willw2:

another fab rebuttal to the tiger mother article.

The BBC’s Tokyo correspondent Roland Buerk investigates Japan’s growing ‘rent a friend’ service sector. Several agencies now rent out fake spouses, best men, relatives, friends, colleagues, boyfriends and girlfriends to help clients get through social functions such as weddings, parents’ evenings - and even funerals.

paperlesswords:

colorlines 

Gotta admit, I’m guilty of this myself lol

alexanderpf:

 Assad Sawey, a BBC journalist, was beaten by Egyptian police and then went on air in his bloodied shirt. When the police saw his camera, he was beaten and electrocuted with steel bars. Although he argued for transportation to a hospital, he said that other foreign journalists were being carted off in trucks to an unknown location.

via ringlunatic

world-shaker:

Facebook has at long last offered an option to use the encrypted “HTTPS” protocol, a feature it will begin rolling out today but won’t finish for a “few weeks.” You should check now if it’s available, and sign up as soon as it is enabled for your account. The performance overhead is minor—zippy Gmail, for example, uses HTTPS for everything—and it’s an important step to keep your Facebook account safe from being hijacked on an open or poorly secured wireless network.

By default, Facebook sends your access credentials in the clear, with no encryption whatsoever. Switching to HTTPS is important because a browser extension called Firesheep has made it especially easy for anyone sharing your open wireless network—at cafe or conference, for example—to sniff your credentials and freely access your account. One blogger sitting in a random New York Starbucks was able to steal 20-40 Facebook identities in half an hour. HTTPS solves this longstanding problem by encrypting your login cookies and other data; in fact the inventor of Firesheep made the software to encourage companies like Facebook to finally lock down their systems.

You can sign up for Facebook HTTPS by going to Account Settings and then selecting “Account Security,” third from the bottom. Then click under “Secure Browsing” — if it’s there. Facebook says everyone should have this by the end of the day, but in the meantime you might be missing the relevant option toggle.

Is Your Favorite Ice Cream Made With Monsanto’s Artificial Hormones?

via Jim Robbins, The Huffington Post

We have Monsanto to thank for rBGH. Monsanto developed the artificial hormone and marketed it aggressively for years, before selling it in 2008 to Elanco, a division of the Eli Lilly drug company. Of course, Monsanto (and now Elanco) wants us to think the hormone is in every way completely satisfactory and safe. Monsanto’s party line has consistently been that there is “no significant difference” in the milk derived from cows who have been dosed with the hormone compared to those who haven’t…

Injecting the genetically engineered hormone into cows increases the levels of a substance called IGF-1 in their milk. Monsanto’s own studies found that the amount of IGF-1 in milk more than doubled when cows were injected with rBGH. Studies by independent researchers show gains as much as six-fold…

“According to an article in the May 9, 1998 issue of the medical journalThe Lancet, pre-menopausal women with even moderately elevated blood levels of IGF-1 are up to seven times more likely to develop breast cancer than women with lower levels.”

“The artificial hormone is also notorious for causing the cows much pain and distress. It does this by increasing painful and debilitating diseases like lameness and mastitis in cows who are injected with it. And because it increases udder infections in cows, it has greatly increased the use of antibiotics in the U.S. dairy industry.”

chos:

latikaaaa:

Bricks for Bread and Milk

“India’s capital city has been flooded with a new wave of migrant workers — children.”

“All Work and No Play: When it comes to child labor laws, little headway has been made on enforcement. In fact, some, like the UNICEF-sponsored authors of “What Works for Working Children,” have made the argument that child labor is better than the alternatives: no work at all or prostitution. Above, Indian children struggle to shovel rocks in front of Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi on Jan. 30.”

readmorewikipedia:

In Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany, some nursing homes build false, imitation bus stops for their patients who are suffering from dementia. Some of these bus stops are even fitted with outdated advertisements and timetables — 30 years outdated.

The patients will sit at the bus stop waiting for a bus to take them to their imagined destination. After some time the nursing staff comes to escort the clients back to the retirement home.

moneyisnotimportant:

 Follow Money Is Not Important (until there’s not enough)

willw2:

The ‘Cherpumple’ Combines Dessert Favorites - WSJ.com

3 pies and 3 cakes in every slice!

Yay American innovation… Now what will we think of next to speed up health-related ailments caused by obesity? Who knows!

morningstar:

jeremyk:

The Dirty Dozen: Sad fruits are pesticidal.

(via Corinne)

Keep in mind: pesticides are absorbed through fruit skins! Thorough washing does not prevent pesticides from entering your body (though it helps!). Peanuts should be found on the left side of this image, an are notorious for being grown under some of the most toxic and poisonous conditions; dont ever consume non organically grown peanuts/peanut butter.