How Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Are Rushing to Cash in on Cannabis
April 18th, 2014Via: Wired:
After Charlotte began taking an extract from the brothers’ strain in 2012, her seizures dropped from 300 a week to three or four a month. It was a revelation. The Stanleys named the strain Charlotte’s Web in her honor. As word of the drug’s antiseizure effect began to spread, families from across the US began moving to Colorado to gain access to it. Today about 200 pediatric patients and another 100 adults take Charlotte’s Web.
…
Today, marijuana is well on its way to legalization. The majority of Americans live in states that have legalized or decriminalized it in some form. Two states, Colorado and Washington, have completely legalized it for recreational use; for lulz. An industry that has long operated in isolation, below ground in basements or in remote hollows in the deep woods, is moving into the light. It will be akin to the wine business.
Not everyone sees this yet, but it is going to become as clear as a blue-sky day at the ocean. Legalization is inevitable. And with it, vast fortunes stand to be made by those who can give growers and retailers and consumers the tools to increase yields, effectively manage inventory, and consume it in healthier, safer ways.
China Just Revealed a Major State Secret: Nearly 20% of Its Farmland Is Polluted
April 18th, 2014Does one double or triple this number to approach the reality of the situation?
Via: Quartz:
Almost one-fifth of China’s farmland is polluted, according to a government report released this week. Officials have acknowledged the country’s problems with water and air pollution, but the extent of soil contamination has been a closely guarded “state secret,” for fear of incriminating certain provinces or companies.
About 19.4% of China’s farmland is polluted by cadmium, nickel and arsenic, according to the seven-year study that analyzed a little over half of China’s entire land area. One-fifth of China’s total arable land is about 26 million hectares (64 million acres), the same area as the United Kingdom, by the most recent estimates.
The pollution is concentrated around the Yangtze and Pearl River Deltas—key sources of water in the country and home to millions of people—as well as in parts of the south where much of China’s rice is grown. Last year, half of all samples of rice in Guangzhou were found to have poisonous levels of cadmium, a chemical that can cause kidney failure when ingested. The main causes are agriculture and industry, the report said.
Research Credit: P7y845W4
Clearer Images of Classified Aircraft Over Wichita
April 18th, 2014Via: KSN:
Jeff Templin is a amateur photographer. He says he’s seen it all until now. While taking pictures of wildlife back in February, something caught his eye. He said it looked like an unusual contrail.
“Right over the city, clear as a bell,” said Templin. “Anyone that was looking up would have seen it. You don’t usually see military or even civilian aircraft’s jets that leave contrails making those kind of severe departures off of the given route.”
Templin says the aircraft made several; severe 180 degree turns in the sky in the shape of an “S”, even more unusual.
“Absolutely silent, no sound,” he said.
So he snapped a few photos and took it home.
“When I put it on my computer and processed them, I was surprised to see this triangular shape that is not like anything you typically see,” he said.
Documentary Film Will Expose Hollywood Pedophile Rings
April 18th, 2014Via: Daily Mail:
The man accusing X Men director Bryan Singer of sex abuse has teamed up with an Oscar-nominated filmmaker for a bombshell documentary that threatens to expose the sordid underbelly of Hollywood.
Michael Egan, who claims he was raped by Singer at a string of Hollywood pool parties as a teenager, has been working with Amy Berg, MailOnline can reveal.
Miss Berg runs Disarming Films and yesterday confirmed to MailOnline she had been working on the project for the past two years.
The New Cop on the Beat May Be a Bot
April 18th, 2014Via: Time:
A Silicon Valley company called Knightscope is currently testing a prototype robot designed to detect and monitor criminal activity, much the way a police officer or a security guard would.
The Knightscope K5 is a five-foot-tall autonomous robot (one presumes that its resemblance to a Dalek is merely coincidental) that roams around your neighborhood, observing and gathering data and trying to predict where and when criminal activity will occur.
It carries no weaponry, but it has a pretty complete sensor package that includes thermal imaging, license plate reading and facial recognition.
Medicated to Death: SSRIs and Mass Killings
April 18th, 2014Via: The Corbett Report:
The Killer Klansman’s Missing Years as a Federal Informant
April 18th, 2014Via: Daily Beast:
White supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller, arrested in three killings Sunday, turned white opportunist when facing decades in prison, testifying against his fellow haters in two trials.
A quarter-century before he was charged with Sunday’s three hate murders outside Kansas City, Frazier Glenn Miller figured prominently in a triple hate homicide in North Carolina.
People intimately familiar with the earlier case say Miller, founder of a Ku Klux Klan chapter and a white political party, should have been a prime suspect in those killings, as well.
Instead Miller became a star witness in both that murder trial and in a sedition case against 13 fellow white supremacists.
Miller had proved himself to be not so much a white supremacist as a white opportunist when he found himself facing decades in prison on weapons charges in 1987. He has said that a lead prosecutor threatened to pile on individual sentences on various charges until they totaled 200 years.
Miller made a deal for just five years.
And he would only have to serve three.
The Silent Hybrid Motorcycles the Pentagon Will Use for Stealth Raids
April 18th, 2014Via: Wired:
Special Forces teams are all about silently penetrating remote areas and executing complex, lightning-fast raids. Now DARPA is developing a new vehicle to soundlessly race commandoes to their missions: stealthy, hybrid-powered motorcycles.
The idea is to develop a hybrid power system that relies on both electric and gas power, allowing special ops to go off-road and zip past enemy forces with the silence of an electric engine, while also being able to handle extended missions and higher speeds with a supplemental gas tank.
In February, DARPA awarded Logos Technologies a $100,000, six-month Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract for a preliminary design to see just how viable the project is.
Reid: Bundy Supporters Are “Domestic Terrorists”
April 18th, 2014Via: CBS:
Supporters of Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy have been called domestic terrorists by Senator Harry Reid.
He made the comments during an appearance at a Review-Journal event, and repeated them, saying “what happened there was domestic terrorism’
The government says Bundy owes more than a million dollars in grazing fees and fines stemming from a 20-year dispute over trespass cattle. After obtaining court orders and beginning a roundup of cattle more than a week ago, BLM backed down, called off the roundup, and returned the cattle, after armed supporters of Bundy converged on the area.
Plant Breeders Release First ‘Open Source Seeds’
April 17th, 2014Via: NPR:
A group of scientists and food activists is launching a Thursday to change the rules that govern seeds. They’re releasing 29 new varieties of crops under a new “open source pledge” that’s intended to safeguard the ability of farmers, gardeners and plant breeders to share those seeds freely.
It’s inspired by the example of open source software, which is freely available for anyone to use but cannot legally be converted into anyone’s proprietary product.
At an event on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, backers of the new Open Source Seed Initiative will pass out 29 new varieties of 14 different crops, including carrots, kale, broccoli and quinoa. Anyone receiving the seeds must pledge not to restrict their use by means of patents, licenses or any other kind of intellectual property. In fact, any future plant that’s derived from these open source seeds also has to remain freely available as well.
Irwin Goldman, a vegetable breeder at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, helped organize the campaign. It’s an attempt to restore the practice of open sharing that was the rule among plant breeders when he entered the profession more than 20 years ago.
