55 years of - you decide

When did vegetarianism become passe? 46 By Lisa Hymas 31 Jan 2012 10:31 AM Out of fashion and proud of it. (Photo by KayVee.INC) It used to be that when I told a fellow progressive I’m a vegetarian, I would get one of three reactions: (1) an enthusiastic “me too!,” (2) a slightly guilty admission of falling off the veg wagon, or (3) a voracious defense of the glories of steak. These days, there’s another increasingly common reaction: People look at me with a mix of pity and confusion, like I’m some holdover from the ’90s wearing a baby-doll dress with chunky shoes and babbling on about No Doubt. I can see what they’re thinking: “You’re still a vegetarian?” At some point over the past few years, vegetarianism went wholly out...

Monsanto’s new seeds could be a tech dead end 20 By Tom Laskawy 30 Jan 2012 9:02 AM This is how corn is planted on industrial-sized farms. (Photo by Minnemom.) When I wrote recently about the next generation of genetically engineered seeds , I was in truth referring to the next next generation. The fact is that the next actual generation of seeds is already out of the lab and poised for approval by the USDA. And I’m not talking about Monsanto’s recently approved “ drought-tolerant ” seeds, which the USDA itself has observed are no more drought-tolerant than existing conventional hybrids. No, the “exciting” new seeds are simply resistant to more than one kind of pesticide. Rather than resisting Monsanto’s glyphosate-based ...

Honeybee problem nearing a ‘critical point’ 110 By Claire Thompson 13 Jan 2012 7:39 PM Photo: Pesticide Action Network North America Anyone who’s been stung by a bee knows they can inflict an outsized pain for such tiny insects. It makes a strange kind of sense, then, that their demise would create an outsized problem for the food system by placing the more than 70 crops they pollinate — from almonds to apples to blueberries — in peril. Although news about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has died down, commercial beekeepers have seen average population losses of about 30 percent each year since 2006, said Paul Towers, of the Pesticide Action Network. Towers was one of the organizers of a conference that brought together beekeepe...

Monsanto’s man Taylor returns to FDA in food-czar role 13 By Tom Philpott 9 Jul 2009 1:04 AM Michael Taylor In a Tuesday afternoon press release, the FDA announced that Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto executive, had joined the agency as “senior advisor to the commissioner.” If the title is vague, the portfolio (pasted from the press release) is substantial–a kind of food czar of the Food and Drug Administration: • Assess current food program challenges and opportunities • Identify capacity needs and regulatory priorities • Develop plans for allocating fiscal year 2010 resources • Develop the FDA’s budget request for fiscal year 2011 • Plan implementation of new food safety legislation Taylor’s new position isn’t his first in government....

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McDonald’s Will Stop Using Pink Goop Beef in Its Burgers Chef Jamie Oliver calls it pink slime . We feel it's more like pink goop . Either way, the ammonium hydroxide soaked pink crap beef is vomit inducing. Thankfully, you won't have to eat it anymore! Kind of. McDonald's has finally caved to the pressure and will ditch the use of the pink goop beef in its burgers. What's gross about the pink goop beef, made by Beef Products Inc (BPI), is that it's actually made of of "beef trimmings" which are the undesirable, leftover crap of a cow that's better fit for dogs than humans. Taking it one step further, the beef trimmings are then processed and soaked in ammonium hydroxide and churned into ground beef. Agh, it's disgusting to even think about . This pink goop beef actually makes up 70% of America's ground beef too! It's taken a while but McDonald's has finally decided to step up its standards in ...

DARPA researchers design eye-enhancing virtual reality contact lenses January 31, 2012   Currently being developed by DARPA researchers at Washington-based Innovega iOptiks are contact lenses that enhance normal vision by allowing a wearer to view virtual and augmented reality images without the need for bulky apparatus.  Instead of oversized virtual reality helmets, digital images are projected onto tiny full-color displays that are very near the eye.  These novel contact lenses allow users to focus simultaneously on objects that are close up and far away.  This could improve ability to use tiny portable displays while sill interacting with the surrounding environment. Developed as part of DARPA’s Soldier Centric Imaging via Computational Cameras (SCENICC) program, SCENICC’s objective is to eliminate the ISR capability gap that exists at the individual Soldier level.  The program seeks to develop novel computational imaging capabilities and explore joint d...

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Cuts force domestic violence refuges to turn victims away Charities say funding cuts mean it is increasingly difficult to find beds for vulnerable women reddit this Alexandra Topping guardian.co.uk , Tuesday 31 January 2012 16.35 GMT Article history Victims of domestic violence at risk of further abuse are being advised to sleep in Occupy camps, in police stations and accident and emergency departments. Photograph: Getty Images/DK Stock ...

What effect has decriminalising drugs had in Portugal? 31 January, 2012 - 12:00 -- Joseph O'Leary Following Sir Richard Branson's appearance before the Home Affairs Select Committee, Melanie Phillips waded into the debate on BBC's Question Time to lambaste Portugal's record following its own decriminalisation of drugs in 2011. Full Fact examines the debate surrounding the issue.   "Richard Branson is not only wrong; he's dangerously wrong. For example he's so dangerous he's persuaded some of these good people in the audience that Portugal since it decriminalised drugs has had great success... The very opposite is the case ... since Portugal decriminalised drugs, drug use there has gone up, the number of people using drugs has gone up, the number of homicides related to drug use has gone up by 40 per cent, and drug-related HIV/AIDS and Hepititis C is up and the rate in Portugal is now eight times that of EU countries...

Atos on the Run – the PIP contract is a poisoned chalice Posted on January 30, 2012 by johnny void | 6 Comments When the con-dem government weren’t elected last year, few people other than benefit claimants had heard of French IT firm Atos Origin, the company Labour shamefully employed to carry out the Work Capability Assessment.  This  health and disability assessment was designed to strip sickness benefits from as many people as possible and has caused untold suffering with some people driven to suicide by the process.  Over the last year this has led to countless protests around the UK outside Atos’ offices and online as the infamy of the company has soared. The world must be a very different place in Atos’ Public Relations Offices these days.  ‘Atos’ is now a dirty word, synonymous with the worst of corporate cruelty.  As well as demonstrations outside their offices, the internet is awash with ...