By David Hill (Singularity Hub) Academic research is behind bars and an online boycott by 8,209 researchers and counting is seeking to set it free…well, more free than it has been. The boycott targets Elsevier, the publisher of popular journals like Cell and The Lancet, for its aggressive business practices, but opposition was electrified by Elsevier’s backing of a Congressional [...]
March 18, 2012
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By Robin Wauters (TheNextWeb) This morning, word got out in Belgian media that SABAM (the Belgian collecting society for music royalties) is spending time and resources to contact local libraries across the nation, warning them that they will start charging fees because the libraries engage volunteers to read books to kids. The De Morgen reporter [...]
March 14, 2012
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By Sara Robinson (AlterNet) How did we get to the 40-hour week in the first place? How did we lose it? And are there compelling bottom-line business reasons that we should bring it back? The most essential thing to know about the 40-hour work-week is that, while it was the unions that pushed it, business [...]
March 14, 2012
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By Ross McGuinness (Metro UK) Instead of just worrying about what might happen to their material possessions after they die, more and more people are taking steps to protect the belongings they store online. The emergence of cloud computing — storing your information on a network of remote servers on the internet as opposed to [...]
March 13, 2012
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By Erica Goode (NY Times) Kept in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours each day, allowed out only in shackles and escorted by guards, they were restless and angry — made more so by the excrement-smeared walls, the insects, the filthy food trays and the mentally ill inmates who screamed in the night, conditions that [...]
March 11, 2012
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Mar 102012
By John Avlon (The Daily Beast) Ninety-eight major advertisers—including Ford and Geico—will no longer air spots on Premiere Networks’ ‘offensive’ programs. Insiders say the loss will rock right-wing talk radio. Premiere Networks, which distributes Limbaugh as well as a host of other right-wing talkers, sent an email out to its affiliates early Friday listing 98 [...]
March 10, 2012
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By David Edwards (RawStory) Republican Georgia state Rep. Terry England says that his experience with cows, pigs and chickens has proven to him that women should be forced to have their babies after 20 weeks of pregnancy. In a debate over Georgia House Bill 954, which would ban abortions after 20 weeks even if the baby [...]
March 10, 2012
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By Arran Frood (Nature) The powerful hallucinogen LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) has potential as a treatment for alcoholism, according to a retrospective analysis of studies published in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The study1, by neuroscientist Teri Krebs and clinical psychologist Pål-Ørjan Johansen of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, is the [...]
March 9, 2012
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