We Often Take Our Surroundings For Granted. This Is An Excellent Piece That Outlines Some Of The Problems

I honestly don’t understand why there aren’t more people who, when given the platform to discuss minimum wage, don’t simply distill it to the simplest of facts:

A forty hour work week is considered full time.

It’s considered as such because it takes up the amount of time we as a society have agreed should be considered the maximum work schedule required of an employee. (this, of course, does not always bear out practically, but just follow me here)

A person working the maximum amount of time required should earn enough for that labor to be able to survive. Phrased this way, I doubt even most conservatives could effectively argue against it, and out of the mouth of someone verbally deft enough to dance around the pathos-based jabs conservative pundits like to use to avoid actually debating, it could actually get opps thinking.

Therefore, if an employee is being paid less than [number of dollars needed for the post-tax total to pay for the basic necessities in a given area divided by forty] per hour, they are being ripped off and essentially having their labor, productivity, and profit generation value stolen by their employer.

Wages are a business expense, and if a company cannot afford to pay for its labor, it is by definition a failing business. A company stealing labor to stay afloat (without even touching those that do so simply to increase profit margins and/or management/executive pay/bonuses) is no more ethical than a failing construction company breaking into a lumber yard and stealing wood.

Our goal as a society should be to protect each other, especially those that most need protection, not to subsidize failing businesses whose owners could quite well subsidize them on their own.

Texas teenager creates $20 water purifier to tackle toxic e-waste pollution

18-year-old Perry Alagappan recognised at World Water Week 2015 for his renewable heavy metal filter made from graphene that he’s keeping open source

Now a new filtering device, invented by a US teenager, could provide a cheap and easy way to purify water.

The renewable heavy metal filter, designed by 18-year-old Perry Alagappan, removes 99% of heavy metals from water that passes through it. The filter, built from graphene nanotubes, can be rinsed with a vinegar concentrate and reused. The highly concentrated waste can then be evaporated, leaving a deposit of pure metal that can be used in many different applications.

Alagappan, who was awarded the Stockholm Junior Water Prize at this year’sWorld Water Week, said the filter cost just $20 (£13) to make, up to five times less than existing reverse osmosis technology.

“I became interested in water purification when I visited my grandparents in India, and saw with my own eyes how electronic waste severely contaminated the environment,” said the recent high school graduate from Houston, Texas, on winning the prize.

Did you know that 80% of all terrestrial plants and animals live in forests? That’s why the Global Goals for Sustainable Development, adopted at the United Nations in New York in September, seek to protect forests and biodiversity. Which Global Goal means the most to you? See the full list here: www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment

New interactive map shows how rising seas will swallow US cities

While there’s unarguably greater awareness than ever that man-made climate change is contributing to global warming and rising sea levels, it can be difficult to visualise what that exactly means for the city you live in. How high will sea levels rise? When will it happen? Where will it happen? And, most importantly, what can we do about it?

These are the questions that this stunning new interactive map is designed to get you thinking about. Mapping Choices is part Google Maps, part time machine. It lets you choose any US city or zip code to see what rising seas will do to your nominated address, based on a range of projections about how high sea levels could increase.

 - ScienceAlert

Well I’M ready for the holidays. 

UK top government official: human rights no longer a "top priority"

Sir Simon McDonald, Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office – the country’s most senior Foreign Office official – told MPs that his department had sidelined human rights work in favour of global trade agreements (the same agreements that allow sovereign wealth funds from the world’s most brutal, oppressive states to buy huge swathes of the UK’s public institutions at knock-down prices in the Tories’ great sell-off of public assets).

It’s called the “prosperity agenda” – promoting business at the expense of human rights. For example, Chancellor George Osborne just conducted a trade-mission to China where he didn’t raise human rights issues at all, because “we have different political systems.”

It used to be that globalists argued for liberalised trade with criminal states because it would somehow lift their populations out of forced labour, mass incarceration and totalising surveillance. Now that these values have been exported to the “free” world, the pretense of a human rights agenda for global trade has been abandoned. Now we’re told thatthe spice must flow because it will make the country rich (just don’t look too hard at who in the country is getting rich).

Read the rest

Ending slavery will also help save the one thing that connects us all... Earth.

Read it here.

“Desperate migrants from Myanmar and Cambodia are enslaved on fishing boats to strip the oceans of fish… in Brazil, young men are trapped by debt in work illegally logging the Amazon forest… Brick kilns in India, operated by bonded labourers, are fuelled with old tyres and used motor oil, spewing carcinogens into the air.”

REBLOG to educate your community about the impact of our everyday consumption.

Wyoming's Ag-Gag law makes it a crime to gather evidence of crime

With this year’s “ag-gag” law, Wyoming has made it a crime to gather evidence of agricultural wrongdoing, from illegal pollution to animal cruelty, even from public land – and also prohibits regulators from acting on information gathered in violation of the law.

Many public interest groups are challenging the law. A similar – but less Draconian – law in Idaho was struck down this year as unconstitutional.

Read the rest

Brain, Bone and Blood Vessels Coming Hot Off the Press

Could the days of custom clavicles and bespoke bladders produced just in the knick of time for suffering patients be around the corner?

While keeping an eye on tissue engineering studies, we’ve been seeing some significant wins in the lab that are bringing the sci-fi future of on-demand 3-D printed organs, bone and blood vessels closer. 

Harvard and Brown bioengineers are taking their own routes to build complex tissues in customized 3-D printers. And just the other week, we reported on newly unveiled work at the University of Florida to print complex soft structures in baths that could one day birth replacement human parts along with soft robots.

Now, Carnegie Mellon engineers reported on Friday that they had successfully printed simplified proof-of-concept anatomical structures like mini femurs, blood vessels and brains suspended in soft gelatin. Learn more and see a video below.

Keep reading