“If only the war on poverty was a real war, then we would actually be putting money into it.”
(via egyptianmuslima4life)
Source: weheartit.com
![sustainablesex:
(via Guerrilla Grafters Bring Forbidden Fruit Back To City Trees : The Salt : NPR)
“We don’t have a supermarket and we have very few produce stores [here],” she says. “What better to alleviate scarcity of healthy produce in an impoverished area than to grow them yourself and to have it available for free.”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m24vyr87W81rpm4r7o1_1280.jpg)
(via Guerrilla Grafters Bring Forbidden Fruit Back To City Trees : The Salt : NPR)
“We don’t have a supermarket and we have very few produce stores [here],” she says. “What better to alleviate scarcity of healthy produce in an impoverished area than to grow them yourself and to have it available for free.”
Source: NPR
Alternative building material - hemp, hempcrete, hemp plaster, hemp insulation. Check out Steve Allin’s hemp building website, as well as the international hemp building assoc.
Source: aiisagulko
Financials Lead US Stock Losses
By MATT JARZEMSKY
NEW YORK—U.S. stocks traded lower as a Friday report that employers added fewer jobs than expected last month cast doubt on the pace of the labor market’s recovery.
All 10 S&P 500 sectors retreated Monday, with financials tumbling the most. Bank of America BAC -3.09% and J.P. Morgan JPM -1.33% were among the biggest decliners among Dow components.
Nonfarm payrolls grew by 120,000 in March, the Labor Department reported. The result snapped a three-month streak of 200,000-plus job growth. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had expected, on average, an increase of 203,000.
Looking ahead, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is slated to speak at a conference in Georgia after the market closes. Investors are watching for signals about the prospects for more monetary stimulus efforts. Tuesday, Alcoa AA -0.36% is due to report first-quarter earnings. The aluminum maker’s report signals the unofficial start of the corporate earnings season.
Crude-oil futures slid 2.3% to $100.99 a barrel, while gold futures rose 0.7% to $1641.80 an ounce. The U.S. dollar lost ground against the yen but edged higher against the euro.
In corporate news, shares of AOL AOL +45.40% soared after the company said it agreed to sell more than 800 patents and related patent applications to Microsoft,MSFT -0.60% and grant Microsoft a license to its retained patents in exchange for $1.06 billion in cash. Microsoft shares slipped.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
It’s a bit sad when I consider that one of the kindest things humanity could do for the earth and all the things existing on earth, would be to develop virtual reality to the point that humans no long need to act upon and harm the earth to achieve all of the freedoms, experiences and luxuries we so desperately seek. I picture the Matrix, but instead of the outerworld being dreadfully decayed and infested with mechanical design, it is green and flourishing with life.
Question is, how many resources would be required to devise of , build and power such a matrix? Think it could be possible and sustainable?
(via sushisaid)
Source: pleatedjeans
If we have a few rich and powerful men on the pinnacle of fortune and grandeur, while the crowd grovels in want and obscurity, it is because the former prize what they enjoy only in so far as others are destitute of it; and because without changing their condition, they would cease to be happy the moment the people ceased to be wretched.
Source: anthony-john534
The 10-metre wide, helium-filled inflatable turbine, called the Airborne Wind Turbine (AWT), is able to produce more than twice the power that a conventional tower turbine can generate at the same height. Prototype by Altaeros Energies, a wind energy company formed out of MIT
This is a huge breakthrough for 2 reasons:
- The higher the altitude, the stronger the winds! As you get farther from the land the wind finds less resistance and goes at higher speeds which only means more power.
- This allows unprecedented mobility and flexibility to wind farms. You could practically chase the wind. Moreover, it would let you prevent major damage to your wind farm in case of hurricanes or severe storms. You would just have to ground your turbine-blimps and the next day you would be operating like nothing happened.
Pros and cons? What are people’s thoughts?
Source: wired.co.uk
Just think, if you work hard, take on massive student loan debts, and crawl on the backs of countless others, you too can live in luxury (maybe, probably not, and if not, clearly you are a failure at life). /sarcasm
Source: thedigitalcitizen
Class War in Congress
Source: cheappoet
Passing tests doesn’t begin to compare with searching and inquiring and pursuing topics that engage us and excite us. That’s far more significant than passing tests and, in fact, if that’s the kind of educational career you’re given the opportunity to pursue, you will remember what you discovered.
One important lesson on economics from someone who’s picked up on a few things…
Put basically: If they’re offering it to plebes like you, the bubble is about to burst.
There are numerous economic bubbles in past and present. The stock bubble. The internet bubble. The housing bubble. The quantum chocolate bubble. Okay, I just wish there was a quantum chocolate bubble…
The point is, bubbles are just like pyramid schemes. Sooner or later, they’re going to run out of people to sell it to and the whole shebang is going to fall on top of whoever’s stuck on the bottom.
That usually means the “sucker” portion of the common throng. The people who believe they’re going to get rich by investing everything they own on a shanty-house in BF-nowhere that the bank says is worth tons and that said people can’t possibly repay inside of ten lifetimes.
The people who genuinely believe that sending a letter to five friends will result in a vast fortune arriving to them by mail.
The people who really think that some wealthy person in Nigeria [or wherever] is going to launder their millions through a plebe’s bank account.
And the people who think pyramid schemes really, really work.
Let me run through some math. Person A decides to start a little scheme selling otherwise worthless pieces of paper as part of a pyramid scheme. He sells to ten people and gives instructions to each to sell to ten more. They remove their names once they’re at the top of a list of ten people.
On the first iteration [the first sale] there are 11 people in the loop.
Second iteration, 111 have bought in
Third, 1111.
Fourth, 11111. Fifth 111111. By the sixth iteration, you’ve reached over a million people. By the ninth, one billion.
There are about sixty billion people on this earth, the last time I checked. At that rate, you’re going to run out of suckers. And the last people to buy in are always the first to cop the consequences of falling for it.
Same principle with [Mad-Lib here] bubbles. The richest people get hold of said maguffin first, and sell it at inflated prices to those lower in the economic scale as an investment opportunity. Increased demand equals increased value, and a few of the lower echelon sell it down, again at an increased price, to those slightly beneath them.
Lather, rinse and repeat for a few iterations and Joe Schlubb and his neighbours are all desperately trying to sign you on to Maguffin Inc.
Only the skeptics can survive bubbles with their fundings intact. Them, or the people who started it in the first place.
If you’re at a sales pitch and they mention the wealthy’s secrets to getting rich, leave. That’s a sure sign you’re about to be bubbled.
Source: internutter
does America still have a ‘working class’ ? If so it’s become strangely invisible because all the media and politicians ever talk about is the ‘middle class’. To listen to them you’d think everyone but the super-rich 1% is ‘middle-class’. Weird ..
Half of what used to be considered middle class is under that same shitty umbrella, I’m afraid to say. Having multiple degrees and working 9-5 in an office doesn’t guarantee health coverage. Most politicians, who are themselves rich, are severely clueless as to the kind of lives their constituents live.
(via rawrevolutionepidemic)
Source: cartoonpolitics
Student loan debt, at $830 billion, now exceeds total US credit card debt, itself bloated to the bubble level of $827 billion. And student loan debt is growing at the rate of $90 billion a year. Will it be the next credit bubble to burst ? More here
(via amodernmanifesto)
Source: cartoonpolitics
