- Carbon In, Carbon Out: Sorting Out the Power Grid
- What sort of carbon footprint do electrical vehicles have in the US? In regions with a high percentage of coal power "charging an electric car sends as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as driving a car rated at 31 to 40 m.p.g., about the same as a current compact model", but where the electricity comes from cleaner fuels "the equivalent miles per gallon is higher than the best of today’s hybrids." (HT: KP)
- Do Children Harvest Your Food?
- "U Roberto Romano's poignant film, The Harvest/La Cosecha (2011), being screened across the country for Farmworker Awareness Week (March 24-29), informs us that nearly 500,000 children as young as six harvest up to 25 percent of all crops in the United States."
- Go public when children die in care, say Alberta protesters
- ”The local chapter of the small national organization wants the provincial government to publicly state how many children die in care each year, and to lift the ban preventing parents from publicly naming children after they've died in care.” See also The Silence of the Press When Children Injured in Foster Care.
- Executive board composition and bank risk taking
- ”... we use difference-in-difference estimations that focus exclusively on mandatory executive retirements and find that younger executive teams increase risk taking, as do board changes that result in a higher proportion of female executives. In contrast, if board changes increase the representation of executives holding Ph.D. degrees, risk taking declines.” Compare to the argument that having few women in the banking sector lead to excessive risk taking and the recent (current?) financial crisis.
- Dark Meat Getting a Leg Up On Boring Boneless Breast
- It’s about time. Trying to breed chickens for more white meat also seemed to result in chickens sometimes unable to walk. Hopefully this’ll change that.
- Germany's Cold-Storage Chaos: Hospitals Overwhelmed with Body-Donation Requests
- The reasoning behind this is presented as more or less being just about funeral costs and cemetery maintenance fee increases. I wonder if part of the reasoning for this might also be philosophical changes in how people think of their bodies. (I’ve heard a lot of lot of arguments that something like cremation shouldn’t be tolerated, but I’m skeptical of how closely modern practices line up with ancient Jewish ones [which as I understand it seem to more in line with the ideas of letting bodies rot in a cave and then scooping bones into smaller jars later... an approach that would also cut down significantly on burial space requirements and associated expenses])
- Err... Sorry to wake you up at 2am - your house is easy to break into': POLICE find ways into homes at night to 'warn' of burglary risks
- ”Police in Shoebury, Essex, have been going round testing doors and windows of houses to check if they have been left unlocked - and if they find an easy way in they will wake up the household to warn them their house is insecure.”
- Millennials Are More 'Generation Me' Than 'Generation We,' Study Finds
- "The study also found a decline in civic interest, such as political participation and trust in government, as well as in concern for others, including charity donations, and in the importance of having a job worthwhile to society. ... Most of the study's data point toward more individualism and less cohesion. The advantages of individualism are more tolerance, equality, and less prejudice, says Ms. Twenge. But the broader implication, she says, is not good."
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