Pink Tentacle has a post about Pluto-kun, created by Japan’s Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation in the 1990s. The helium-voiced fellow stars in a “pro-nuclear PR cartoon entitled ‘Pluto-kun, Our Reliable Friend.’ The aim of the animated film, which features the company mascot Pluto-kun, is to dispel some of the fears surrounding plutonium.”
Futurist Thomas Frey: I often get asked the question, “How do you become a futurist?”
When I get this question, I know that the person asking is secretly thinking that being a futurist is one of the coolest professions of all times, which it is. And they want some concrete process for becoming a futurist, which there isn’t one.
The biggest danger to Chinese workers is not workplace accidents, but occupational disease. There are potentially 200 million workers in China that are under the threat of contracting an occupational disease according to a senior trade union official.
The bubble that has taken the place of housing is the higher education bubble.
Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder, hedge fund manager and venture capitalist has a special talent for making money. He also has a talent for making people mad.
Remember a few years ago when everyone decided that using algae as a biofuel feedstock would be the best thing ever? Well, progress on that front is moving so slowly that companies have realized that that might not be where the money is. But there is still all this algae lying around. So, instead, a handful of ambitious biofuel and algae production startups have decided to put their product into every segment imaginable–we’re talking about putting algae in your makeup, your protein supplements, and even your medication. Now Aurora Algae has unveiled its mysterious-sounding A2 Product Portfolio–a series of algae-based oils and powders that will be used in the biofuel, food, aquaculture, neutraceutical, and pharmaceutical industries. What will happen when all the products you use have everyone’s favorite sea vegetable added to them?
Plants only need a specific wavelength to grow, not the full spectrum of the sun.
If we were to prevent a Malthusian catastrophe, we’d better figure out a way to boost crop yield to keep feeding the planet’s growing population. Gertjan Meeuws and other bioengineers of PlantLab have found an answer: a greenhouse where every aspect of the growing condition is controlled, where climate (or even the Sun) is not a factor at all…
Do you use Gmail or other email cloud service? Then you’d be surprised to learn that according to the law, the government can get your email without a warrant if it’s older than 180 days. David Kravets of Wired’s Threat Level explains…
Sapientia University has created a series of online videos that illustrate different sorting algorithms using folk dances:
What you have to do is just check that they are in fact implementing the algorithm correctly. The dancers have numbers stuck on their front and they do seem to look down and examine the value on another dancer before performing the dance routine dictated by the algorithm…
Swedish philosophy student Isaac Gerson thinks that file sharing is sacred. The 19-year-old leader of the Missionary Church of Kopimism believes that stealing and sharing are signs of appreciation, and has compared closed-source software to slavery. Last year, Sweden rejected the church’s application to be recognized as a religion, but Gerson isn’t giving up so easily…
Pachamama, the goddess revered by indigenous Andean people as ‘Mother World’
A brief update on a story from a year ago: Bolivia is about to pass laws granting all of nature equal rights to human beings. The laws were first proposed after the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth and show the deep differences in zeitgeist between Bolivia and, well, pretty much every other nation-state on the planet…
Nano-Netting – Super strong nano fibers so small they are invisible
to the human eye, giving the illusion of being suspended in air
Futurist Thomas Frey: Imagine walking into a store in the future, a store whose business is comprised solely of applying coatings to your clothing. All of the coatings will be invisible to the human eye.