Printer problems … fixed.

After cleaning print head and deep cleaning print heads and still not getting a decent print out, I came across this site PrinterKnowledge, started by Rob Ludlow’s nifty-stuff.com, which helped understand the nature of the problem.  (Anatomy of a Canon print head helped a lot – see photo below.) It was the print head, but …
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Watch out for pinkies in your pork.

It was pretty disgusting before, but since the further deregulation of health and safety standards the level of contamination in the US meat delivery system has become even more vile. BloombergBusinessweek features a report on The Truth About Pork and How America Feeds Itself.  Their graphic reproduced below gives a glimpse of the problem. The …
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Roundup (glyphosate) seems to encourage ADHD and autism

Children can be a pain.  Singing, dancing, playing … all that noise.  Sometimes it seems too much, it seems unnatural.  That’s when we start to diagnose ADHD (which isn’t really a disorder at all).  But what is interesting is that there seems to be a correlation between the increased use of glyphosate in the food …
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GM corn caused cancerous tumors in the test rats …

… so Monsanto lobbied for a retraction of the evidence. In September 2012, the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT) published the findings of the first long-term study of rats fed genetically modified corn. The study’s authors, led by Gilles-Eric Séralini of the University of Caen, France, concluded that the GM corn caused cancerous tumors …
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Obama: The idea that so many children are born into poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth is heartbreaking

Barack Obama gave a speech in Washington DC which described economic themes for the rest of his term. “The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American Dream, our way of life, and what we stand for around the globe,” he said. “The idea that so many children …
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Babies in a bucket

From CNN Faces of the world: National  Geographic photographer’s amazing portraits Babies in a bucket, in a tent city after the earthquake, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 2010 “When the quake hit on January 12, 2010, I had been staying in a decadent US$10,000 a night villa while photographing the stunning Amanyara on Turks and Caicos Island. One …
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Biosphere destruction is being ignored but happening fast and time is running out.

In Dangerous Global Warming Closer Than You Think, Climate Scientists Say, Scientific American outlines two reports encouraging immediate and extensive action, before it’s too late. The message of the reports is that climate volatility is already here, species extinction is close to a critical level, as are levels of toxic concentrates.  They are now talking …
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Bicycles outselling cars.

Data shows that in 2012, bicycles outsold cars in 26 of the European Union’s 28 states.  That sounds like good news. The reasons are undocumented though informed conjecture suggests that the cost of fuel and the opportunity for a more healthy lifestyle are helping boost demand for cycles. Cities are also promoting cycling, through bicyle …
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You are twice as likely to pay a bribe if you live in a poor country

That’s a simple summary of Transparency International’s 2013  Corruption Perceptions Index. A big headline this year was the drop in Spain’s ranking because of a number of public scandals.  But do not imagine that corruption in Spain has actually gone up or down, just because perception has changed.  Actual corruption is pretty much the same …
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Yahoo, Bing, Scroogle, Scraper, and anonymous search

How embarrassing!  I knew it, but forgot it.  But luckily was reminded yesterday that Yahoo doesn’t offer search any more. In mid-2009 Yahoo gave up on search and contracted with Bing to supply teh service.  I was reminded when I saw the confession at the bottom of a Yahoo search page.  Further investigation reminded me …
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