Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Forage: where you can sell your excess produce from backyard farming to your local restaurant.
One Los Angeles chef decided to take organic and local to another level by having customers bring fruits and vegetables from their backyards to put in the restaurants dishes. The county intervened, but the restaurant figured out a way to get its customers involved with the menu again.
It DOES get better...
Dan Savage of Savage Love launches a campaign to let LGBT kids out there that life for them does get better after high school.
If you're going to be religious, at least know what you're believing in.
A new survey of Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths...
Monday, September 27, 2010
Transgender teen denied Homecoming King title.
The silver lining to me is that in Michigan in 2010 he won the vote to be king in the first place...
Friday, September 24, 2010
Opening up the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, allows its data to be freely used by by The Weather Channel and news organizations so that people can stay informed about their local weather conditions. So, too, could we use the data gathered by HHS to make informed decisions about which hospitals we use, what neighborhood we wish to live in, etc. Statistics on local health outcomes could even affect property value, just as school district ratings already do.
Can't we all just get along?
This wild monkey adopted an abandoned kitten and is caring for it as his own. The long-tailed macaque monkey was spotted in a forest in the Ubud region of Bali, Indonesia, protectively nuzzling and grooming the kitten.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Urban Walmarts coming to a city near you...
I'm hoping this means healthy, affordable produce for low income neighborhoods that currently rely on corner stores full of processed foods for their groceries.
"As part of its new "urban strategy," the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., is looking to open two dozen stores in the Bay Area... Wal-Mart's move reflects an "enormous paradigm shift" among consumers, away, in this economy, "from what they want to have, to what they have to have." Top of the list is food - reasonably priced, fresh and within walking distance."
"As part of its new "urban strategy," the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., is looking to open two dozen stores in the Bay Area... Wal-Mart's move reflects an "enormous paradigm shift" among consumers, away, in this economy, "from what they want to have, to what they have to have." Top of the list is food - reasonably priced, fresh and within walking distance."
Breakdown of race in major cities.
Red = White
Blue = Black
Orange = Hispanic
Green = Asian
San Francisco:
Blue = Black
Orange = Hispanic
Green = Asian
San Francisco:
OK Go's PeeWee machine.
I love this on so many levels. My favorite part is when the spoons hit the glasses...
More Gaga on the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
I don't know about the whole prime rib analogy, but I'll take support wherever we can get it!
Monday, September 20, 2010
Eat responsibly.
Every time we buy food we're essentially voting for what kinds of food we want to be available and how we want it to be grown. Buying organic may stretch your budget too far, but simply buying local and in season can also have a dramatic impact on your health and on farmers' livelihood.
Watch Food Inc.
Watch Food Inc.
The rise of women and the "mancession".
Did you know...
- Men’s share of the labor force has declined from 70 percent in 1945 to less than 50 percent today, and in the country’s biggest cities, young, single, childless women—that is, the next generation—earn 8 percent more than their male peers
- Women have matched or overtaken men as a percentage of students in college and graduate school, while men have retained their lead in alcoholism, suicide, homelessness, violence, and criminality
- Of the 3.6 million people canned since the downturn began in December 2007, more than four fifths have been men
- The American Time Use Survey shows that in fact laid-off men tend to do less—not more—housework, eating up their extra hours snacking, sleeping and channel surfing (which might be why the Cartoon Network, whose audience has grown by 10 percent during the downturn, is now running more ads for refrigerator repair school). Unemployed women, in contrast, spend twice as much time taking care of children and doing chores. Nor do former working stiffs necessarily reconnect with their families: following alcoholics and drug addicts, they're the most likely demographic to beat their female partners.
Time to rethink the classic gender binary...
- Men’s share of the labor force has declined from 70 percent in 1945 to less than 50 percent today, and in the country’s biggest cities, young, single, childless women—that is, the next generation—earn 8 percent more than their male peers
- Women have matched or overtaken men as a percentage of students in college and graduate school, while men have retained their lead in alcoholism, suicide, homelessness, violence, and criminality
- Of the 3.6 million people canned since the downturn began in December 2007, more than four fifths have been men
- The American Time Use Survey shows that in fact laid-off men tend to do less—not more—housework, eating up their extra hours snacking, sleeping and channel surfing (which might be why the Cartoon Network, whose audience has grown by 10 percent during the downturn, is now running more ads for refrigerator repair school). Unemployed women, in contrast, spend twice as much time taking care of children and doing chores. Nor do former working stiffs necessarily reconnect with their families: following alcoholics and drug addicts, they're the most likely demographic to beat their female partners.
Time to rethink the classic gender binary...
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Urban farming.
Imagine skyscrapers with a grocery store on the ground floor and an organic farm filling the rest of the top floors.
The new far right wing.
They say to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Get to knowChristine O'Donnell, the Republican candidate for Senate from Delaware who is campaigning for VP Joe Biden's old seat.
Oh, and she has a gay sister.
Oh, and she has a gay sister.
A rose by any other name... is still not something we should eat.
The Corn Refiners Association trade group is petitioning the Food and Drug Administration to replace the phrase "high-fructose corn syrup" with "corn sugar." Either way, it's still unhealthy for people and for the environment.
Ted Koppel: Nine years after 9/11, let's stop playing into bin Laden's hands
He's not the first to make this point, but it's worth repeating.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Oh HELL no. The public should NOT have to pay for PGE's fires.
When I heard about the $100 million fund that PGE set up for the victims of the San Bruno natural gas fire I was hopeful that this would mark an improvement over the corporate bad behavior that we've seen run rampant recently (do I even need to mention BP??). And then I read about PGE proposing a bill that would "require customers to pay all costs of catastrophic fires, such as last week's gas-line explosion in San Bruno, that exceed a utility's insurance coverage". Please tell me that the fund wasn't created to counter the inevitable bad press that PGE would receive after news of this bill got out...
Bamboo bikes.
I'm baffled as to why we don't just make everything out of bamboo and hemp instead of cutting down trees all over the world.
Bay area people can get bamboo bikes from at least two places locally and can attend workshops about them too.
Bay area people can get bamboo bikes from at least two places locally and can attend workshops about them too.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Best existential skate flick ever.
Skaters are Revolutinaries! Even if you never pick up a skateboard, this is a good philosophy by which to live.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Surprise! Google and the internet interrupts productivity at work.
Study says that PacMan on Google wasted 4.8 million man hours.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Do we hold our stress in our hair?
We've all heard the story before - a woman goes through a breakup, chops off her hair, and starts fresh. Or a dude clips his dreadlocks and sheds his karmic weight. That always seemed to make sense for no particular reason, but once again an old adage now has science to back it up.
The most uncomfortable political moment I've ever seen.
I mean, we already knew that Governor Jan Brewer was crazy because of the Arizona immigration bill that she enthusiastically signed into law, but this is just plain AWKWARD. Like I'm blushing FOR her kind of awkward. Ugh.
View the Rachel Maddow coverage of this here.
View the Rachel Maddow coverage of this here.
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