The word again today is GREED.
Frederick Kaufman’s piece for Foreign Policy examines how the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI) is responsible for the increase in food prices.
MySpace For Sale: The Bidding Begins
MySpace is coming up on the chopping block.
A handful of venture capital firms and other companies are expected to make News Corp. offers for one of its most disappointing properties:MySpace.
News Corp. declared it was ready to sell MySpace in an earnings call in February. At that time, in spite of significant layoffs and a massive redesign, the company “recorded a $275 million pre-tax charge for the impairment of goodwill related to the Digital Media Group and an organizational restructuring at MySpace…
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RIP Typewriters: Last Manufacturer Closes Its Doors
RIP Typewiter
Joining other discarded technologies of late, including the Flip video camera, Kodachrome, and the humble floppy disk is the typewriter, which will no longer be produced anywhere in the world.
The last company on earth to produce the typewriter — Godrej and Boyce — has shut down its production plant in Mumbai, India, according to reports that, fittingly, are making the rounds via the Internet…
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Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Apple in US Over Location Tracking Issue
Apple has been tracking your moves and invading your privacy.
Bloomberg was first to report today that two iPad/iPhone users have filed a class action lawsuit accusing Apple of invasion of privacy and computer fraud, and of “secretly recording movements of iPhone and iPad users.”
USDA Outsources Biotech Crop Evaluation to the GMO Industry
What kind of logic prevails when environmental impact statements
on biotech crops are outsourced to the GMO industry itself?
The U.S. is already cultivating 165 million acres of genetically modified crops, up 7 million acres from just two years ago. Modified seeds and large monocultures in general, are monopolizing our nation’s agriculture system like never before and crop after crop are deemed “safe” by the USDA. We’re headed full speed down a dark, winding road and it seems we’re driving blindfolded. And most recently, according to a story on Grist, the USDA is starting a new program which will outsource environmental impact statements on biotech crops to the GMO industry. Obviously, biotech companies are thrilled with the idea…
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Hertz is Going After Zipcar Aggressively
The Car-Sharing Wars Have Begun
Not long after Zipcar had a successful IPO, car rental behemoth Hertz is going for the jugular by expanding its own car-sharing capabilities in New York City, an important market, and by slashing fees and guaranteeing car availability…
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Smell Like A Nerd: RPG Performance Perfumes
Don’t you wish you could smell like me?
Yesterday we told you about blood type perfumes. Today we have something even wackier. Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is selling a line of RPG-inspired perfumes intended to invoke the mythical races of elves, dwarves, half-elves, hobbits and orcs, as well as the distinctive aromas of clerics, fighters, mages, paladins and such. I totally guessed that paladins smelled like vanilla and “evil” smelled of “Smouldering opium tar, tobacco absolute, green tea, black plum, kush, ambergris accord, ambrette seed, and costus root…”
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Active Twitter Users Have Shorter Relationships
OkTrends has an intriguing post about sex compiled from the data from the bazillion interaction data of members of the OkCupid dating site, but this one is particularly intriguing: active Twitter users have shorter relationships…
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FBI Shuts Down Poker Sites in Online Gambling Crackdown
This is not what you want to see on your site when you log in in the morning.
On Friday, the FBI shut down three of the world’s most popular online poker sites, replacing their home pages with the message: “This domain name has been seized by the F.B.I. pursuant to an Arrest Warrant.” (as shown above)
Joe Menn at the Financial Times nails the story first and best, and describes it as “the largest crackdown since Congress banned electronic gambling transactions in 2006.”
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Word Clouds Show Gender Bias in Toy Ads
Advertising words used in ads for boys.
Crystal Smith of The Achilles Effect blog looked at the words from TV commercials for toys and used to present the stark gender bias in toy advertising in graphic form…
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Authorities In Tajikistan Plan Ban On Divorce By Text Message
Convenient but soon to be banned.
Tajikistan’s Council of Ulema is set to issue a fatwa banning a so-called SMS-divorce, the state religious committee have announced. The move comes amid growing complaints that some Tajik men – working as migrant laborers in Russia – divorce their wives by sending a mobile-phone text message or just making a phone call.
Sunni Islamic traditions allow men to divorce their wives by merely saying “talaq,” an Islamic term for a declaration of divorce. Tajik religious leaders, however, insist that ending a marriage is not such a simple matter…
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Scientists Created Embryonic Eye in Test Tube
Eye see you!
Scientists from the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Japan cultivated embryonic stem cells in a test tube and added proteins to coax them into developing. They had wanted it to form a recognizable organ, but were stunned to find that over 10 days, the stem cells had formed an embryonic eye:
Professor Yoshiki Sasai, lead author said: “What we’ve been able to do in this study is resolve a nearly century-old problem in embryology, by showing that retinal precursors have the inherent ability to give rise to the complex structure of the optic cup.”
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