Archive | June, 2009

When Bees are Outlawed Only Outlaws will have Bees

30 Jun

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2006_03_09 008

2006_03_09 008

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Just found this on Treehugger.   This is a crazy policy. 

Just read how beekeeping is illegal in New York. Another one of Guliani’s quality of life issues, like jaywalking and dancing. One more reason the SgtMjr has to not move to New York.

It sounds like dozens of people are risking huge fines for the privelige though. Neighbors are bought off with jars of honey and the city benefits. Wish that was true whenever someone broke the law.

Source: forums.treehugger.com

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Untitled

18 Jun

Sent from my iPhone

Facebook URL Policy Favors East Coast

12 Jun

Facebook is wading into territory that domain name registrars found themselves in 10 years ago.  Namely, trying to figure out ‘who owns a name?’  Some notable examples include:

  • J. Crew forced the owner of crew.com to give them the name even though the domain is arguably a generic English word. 
  • Indian megacorp TaTa successfully sued the owner  (and this was my favorite dispute) of bodacioustatats.com and got the name. 

Now these battles over language are being waged in yet another namespace, that of facebook.

Businesses and entrepreneurs have been warned by a leading information technology lawyer to protect brand names and trade marks ahead of plans for personalised web addresses on Facebook.

From Saturday (June 13th) users of the social networking site will be able to register their own URL address, replacing numbers with a name of their choice. This could be your brand e.g. http://www.facebook.com/irwinmitchell.

Source: huttoncranswicktoday.co.uk

As someone who has seen the feeding frenzies that arise from these registration drives I can assure you that we are witnessing the beginning of an arms race.  Once scarcity is introduced into the system people are motivated to build technology, sophisticated back stories and big legal teams to extract the value that scarcity creates.  We’ll see that here too. 

That is the big story here but on a more tactical level I was ticked off by their policy of tying registration into time zones.  When I went to facebook today to get my personal username, I got this message:

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Facebook URL Policy Favors East Coast - screen capture

Facebook URL Policy Favors East Coast – screen capture

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uploaded by mtippett

Starting on Friday, June 12th, at 9:01pm in your time zone, you’ll be able to choose a username for your Facebook account to easily direct friends, family, and coworkers to your profile.

Source: facebook.com

I was a bit ticked off (as a West Coaster) to see the bias toward those on the East Coast.  By the time the sun sets on the West, all the good names will be gone.  Pity poor Bob Smith.

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Greed in the Seed: Food Inc’s “Inconvenient Truth”

11 Jun

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Food Inc Official HD Trailer

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Food Inc Official HD Trailer

The Huffpo had a piece on the soon to be release film, Food Inc. 

The riveting documentary Food, Inc. (opening in select cities tomorrow) presents elements of the food industry that can put profit ahead of food safety, workers’ rights, animal welfare, the sustainability of the environment, and the livelihood of the family farmer.

Source: huffingtonpost.com

Having watched an advanced screening I can tell you that this film is well worth watching and will change the way you think about food.  If it moves you to act, the film has these suggestions.

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Food Inc.

Food Inc.

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Your Food Has Been Lying to You

10 Jun

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Food Inc Full Movie Trailer 2009

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Food Inc Full Movie Trailer 2009

Do you know where your food comes from?  If you’re like most people the answer is likely ‘no’.  The makers of Food Inc. are hoping to educate you.

Bigger-breasted chickens fattened artificially. New strains of deadly E. coli bacteria. A food supply controlled by a handful of corporations.

The documentary “Food, Inc.” opens in the United States on Friday and portrays these purported dangers and changes in the U.S. food industry, asserting harmful effects on public health, the environment, and worker and animal rights.

Big corporations such as biotech food producer Monsanto Co., U.S. meat companies Tyson Food Inc. and Smithfield Foods, and poultry producer Perdue Farms all declined to be interviewed for the film.

Source: reuters.com

But if you think that big agribusiness is taking the new lying down then guess again.  The industry is pushing back hard with a PR blitz of their own.  They have reason to be worried.  Having seen an advanced screening of the film, I can tell you that this movie could reveal some very Inconvenient Truths about the food business.

Thumbnails

  • Food Inc Full Movie Trailer 2009
  • Flavor fusion
  • Lemoncello: Sorrento’s Yellow Liquid Gold | Photo 02
  • Canal de Bourgogne: A slow easy cruise
  • The Culprit | Photo 02
  • Argriturismo in Italy: Agricultural tourism? | Photo 11

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Your Food Has Been Lying to You

10 Jun

Do you know where your food comes from?  If you’re like most people the answer is likely ‘no’.  The makers of Food Inc. are hoping to educate you.

Bigger-breasted chickens fattened artificially. New strains of deadly E. coli bacteria. A food supply controlled by a handful of corporations.

The documentary “Food, Inc.” opens in the United States on Friday and portrays these purported dangers and changes in the U.S. food industry, asserting harmful effects on public health, the environment, and worker and animal rights.

Big corporations such as biotech food producer Monsanto Co., U.S. meat companies Tyson Food Inc. and Smithfield Foods, and poultry producer Perdue Farms all declined to be interviewed for the film.

Source: reuters.com

But if you think that big agribusiness is taking the new lying down then guess again.  The industry is pushing back hard with a PR blitz of their own.  They have reason to be worried.  Having seen an advanced screening of the film, I can tell you that this movie could reveal some very Inconvenient Truths about the food business.

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Pirot Party Wins Seat in European Parliament.

8 Jun

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Rickard Falkvinge – Swedish PiratPartiet

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Rickard Falkvinge - Swedish PiratPartiet

For the first time in history a member of the Pirate Party, an organization dedicated to defending the intellectual property rights of consumers and their ability to file share, has won a seat in the EU Parliament.

The Pirate Party has won a huge victory in the Swedish elections and is marching on to Brussels. After months of campaigning against well established parties, the Pirate Party has gathered enough votes to be guaranteed a seat in the European Parliament.

When the Swedish Pirate Party was founded in early 2006, the majority of the mainstream press were skeptical, with some simply laughing it away. But they were wrong to dismiss this political movement out of hand. Today, the Pirate Party accomplished what some believed to be the impossible, by securing a seat in the European Parliament.

With 99.9% of the districts counted the Pirates have 7.1 percent of the votes, beating several established parties. This means that the Pirate Party will get at least one, but most likely two of the 18 (+2) available seats Sweden has at the European Parliament.

Source: torrentfreak.com

It will be interesting to see whether the party, who has gathered considerable momentum recently, will be able to re-frame the debate and change policy as it relates to file sharing.  The leader of the Pirate Party will be in Vancouver on June 11th speaking at the Open Web Vancouver conference.

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Innovative art space in Vancouver now in Jeopardy

8 Jun

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Woodwards

Woodwards

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uploaded by Mark Klotz

For years a group of arts and media supporters have been working to set up a space downtown Vancouver that supports the media arts scene in the City.  As part of its commitment to supporting the community the developers of the new Woodwards space agreed to provide support for the creation of a space called W2.  But as the date nears for the center to open those commitments seem to be fading.  The Straight reports that:

An innovative arts hub at the Woodward’s development, set to open in September 2009, is in danger of tanking. On June 1, the board of directors of W2 met with City of Vancouver cultural-services staff to prepare the nonprofit for what’s coming June 11.

Staff warned that city council that day will be recommending just 7,800 square feet of space, down from a high of 16,000, according to Magnus Thyvold, W2’s board chair. City staff, he reported, will also suggest axing the café that was to be in the basement of the old Woodward’s building, and the gallery may be cut, among other changes.

“As it gets closer and closer, it’s like the dollars start talking,” Thyvold told the Straight. “This nonprofit space was supposed to have been the developer’s contribution to the community.”

Source: straight.com

The original space was to be supported in part by running a cafe in the building.  But if the decision is made to have the cafe run by some other organization, the W2 people are worried that the whole enterprise will be unsustainable.  A group of supporters has begun to organize to save the space and has, among other things, set up a facebook group.
 

Videos

Historic Woodwards Building Collapses in Massive, Controlled Explosion — Copyright Urban Jungle Films 2006

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uploaded by Actual News Geezer

Historic Woodwards Building Collapses in Massive, Controlled Explosion -- Copyright Urban Jungle Films 2006

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Monsanto: The Microsoft of Food

3 Jun

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Tom Philpott reports on Monsanto’s lobbying efforts in Grist.  He draws an interesting comparison between the food industry and software.  One difference, of cource, is that you can’t grow a PC in your front yard.

Monsanto dominates the global market for GMO seeds like Microsoft dominates the operating-system software market. 

You don’t skirt around antitrust enforcement like that without having good friends in Washinton. And to make friends, you’ve got have guys in suits working the Hill and the agencies. La Vida Locavore’s ever-enterprising Jill Richardson got her hands on Monsanto’s first-quarter lobbying disclosure form (PDF). Turns out, the GMO-seed giant spent $2 million pushing its agenda in Washington the first three months of the year.

Conspiracy theorists fixated on a food safety bill called HR 875—insisting that Monsanto is planning to seize the globe’s farmland (why would a highly profitable transnational want to move into a low margin business like farming?) and ban organic agriculture—will be disappointed. The form makes no mention of food-safety bills.

Monsanto does, however, mention lobbying on Senate Bill 384—the so-called Global Food Security Act—which would gear U.S. foreign aid policy to promote GMO seeds in developing countries.

As Jill points out, a Monsanto flack dropped by La Vida Locavore last month to deny that that the company had worked to shape the bill. Shame, shame.

Monsanto’s other big legislative concern? Strengthening already-draconian patent protection for the GMO seed industry—the one it dominates like Microsoft dominate operating system software.

Source: grist.org

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Twitter breaks news of Tornado in Boulder

2 Jun

Nearly every other day there are reports of twitter helping news organizations break news.  here is one I found today.

on May 22, 2008, a large tornado struck Windsor, Colo., just 50 miles from my home in Boulder. I was first alerted to my local severe weather via Twitter – by a friend who lives in California! I then used a combination of Twitter and mainstream news sites to track events. I instantly shared what I was learning as I learned it via Twitter, sending updates to more than 700 of my friends, colleagues, and other interested people – many of whom I don’t even know, but they’ve chosen to get updates from me.

From a citizen media perspective, that’s pretty powerful. Not only can anyone’s news matter – it can matter fast!

Source: kcnn.org

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