Monsanto is a perfect example of the worst excesses of opaque corporate shenanigans that, alongside outright political dictatorship and oppression, are direct threats to true democracy.
The Monsanto Technology Stewardship Agreement (the name itself is Orwellian in it’s use of language to obscure and not illuminate) indemnifies Monsanto against “any and all losses, injury or damages resulting from the use or handling of seed (including claims based in contract, negligence, product liability, strict liability, tort, or otherwise)…in no event shall Monsanto or any seller be liable for any incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages.”
The Kite Powered Electric Car, Wind Explorer.
Continue reading… “Kite-Powered Electric Car Crosses Australia Using Only $15 Worth of Electricity”
The Atlanta duo Amy Flurry and Nikki Salk have created a wonderful series of fantastic paper wigs! Flurry is a freelance writer, editor and stylist and she also co-founded Paper-Cut-Project. Salk has a degree in Fine Arts in Design and runs a fashion blog called Fashion Gatherer and an art website called Charta-Aeterna.
Their paper installations are “fueled by a love of fashion and an appreciation of grace and nuance of this humble material.”
Facebook rolled out a new way for users to read and understand its privacy policy. Although none of the terms of the privacy policy have changed, the new site and policy outlines has been rewritten, reformatted and reorganized in a way that makes it easy for non-lawyers to understand…
Continue reading… “Facebook Writes Its Privacy Policy in a Language Humans Can Read”
Jasmine Flower
Mark Twain in Lego. What more could you want?
Is there anything that hasn’t been created from Lego bricks? Fine Clonier ran a contest that invited people to create historical figures out of Legos. Mark Twain above was the overall contest winner. Bookalicious recently posted some of the literary figures featured in the contest…
The quest for better fuel economy has General Motors cribbing from headphone technology.
Can technology used in headphones really improve gas mileage? GMC’s Terrain crossover is proving that yes, it can — or at least, it improves the experience of getting more miles per gallon.
Continue reading… “Can Headphone Technology Improve Gas Mileage?”
Increasing numbers of parents are controlling the diets of their babies and toddlers.
With one in ten children under two overweight, in the U.S. the obesity crisis is getting worse each year. But some parents are so worried about preventing the problem, they are putting their babies on diets.
Scientists used social-network analysis to find the origins of an outbreak of tuberculosis (top).
It was the baby’s case that first caught people’s attention: an infant in a medium-sized community in British Columbia that was diagnosed with tuberculosis in July 2006. When public health workers took a deeper look at the community’s medical records, they found a number of additional cases suggestive of an outbreak. By December 2008, 41 cases had been identified, bumping up the region’s annual incidence rate by a factor of 10.
Continue reading… “Social Networking Analysis and Genomics Solve Mysterious TB Outbreak”
The most conservative states are typically in the South and West. The least conservative states are in the Eastern part of the country and on the West Coast.
Where do people who call themselves liberals and conservatives live in the United States? A new Gallup Poll shows Mississippi has the largest percentage of people who self-identify as conservatives, at 50.5%, followed by Idaho(48.5%) and Alabama (48.3%).
Continue reading… “Mississippi is Most Conservative State in U.S.”
Beer is now alcohol in Russia
Beer is to be legally classified as an alcoholic drink in Russia for the first time as the Kremlin forges ahead with the toughest anti-alcohol campaign since the fall of the Soviet Union. The beverage is technically classified as a foodstuff for now, an anomaly that has allowed producers to avoid a sweeping new crackdown on alcohol advertising and night-time sales.
Continue reading… “Beer to be Classified as Alcohol for First Time in Russia”
