Fun Interesting Pertinent Information Dissemination

Top Picks
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Costco's Profit Soars To $537 Million Just Days After CEO Endorses Minimum Wage Increase

Elizabeth Warren: Why Isn’t Min Wage Keeping Up With Productivity? Should Be $22 p/h (check out the video in this article)

Boehner Agrees With Obama: "We Do Not Have An Immediate Debt Crisis"

It’s time to tax financial transactions
...a light tax on all financial transactions — three pennies on every $100 traded.

The good news is that it’s a tax so small it could be mistaken for a rounding error. It’s so small, Wall Street could easily afford it and the average E-Trade investor would barely notice it. If this were a tax on coffee, it would cost you $1 for every 800 cups you bought at Starbucks.

But there’s even better news. This insignificant tax raises a significant amount of revenue — $352 billion over the next 10 years, or enough to refund about one-third of what the sequester will slash from the federal budget. It’s also enough to put many air traffic controllers back to work, Head Start teachers back in preschools, and crucial government programs back in business.

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

Bills Seek End To Farm Animal Abuse Videos

Neil Tyson Pounds The Table, Demanding A Future, Now!

The original Michelin Man

Politics and Business
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Elizabeth Warren Takes On Eric Holder's 'Too Big To Jail' Statement

How to Force Ethics on the Food Industry
Written by a former executive vice president of global corporate affairs for Kraft Foods.

The Lyndon Johnson tapes: Richard Nixon's 'treason'
Declassified tapes of President Lyndon Johnson's telephone calls provide a fresh insight into his world. Among the revelations - he planned a dramatic entry into the 1968 Democratic Convention to re-join the presidential race. And he caught Richard Nixon sabotaging the Vietnam peace talks... but said nothing.

New evidence: CIA and MI6 were told before invasion that Iraq had no active WMD

How To Find A Food Desert Near You
Want to know where you can't buy fresh, healthful food? The USDA has the map for you.

Chinese Solar Company Shuts U.S. Factory
The industry has been sagging under a global over-supply problem, and a trade war has made matters worse. Last year, the U.S. International Trade Commission slapped a 36 percent tariff on Chinese solar cell manufacturers, for dumping cheap products on the U.S. market. That drove up the cost of components Suntech imported to Arizona. Meta says it's another reason manufacturing here became too expensive.

From Grief Comes A Mission To Make Estate Planning Less Daunting
Her site — which is a NSFW riff on "get your stuff together" — features a checklist and templates for some key documents, including a will, living will and power of attorney. It also suggests compiling online account usernames and passwords and putting these key documents in a safe or scanning and uploading them to a password-protected site.

Bank of America cuts check for Estates couple in mistaken foreclosure case
When Bank of America tried to foreclose on Warren and Maureen Nyerges' fully-paid, Golden Gate Estates home last year, it was a mistake.

When the couple's attorney arrived at a Bank of America branch Friday morning with deputies, a moving company and a court writ permitting him to seize furniture and cash to recoup fees in the case, it was a last alternative.

The Surprising Reasons Why America Lost Its Ability To Compete

Science and Technology
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Forget the Cellphone Fight — We Should Be Allowed to Unlock Everything We Own (good comic)

Graphene antenna could increase wireless speed 100 times (You may have to expand the story)

Labels That Translate Calories into Walking Distance Could Induce People to Eat Less

Scientists prove you really can tell what your dog is feeling by looking at its face

How Do Roosters Know When to Crow?
The birds truly do have an inner circadian rhythm that tells when when to crow.

Earthquakes make gold veins in an instant

Fun, Interesting, Disturbing and Offbeat
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Elephant Poaching Pushes Species To Brink Of Extinction

Man left in solitary confinement for 2 years gets $15.5 million settlement
Slevin's story of inhumane treatment in the Dona Ana County Jail, where he was incarcerated from 2005 to 2007 — which he said included his toenails growing so long that they curled around his foot, and fungus festering on his skin because he was deprived of showers...

Scots fought 'in bright yellow war shirts not Braveheart kilts'
Medieval Scottish soldiers fought wearing bright yellow war shirts dyed in horse urine rather than the tartan plaid depicted in the film Braveheart, according to new research.

Questions to a med students talking to 14 yr olds

Note to a patient who has short-term memory loss (Profanity. Also, different than the one posted on Epoch.)

Police: Oregon panhandlers raking in the green

Trinity students blag way around globe for ‘jailbreak’ charity stunt

The TCD Jailbreak encouraged students to try to get as far away from the college campus without paying a cent – and all within 36 hours. Participants happily rose to the challenge – managing to reach Sydney, Malaysia and Argentina.

The Great Wall of Vagina
Over the past 5 years, 400 women volunteered to have plaster casts made of their vulvae by UK artist Jamie McCartney to help alleviate women's anxiety about their genital appearance.

Videos
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Crane Fail

Inflatable concrete tent

The Pain of Electricity (AC versus DC)

Burning Stuff With 2000ºF Solar Power!!

Pics

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The dog ate a bee

7ft tall hand-fed pet kangaroo

Fun Interesting Pertinent Information Dissemination

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Jimmy Carter says when he ran against Gerald Ford, he didn't raise any money

Forget the jog slog and fit in a sprint for maximum weight loss results
Sprint training for 60 minutes a week burns the same amount of body fat in men as jogging for seven hours a week, Sydney scientists report.

Secret Cash for Climate Denial
It investigated the anonymously funded Donor’s Trust and Donor’s Capital Fund which together have given over $100 million dollars to climate change denial groups in the United States over the past decade.

You’d Need 76 Work Days to Read All Your Privacy Policies Each Year

Anti-government extremist groups reach record levels, say experts

Here Come the Market Manipulators | The Scott Adams Blog (If you think the financial industry is rigged, you will like this.)

Market Manipulators - Clarification | The Scott Adams Blog

Watch the Rubik's Cube

Rob's boss sent Rob home with a note for Rob's wife

Politics and Business
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Tax Cuts Don't Lead to Economic Growth, a New 65-Year Study Finds

Silicon Valley Is High on Innovation. And Pot

Freedom of the Press Foundation
The Freedom of the Press Foundation is dedicated to helping promote and fund aggressive, public-interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption, and law-breaking in government. We accept tax-deductible donations to a variety of journalism organizations that push for government transparency and accountability.

Don’t Blink, or You’ll Miss Another Bailout
Not only do the filings show the New York Fed helping to thwart another institution’s fraud case against the bank, they also reveal that the New York Fed agreed to give away what may be billions of dollars in potential legal claims.

Unpatentable Drugs and the Standards of Patentability
This gap in the patent system for drugs has created a pervasive problem in the pharmaceutical industry, causing firms to regularly screen through their drugs in R&D and discard ones with weak patent protection. The potential harm to the public from the loss of these drugs is likely significant. Congress can easily avoid this problem by ensuring that the successful completion of the FDA's rigorous clinical trial process is rewarded with a lengthy exclusivity period enforced by the FDA.

The Norwegian prison where inmates are treated like people
On Bastoy prison island in Norway, the prisoners, some of whom are murderers and rapists, live in conditions that critics brand 'cushy' and 'luxurious'. Yet it has by far the lowest reoffending rate in Europe.

Dismissed: State trooper beats citations in fatal crash
The car barreled down a county road at more than 100 mph before it slammed into a Mitsubishi Galant, killing one woman, seriously injuring another and hurtling a child through the windshield. At the wheel of the speeding vehicle: an on-duty Florida Highway Patrol trooper.

Starbucks CEO: "We spend more on health care than coffee"

Why Are Walmart Billionaires Bankrolling Phony School ‘Reform’ In LA?

This is America, Now: The Dow Hits a Record High With Household Income at a Decade Low

Science and Technology
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Wanna Play? Computer Gamers Help Push Frontier Of Brain Research
(You can play games to help science.)

Ancient Chompers Were Healthier Than Ours
"Hunter-gatherers had really good teeth," says Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA. "[But] as soon as you get to farming populations, you see this massive change. Huge amounts of gum disease. And cavities start cropping up."

Artificial sweeteners tied to obesity, Type 2 diabetes
Diet pop and other artificially sweetened products may cause us to eat and drink even more calories and increase our risk for obesity and Type 2 diabetes, researchers are learning.

Scientists Discover Children’s Cells Living in Mothers’ Brain
In this study, male cells were found in the brains of women and had been living there, in some cases, for several decades.

Moray eels attack with second pair of 'Alien-style' jaws

Video of eel eating

Parasite in your brain (video and story)

Brain Plasticity: Can Eyes See Outside of the Head?
But for our next trick, we’re going to need a bucket of tadpoles with eyes on their butts and some good old-fashioned alternating current. In other words, things are about to get all kinds of weird.

Fun, Interesting, Disturbing and Offbeat