Archive for the 'Collapse' Category
Japan’s Next Generation of Farmers Could Be Robots
April 23rd, 2016Via: Bloomberg: As the average age of farmers globally creeps higher and retirement looms, Japan has a solution: robots and driver-less tractors. The Group-of-Seven agriculture ministers meet in Japan’s northern prefecture of Niigata this weekend for the first time in seven years to discuss how to meet increasing food demand as aging farmers retire without […]
Life-Expectancy Inequality Grows in America
April 19th, 2016Via: The New Yorker: There may be no better way to appreciate humanity’s growing prosperity than to consider how long we live. A child born in 1900—little more than a century ago—was likely, on average, to die by the age of thirty. Today, according to the World Bank, the comparable figure is seventy-one. That is […]
Here Come the Unregulated GMOs
April 18th, 2016Via: MIT Technology Review: People are arguing about whether genetically modified foods should carry labels. But the next generation of GMOs might not only be unlabeled—they might be unregulated. Over at Scientific American you can read a 6,000-word story about how one such plant, a GM mushroom, was created. The short version is that a […]
Japan’s Demographic Time Bomb
April 14th, 2016Via: Vox: Japan has a major demographic problem: 26 percent of its population is elderly, the largest percent of any country in the world. That’s because Japan’s birthrate is declining, as is its overall population. In other words, a huge chunk of its population is getting old and leaving the workforce, and not enough people […]
Japan Prepares for Release of Tritium from Fukushima Plant
April 12th, 2016Via: Japan Today: To dump or not to dump a little-discussed substance is the question brewing in Japan as it grapples with the aftermath of the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima five years ago. The substance is tritium. The radioactive material is nearly impossible to remove from the huge quantities of water used to cool melted-down […]
Venezuela: Three Day Weekends for all Workers Due to Power Shortages
April 7th, 2016Via: Independent: Venezuelan workers will get Fridays off in the months of April and May, in a bid to save energy in the black-out hit country, the president said. President Nicolas Maduro said Venezuelans will have “long weekends” in an appearance on state television on Wednesday night, announcing the measure as part of a 60-day […]
Southern California Braces for Summer Blackouts Due to Porter Ranch Gas Leak
April 6th, 2016Via: Los Angeles Times: State officials warn that Southern California could face as many as 14 days of scheduled blackouts this summer because of depleted reserves of natural gas caused by the massive leak in Aliso Canyon. The canyon in the hills above Porter Ranch is a crucial gas storage facility, supplying 17 power plants […]
Austria Wants to Deploy Soldiers to Border with Italy
April 2nd, 2016Via: Reuters: Austria plans to deploy soldiers at the Brenner border with Italy to stem an expected increase in migrants trying to get to northern Europe, Defense Minister Hans Peter Doskozil told a German newspaper on Saturday. Austria, which has broken ranks with Germany in handling Europe’s migrant crisis by imposing border restrictions, has previously […]
America’s Million-Doctor Shortage Is Right Around the Corner
April 2nd, 2016Via: MarketWatch: The doctor is disappearing in America. And by most projections, it’s only going to get worse — the U.S. could lose as many as 1 million doctors by 2025, according to a Association of American Medical Colleges report. Primary-care physicians will account for as much as one-third of that shortage, meaning the doctor […]
Feds to Cops: Keep Robbing People
March 29th, 2016I wonder if the Feds will prosecute themselves under their own RICO laws… Via: Washington Post: The Justice Department has announced that it is resuming a controversial practice that allows local police departments to funnel a large portion of assets seized from citizens into their own coffers under federal law. The “Equitable Sharing Program” gives […]
