
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Wednesday January 18, 2012

What Happened to Yesterday's "It" Drugs?

Adam K. Raymond
The Fix

Remember PCP, Quaaludes and Angel Dust? They were once widely decried as threats to our civilization. Now, they're all but forgotten. How did they fall under the radar?

Like one-hit wonder pop stars or dissolute child actors from the '80s, recreational drugs tend to arrive on the scene with fanfare, do tremendous damage, and fizzle out when popular tastes move on to the Next Big Thing.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

France Steps Forward With Robin Hood Tax

A. D. McKenzie
Inter Press Service

The decision by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to push ahead with a financial transactions tax (FTT) may be a political ploy ahead of elections, but it has the approval of many non-governmental organisations, even as support lags elsewhere.

"If France is setting an example, we support this as a principle," said Matt Davies, head of international policy and advocacy for international movement ATD Fourth World, a French-based organisation that works to eradicate extreme poverty.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

Pirate Bay dropping torrents after magnetic attraction

Iain Thomson
The Register

Technology to make tracking harder

The Pirate Bay has announced that it is dropping torrent files in favor of magnet links to keep up with current trends.

“Magnet is now default, Download torrent is now where the magnet links used to be,’ said the group said on its blog.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

The evolution of American debt

Hannah Tepper
Salon

Over the last century, over-borrowing has gone from shameful to commonly accepted. An expert explains what changed

In the US today, debt is ubiquitous.

Whether it’s paying back thousands of dollars in student loans, using your Visa card for a pack of gum when you’re out of cash, or taking out a mortgage on a first home, it’s been woven into our financial system so tightly, that even when we suffer the sometimes cruel and unusual detriments of borrowing, we have little to no realistic impetus to stop.
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Wednesday January 18, 2012

Cyber War: Reality or Hype?

Conn Hallinan
Counterpunch

During his confirmation hearings this past June, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned the Senate, “The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack that cripples our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems.”

It was powerful imagery: a mighty fleet reduced to smoking ruin, an expansionist Asian power at the nation’s doorstep.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

Richard Dawkins celebrates a victory over creationists

Jamie Doward
The Observer

Free schools that teach 'intelligent design' as science will lose funding

Leading scientists and naturalists, including Professor Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough, are claiming a victory over the creationist movement after the government ratified measures that will bar anti-evolution groups from teaching creationism in science classes.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

Offsetting Global Warming: Molecule in Earth's Atmosphere Could 'Cool the Planet'

ScienceDaily

Scientists have shown that a newly discovered molecule in Earth's atmosphere has the potential to play a significant role in off-setting global warming by cooling the planet.

In a breakthrough paper published in Science, researchers from The University of Manchester, The University of Bristol and Sandia National Laboratories report the potentially revolutionary effects of Criegee biradicals.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

India OKs censoring Facebook, Google, Microsoft, YouTube

Emil Protalinsk
ZDNet

The Indian government has given the green light for the prosecution of “21 social networking sites.”

The list features 10 foreign-based companies, and could affect websites provided by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and YouTube.
read full story

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Wednesday January 18, 2012

Bacon roll a day linked to most lethal of cancers

Jeremy Laurance
Independent

The most fatal of all cancers is linked today for the first time with the consumption of processed meat.

A daily bacon sandwich or a single sausage, equivalent to an average serving of 50 grams, is associated with a 19 per cent increase in risk of pancreatic cancer, researchers say.
read full story

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Sunday January 15, 2012

Smartphones stress users with 'phantom' text messages

John E Dunn
Techworld

The psychological cost of mobile technology

Stress levels in smartphone users can become so pronounced some start experiencing the “phantom vibrations” of non-existent test messages, new research has suggested.
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 04:13 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 15, 2012

How Genetically Modified Foods Could Affect Our Health in Unexpected Ways

Ari LeVaux
AlterNet

Yet another reason to test GMOs for safety.

Chinese researchers have found small pieces of rice ribonucleic acid (RNA) in the blood and organs of humans who eat rice. The Nanjing University-based team showed that this genetic material will bind to receptors in human liver cells and influence the uptake of cholesterol from the blood.
read full story

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Sunday January 15, 2012

Cameroon: Stepping Naturally Away from Plastic

Ngala Killian Chimtom
Inter Press Service

Maya Stella, a restaurant manager in the capital of Cameroon, no longer uses plastic to wrap the corn-fufu that she sells to her customers.

She now uses banana or plantain leaves instead, because these are "natural and it is our African culture to use leaves in wrapping food."
read full story

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Sunday January 15, 2012

Exposed: Taxman's 'illegal' war against Britain's small businesses

Oliver Wright
Independent

Tax Tribunal rules HMRC is waiting months before alerting firms returns are late so that fines stack up

The Government is unlawfully using late-payment penalty fines against tens of thousands of small firms who do not file their tax returns on time as a "cash-generating scheme" for the Exchequer.
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 04:04 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 15, 2012

Millions in India bow to the sun, offending Muslims and Christians

Acharya S
Freethought Nation

Christian and Muslim leaders are complaining about a Guinness World Record attempt to have six million people in India all bowing at once to the sun:
read full story

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Sunday January 15, 2012

Occupy London Finsbury Square to be long-term eco-village

Nick Rosen
Off Grid

As the Occupy LSX movement prepares for a legal battle over its encampment outside St Paul’s Cathedral, its presence down the road in Finsbury Square looks slightly more secure.

Public spending cuts have left the square’s owners, the Borough of Islington, with an overstretched legal team, and although it do not support the Occupy presence, the Council is “reluctant” to devote potentially millions of pounds to evict the protesters.
read full story

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Sunday January 15, 2012

Get Busted for Marijuana, Work as Police Informant, Get Killed? How the Drug War Turns Arrests Into Deaths

Tony Newman
AlterNet

No one has ever died from smoking marijuana. But getting busted with a small amount of marijuana has led to countless tragic deaths.

No one has ever died from smoking marijuana. But getting busted with a small amount of marijuana has led to countless tragic deaths.
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 03:36 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 15, 2012

Honeybee problem nearing a ‘critical point’

Claire Thompson
Grist

Anyone who's been stung by a bee knows they can inflict an outsized pain for such tiny insects.

It makes a strange kind of sense, then, that their demise would create an outsized problem for the food system by placing the more than 70 crops they pollinate -- from almonds to apples to blueberries -- in peril.
read full story

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Sunday January 15, 2012

Metropolitan police to scale back stop and search operation

Vikram Dodd
The Guardian

Police chief's memo signals reforms amid legal doubts over use of section 60 stop and search powers

Scotland Yard signalled on Thursday that it would significantly reform its use of the controversial power to stop people without suspicion, as an internal document by the Met police deputy commissioner, obtained by the Guardian, revealed fears that the courts could strike down such searches as unlawful.
read full story

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Sunday January 15, 2012

Have your own genome decoded – for just £650

Steve Connor
Independent

A desktop machine not much bigger than a microwave cooker that can in one day decode the entire three billion "letters" of the human genome for just $1,000 (£650) has been built, an American biotechnology company has announced.
read full story

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Sunday January 15, 2012

Is it a phone, or a TV? No, it's smart eyeglasses

Sharon Gaudin
Computerworld US

With the smart glasses, the wearer can change the focus of the lenses by tapping on the frame near the temple

There are smartphones and smart TVs. Now there are smart eyeglasses.
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 03:21 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 15, 2012

Lesson From New Hampshire: The Powerlessness of the American Citizen

J.A. Myerson
Truthout

Hanging out in New Hampshire for the run-up to the primary is a powerful education in how undemocratic the American political system is.

Corporate-funded journalists run around, jockeying for access to corporate-funded candidates, who, in the case of this Republican field, spent roughly $53 million campaigning in two states, both of which are over 90 percent white, where about 350,000 people voted.
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 03:08 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 15, 2012

Scientists develop material to trap carbon dioxide

Sussanne Rust
Grist

As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to climb, a team of California scientists has created a new material that will help reduce the amount escaping from smokestacks and power plants.

The material, called polyethylenimine, or PEI, acts like a carbon dioxide fly-tape trap, attracting the greenhouse-gas molecules and sticking to them so they can't escape.
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Sunday January 15, 2012

Compost Cuisine: Amazing Ways to Make Delicious Food Out of Garbage

Anneli Rufus
AlterNet

Chefs are taking sustainability to new heights by gazing into the depths: that is, at what would otherwise be deemed not fit to eat.

Think you're living the anti-waste life?
OK then. Pop quiz: When you eat dates, do you also eat the pits?
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 02:57 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 15, 2012

Asia skyscraper building boom may be sign of impending economic collapse, warn experts

AP

A skyscraper building boom in China and India may be a sign of an impending economic collapse, according to financial experts.

Barclays Capital has mapped an "unhealthy correlation" between construction of the world's tallest buildings and looming financial crises over the last 140 years, including the Great Depression and the Asian financial crisis.
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 01:41 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 15, 2012

Japanese breakthrough will make wind power cheaper than nuclear

Karl Burkart
Mother Nature Network

A surprising aerodynamic innovation in wind turbine design called the 'wind lens' could triple the output of a typical wind turbine, making it less costly than nuclear power.

The International Clean Energy Analysis (ICEA) gateway estimates that the U.S. possesses 2.2 million km2 of high wind potential (Class 3-7 winds) — about 850,000 square miles of land that could yield high levels of wind energy.
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 01:37 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 15, 2012

No fracking in home counties, village residents tell oil company

Robert Booth
The Guardian

Cuadrilla's plan to drill test well in West Sussex leads to furious reactions at public meeting

After earthquakes in Lancashire and tales of poisoned water and flaming taps in the US, "fracking" for gas or oil in the English home counties was never likely to be easy.
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 01:34 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 15, 2012

Chinese Become Unwelcome Guests

Stanley Kwenda
Inter Press Service

Alec Marembo has built his family fortune making bricks in Dzivarasekwa, a sprawling high-density suburb north of the capital of Zimbabwe.

But due to the economic crisis of the last decade, his fortune started crumbling. Although he could break even when the downturn started, he finally gave in to competition from the Chinese.
read full story

Posted in: by bubblejam at 01:32 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 15, 2012

Anonymous hackers hit websites after Pirate Bay block

Jeremy Kirk
Techworld

Hacktivists take down lobbyist websites after Finnish ISP forced to bar tracker

Anonymous has struck the websites of two anti-piracy organisations, a day after Finnish ISP Elisa blocked access to The Pirate Bay search engine in response to an injunction requested by one of the organisations
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Saturday January 14, 2012

Stoned seniors: Germany faces epidemic of hippy pensioners

Tony Paterson
Independent

They include sixty-plus grandmothers spaced out on LSD and 70-year-old grandpas in court for dealing dope: Germany is struggling to cope with a rapid increase in “pensioner hippies” who are still hooked on drugs nearly half a century after the end of the Flower Power era.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Africa Begins to Rise Above Aid

Miriam Gathigah
Inter Press Service

An increasing number of African countries are beginning to step away from aid dependency, as the domestic private sector becomes the engine of growth across much of Africa.

Currently, at least a third of African countries receive aid that is equivalent to less than 10 percent of their tax revenue.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Rural > City > Cyberspace

Nicholas Carr
Adbusters

The Biggest Migration In Human History.

A series of psychological studies over the past 20 years has revealed that after spending time in a quiet rural setting, close to nature, people exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory, and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Profs call for harsh taxes on sweet carbonated beverages

Lewis Page
The Register

California moves toward tapwater-only lifestyle

Medical scientists in San Francisco have sent a chill wind blowing through the IT industry as they issue a call for swingeing taxes on "soda, fruit punch, sweet tea, sports drinks, and other sweetened beverages".
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Decisive moment? Smartphones steal focus from point-and-shoot cameras

Juliette Garside and Roger Tooth
The Guardian

Camera sales fell 30% in 2011 as experts predict snapshot device may go way of satnav and landline

Not long ago, life's precious moments were captured by someone who had the foresight to bring their camera. Now, everyone can reach for their phone.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

UK retailers warned to prepare for EU cookie legislation

Sophie Curtis
Techworld

E-tailers need to make sure that their strategies comply with EU law, without breaking their websites

Online retailers in the UK are being warned that they must act now to address new EU cookie legislation, or risk damaging user experience and constraining opportunities for customer conversion when the law comes into force later this year.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

The next generation of GMOs could be especially dangerous

Tom Laskawy
Grist

Did a recent scientific study just change the way we should think about the safety of genetically modified foods?

According to Ari Levaux at the Atlantic, the answer is a resounding yes.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Nicotine patch claims up in smoke

Rob Hastings
Independent

Nicotine patches are no better than willpower alone in helping smokers quit their habit, a study has found.

Gums and nasal sprays are equally ineffective, according to research in the US by the Harvard University School of Public Health.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Dark matter mysteries: a true game of shadows

Stuart Clark
New Scientist

Far from shedding light on dark matter, our first experimental glimpses of the elusive stuff have only deepened its mystique

It's a troubling time to be looking for the universe's missing matter. On the face of it, it shouldn't be.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Bankers can wait. Targeting protesters is much more Cameron's cup of tea

George Monbiot
The Guardian

The Vickers banking reforms are set for 2019. But when it comes to undermining protest ministers don't fanny about

When governments seek to protect the rich from the poor, they act swiftly and decisively. When they undertake to protect the poor from the rich, they fanny about for years until the moment has passed.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Five packaged foods you never need to buy again

jane Mountain
Grist

What did you resolve to do this year? Eat healthier? Avoid processed foods?

Stay away from GMOs? Stop buying products foisted on you by the man? Reduce the size of your weekly garbage bag? Become a domestic god(ess)?
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Mafia now "Italy's No.1 bank" as crisis bites: report

James Mackenzie
Reuters

Organized crime has tightened its grip on the Italian economy during the economic crisis, making the Mafia the country's biggest "bank" and squeezing the life out of thousands of small firms, according to a report on Tuesday.

Extortionate lending by criminal groups had become a "national emergency," said the report by anti-crime group SOS Impresa.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Ethanol Subsidies: Not Gone, Just Hidden a Little Better

Kevin Drum
Mother Jones

A few years ago I called subsidies for corn ethanol "catastrophically idiotic." And why not?

Corn ethanol, it turns out, is actively worse for the environment than even gasoline, farmers responded to the subsidies by reducing the amount of farmland used for food production, and this drove up the price of staple food worldwide.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

5 Things You Should Know About the FBI's Massive New Biometric Database

tana Ganeva
AlterNet

Civil libertarians worry about the roll-out of Next Generation Identification, a massive expansion of the agency's current biometric database.

The FBI claims that their fingerprint database (IAFIS) is the "largest biometric database in the world," containing records for over a hundred million people.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Visa approves smartphones for NFC payments: Good start, but still hurdles ahead

Zack Whittaker
ZDNet

Visa announced today its approval of Samsung, LG and BlackBerry smartphones to utilise its new Visa payWave technology, as part of efforts to widen adoption of mobile device wireless payments.

It’s a step in the right direction, but the path to wireless payment success is still fraught with hurdles. It does however pave the way for a future roll-out for smartphone payments.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Hubble shows images from record-breaking 13.1 billion light-years

Iain Thomson
The Register

Spots quintet of infant galaxies in formation

The Hubble telescope has broken its own distance record, spotting a cluster of five galaxies 13.1billion light-years away.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

The US schools with their own police

Chris McGreal
The Guardian

More and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors. Pupils are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor.

Why is the state criminalising normal childhood behaviour?
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Western Oil Firms Remain as US Exits Iraq

Dahr Jamail
Al Jazeera

The end of the US military occupation does not mean Iraqis have full control of their oil.

On November 27, 38 months after Royal Dutch Shell announced its pursuit of a massive gas deal in southern Iraq, the oil giant had its contract signed for a $17bn flared gas deal.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

USB 3.0 to reach smartphones, tablets this year

Agam Shah
Yechworld

USB 3.0 on mobile devices will improve data transfer rates and recharge times

USB 3.0 ports will reach smartphones and tablets by the end of the year or early next year, the USB standards setting organisation said on Sunday.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Twitter’s ‘verified accounts’ now come with hefty price tag

Stephen C. Webster
The Raw Story

When media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s wife allegedly joined Twitter, it didn’t take her long to earn a “verified account,” one of the few status symbols available to known individuals on the social media network.

Days later, the account was revealed to be a fake, leaving journalists the world over wondering how Twitter slipped up so badly.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Timeline puts your life in Facebook's hands

Jacob Aron
New Scientist

Facebook's Timeline shows the world your past since birth, if you choose – will you? Here are some things to think about first

We are born, we live, we die - and now we can do it all on Facebook.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Invading cannibal ladybirds take over Britain's homes

Genevieve Roberts and Charlie Cooper
Independent

Asian interlopers devour native insect populations and exude chemical that could ruin your curtains

It started with the squirrels – Britain's native reds being ousted by their ruthless grey American cousins.
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Do You Know Where Your Medicine Came From?

Paul Tullis
Miller-McCune

Here’s look at where the stuff in your medicine cabinet was manufactured. Just don’t ask if these foreign-made drugs are safe, because in many cases, it’s impossible to say.

Headaches. Insomnia. Anxiety. American medicine cabinets are packed with remedies for these common maladies. And up to 40 percent of them are manufactured overseas (along with 80 percent of active ingredients for pharmaceuticals).
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Thursday January 12, 2012

Danger Waters: The Three Top Hot Spots of Potential Conflict in the Geo-Energy Era

Michael T. Klare
TomDispatch

Welcome to an edgy world where a single incident at an energy “chokepoint” could set a region aflame, provoking bloody encounters, boosting oil prices, and putting the global economy at risk.

With energy demand on the rise and sources of supply dwindling, we are, in fact, entering a new epoch -- the Geo-Energy Era -- in which disputes over vital resources will dominate world affairs.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

More patients sue plastic surgeons over faulty cosmetic operations

Denis Campbell
The Guardian

Half the claims for bad cosmetic surgery are successful compared with 30% for general medical compensation claims

Growing numbers of patients are suing plastic surgeons over mistakes during operations designed to improve their appearance, according to the Medical Defence Union, which represents over half of Britain's doctors and surgeons when they are accused or malpractice or negligence.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

Physicists propose test for loop quantum gravity

Lisa Zyga
PhysOrg.com

As a quantum theory of gravity, loop quantum gravity could potentially solve one of the biggest problems in physics: reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics.

But like all tentative theories of quantum gravity, loop quantum gravity has never been experimentally tested.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

O2 rolls out free public Wi-Fi to two London boroughs

Olivia Solon
Wired.co.uk

O2 has signed a deal with London's Westminster City Council and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to create Europe's largest free wireless hub in Europe.

The deal is part of both councils' plans to ensure that visitors to London will be able to make the most out of London's offerings, particularly in a year in which both the Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics take place.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

Abuse of stop and search powers is a crime, says Lawrence inquiry adviser

Mark Townsend
The Guardian

Dr Richard Stone said officers who targeted suspects on grounds of their skin colour alone should be charged

Officers who abuse their powers of stop-and-search to further a racist agenda should be prosecuted for wasting police time, according to a member of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry panel.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

Air battery to let electric cars outlast gas guzzlers

Duncan Graham-Rowe
New Scientist

One of the biggest drawbacks with owning an electric vehicle (EV) is range anxiety - a driver's nagging fear that the battery charge will not get them to their destination.

Now IBM claims to have solved a fundamental problem that may lead to the creation of a battery with an 800-kilometre (500-mile) range - letting EVs potentially compete with most petrol engines for the first time.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

Cannabis plant extracts can effectively fight drug-resistant bacteria.

Nora Schultz
ABC News

Substances harvested from cannabis plants could soon outshine conventional antibiotics in the escalating battle against drug-resistant bacteria.

The compounds, called cannabinoids, appear to be unaffected by the mechanism that superbugs like MRSA use to evade existing antibiotics.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

Cyclists plan blockade of deadly junction

Kevin Rawlinson
Independent

Protesters say Transport for London is doing nothing to tackle the rise in fatal accidents

Protesters plan to block one of London's busiest junctions today to highlight their anger at a 60 per cent rise in cycling deaths in the capital in two years.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

Supreme Court to Decide if Cops Can Raid Homes Based on Drug-Sniffing Dog

David Kravets
Wired

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide for the first time whether judges may issue search warrants for private residences when a drug-sniffing dog outside the home reacts as if it smells drugs inside.

The case, involving a suspected Florida drug dealer, tests the limits of government intrusion into the home.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

7 Reasons America's Mental Health Industry Is a Threat to Our Sanity

Bruce E. Levine
AlterNet

Drug industry corruption, scientifically unreliable diagnoses and pseudoscientific research have compromised the values of the psychiatric profession.

Why do some of us become dissident mental health professionals?

The majority of psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals “go along to get along” and maintain a status quo that includes drug company corruption, pseudoscientific research and a “standard of care” that is routinely damaging and occasionally kills young children.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

The Year of Voter Suppression

Nancy A. Heitzeg
Critical Mass Progress

As we enter another election cycle, our most urgent challenge will be to ensure that the right to vote and the right to have that vote counted is protected.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

World's first mixed-embryo rhesus monkeys born in US

Brid-Aine Parnell
The Register

Normal, healthy chimeric primates created during stem cell research

Genetic researchers have created the world's first chimeric monkeys, primates who were created from a combination of cells from separate rhesus monkey embryos.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

More Than 200 Million People Use Illicit Drugs

Luke Walker
The Fix

Developed nations are the most enthusiastic consumers, notes a comprehensive review of studies, and the figures given are an underestimate.

Around 200 million people worldwide use illicit drugs such as marijuana, heroin, cocaine and meth, with use concentrated in wealthy nations like the US.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

The Mathematics of Lego

Samuel Arbesman
Wired

The world of toys and games is not immune to mathematics. From the Rubik’s Cube to Monopoly, fun pastimes can be quantified.

And the same is true of Legos. Lego blocks, the building toys that are truly amazing and that I have never quite grown out of, are amenable to math.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

Hamster power to help solve energy crisis?

The Guardian

Children's pet hamsters can help solve the world's energy crisis!

With the energy crisis looming, today's Caturday video smile focuses on hamster power. You know, those small fuzzy rodents that adults get for their kids as pets.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

Solar Power Off the Grid: Energy Access for World’s Poor

carl pope
e360

More than a billion people worldwide lack access to electricity.

The best way to bring it to them — while reducing greenhouse gas emissions — is to launch a global initiative to provide solar panels and other forms of distributed renewable power to poor villages and neighborhoods.

After the Durban talks last month, climate realists must face the reality that “shared sacrifice,” however necessary eventually, has proven a catastrophically bad starting point for global collaboration.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

6 Recipes for Winter Wellness

Jennifer Kaye and Kate Malongowski
Yes

Fight seasonal maladies the natural way.

Thyme Gargle

Thyme has a natural antiseptic called thymol, which is an active ingredient in some mouthwashes. It also soothes the throat. Thyme tea can also be used as a gargle for a sore throat, or drunk to ease stomach cramps.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

Press gangs of New York

Ian Burrell
Independent

If you think British tabloids are cut-throat, look at the Big Apple's. As Colin Myler, ex-News of the World editor, flies in to run his former boss's arch rival title, a new chapter is about to be written...

The smell of blood was in the nostrils of the New York media pack even before Colin Myler had stepped off his flight from London yesterday on his return to the Big Apple.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

Facebook login details stolen by Ramnit worm

Jeremy Kirk
Techworld

Virus extends reach to grab social network credentials

A pervasive worm has expanded its reach to now steal login and password details for Facebook users, warned security vendor Seculert, which found a server holding 45,000 login credentials.
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Wednesday January 11, 2012

Memory loss can begin from age 45, scientists say

Sarah Boseley
The Guardian

Mental dexterity and brain power deteriorate earlier than thought, according to study of 7,000 civil servants

As all those of middle age who have ever fumbled for a name to fit a face will believe, the brain begins to lose sharpness of memory and powers of reasoning and understanding not from 60 as previously thought, but from as early as 45, scientists say.
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Monday January 09, 2012

America Beyond Capitalism: Is It Possible?

Gar Alperovitz
Dollars and Sense

Thousands of co-ops, worker-owned businesses, land trusts, and municipal enterprises are quietly beginning to democratize the deep substructure of the American economic system.

“Black Monday,” September 19, 1977, was the day 34 years ago when the shuttering of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube steel mill threw 5,000 steelworkers onto the streets of their decaying Midwestern hometown.
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Monday January 09, 2012

The art of demolition: Bringing down a multi-storey structure is a process as scientific as it is creative

Josh Sims
Independent

When Glencairn Tower went down in November, 64 charges – 100kg of the latest explosives placed with scientific precision – brought all 17 storeys down in just five seconds.

The demolition job was unusual for two reasons.
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Monday January 09, 2012

US pressured Spain to implement online piracy law, leaked files shows

Dominic Rushe
The Guardian

US ambassador threatened Spain with 'retaliation actions' if the country did not pass tough new Sopa-style internet piracy laws

The US ambassador in Madrid threatened Spain with "retaliation actions" if the country did not pass tough new internet piracy laws, according to leaked documents.
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Monday January 09, 2012

Why You Can Be Branded a Terrorist for Fighting Animal Abuse

Rania Khalek
AlterNet

The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act has had a chilling effect on activists scared to participate in what should be constitutionally protected activity.

Five longtime activists are challenging a federal law that defines a wide spectrum of peaceful – and in some cases, otherwise lawful – animal rights activism as acts of terrorism.
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Monday January 09, 2012

Invisible DoS attack devised by white hat hacker

Lucian Constantin
Techworld

Apache, Nginx and IIS vulnerable to prolonged web server response reads

Qualys senior software engineer Sergey Shekyan has devised a new HTTP denial-of-service (DoS) attack method which relies on prolonging the time clients need to read web server responses.
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Posted in: by bubblejam at 02:23 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Monday January 09, 2012

Time to Stop Being Cynical About Corporate Money in Politics and Start Being Angry

Bill McKibben
TomDispatch

My resolution for 2012 is to be naïve - dangerously naïve.

I’m aware that the usual recipe for political effectiveness is just the opposite: to be cynical, calculating, an insider.
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Sunday January 08, 2012

For Better Grades, Try Bach in the Background

Tom Jacobs
Miller-McCune

New research from France finds students learned more when a videotaped lecture was underscored with classical music

As every teacher knows, it is one thing to impart information; it’s quite another for students to absorb it, process it, and be able to regurgitate it.
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Sunday January 08, 2012

Shopping centre tracking system condemned by civil rights campaigners

Steve Morris
The Guardian

Monitoring technology to help analyse shopping habits allows people to be tracked using their mobile phone signal

Technology that tracks customers as they navigate shopping centres by picking up signals from their mobile phones has come under fire from civil rights campaigners and consumers.
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Sunday January 08, 2012

Boffins hack evolution, create SUPERSOLDIER ANTS

Iain Thomson
The Register

Genetic prestidigitation could engineer new species

Researchers in Canada have created a new type of supersoldier ant by activating genetic material from long-dead forms of life.
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Sunday January 08, 2012

Well, it worked for Peter Parker: genetic scientists unleash power of the spider web

Steve Connor
Independent

Breakthrough may pave way for new biomaterials that could be used in medicine and engineering

Scientists have created genetically-modified silkworms that can spin the much stronger silken threads of spiders in a technological breakthrough that promises to revolutionise the production and use of new materials made with spider silk.
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Sunday January 08, 2012

Killing Heroin With Saffron

Athar Parvaiz
Inter Press Service

Weaning Afghanistan’s poppy farmers away from growing the raw material for the bulk of the world’s illicit heroin has never been easy, but Kashmir’s saffron cultivators may have the answer.

A high-value crop, saffron has long been seen as a counternarcotics candidate, but the idea has a chance of coming to fruition with expertise from farmers in India’s Jammu and Kashmir state who produce the finest saffron anywhere.
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Sunday January 08, 2012

Google Plus user base growing by population of Glasgow every day

Jay Alabaster
Techworld

Paul Allen, the founder of Ancestry.com, says Google's social network will hit 400 million users next year.

Membership for up and coming social network Google+ has accelerated over the holiday period, with 625,000 new users being added a day and an overall total of 62 million, a researcher has estimated.
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Sunday January 08, 2012

The Arms Merchants

Christopher Brauchli
Counterpunch

Arms sales are not as straightforward as one might think. For one thing, Russia and the United States are both eager to maintain their respective positions as the most successful merchants of death dealing devices.

That causes them to sacrifice principle to expediency.
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Sunday January 08, 2012

The Silly, The Stupid, and The Just Plain False: The Top Ten 'Reefer Madness' Stories of 2011

Russ Belville
NORML

From the pizza driver who snitched on a pot patient to cannabis 'deaths' and vodka tampons, 2011 was a year of great drug propaganda.

We bring you the Top Ten “Reefer Madness” Stories of 2011. ”Reefer Madness”, of course, is the 1936 anti-pot propaganda film showing young people becoming crazed and violent on the effects of “reefer”.
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Sunday January 08, 2012

Faith school expansion plans are 'shameful', say secular campaigners

Jeevan Vasagar
The Guardian

The government is said to be considering making it easier for the Church of England to take control of state schools

Secular campaigners have criticised reports that ministers are considering making it easier for the Church of England to take control of state-funded schools.
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Sunday January 08, 2012

Travellers will be offered sites to avoid repeat of Dale Farm

Nigel Morris
Independent

£47m plan to provide hundreds of pitches

Moves to create some 800 permanent sites across England for Traveller families will be announced today in an effort to defuse community tensions with settled residents.
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Sunday January 08, 2012

Eaters, beware: Walmart is taking over our food system

Gist

Aubretia Edick has worked at a Walmart store in upstate New York for 11 years, but she won't buy fresh food there.

Bagged salads, she claims, are often past their sell-by dates and, in the summer, fruit is sometimes kept on shelves until it rots.
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Sunday January 08, 2012

Taliban leaders held at Guantánamo Bay to be released in peace talks deal

Julian Borger and Jon Boone
The Guardian

US agrees in principle to releasing top officials from Afghanistan insurgent group in exchange for starting process of negotiations

The US has agreed in principle to release high-ranking Taliban officials from Guantánamo Bay in return for the Afghan insurgents' agreement to open a political office for peace negotiations in Qatar, the Guardian has learned.
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Sunday January 08, 2012

Austerity and the Modern Banker

Simon Johnson
Project Syndicate

Santa Claus came early this year for four former executives of Washington Mutual (WaMu), a large US bank that failed in fall 2008.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) had brought a lawsuit against the four, actions that included taking huge financial risks while “knowing that the real estate market was in a ‘bubble.’”
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Sunday January 08, 2012

Scareware cybercriminals after smartphone users, warns Kaspersky

Lucian Constantin
Techworld

Cybercriminals poison Google search results for popular mobile apps with links leading to scareware

Scareware distributors are targeting smartphone users who search the Web for popular mobile apps, experts from antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab have warned.
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Posted in: by bubblejam at 10:37 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 08, 2012

China prepares for lift-off with mission to land on the Moon

Clifford Coonan
Independent

China has released plans for a five-year space programme, including building a space station and manned missions.

Its ambitions reflect those of the US more than 40 decades ago, and have similar goals.
read full story

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Saturday January 07, 2012

Why Black Market Entrepreneurs Matter to the World Economy

Robert Capps
Wired

Not many people think of shantytowns, illegal street vendors, and unlicensed roadside hawkers as major economic players.

But according to journalist Robert Neuwirth, that’s exactly what they’ve become.
read full story

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Saturday January 07, 2012

Nasa's gravity twins now circling Moon

Jonathan Amos
BBC News

The US space agency (Nasa) has succeeded in placing two new satellites in orbit around the Moon.

Both spacecraft were put in elliptical paths around the lunar body over the weekend after performing braking manoeuvres following their more than 100-day journey from Earth.
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Saturday January 07, 2012

Police forces confess 944 officers have a criminal record

Press Association

Freedom of information requests reveal police with convictions ranging from burglary to perverting the course of justice

More than 900 serving police officers and community support officers have a criminal record, official figures show.
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Saturday January 07, 2012

We've Lost Nearly All of Our Wild Foods -- What Happened? And What Are We Missing?

Jill Richardson
AlterNet

Fish are the last wild food that most of us will eat.

A few days from now, a single bluefin tuna will make international headlines when it sells for an ungodly amount of money -- perhaps more than $100,000 -- at Tokyo's Tsukiji market.
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Saturday January 07, 2012

Crackdown on small firms, a blind eye for big business

Olivier Wright
Independent

Tax officials accused of double standards as new drive follows let-off for Goldman Sachs

The tax office faced accusations of double standards last nightover plans to target thousands of small businesses with spot checks on their paperwork – despite letting big companies such as Goldman Sachs off millions of pounds in tax.
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Saturday January 07, 2012

Police Databases:How More Than 900 Staff Abused Their Access

For the first time, Big Brother Watch has uncovered the true extent to which Police abuse their access to confidential databases.

This report follows allegations yesterday that former Downing Street Head of Communications Andy Coulson paid the Police in order to receive privileged information.
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Saturday January 07, 2012

Goodbye 'Shop Til You Drop' Mentality: Renegade Band of Economists Call for 'Degrowth' Economy

Christine MacDonald
AlterNet

The road to prosperity and happiness doesn't lead to the shopping mall, as most economists would have you believe.

In this country, shopping is not just a national pastime. Consumer spending, which makes up about 70 percent of the economy, is a sort of patriotic duty -- never more so than in the last four years of economic malaise.
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Saturday January 07, 2012

How Israel Empowers Islamist Movements

Uri Averny
Counterpunch

If Islamist movements come to power all over the region, they should express their debt of gratitude to their bete noire, Israel.

Without the active or passive help of successive Israeli governments, they may not have been able to realize their dreams.
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Saturday January 07, 2012

Can ‘Climate-Smart’ Agriculture Help Both Africa and the Planet?

Fred Pearce
e360

One idea promoted at the Durban talks was “climate-smart agriculture," which could make crops less vulnerable to heat and drought and turn depleted soils into carbon sinks.

The World Bank and African leaders are backing this new approach, but some critics are skeptical that it will benefit small-scale African farmers.
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Saturday January 07, 2012

UK cops disciplined, sacked, quit over Facebook misdeeds

Lewis Page
The Register

Plods boasted of thumping rioters, harassed exes

English and Welsh police are no more sensible than anyone else when it comes to being web2.0sluts, according to reports.
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Saturday January 07, 2012

Beware corporate psychopaths – they are still occupying positions of power

brian Basham
Independent

Outlook Over the years I've met my fair share of monsters – rogue individuals, for the most part. But as regulation in the UK and the US has loosened its restraints, the monsters have proliferated.
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Saturday January 07, 2012

If Corporations Have Rights Like People, Shouldn't Animals?

Sue Russell
Miller-McCune.com

In a nation where corporations are people and others want fetuses to be, a core of philosophers and attorneys are trying develop laws to declare animals “legal persons.”

On December 19, 1994, animal protection lawyer Steven Wise — a deeply patient man — was frustrated. A decade into his 25-year plan to upend the fundamental legal principle that animals are property or “things” with no more rights than a table or bicycle, he was barely making a dent.
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Wednesday January 04, 2012

Advertisers Lose Ground in 2011

Adbusters

Cleaning the toxic areas of our mental environment.

After years of concentrated activism, lawmakers worldwide are finally waking up to the impact ads have luring individuals, especially the young, into unhealthy and damaging lifestyles. Alcohol, tobacco, cosmetics and junk food memes are being roasted by governments far and wide.
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Wednesday January 04, 2012

Are you hooked on gadgets? Then it's time you went on a digital diet

Roman Krznaric
Inddependent

We need less electro-chatter and more thoughtful, face-to-face conversation

There is a crisis in the art of conversation, and it's making us hungry. On the one hand, we face a famine of quality conversation in our relationships.
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Posted in: by bubblejam at 07:31 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Wednesday January 04, 2012

Anonymous 101 Part Deux: Morals Triumph Over Lulz

Quinn Norton
Wired

In the beginning, there were lulz, pranks and a culture of trolling just to get a rise out of anyone.

But despite many original Anons best efforts, Anonymous has grown up to become the net’s immune system, striking back whenever the hive mind perceived that the institutions that run the world crossed the line into hypocrisy.
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Wednesday January 04, 2012

US Eyes First BP Criminal Charges Over Gulf Spill

AFP

The prosecutors are focusing on US-based BP engineers and at least one supervisor who they say may have provided false information to regulators on drilling risks.

US prosecutors are readying criminal charges against British oil giant BP employees over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident that led to the catastrophic Gulf oil spill, The Wall Street Journal reported online.
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Wednesday January 04, 2012

Escalating depression crisis is costing Britain £11bn a year

Nigel Morris
Independent

Job fears behind rise in illness – and huge economic toll from loss of earnings and treatment

High levels of depression are costing the country almost £11bn a year in lost earnings, in demands on the health service and in prescribing drugs to tackle the problem.
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Wednesday January 04, 2012

Weapons Sales to Iraq Move Ahead Despite US Worries

Michael S. Schmidt and Eric Schmitt
The New York Times

The Obama administration is moving ahead with the sale of nearly $11 billion worth of arms and training for the Iraqi military despite concerns that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is seeking to consolidate authority, create a one-party Shiite-dominated state and abandon the American-backed power-sharing government.
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Wednesday January 04, 2012

Chimpanzees seem to know what's on other chimps' minds

Ian Sample
The Guardian

Humans may not be alone in having insight into the minds of others, a chimpanzee study suggests

Chimpanzees moving through the forest take into account other chimps' ignorance or knowledge of a threat when they raise the alarm.
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