Needs your own lobbyist? Kickstarter knock-off funding to Anti-SOPA cause

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A new way to deal with political problems.

Over the past two weeks, staffers from HUGE, the Dumbo-based digital agency, have been at work on a different kind of interactive campaign. Yesterday around noon, a skunkworks team made up of software engineers, interaction designers, information architects, and more finally unleashed their side project on the world: a platform called We the Lobby that “makes the United States political system available to the 99% who can’t afford a lobbying group.”

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The SOPA blackout: Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, Google, and many others protest proposed law

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Two new laws proposed by US legislators, the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act, have been attracting a very negative reaction from the web community over the past couple of months, which is today culminating in a day of protests. Aiming to curtail copyright infringement on the web by giving the US government unprecedented new powers, both SOPA and PIPA have been rejected as overreaching and unhelpful laws that cannot coexist with a free and open internet.

A lot of websites (most notably Wikipedia) are going dark today in protest of SOPA.

But the humor site The Oatmeal easily wins for its hilarious GIF about the proposed law. In its own way, it does a better job of explaining what SOPA means than a lot of the serious sites out there.

Here it is after the jump. Watch and laugh…

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A new cycling superhighway. Not in the U.S.A.

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Cycling transportation gets a boost in Sweden.

If you want to find an unassuming place where bicycling is a way of life and nobody makes a big deal about it, head south. The south of Sweden, that is, where the small university town of Lund has a big bicycle habit. They just don’t advertise it.

In Lund, 60% of the populace bikes or takes public transport to go about their daily tasks. And then there’s Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city – only 20 miles southwest of Lund. Malmö also doesn’t have a reputation for fantastic biking. But some say it is the country’s best biking city – ahead of both Stockholm, the capital; Gothenburg, the second largest Swedish metropolitan area, and a host of smaller bike-friendly burgs…

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For sale, one space tracking station worthy of an evil genius

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Can you see what I see? Can you hear what I hear?

If you have plans to take over the world, you’re going to need a secret lair from which you can run your evil plots. But why waste time and money hollowing out a volcano when there’s already the perfect place for sale in the real estate listings?

The Jamesburg Earth Station was built by NASA in 1968 for receiving transmissions from the Apollo moon landings, then it was used by AT&T for satellite telecommunications. It even played a key role relaying pictures of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Now it can be yours for just under $3 million…

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Walmart wants to start a conversation on sustainability with its new Green Blog

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Walmart is going green?

So Walmart has launched a green blog, The Green Room, “that we hope to develop into a vibrant conversation about helping people live better around the globe.” So says Andrea Thomas, who leads sustainability at Walmart.

Right now there are just a few questions to start the conversation. What do you think are the biggest challenges in sustainability? What do you wish we, as a company, could do to address an environmental or social issue? How could we help you reach your own sustainability goals?

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1st meteor shower of 2012 amazes skywatchers

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A Quadrantid meteor is seen streaking across a cloud-spattered sky with shadowy rocks in the foreground in this dazzling photo by astrophotographer Roberto Porto taken on Jan. 4, 2012 on Tenerife Island in Spain’s Canary Islands during the meteor shower’s peak.

A dazzling display of “shooting stars” kicked off the 2012 skywatching season early Wednesday (Jan. 4), thrilling amateur astronomers around the world with views of the Quadrantid meteor shower.

Usually one of the most dependable meteor displays of the year, the Quadrantid meteor shower peaked at about 2:30 a.m. EST (0730 GMT) in a brief, but eye-catching, light show. Quadrantid meteors are the leftover crumbs of a shattered comet that broke apart centuries ago, NASA scientists say…

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Stone Age temple found in Orkney is 800 years older than Stonehenge

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Stonehenge may not have been the centre of Neolithic culture after all.

A 5000-year-old temple in Orkney could be more important than Stonehenge, according to archaeologists.
The site, known as the Ness of Brodgar, was investigated by BBC2 documentary A History of Ancient Britain, with presenter Neil Oliver describing it as ‘the discovery of a lifetime’.

So far the remains of 14 Stone Age buildings have been excavated, but thermal geophysics technology has revealed that there are 100 altogether, forming a kind of temple precinct…

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Death Valley microbe may spark novel biotech and nanotech uses

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Badwater Basin, lowest elevation in the Western Hemisphere, at Death Valley National Park.

Nevada, the “Silver State,” is well-known for mining precious metals. But scientists Dennis Bazylinski and colleagues at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) do a different type of mining.

They sluice through every water body they can find, looking for new forms of microbial magnetism.
In a basin named Badwater on the edge of Death Valley National Park, Bazylinski and researcher Christopher Lefèvre hit pay dirt…

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Crowdfunding temporarily halts oil extraction in Ecuador

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No drilling here for now.

Ecuador had agreed last year to accept money in exchange for not drilling foroil in Yasuní National Park, an area of the Amazon rainforest that last year set a record for the most mammal, bird, amphibian and plant species in the world.

But a fundraiser was held last night that collected the $116 million necessary to temporarily halt exploitation of the area for oil…

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Amazon sold over 4 million Kindles in December, and E-Book sales are up 175 percent

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The Kindle Fire is a holiday record breaker.

Amazon sent out a press release titled, “2011 is the Best Holiday Ever for Kindle” and looking at the numbers, it seems like a justified statement.

The company reports that there were over a million Kindle devices sold each week, with the Kindle Fire as the hottest item, the Kindle Touch following it up, and the plain old Kindle bringing up the rear…

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