Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative: ‘Owned by Those it Serves’
October 23rd, 2012Via: northjersey.com: When we buy stuff-gas, groceries, clothes, cars, you name it-we almost always buy from businesses whose primary goal is to make a profit for their owners or shareholders. Profit-based private enterprise has served America well, but in some instances another approach has worked, too: the cooperative method. One of New Jersey’s stellar examples […]
Japanese Justice Minister Resigns After Revealing Organized Crime Links
October 23rd, 2012Via: AFP: Japan’s justice minister, who has admitted past links with organised crime, resigned Tuesday just three weeks into the job, citing “health problems”, the government said. Keishu Tanaka was brought into the cabinet at the start of the month as part of a reshuffle aimed at shoring up Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s shaky administration. […]
WikiHouse
October 22nd, 2012Via: WikiHouse: WikiHouse is an open source construction set. It’s aim is to allow anyone to design, download, and ‘print’ CNC-milled houses and components, which can be assembled with minimal formal skill or training. Related: WikiHouse Blog Research Credit: F
Less Boneheaded Farming
October 22nd, 2012Via: New York Times: The study was done on land owned by Iowa State University called the Marsden Farm. On 22 acres of it, beginning in 2003, researchers set up three plots: one replicated the typical Midwestern cycle of planting corn one year and then soybeans the next, along with its routine mix of chemicals. […]
Survey: 40 Percent Of Americans Have $500 Or Less In Savings
October 20th, 2012Via: CBS: A survey of about 1,100 Americans finds that more than 4-in-10 respondents admit they don’t have more than $500 in readily accessible savings.
‘You’re not going to hear about the Windows 8 upgrade cycle. This is the end of Windows.’
October 20th, 2012I run IT for a small business here in the Far North of New Zealand as a favor to family members. While it’s a small business, it’s one of the largest employers in the region. The employees are decentralized and I thought about establishing the right kinds of network connections and remote access systems, servers, […]
Samsung Accused of Severe Mistreatment of Chinese Workers
October 19th, 2012Via: China Labor Watch: Indeed, the list of illegal and inhumane violations is long, including but not limited to well over 100 hours of forced overtime work per month, unpaid work, standing for 11 to 12 hours while working, underage workers, severe age and gender discrimination, abuse of student and labor dispatch workers, a lack […]
Student Loan Debt Hits Record High
October 18th, 2012Via: CNBC: The average college student who graduated in 2011 had $26,600 in student loans, according to a new report, which estimates two-thirds of last year’s college graduates had student loan debt. The average debt is the largest since the Institute for College Access and Success began compiling the figures in 2005, and it comes […]
Foxconn Says Underage Workers Used in China Plant
October 18th, 2012Shocker. Via: Reuters: Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s largest contract electronics maker, has acknowledged hiring teenagers as young as 14 in a Chinese factory, in breach of national law, in a case that raises further questions over its student intern program. Labor rights activists in China have accused Foxconn and other big employers in China […]
U.S. Mercenaries Drunk, Shooting IV Drugs in Afghanistan
October 18th, 2012Via: ABC News: Cellphone video recorded earlier this year at an operations center of a U.S. defense contractor in Kabul, Afghanistan appears to show key personnel staggeringly drunk or high on narcotics, in what former employees say was a pattern of outrageous behavior that put American lives at risk and went undetected by U.S. military […]
