Help with Your Food Garden “… James Lucal in Seattle … not only brings home the local produce, he got a local to grow it for him directly outside his home. And yet he spent almost nothing for this luxury, and lifted not so much as a trowel to make it happen. Welcome to ‘urban [...]
It's a Guy Thing “[G]uys who want to lug around their iPads are finding themselves quietly reaching for a so-called man purse, or murse. The iPad-shaped bags seem to be the gadgetphile’s equivalent of a woman’s clutch. Scott Stein, a senior associate editor at CNET who lives in New York City, has reviewed iPad bags [...]
Financing from Strangers “When recent college graduate Bronson Chang wanted to renovate his uncle’s candy shop in Honolulu, he decided to tap his social network for the funds via a ‘crowdfunding’ website, instead of seeking a loan at a bank. Crowdfunding sites—such as ProFounder.com, Peerbackers.com, Kickstarter.com and IndieGoGo.com—allow entrepreneurs to raise money collectively toward a [...]
African Wars Restrict U.S. Retailers “Top U.S. retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp. are battling to limit a new federal law that could force them to report whether their store-brand goods contain minerals from war-torn Central Africa. The requirement, part of the Dodd-Frank financial law passed in July, aims to pressure companies to [...]
Scary Web Bits “[There is] … a growing phenomenon making its way around message boards and e-mail chains called ‘creepypasta’ — bite-sized bits of scariness that have joined the unending list of things-to-do-when-you’re-bored-at-work. … . creepypasta vary widely. One … “The Russian Sleep Experiment,” is a short story about Russian prisoners who are forcibly deprived [...]
Ideas Worth Spreading “TED” is an acronym for “Technology, Entertainment, Design.” [From the TED website - http//www.ted.com/ ]: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with [...]
Stopping By to See Poverty “Megacities such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Sao Paolo and Mexico City have become almost unspeakably congested leviathans. They may be seen as ‘colorful’ by those engaging what writer Kennedy Odede [see quotation below] calls ‘Slumdog tourism.’ They may also be exciting for those working within the confines of ‘glamour zones’ [...]
Fear of No Outlets “The [electric] carmakers are eager to make their first customers happy, so they are bending over backwards to help with the charging infrastructure and to allay ‘range anxiety’ — the fear of running out of electricity and getting stranded, because all-electric cars cannot go as far as conventional ones. (This is [...]
Common Ground Ridiculed “ ‘Come By Here,’ a song deeply rooted in black Christianity’s vision of a God who intercedes to deliver both solace and justice, by the 1960s became the pallid pop-folk sing-along ‘Kumbaya.’ And ‘Kumbaya,’ in turn, has lately been transformed into snarky shorthand for ridiculing a certain kind of idealism, a quest [...]
Transforming Cells " … [S]cientists found over the past two years that they could do what they call ‘transdifferentiation.’ They are now taking cells, like nerve cells, and turning them into other types of cells, like muscle cells. In theory, of course, it should be possible. All cells in the body have the same genes [...]