Archive for the 'Economy' Category
New Zealand: Peria School’s New Solar Power System
June 24th, 2014Update: The Story Was Finally Broadcast on Television Show Seven Sharp This finally aired on a show called Seven Sharp on 27 June 2014. Fast forward to about the 15 minute mark. — Here’s a little slice of life from rural Northland New Zealand, for anyone who’s interested. Yesterday, I went along to Peria School […]
5KW Grid-Tie Solar Power System
June 23rd, 2014Update and Correction, 30 June 2014 The Q-Cells and SMA special mentioned in this post is now over. All of those systems have sold out. Also, Solar King operates in the North Island and the top of the South Island (Nelson). — We pay NZ$47.7 cents (including GST) per kilowatt hour for electricity. That’s robbery. […]
Prison Inmates Offer Captive Market for Gadget Makers
June 23rd, 2014Via: NBC: Even in the cooler, Americans are hot for tech. U.S. inmates are increasingly buying gizmos from prison commissaries, including MP3 players and flat-screen televisions — spending about $750 million annually on their gadget habits as several companies quietly seize this massive, captive audience and take niche marketing to an entirely different place. Sign […]
WikiLeaks Publishes Secret Draft Text for the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) Financial Services Annex
June 21st, 2014Via: WikiLeaks: Today, WikiLeaks released the secret draft text for the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) Financial Services Annex, which covers 50 countries and 68.2%1 of world trade in services. The US and the EU are the main proponents of the agreement, and the authors of most joint changes, which also covers cross-border data flow. […]
Thousands of Illegal Immigrants Being Housed in FEMA Facilities and Military Bases; Hundreds of Unaccompanied Children Arriving in U.S. Daily
June 20th, 2014Is the U.S. on the way to becoming a failed state? Losing control of borders is one of the primary characteristics of failed states. See the Wikipedia page for failed states and compare the following criteria to what’s happening in the U.S. right now: Mounting Demographic Pressures [Yes] Massive Movement of Refugees or Internally Displaced […]
Elon Musk Needs a Very Big Factory for His New Solar Technology
June 19th, 2014Via: MIT Technology Review: Billionaire, Tesla founder, and private space entrepreneur Elon Musk announced yesterday that Solar City, the solar installation company where he is chairman, plans to acquire a startup called Silevo for $200 million (plus up to $150 million more if the company meets certain goals). And with typical bravado, he also said […]
Global Peace Index 2014
June 19th, 2014Keep scrolling down to find the U.S. at position 101. Via: Guardian: The top five most peaceful nations were completely unchanged from the previous year’s study, with Denmark, Austria, New Zealand and Switzerland again runners up to Iceland. Europe remained the most peaceful region as a whole although the United Kingdom ranked 47th, France 48th […]
Netherlands: Drastic Reduction in Use of Antibiotics on Farms
June 18th, 2014Via: Modern Farmer: Along with every other livestock producer in the Netherlands, Oosterlaken is in the midst of a high-stakes, government-mandated experiment: Can large-scale meat production succeed without routine use of antibiotics? “Growth promoters,” the microdoses of everyday antibiotics given to livestock to fatten them, have been banned in Europe since 2006—but the Netherlands decided […]
The Highest-Paid CEOs Are The Worst Performers
June 18th, 2014Via: Forbes: Across the board, the more CEOs get paid, the worse their companies do over the next three years, according to extensive new research. This is true whether they’re CEOs at the highest end of the pay spectrum or the lowest. “The more CEOs are paid, the worse the firm does over the next […]
U.S. Health Care System Costs the Most, Ranks Lowest in International Survey
June 17th, 2014Via: CBS News: The U.S. spends more money on health care compared with other industrialized countries, but Americans still get the least bang for their buck — and many still don’t have access to care — according to a report just published by the Commonwealth Fund. The report from the private health care research foundation […]
