Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Cancer-Free Woman Undergoes Chemotherapy After False Diagnosis
July 18th, 2013Via: KHOU: A 54-year-old Victoria woman is trying to find sense in a life-changing diagnosis that never should have happened. Herlinda Garcia said she became “a whole different person” after she was diagnosed with Stage IV terminal Breast Cancer. That diagnosis came after Garcia had a benign tumor removed from her left breast. “When you’re […]
Millions of Americans Living Abroad: Get Ready to Comply with New and Absurd U.S. Tax Rules or Give Up Citizenship
July 17th, 2013Via: Wall Street Journal: Beware the sledgehammer used to crack the nut. In this case, the nut is the U.S. government’s laudable goal of catching tax evaders. The sledgehammer is the overreaching effect of legislation that is alienating other countries and resulting in millions of U.S. citizens abroad being forced to either painfully reconsider their […]
Judge Demands Tech Companies Hand Activist Data Over to Chevron
July 17th, 2013Via: Grist: Chevron is attempting to defend itself against a pesky $18 billion-plus judgment for its dirty dealing in the Ecuador rainforest. In the company’s appeal against the landmark judgment, a federal judge in New York has upheld a subpoena from Chevron seeking IP addresses and identity records of people allegedly tied to the investigation. […]
EPA Nukes Radiation Rules
July 17th, 2013Via: EnviroReporter: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s draft EPA “Protective Action Guide” (PAG), posted on its website April 15, allows hundreds to thousands of times more radiation in disasters than the agency had previously allowed. Americans have until Monday, July 15 to comment* even though the EPA made the new PAG effective immediately. According to […]
Microsoft Trying to Create System That Predicts Your Physical Location in the Future
July 17th, 2013Via: Fast Company: Would you like to know how crowded your drive to the beach will be in three weeks? Or where your ex will be on a Friday night next month so that you can avoid him? Adam Sadilek, formerly of Microsoft, now a researcher at Google, and John Krumm, a principal researcher at […]
Japan’s Internet Cafes: Home for the Underemployed
July 16th, 2013Via: Bloomberg: Over the past 10 years, Internet cafes in Japan have become hotels for the underemployed. Many are equipped with tiny private booths, showers, and laundry service and offer reasonably priced packages for overnight users. The monthly rate at one cafe is 1,920 yen ($19) a day. In 2007, according to Japan’s Ministry of […]
The Case for Abolishing the DHS
July 16th, 2013Via: Bloomberg: On Friday, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano resigned to take up a post running California’s university system. With her departure, there are now 15 vacant positions at the top of the department. That suggests it would be a particularly humane moment to shut the whole thing down. The U.S. Department of Homeland […]
‘Robots to Revolutionize Farming’
July 16th, 2013Via: AP / Time: On a windy morning in California’s Salinas Valley, a tractor pulled a wheeled, metal contraption over rows of budding iceberg lettuce plants. Engineers from Silicon Valley tinkered with the software on a laptop to ensure the machine was eliminating the right leafy buds. The engineers were testing the Lettuce Bot, a […]
In Iraq, the Bomb-Detecting Device That Didn’t Work, Except to Make Money
July 15th, 2013Step right up, step right up, step right up, Everyone’s a winner, bargains galore That’s right, you too can be the proud owner Of the quality goes in before the name goes on One-tenth of a dollar, one-tenth of a dollar, we got service after sales You need perfume? we got perfume, how ’bout an […]
The Shadowy Cartel of Doctors that Controls Medicare
July 14th, 2013Via: Washington Monthly: On the last week of April earlier this year, a small committee of doctors met quietly in a midsized ballroom at the Renaissance Hotel in Chicago. There was an anesthesiologist, an ophthalmologist, a radiologist, and so on—thirty-one in all, each representing their own medical specialty society, each a heavy hitter in his […]
