Yes, we still can! Congratulations, New Orleans.
Yes, we still can! Congratulations, New Orleans.
Click and play... stay positive.
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A nice story from the World Bank blog about a grass-roots organization's efforts to stop petty corruption in India and around the world:
...the idea was first conceived by an Indian physics professor at the University of Maryland, who, in his travels around India, realized how widespread bribery was and wanted to do something about it. He came up with the idea of printing zero-denomination notes and handing them out to officials whenever he was asked for kickbacks as a way to show his resistance. Anand took this idea further: to print them en masse, widely publicize them, and give them out to the Indian people. He thought these notes would be a way to get people to show their disapproval of public service delivery dependent on bribes. The notes did just that. The first batch of 25,000 notes were met with such demand that 5th Pillar has ended up distributing one million zero-rupee notes to date since it began this initiative. Along the way, the organization has collected many stories from people using them to successfully resist engaging in bribery.
I like it. Now let's send some "zero dollars" to the Famous Five justices Supreme Court, the Blue-Dog Democrats, and the entire Republican party.
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This is what we are fed daily... small wonder we don't watch the news!
]]>First Tylenol, now Toyota. Same old story. Silence is not damage control.
Now the NHTSA is looking at the pedal maker. There must be a way to check the electronics - some way to look at the log files, perhaps?
Note that both companies are blaming their suppliers.
Is this the result of in-house PR?
Hail Corporatocracy!
Brought to you by our Corporate Supreme Court and the Corporate Propaganda Machine, er, Media.
Quote of the Week: I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country. - Thomas Jefferson
]]>The courage of MLK is what makes us admire him most. Like Gandhi, like Nelson Mandela, like Malcolm X. Every once in a while we're blessed with leaders like this. And, what do we do? Generally speaking, we kill them.
And yet we are moving forward, despite the hatred.
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One: donate to Paul Farmer's Partners in Health, and two: cancel Haiti's debt.
]]>Somehow, I think that the US still offers the world the best way forward.
Yes, despite the lobbyists and the money-grubbing pirates in high office, there is still hope.
Don't give in, America.
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That's all I have of this classic.
Discussion: How do you respond to a letter like this?
It's time. The Chinese government never has any qualms about "doing evil," so it's good to see Google stand up for some principles.
]]>Researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB), in cooperation with colleagues from Oxford and Bristol Universities, as well as the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, have for the first time observed a nanoscale symmetry hidden in solid state matter. They have measured the signatures of a symmetry showing the same attributes as the golden ratio famous from art and architecture.
And the winning number is:
or
![\varphi = [1; 1, 1, 1, \dots] = 1 + \cfrac{1}{1 + \cfrac{1}{1 + \cfrac{1}{1 + \ddots}}}](http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/b/6/8b60ba0565a178cde9cc400bd6c253ab.png)
The proper response to this should go something like "OMG!"
Here's Mark Fiore's video:
And here's the full story >>
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