Twitter to Censor Content in Some Countries
January 27th, 2012Via: Montreal Gazette:
Twitter announced Thursday that it would begin restricting Tweets in specific countries, renewing questions about how the social media platform will handle issues of free speech as it rapidly expands its global user base.
Until now, Twitter had to remove a tweet from its global network if it received a takedown request from a government. But the company said in a blog post published Thursday that it now has the ability to selectively block a tweet from appearing to users in one country.
“Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country while keeping it available in the rest of the world,” the Twitter blog said.
Fast Food Companies Abandon Ammoniated ‘Pink Slime’ Beef
January 27th, 2012Via: Food Safety:
Ammoniated beef has taken a real beating in the media over the past couple years, and now fast-food giants McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Burger King are no longer using it. As veteran journalist Philip Brasher reported over the holidays, the Iowa-based company that manufactures the beef product — at one time used in around 70 percent of American ground beef — has watched sales drop by 25 percent.
Britain: Wave Powered Pistons Will Pump Sea Water Into Reservoirs for On-Demand Electricity Generation
January 27th, 2012My guess is that pigs will fly before this is built out on any meaningful scale, but it looks like an interesting idea.
Via: BBC:
A Devon inventor’s electricity from seawater generator could be sited at 200 points around the UK coastline.
Energy firm Ecotricity wants to develop a commercial Searaser for testing off Falmouth in Cornwall and put hundreds around the coast in five years.
Dale Vince of Ecotricity said the potential was “enormous”.
The Searaser machine works by using wave energy to pump water up to container tanks and the water is then released to a hydro-electric turbine.
Searaser is the brainchild of British engineer Alvin Smith from Dartmouth.
He came up with the idea about 10 years ago while he was playing with an inflatable ball in a swimming pool.
Searaser pumps seawater using a vertical piston between two buoys – one on the surface of the water, the other suspended underwater and tethered to a weight on the seabed.
As the ocean swell moves the buoys up and down, the piston works like a bicycle pump to send seawater through a pipe to an onshore turbine to produce electricity or to a coastal storage reservoir.
It can then be released through a generator as required.
Mr Smith: “There are over 150 reservoirs on our cliff tops already around the south west.
“A lot of these are becoming available.
“The tanks can be large or the size of a family swimming pool.”
He said that a full size machine would be about 1m wide and 12m deep and cost up to £250,000.
The ideal site for machines would be in water about 25m deep near a cliff face.
He is hoping the test machine will be installed off Falmouth in Cornwall by the end of the year.
Related: Pumped-Storage Hydroelectricity
Illinois Semi Automatic Firearm Owners: Be Aware of HB1294
January 27th, 2012If you bother to read the full text of the legislation, you’ll find that the definition of “assault weapons” is very broad and covers a lot of rifles, handguns and shotguns.
Via: Illinois General Assembly:
Synopsis As Introduced
Amends the Criminal Code of 1961. Provides that 90 days after the effective date of this amendatory Act, it is unlawful for any person within this State to knowingly manufacture, deliver, sell, purchase, or possess or cause to be manufactured, delivered, sold, purchased, or possessed a semi-automatic assault weapon, an assault weapon attachment, any .50 caliber rifle, or .50 caliber cartridge. Provides that beginning 90 days after the effective date of this amendatory Act, it is unlawful for any person within this State to knowingly manufacture, deliver, sell, purchase, or possess or cause to be manufactured, delivered, sold, purchased, or possessed a large capacity ammunition feeding device. Provides that these provisions do not apply to a person who possessed a prohibited weapon, device, or attachment before the effective date of this amendatory Act if the person has provided proof of ownership to the Department of State Police within 90 days after the effective date of this amendatory Act. Provides that on or after the effective date of this amendatory Act, such person may transfer such device only to an heir, an individual residing in another state maintaining that device in another state, or a dealer licensed as a federal firearms dealer. Specifies penalties for violations. Provides exemptions. Provides that the provisions of the Act are severable. Effective immediately.
North Mountain Pastures
January 27th, 2012Via: Kickstarter:
If you love traditional European salume, charcuterie, cured meats, air-dried meats, or artisan meats by any other name, then you have come to the right place!
North Mountain Pastures is me – Brooks, my wife Anna, and our two children, Kaj and Leila. We’ve been farming together on leased land for over 6 years now, and just bought our own land in the spring of 2011.
We are farmers. This means we work to produce a valuable product (meat) from the sun’s energy (grass).
Growing the highest quality food possible is our goal. We believe that good food is nutritious and delicious. We believe the way to raise livestock is to provide an environment that mimics nature and is integrated with our natural environment. Our animals thrive naturally: outdoors, eating organic pasture and grains, feeling sun and rain and even snow, clean water, plenty of space. What is good for the animals is good for our farm – the soil is fertilized with manure and protected from erosion with permanent pasture.
UK Bioethicist: Pregnancy and Natural Birth Should Not Be Tolerated
January 27th, 2012Make ready the municipal hatcheries.
Via: Bioedge:
Pregnancy and childbirth are so painful, risky and socially restrictive for women that public funding should urgently be directed to the development of artificial wombs. This is the only way to achieve true equality between men and women for then neither women nor men would then be limited by having children and the burdens of reproducing the species would be shared equally.
This is the radical suggestion made by a leading British bioethicist, Anna Smajdor, of the University of East Anglia.
Artificcial gestation, or ectogenesis, is currently science fiction, but it may be possible. Dr Smajdor believes that in a truly liberal society pregnancy and childbirth should not be tolerated:
Changes to financial and social structures may improve things marginally, but a better solution needs to be found. Either we view women as baby carriers who must subjugate their other interests to the well-being of their children or we acknowledge that our social values and level of medical expertise are no longer compatible with “natural” reproduction.
…
I suggest that there is a strong case for prioritizing research into ectogenesis as an alternative to pregnancy. I conclude by asking the reader the following: if you did not know whether you would be a man or a woman, would you prefer to be born into Society A, in which women bear all the burdens and risks of pregnancy, or Society B, in which ectogenesis has been perfected.
LAPD and Special Forces Conduct Military Maneuvers in Skies Above Downtown LA
January 27th, 2012Via: CBS:
The Los Angeles Police Department teamed with military special operation forces Wednesday evening to conduct multi-agency tactical exercises in the skies above downtown LA.
Many questioned what was going on Wednesday night as a Black Hawk helicopter and four OH-6 choppers – or “Little Birds” – flew over the city, at one point hovering just above the US Bank building downtown and later flying low over the Staples Center as the Lakers played inside.
Someone could be seen sitting inside an open chopper with his legs hanging off the side.
Sky9 spotted the Black Hawk in the dark, making what appeared to be a drop off at a park before quickly ascending back into the air.
Throughout the exercise, the five rotorcrafts were staged at Dodgers Stadium.
The LAPD said the purpose of the training was in part to ensure the military’s ability to operate in urban environments.
Chief Warrant Officer David Duran was a U.S. Army aviator for 12 years. He now flies Blackhawk helicopters for the National Guard in California. Duran says what KCAL9 saw Wednesday night could be a dry run for a future mission.
“They do a lot of mockup training,” said Duran. “But it’s always best to get the closest terrain layout to what the objective is.”
Land of the Free: U.S. Press Freedom Ranked 47th in the World
January 27th, 2012Via: Reporters without Borders:
The United States (47th) also owed its fall of 27 places to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests.
The Death of Used Video Games
January 27th, 2012Via: Kotaku:
Microsoft will upgrade its disc technology for its next Xbox from DVDs to Blu-Ray discs, catching up to rival Sony, games industry sources tell Kotaku.
Sony’s PlayStation 3 currently supports Blu-Ray, which can contain 25 or 50GB of data compared to DVD’s 9GB.
But that disc detail could be far less impactful to the next generation of game consoles than the assertion I’ve heard from one reliable industry source that Microsoft intends to incorporate some sort of anti-used game system as part of their so-called Xbox 720.
It’s not clear if that means that the system wouldn’t play used games or how such a set-up would work. Obvious approaches—I’m theorizing here—like linking a copy of a game to a specific Xbox Live account could seemingly be foiled by used-game owners who would keep their system offline. My source wasn’t sure how Microsoft intended to implement any anti-used game system in the new machine.
A push in any way by Microsoft against used games would likely be cheered from publishers sick of seeing retailers like GameStop crow about their revenues from the sale of used games. But it could potentially anger consumers who rely on buying cheaply-sold used games or even pass games to relatives or friends.
MIT Student Develops $3 Cutting-Edge Healing Device, Field Tested in Haiti
January 26th, 2012This is a couple of years old, but it was news to me.
Via: Fast Company:
No one really knows why, but for an open wound, simply applying suction dramatically speeds healing times. (The theory is that the negative pressure draws bacteria out, and encourages circulation.) But for almost everyone, that treatment is out of reach–simply because the systems are expensive–rentals cost at least $100 a day and need to be recharged every six hours.
No more. Danielle Zurovcik, a doctoral student at MIT, has created a hand-powered suction-healing system that costs about $3. The device is composed of an airtight wound dressing, connected by a plastic tube to a cylinder with accordion-like folds. Squeezing it creates the suction, which lasts as long as there’s no air leak. What’s more, where regular dressings need to be replaced up to three times a day–a painful ordeal–the new cuff can be left on for several days.
