Hot Issues – Page 19

Big Problems, Culture, Current Events, Education, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, Internet, New Viewpoints, People Making a Difference

Canada’s warrantless surveillance bill is back, and bigger than ever, with surveillance powers for US gov’t, too

June 10, 2012

Authorities are doing their best to clamp down on the internet.

Bill C30, the sweeping Canadian warrantless Internet surveillance bill, is back from the dead. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews (who declared that opposition to his bill was tantamount to support for pedophiles) has been working behind the scenes to resurrect his legislation, joining forces with the US government in the name of “perimeter security.” This proposed deal would expand the warrantless surveillance to US authorities, who could also access Canadians’ private information…

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Analysis, Business, Corporate Manipulation, Crazy Stuff, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, New Discoveries

HP busted for putting less and less ink into printer cartridges

May 11, 2012

What you see is not what you get.

The price for HP ink cartridges isn’t shrinking but the amount of ink that HP puts into those cartridges sure has, according to an investigation by HP Ink Cartridges.co.uk.

The site took two of the same model of ink cartridges, the HP 350. One was produced in 2010, the other in 2012. They sawed off the top and measured the spot that holds the ink with a sponge. The one from 2012 held about half the ink from 2010. But from the outside they looked the same…

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Breakthrough Thinking, Globalism, Hot Issues, Human Behavior, New Viewpoints

Wi-Fi-Blocking Wallpaper protects your Web Fortress by keeping neighbors out

May 9, 2012

Privacy?

Scientists from the institut polytechnique Grenoble INP and the Centre Technique du Papier have developed a novel new product so gratuitous, it almost seems necessary: a silver-crystal coated wallpaper that can block neighbors from freeloading off your Wi-Fi network. The silver crystals are arranged in such a way that they are able to block certain wireless frequencies, not least of which is the same frequency as a WiFI router.

But, what about just setting up a password-protected network?

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Analysis, Big Problems, Breakthrough Thinking, Business, Education, Entertainment, Globalism, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, New Viewpoints

The Intention Economy

May 1, 2012

Doc Searls says our current ‘attention economy’ should be switched to an ‘intention economy’.

Every day companies are spending gobs of money to earn and keep your attention. Advertisers are collecting heaps of information about you in the hopes of presenting you with more targeted advertisements: advertisements on which you’ll want to click. Yet despite all of this information, advertising still pretty much sucks. It doesn’t have to be this way…

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Analysis, Big Problems, Corporate Manipulation, Crazy Stuff, Economy, Entertainment, Globalism, government, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, Science & Technology News

U.S. on track to stop funding clean tech

April 25, 2012

Sucks for American clean tech. Never mind that the industry is pretty universally regarded as one of tomorrow’s most important drivers of job growth and innovation—the already too-meager, maddeningly scattershot government support for clean energy is about to dry up altogether. So, goodbye ARPA-E?

David Roberts points us to this graph from a newish report from the Breakthrough Institute, the World Resources Institute, and the Brookings Institution, and, as you can see, it’s not pretty. And that sad-looking $11 billion stump too will disappear unless there’s a shift in policy.

Here’s Roberts…

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Business, Corporate Manipulation, Crazy Stuff, Education, Entertainment, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, Internet, New Viewpoints

Reading all the privacy policies you “agree” to would take a month per year

April 24, 2012

How much time do you have to read the privacy policies you encounter?

In The Cost of Reading Privacy Policies, by Aleecia M. McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor, the authors calculate that the average Internet user would have to spend one full working month per year in order to skim all the Internet privacy policies she encounters in a year. Mike Masnick reports on Techdirt…

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Analysis, Brain, Crazy Stuff, DIY, Education, Entertainment, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, Human Behavior, New Discoveries, People Making a Difference

Here’s how much body parts cost on the Black Market

April 23, 2012

If you were ever curious as to how much body parts can fetch on the black market,Medical Transcription created a snazzy infographic to show you. Some parts are shockingly cheap! Like would you want a new shoulder or a new iPad? Both cost 500 bucks.

Other organs are prohibitively expensive, like a kidney. That little sucker costs $262,000 in the US (other countries have it for cheaper)! Here’s the full list of body parts and their cost…

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Analysis, Animals, Big Problems, Corporate Manipulation, Crazy Stuff, Globalism, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, New Discoveries

The aftermath of BP oil spill: mutant seafood

April 19, 2012

Signs of the impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp – and scientists and fishermen point fingers towards BP’s oil as being the cause.

Two years after BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, fishermen are finding deformed fish and mutant shrimp in their seafood catch…

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Analysis, Current Events, Globalism, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, New Discoveries, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

Scientific retractions increasing exponentially

April 18, 2012

In an article in today’s New York Times, “A sharp rise in retractions prompts calls for reform,” Carl Zimmer documents and analyzes the sharp increase in the proportion of papers retracted in the scientific literature. From 2000-2009 the trend is disturbing (pictured above).

The article notes:

In October 2011, for example, the journal Nature reported that published retractions had increased tenfold over the past decade, while the number of published papers had increased by just 44 percent. In 2010 The Journal of Medical Ethics published a study finding the new raft of recent retractions was a mix of misconduct and honest scientific mistakes…
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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Economy, Education, Global Warming, Globalism, government, Green Friendly, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, Latest News, New Discoveries

To envision sustainable business, We must reimagine our economy

April 17, 2012

From senior executives identifying the profit motive as an obstacle to sustainability to corporations questioning the very nature of capitalism as we know it, the plus side of the recent financial crisis and ongoing slow recovery has been that tough questions are finally being asked about how our economy functions and whose interests it serves.

On May 2nd Forum for the Future—whose work on system innovation aims to create change across entire sectors of our economy—are hosting an event in New York which will explore better ways of doing business in a post-Great Recession world…

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Education, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, New Discoveries, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News, Space

Is NASA tracking the Cosmic Shift?

April 12, 2012

Cosmic changes are coming.

When it comes to terraforming, the Universe makes man’s puny efforts to be king of the hill look pretty pathetic. Not only are we completely at the mercy of a constantly changing planet, but we’re careening through space totally vulnerable to a sea of objects and cosmic influences beyond our wildest imagination.

Yet intuitively we have the peace that all is under control in some magnificent way.

The decades long assertion that our solar system would soon enter an electrically charged life altering photon belt around the Sirius star system has been regularly dismissed as pseudo science–NASA speak for “conspiracy theory”. Despite periodical scientific validation it has been continually pushed aside by mainstream science.

Until now…

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Analysis, government, Hot Issues, Science & Technology News

Red-light camera debate continues while their legal status grows murkier

April 11, 2012

Red-light cameras are used in about 555 communities around the country.

At the heart of the debate about red-light cameras is this question: Do they save lives by reducing accidents or are they primarily a way for cities to raise money in an era of lagging tax revenue?

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