When You Program Microsoft, You're Programming Communism

Chinese Environmentalist Beaten With Batons For Five Hours After Bringing Attention To River Pollution

The Offer

[caption align="aligncenter" width="500"]Yes, that's a river[/caption]

A Zhejiang entrepreneur is offering a 200,000 yuan reward to a senior official if he swims in a polluted river for 20 minutes, as part of an attempt to draw attention to the environmental plight in China's eastern province.

Jin Zengmin, chief executive of a Hangzhou eyeglasses retailer, announced the reward on China’s Twitter-like social website on Saturday.

“If the environmental protection bureau chief dares to swim in [Ruian's] river for 20 minutes, I will pay [him] 200,000 yuan [HK$246,000],” Jin wrote on Sina Weibo.

In three photos Jin posted, a river in small-town Ruian is seen entirely blocked by floating rubbish. Jin blamed a rubber overshoe factory for dumping industrial waste into the river.

This river was where villagers used to wash vegetables and clothes in his childhood, Jin told Chinanews.com.

Full Article at South China Morning Post

The Response

Chen Yuqian, a 60-year-old resident of Pailian village in Zhejiang province, was one of at least three concerned citizens who last week called on Chinese environmental officials to brave the rivers they were supposed to be keeping clean.

A businessman from the same province vowed to pay 200,000 yuan (around £20,000) to his local environmental protection chief if he dared bathe in a rubbish-clogged river near Rui'an City.

Mr Chen, a farmer who has spent the last decade fighting pollution, posted his challenge on the internet, hoping it would trigger government action.
Instead, his daughter says he was severely beaten by a gang of baton-wielding men at around 6am last Sunday.

"My father was alone at home," said 32-year-old Chen Xiufang. "Some 40 people turned up in plain clothes, some holding batons. The only thing they said was: "[You] used the internet, you always use the internet!"

Full Article at The Telegraph UK

Nestle CEO Says Water Isn’t A Human Right

http://youtu.be/nTqvBhFVdvE?t=1m59s

In a candid interview for the documentary We Feed the World, Nestle CEO Peter Brabeck makes the astonishing claim that water isn’t a human right. He attacks the idea that nature is good, and says it is a great achievement that humans are now able to resist nature’s dominance. He attacks organic agriculture and says genetic modification is better.

Nestle is the world’s biggest bottler of water. Brabeck claims – correctly – that water is the most important raw material in the world. However he then goes on to say that privatisation is the best way to ensure fair distribution. He claims that the idea that water is a human right comes from “extremist” NGOs. Water is a foodstuff like any other, and should have a market value.

He believes that the ultimate social responsibility of any CEO is to make as much profit as possible, so that people will have jobs.
And just to underline what a lovely man he is, he also thinks we should all be working longer and harder.

Consequences of water privatisation

The consequences of water privatisation have been devastating on poor communities around the world. In South Africa, where the municipal workers’ union SAMWU fought a long battle against privatisation, there has been substantial research (pdf) about the effects. Water privatisation lead to a massive cholera outbreak in Durban in the year 2000.

The Nestle boycott

Nestle already has a very bad reputation among activists. There has been a boycott call since 1977. This is due to Nestle’s aggressive lobbying to get women to stop breastfeeding – which is free and healthy – and use infant formula (sold by Nestle) instead. Nestle has lobbied governments to tell their health departments to promote formula. In poor countries, this has resulted in the deaths of babies, as women have mixed formula with contaminated water instead of breastfeeding.

Tell Nestle they are wrong – water is a human right

There is Europe-wide campaign to tell the European Commission that water is a human right, and to ask them to enact legislation to ensure this is protected.

If you live in Europe, please Sign the petition here.

Via USILive.org

New York "Cannibal Cop" Accused Of Using Police Database To Make A List Of Targets To Kill And Eat

The estranged wife of New York’s so-called Cannibal Cop took to the witness stand yesterday, on the first day of her estranged husband’s conspiracy to kidnap trial.

Kathleen Mangan-Valle described how former NYPD officer Gilberto Valle planned to tie her up by her feet, then slit her throat and “watch the blood rush” from her body.

She went on to say how she discovered her husband’s alleged plot to “slow cook” and eat over 100 women after finding graphic emails on his computer.

She also claims to have found images of naked, blood-soaked women on the computer, some of whom she believes were dead.

The 27-year-old described how life with the accused, who is charged with using police databases to make a list of targets as well as conspiracy to kidnap, used to be normal until “weird stuff started happening”.

She says Valle began asking for specific details of her jogging routes and expressed an interest in how well lit and busy they were.

She says it was around this time that she used spyware to access the 28-year-old’s computer, where she allegedly discovered plans to cook and eat women.

Ms Mangan-Valle told the court: “I was going to be tied up by my feet and my throat slit and they were going to watch the blood drain out of me.”

Full Article at The Independent UK

Zero Dark Thirty, the CIA and film critics have a very bad evening

Wall St. Sets Off Controversy Claiming The Average American Household Makes $650,000

While Wall St. has been playing the victim, demanding bailouts and special treatment within the U.S. judicial system (too big to fail), they also seemed to have time to show exactly how disconnected they are to the average American. A post made January 4, 2013 on The Wall Street Journal seems to have riled up quite a few people because of it's obviously naive viewpoint on the income of the majority of Americans. Here's the infographic they posted while moaning about their unfair taxation.



The article itself has to be just sickening for someone struggling to make ends meet. I myself consider myself lucky with the job I have and yet this pic enrages me. The average American probably makes less than what this "Infographic" shows them paying in taxes, hell the average Americans income is probably closer to the "increase in taxes" than the actual income shown here.

Of course, the article in the Wall Street Journal plays it out as if the "1% of taxpayers" are the ones suffering.

In the nick of time, and amid much political drama, Congress passed the American Taxpayer Relief Act on New Year's Day—averting massive tax increases for nearly all earners that were slated to take effect Jan. 1.

Even so, millions of people soon will feel something less than relief from the new law.

The bill approved in Congress to avert the fiscal cliff would bring the first major tax increase on high earners in 20 years. Laura Saunders breaks down how new tax increases will impact across different tax brackets.

While the top 1% of taxpayers will bear the biggest burden, many other families, affluent and poor, will pay more as well.

The most immediate change affects nearly all workers: Congress allowed a two-percentage-point cut for the employee portion of the Social Security tax to expire. As a result, each will owe up to $2,425 more in payroll tax this year than in 2012.

Fortunately we have people out there like Matthew Gray [MIT] that are checking facts and calling bullshit on this.

I believe I was able to determine an answer from the 2011 American Community Survey microdata. First limiting to households composed exclusively of children and a single parent (as depicted), gets you down to 6.5 million households. (Sanity check: Wikipedia cites about 13 million single-parent households, but that includes those with other adults present, and the microdata shows an equal number of single-parent households with a single adult and multiple adults.)

Further restricting to single parent with 2 children, exactly, gets you down to 2.1 million households.

Limiting to those with an income of $260,000 or more, leaves you with 9,489 households total, or the top 0.4% of single-parent two-children household incomes. Median income for this demographic is $23,400. 90th percentile is $70k, and 95th percentile is $94k.

The internet has also been quite vocal about this spurious and offensive article

Huffington Post - The Wall Street Journal Doesn't Actually Know Any Middle-Class Americans


Esquire - LES INSUFFERABLES


American Livewire - Wall Street Journal Baffles Americans With Tax Graphic


Daily KOS - Revealed: The Wall Street Journal Has No Idea What is Happening in America

Arduino Basics - Speed Controlled RGB LED Array

The Schematic

The Code

[sourcecode language="java"]
// p is our potentiometer
// r, g, & b our led's
int r=10,g=11,b=12,p=1,pval=0;
void setup(){
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(r,1);
pinMode(g,1);
pinMode(b,1);
}
void loop(){
// read the potentiometer
pval=analogRead(p);
// pass the value to cycle function
cycle(pval);
}
void cycle(int interval){
// map the pot value to something
// more managable
interval=map(interval,1,1023,30,300);
// write to serial for debugging
Serial.println(interval);
// flash values to rgb pins
flashPin(r,interval);
flashPin(g,interval);
flashPin(b,interval);
}
void flashPin(int pin,int interval){
// turn led on
digitalWrite(pin,1);
// read interval val from pot
delay(interval);
// turn led off
digitalWrite(pin,0);
delay(interval);
}
[/sourcecode]

The Implementation

http://youtu.be/YZBKMzh6Bg4