Author: David Cantatore

The Craigslist Project turns Internet anonymity into art

art

I would have never thought you could turn craigslist into art. For those who don’t know (really?), craigslist is one of the oldest – if not the oldest – free classified sites on the web. There’s really everything there, kind of a cesspool in some sections. Heck, I found a couple of jobs on craigslist and they weren’t all that enjoyable. Caveat emptor.

This is pretty cool work!

The Craigslist Project, Samantha Allen’s first exhibit, is a collection of original photographs and written ads that she submitted to the popular classifieds website in the hopes that she might receive intriguing or otherwise noteworthy responses — which, for the most part, she did.

via The Craigslist Project turns Internet anonymity into art on BlogTO

China Threatens Massive Venting of Super Greenhouse Gases in Attempt to Extort Billions

this can't end well

So, basically, China is blackmailing the entire world with a massive release of toxic, ozone-destroying gas is the international community doesn’t pay. Nice.

Keep buying stuff made in China, peeps, it’s cheaper. Yeah, right.

In a shocking attempt to blackmail the international community, Xie Fei, revenue management director at the China Clean Development Mechanism Fund, threatened: “If there’s no trading of [HFC-23] credits, they’ll stop incinerating the gases” and vent them directly into the atmosphere. Speaking at the Carbon Forum Asia in Singapore last week, Xie Fei claimed he spoke for “almost all the big Chinese producers of HFCs who “can’t bear the cost” and maintain that “they’ll lose competitiveness”.

via China Threatens Massive Venting of Super Greenhouse Gases in Attempt to Extort Billions as UNFCCC Meeting Approaches – MarketWatch.

That’s a lot of Rubik’s Cubes

art, cool

4242 Rubik's Cubes were used to create this triple portrait of Dr Martin Luther King Jr

4242 Rubik’s cube cubes and many hours of work were needed to achieve this triple portrait of Martin Luther King Jr.

Original site is in German, so here’s a rough translation (with the help of google, that is):

4242 Rubik’s cube cubes and many hours of work. The result is an approximately 5.8 m wide and 2.9 m high portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. Pete Fecteau , with the help of YouCanDoTheRubiks, First Park Congregational Church, The Student Advancement Foundation and Cooley Law School produced about half a ton of heavy work of art.  A a computer-generated blueprint was used for the presentation of his ‘Dream Big’, which got him in the top 50 of 1700 participants of the ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

via Dream Big | Ignant.

Thailand is 20% underwater, and is second-biggest hard drive producer after China. Now do you care about the floods? – Boing Boing

sux, tech

A flood victim cycles through the water using a homemade tall three-wheeler in Bang Phlad district, Bangkok October 30, 2011. Thailand’s worst floods in half a century have killed 381 people since July, wiped out a quarter of the main rice crop in the world’s biggest rice exporter, forced up global prices of computer hard drives and caused delays in global auto production after destroying industrial estates. (REUTERS/Bazuki Muhammad)

There may be a shortage of hard drives for the big Christmas retail season because of the catastrophic floods in Thailand. By some estimates the total global output of magnetic hard drives could fall as much as 30% in the final three months of 2011.

Production of laptops and other devices that use these drives may be impacted through early 2012. Second only to China, Thailand is one of the world’s top hard drive producing countries. Western Digital and Seagate now produce about 90% of hard drives, and both have affected plants in Thailand. Western Digital’s factory is literally underwater.

via Thailand is 20% underwater, and is second-biggest hard drive producer after China. Now do you care about the floods? – Boing Boing.

How modern wheat is making us fat and sick

this can't end well

Very interesting read about the dangers of modern wheat, which doesn’t have much in common with the one our parents/grand-parents ate and why our generations are fatter and sick with auto-immune diseases such as Celiac or Crohn’s or even rheumatoid arthritis among other niceties.

Quick: Name a common food, consumed every day by most people, that:• Increases overall calorie consumption by 400 calories per day • Affects the human brain in much the same way as morphine • Has a greater impact on blood sugar levels than a candy bar • Is consumed at the rate of 133 pounds per person per year • Has been associated with increased Type 1 Diabetes • Increases both insulin resistance and leptin resistance, conditions that lead to obesity • Is the only common food with its own mortality rateIf you guessed sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, youre on the right track, but, no, thats not the correct answer.The true culprit: Triticum aestivum, or modern wheat.

via Triticum Fever, by Dr. William Davis, author of Wheat Belly – Boing Boing.

Group of 147 tight-knit companies controls 40% of the world’s total wealth

links, this can't end well

This is somewhat scary.

The work, to be published in PloS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – the “real” economy – representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

Read the whole story on: the capitalist network that runs the world –  New Scientist.