June 2012
181 posts
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Food Sector Workers: Underpaid, Overworked,...
erinnn:
Nearly 20 million Americans work in parts of the food sector: production, processing, distribution, retail and service. Ten million of them work in restaurants.
These workers are grossly underpaid, struggling to make ends meet while the economy has left them behind. For instance, consider the federal minimum wage for tipped employees (predominantly servers):
Take that $2.13 figure,...
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The cost of having a child hits $234,900 →
ukuzihs:
Something to think about the next time you think about having a kid…
(This doesn’t count college, if you were planning on paying for the kid’s college.)
The cost of raising a child differs sharply depending on the resources available to the parents. According to the USDA’s calculations:
For households with annual income less than $59,410, annual expenses per child range from $8,760...
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Men move into women's jobs, even though there are... →
fuckyeahfeminists:
Not surprising, but definitely sad. Basically there are no high-paying careers/industries that are predominantly female.
Laura Clawson on DailyKos writes,
Men are increasingly moving into jobs traditionally dominated by women, the New York Times’ Shaila Dewan and Robert Gebeloff report, with a third of job growth among men coming in occupations that are 70 percent female,...
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NY Times: Gender Roles and the Job Market →
cfrblog:
Miguel Alquicira, 21, graduated from high school in a desolate job market, one in which the traditional opportunities, like construction and manufacturing, for young men without a college degree had dried up. After career counselors told him that medical fields were growing, he borrowed money for an eight-month training course. Since then, he has had no trouble finding jobs that pay...
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Who works at startups? (infographic) →
startup-ecosystem:
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“I scarcely know myself. My mind roars like a turbulent sea in the storms of...”
– Kierkegaard - Either/Or (via kittenthefairy)
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Official Duolingo Blog: 100% Free Language... →
garychou:
duolingo:
Our baby was born today. Like new parents, we’re beaming with excitement to announce that Duolingo is now open to the world. We know, we’re biased, but we think she’s a beauty. Over the past six months, hundreds of thousands of beta testers have helped us refine the service. Many waited for…
Duolingo is our latest investment at Union Square Ventures. Also check out...
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The Financial Case for Public Art →
warungjakartaonweekly:
Investments in public art are not just for cultural or aesthetic purposes; they also can have a positive bottom-line economic impact, with material financial benefits to their owners. Good art is good business.
From the article:
Public art in transit-oriented developments presents a valuable marketing opportunity, both for public agencies and private developers. Dollar...
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Nine Quotes about Art as an Investment →
idroolinmysleep:
In short: art is a terrible investment. Buy art if you love it, but not if you’re trying to make money.
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Art Has Been Crushing Equities Over The Last... →
businessinsider:
Forget stocks and bonds.
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Are Your Jeans Killing People?
buypositively:
Photo via Allison Joyce
Post via Ethical Ocean
In 2009, the Turkish government banned “denim sandblasting” after more than 50 denim workers died from silicosis, an incurable respiratory disease caused by inhaling silica dust. Silica dust comes from sandblasting denim, the process used to make bright new jeans look faded, frayed and distressed.
This was particularly horrifying...
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G20 Opens Competition for Best Solution to... →
G2012 Mexico is partnering with Ashoka Changemakers to launch the G2012 Mexico Financial Inclusion: Innovative Solutions for Unlocking Access challenge, an online competition to find groundbreaking initiatives from around the world that make financial services accessible to under-served and excluded communities.
[…]
All private sector individuals, organizations, or partnerships are...
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Economic Growth in Africa →
kayhelm:
According to projections by the IMF, on average Africa will have the world’s fastest growing economy of any continent over the next five years.
Seven of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies are African. The continent is famously resource rich, which has surely helped, but some recent studies suggest that the biggest drivers are far less customary for Africa, and far more...
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“If we can agree that the recession wasn’t about bubbles but about the...”
– The Destruction of Economic Facts
(via diligentventure)
Worth reading.
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Bioprinting →
visualoop:
Via
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Chart of the Day: Evidence based medicine?
ghst-innovation:
This is one of the most informative charts about the body of evidence supporting the “science” of medicine. Many so-called “truths” of healthcare are based on the relative strength of the body of evidence:
Seriously, look at this.
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Healthcare figures to know
ghst-innovation:
When considering opportunities, challenges and threats to society, one should have a good grasp of certain healthcare figures. Here are a few I find important, framed in a manner that a strategist might think:
Unmet clinical need
Prevalence of Cardiovascular disease (globally): [forthcoming]
Prevalence of Respiratory disease (globally): 420 million
Incidence of Cancers...
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Menand - The Marketplace of Ideas (excerpt): stats...
[[MORE]]In 2007, two sociologists working at Harvard and George Mason, Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, conducted a national survey of the political views of the professoriate that observed all the protocols of scientific research and that has a good claim to being an accurate statistical picture of the views of the 630,000 full-time professors, at every level of institution, from research...
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Worldly Non-Philosophy, pt. 1: The Principle of... →
The key component of François Laruelle’s Non-Philosophy is its identification of the ‘Principle of Sufficient Philosophy’, which he claims has been presupposed by all philosophies throughout history. It is surprising, then, to see how simply it can be formulated: “Everything is philosophizable.” The PSP adopts its name from the ‘Principle of Sufficient Reason’ propounded by Leibniz, which stated...
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Canada’s Creeping Suppression of Dissent →
Since the inauguration of the Harper government in March, a wave of restrictions has hit charitable organisations, whether social or environmental. The first victim of this process was the NGO Physicians for Global Survival, created 32 years ago to promote nuclear disarmament. The group was stripped of its tax status in May for having exceeded the 10% limit on lawyers fees.
C-38 will facilitate...
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“While we already know that water — like pretty much everything else on the...”
– Technology - Megan Garber - It Takes More Than 3 Gallons of Water to Make a Single Sheet of Paper - The Atlantic (via myserendipities)
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Global carbon emissions rise is far bigger than... →
Increases in fossil fuel use of this magnitude are likely to carry the world far beyond the temperature rise of 2C by 2050 that scientists have estimated is the limit of safety, beyond which climate change is likely to become catastrophic and irreversible.
According to the new EIA data, carbon dioxide emissions from the US have resumed their rise, after a brief blip caused by the financial...
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Dreaming Up Whole New Carbon Markets →
Although carbon capture projects have stumbled lately, oil companies buy carbon dioxide, usually in individual transactions, for a process known as enhanced oil recovery, in which carbon dioxide is pumped into the ground to force extra oil out of the fields. But naturally occurring carbon is in decline, and there is more demand than can be met, said Ann E. Banks, chief commercial officer of the...
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Rio+20 Earth Summit: campaigners decry final... →
Rio+20 was intended as a follow up on the 1992 Earth Summit, which put in place landmark conventions on climate change and biodiversity, as well as commitments on poverty eradication and social justice. Since then, however, global emissions have risen by 48%, 300m hectares of forest have been cleared and the population has increased by 1.6bn people. Despite a reduction in poverty, one in six...
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U.N. Report from Rio on Environment a ‘Suicide... →
From the article:
More than a year of “sophisticated U.N. diplomacy has given us nothing more than more poverty, more conflict and more environmental destruction,” said Lasse Gustavsson, executive director for conservation at the World Wildlife Fund.
“An outcome that makes nobody happy,” was how Sha Zukang of China put it — and he was the Rio+20 secretary-general.
The final statement from...
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“It turns out that the media giving fat people 386,170 negative messages about...”
– Ragen Chastain, The Crushing Cost of Fat Stigma (via supersandys-space)
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“Two out of three 2011 law school graduates did not get real legal jobs”
– Lawyers Guns and Money (via welearnedtoday)
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High Youth Unemployment Still Plagues Arab Spring... →
melhoshy:
The study also noted that productivity in the Arab region increased by 22% over the past two decades, compared to 356% in East Asia.
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IT hiring forecast optimistic ... for now →
guiseppegetto:
Tech professionals of all experience levels are in demand, though hiring managers and recruiters reported different search priorities. Companies recruiting for their own needs are most likely to focus on tech professionals with two to five years in the workforce, slightly edging out those with six to 10 years of experience, Dice.com reports. Recruiters and staffing companies,...
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