there are lots of things i dislike about people. i’ve been thinking about that a lot the last few days, and someone on livejournal managed to find an excellent example that embodies most of my fury.
any graduate student learns the skills of finding free food. Heck, this is a skill most undergrads also manage to hone.
Of course, this is a skill we don’t think of much outside of the poor student sector, but one worth considering, because an awful lot of perfectly good food gets thrown away, either from fast food joints, bakeries, restaurants, and supermarkets. Think about how much food there is out there, if not for the social taboo of finding it in dumpsters. Better than think about it, watch the Current TV piece about it.
Here are some stories that have piqued my interest of late. Wired had an article about breweries and sustainability. MIT has a piece on using algae as stack scrubbers to reduce carbon dioxide pollution. Ceres has made a 2006 report on companies making the biggest strides with climate change strategies. All of these are rather hopeful bits of information, a nice change from the gloom and doom I get in class. Mind you, bird flu may kill us all this next migration season and then we’ll have a lot less to worry about.
Do any other folks listen to the naked scientists program? I’ve been checking out the podcast and have been much amused…. but more amusing is that people will eat lousy food if you serve it to them in a big bucket (the research was on popcorn), and people discount the calorie content if they don’t like it. Really, check it out!
I think this is an excellent piece and discussion over at Body and Soul. Lots of food for thought there.
Apparently the folks behind Miramax have left Disney, though the Miramax name and library remain with Disney. Does this mean we’ll have a new creative label pop up? Does this mean Disney will lose all semblance of an investment that has an “edge”?
The news is often filled with disturbing stories and sensational episodes that people would just as soon not think about. Fortunetely, there are people out there who still try to wake us up in the face of this common denial.
Nicholas Kristoff is a New York Times writer who has written an interesting series on two Cambodian girls who were sex slaves. There’s also been a follow-up editorial in the International Herald Tribune.
When I wrote about drugs in kids today I found myself wondering where in the world I would be able to find the proceedings of this ongoing hearing regarding the FDA.
While ranting at length, a friend pointed me to Congress’ publications online. (thanks Joe!)
To be more specific, what I am looking for will probably show up here with the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Committee Hearings for the 108th Congress . Here we can read about all kinds of interesting hearings:
- SARS: Assessment, Outlook, and Lessons Learned
- A System Overwhelmed: The Avalanche of Imported, Counterfeit, and Unapproved Drugs into the U.S.
- Can Tobacco Cure Smoking? A Review of Tobacco Harm Reduction
- Legislative Efforts to Combat Spam
- Blackout 2003: How did it Happen and Why?
- Identity Theft: Assessing the Problem and Efforts to Combat it
- College Recruiting: Are Student Athletes Being Protected?
- The Ultra Deepwater Research and Development: What are The Benefits?
- EPA’s Resource Conservation Challenge
- Online Pornography: Closing the Door on Pervasive Smut
- Problems with the E-Rate Program: Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Concerns in the Wiring of Our Nation’s Schools to the Internet Part 1
- Parents Be Aware: Health Concerns about Dietary Supplements for Overweight Children
See, a little something for everyone!
NPR has a feature on Miriam Makeba. I love that I can listen to NPR pieces from China online. She is a fascinating singer with a new album out who hates being referred to as “the click click girl.” Her talk about growth as an artist and discovering her role allowing her to take on the name “Mama Africa” is inspirational to me.
Social censorship was one of the topics that came up today over at Jeff Jarvis’ BuzzMachine. This is an interesting twist in a puzzle of me rarely being able to connect to some interesting websites.
Living in China, there are certain things that I take as fact about the Internet:
It surprises me since some Chinese free blogging community services have popped up over the past bit. Also, contrary to popular belief, porn and illicit drug information is extremely accessible from China, which only confuses me. Also, what is available in different parts of China is not the same. In Southern Gansu’s Tibetan Autonomous Region, many Tibetan dissent websites were available, no problem. Those aren’t available from anyplace else I’ve been in China.
Then again, young monks there played a lot of Counter Strike, which struck me as very un-monklike. So much for predictable patterns of behavior.