12 November 2011

The Collapse of Honey Bees

Half of all the honey bees on the planet have died in recent years. A startling fact when you consider not only the impact that this has on the food chain and our food supply, but the even deeper metaphor that this represents for our culture. The disappearance of the bees has been named “Colony Collapse Disorder” and one well known bio-dynamic bee keeper featured in the new film by Taggart Siegel, Queen of the Sun, commented that actually the bees are showing us that this disorder is our own.

After watching the film at the recent Bioneers annual conference which offers the most progressive analysis and solution orientation to the global environmental crises we face, I decided to become a bee keeper. Honey bees are one of the few super-organisms on the planet, which is to say that a hive of tens of thousands of bees sacrifice their individual identities to create a bigger whole. The biology of creating beeswax and honey is nothing short of miraculous… Pollination is the tireless and miraculous process in which the natural world reproduces and evolves. The honey bees tireless efforts are literally the erotic glue that produces over 40% of our food supply. There is not a more sacred act of love that exists on this planet, nor one that we more take for granted.... more on

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11 November 2011

Penn State Scandal: Can You Imagine?

There is a child sex abuse scandal at Penn State and people have taken to the streets to celebrate (again).
Seriously, people? Is this really the best we have in us? Let’s start with some basics:
Child – Human beings, around middle school age, in this case boys. Young boys.Sex Abuse – Rape. Rape. Rape.Scandal - People knew about boys being raped and didn’t report it to police.Celebrate – People took to the streets to initially support, and later protest the firing of those involved in said scandal......
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10 November 2011

Autistic Girl Raped After Deboarding School Bus

Just as a 14-year-old autistic girl deboarded her school bus at 8:00 am at a Rutherford County high school on October 28, 36-year-old William Gilbert Barnett Jr. of Clarksville, Tennessee, picked her up and allegedly raped her in his truck. Barnett returned her to the school bus stop around 4:00 pm after school. He has been charged with three rape charges and three counts of aggravated sexual battery. It’s a chilling case, for schools and for parents of autistic children who often struggle to interpret social cues and to grasp the intentions of an individual like that of the accused in this case....

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The dictatore Assad sell his empire abroad for fear of confiscation and fall

Addressed the Telegraph British family Basharalassad filter property around the world, the newspaper said the Assad family great wealth in the form of apartments and houses in the British capital, London, and is currently sold by relatives, including property, according to the newspaper, a home worth ten million pounds in the "Mayfair" is owned by Rifaat Assad, the uncle of the current president, known as the "butcher of Hama," because he was accused of killing 40 thousand people in that city three decades ago.
The newspaper added that the Assad family do this step in order to obtain liquidity in the event was forced to leave power in Syria, especially since Britain had already frozen the assets of a number of leaders in the region, including the former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and his Tunisian counterpart, Hosni Mubarak, and Libyan leader ousted, Muammar Gaddafi and drew the newspaper that Rifaat al-Assad had already sold the real property in the United....
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9 November 2011

The man who invented the laser

How far is the Moon from Earth? How much does a liter of milk? Or, what is written on the CD case that you are not in your hands? There is only one way to answer all the questions to have a laser . It is shooting a laser beam towards a reflector placed by the astronauts on the moon that we know the distance that separates us from our satellite (384mila km). Thus, it is past the reader of the case the bar code printed on the carton of milk, or any other product in the supermarket, we know how much to pay. And also to listen to a CD, we need an optical drive. All applications of the same brilliant idea, that of ' light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation . In a word of the laser , invented by Gordon Gould (1920-2005) on the night of November 9, 1957 .
Have you ever seen the light photographed? Here are the pictures.

Gould, a physicist with a doctorate in New York spectroscopy at Columbia University , it had risen shortly after midnight, a prey to the urge to write what had been flashed in my head. He put it down on paper his notes ( "Some rough calculations on the feasibility of a laser: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation" ), on the feasibility of the laser . It was the first time that acronym was used. He was to indicate the way the light was amplified to produce a beam narrow and high-power, and Gordon was well aware of the extent of his insight. So much so that when he had finished writing his notes brought because they were authenticated by a notary. Almost imagined how much profit would be returned over time....

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8 November 2011

Greenpeace Shuts Down A Coal Power Site In South Africa

On Monday, a group of Greenpeace Africa activists managed to interrupt work at the construction site of a gigantic new coal-fired power plant in South Africa for several hours.
Some of the activists chained themselves to the gate at the entrance to the site where Eskom, South Africa’s state-owned electricity utility, is busy building the Kusile power station, which will have a total capacity of 4800 megawatts (MW) once it’s completed. A second group of activists gained access to the site, scaled a tall construction crane and dropped a banner reading ‘Kusile: Climate Killer’ from it.....

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7 November 2011

No More School Buses in Washington State?

Washington state is considering eliminating all funding for school busing to address a $2 billion shortfall in the state budget. Cutting school busing for all students would give the state an additional $220 million. Getting rid of transportation for students would mean that it will be up to parents to figure out how to get their kids to school not to mention lots more traffic at drop-off and pick-up time.

But it also raises the question of what constitutes a “basic education.” While some note that cutting transportation is preferable to other cuts in the classroom, no more school buses means that some students will have no means of getting to school, if parents work or if students live beyond walking distance. While there are some benefits to students — such as the exercise from walking — there are also safety concerns, depending on where students live and how long their walk is.

Washington is not the only state that has put school buses on the line in seeking to address budget issues; California and Colorado have also previously cut funds for transportation. But if Washington Governor Chris Gregoire’s idea is approved by state lawmakers, Washington would be the first state to completely eliminate transportation for children in public school in the US. Bob Riley, executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services, says that about 50 percent of US school children –not including children in special education whose transportation is mandated under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) — take school buses to.... more on


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6 November 2011

Internet Explorer near the halfway point

Internet Explorer is going to fall below 50% penetration, thus becoming the first "minority" in the industry that dominated.
In the desktop world, where Internet Explorer has dominated far and wide since the fall of Netscape, the browser Microsoft is nearing a turning point: after checking the market with the quasi-monopoly for years, in fact, IE is now near the threshold of 50%, extremely important psychological threshold in the competitive framework that is being shaped.....

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