The news reports of violence occurring just south of the border in Mexico have been frequent. It seems that every week we hear about another murder or execution of residents living in the various Mexican border towns at the hands of the drug cartels. And it seems that anyone who stands up to the cartels, [...]
Ah, the USDA Food Pyramid — we all learn in school that it’s the dietary guidelines that we should try to follow if we want to live healthy lives, but how many people actually take the pyramid’s advice? And how many people have seen the pyramid since their school days or even know that it [...]
In July President Obama announced that through the Recovery Act, $1.85 billion would be given in loans to fund solar projects and to help make clean energy more readily available to U.S. residents. It was great to see Obama lend solar energy some financial support, but it did raise some questions as to why the [...]
Now that the BP well has finally been plugged up, and some fishermen are returning to work, many people are wondering whether or not it is safe to eat seafood from the Gulf of Mexico. The government’s “sniff test” (smelling seafood to determine if it is contaminated with oil) is the first line of defense [...]
We’d all love to give to various charities, but times are tough and money is tight. So what if it were a lot easier to donate money, in amounts so small you’d never notice it was gone in the first place? That’s the idea behind SwipeGood, a new organization that helps users give a little [...]
In the past I’ve written about overfishing and how a computer application in Italy was working to ensure that fishermen were connected with consumers, so that none of their catch would go to waste. Now a small fishing village in Maine is taking a low-tech spin on this idea of connecting potential buyers to the [...]
Ah the American Chemistry Council (ACC) is at it again. On Tuesday I wrote about how the trade association fought against Canada’s ban of BPA, and now the organization is (at least partially) responsible for Californian lawmakers rejecting a bill that would have banned plastic shopping bags statewide.
Although a number of cities in California have [...]
The recent recall of over half a billion eggs due to a salmonella outbreak at Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, two of the country’s leading egg suppliers, was a huge blow to factory farming practices. The public got nervous because no one wants to eat contaminated eggs, and the Food and Drug Administration was [...]
Bisphenol-A (BPA) has a long history of connections to health problems ranging from early onset puberty in females, to ADHD, and even cancer. Clearly this is not a safe chemical, and Canada has decided to label it that way — on Wednesday our neighbors to the north took steps towards adding BPA to the country’s [...]
For many parts of the world, having access to clean drinking water is a privilege and not a right. Rural regions and even many impoverished cities just don’t have the infrastructure needed for water purification, which is why a new invention created by scientists at Stellenbosch University, in Cape Town, South Africa couldn’t be more [...]
