Free and green. Those are the goals of a pilot program launched today by the U.S. Postal Service that allows customers to recycle small electronics and inkjet cartridges by mailing them free of charge.The “Mail Back” program helps consumers make more environmentally friendly choices, making it easier for customers to discard used or obsolete small electronics in an environmentally responsible way. Customers use free envelopes found in 1,500 Post Offices to mail back inkjet cartridges, PDAs, Blackberries, digital cameras, iPods and MP3 players – without having to pay for postage.
(via Lupa)
The first legalised home computers have gone on sale in Cuba, but a ban remains on internet access.This is the latest in a series of restrictions on daily life which President Raul Castro has lifted in recent weeks.
[…]
In recent weeks thousands of Cubans have snapped up mobile phones and DVD players.
Week in Review
Rose Colored news returns to regular operations
Crime prevention organization making a difference in Chicago
Man grows new finger thanks to ground-up pig bladder
Argentina Decriminalizes Drug Consumption
Alaska: Appeals Court Cracks Down on Coercive Searches
Low cost, small scale wind turbines to power off-grid villages
Gel-like Material Shows Promise As Oral Insulin Pill For Diabetes
Bakeries urge customers to plant wheat in their lawns
Florida: No crime in photo of undercover officer
New York Times Magazine has a lengthy piece on an interesting crime-prevention organization in Chicago, CeaseFire:
Newspaper accounts usually refer to the organization as a gang-intervention program, and Hoddenbach and most of his colleagues are indeed former gang leaders. But CeaseFire doesn’t necessarily aim to get people out of gangs — nor interrupt the drug trade. It’s almost blindly focused on one thing: preventing shootings.
CeaseFire’s founder, Gary Slutkin, is an epidemiologist and a physician who for 10 years battled infectious diseases in Africa. He says that violence directly mimics infections like tuberculosis and AIDS, and so, he suggests, the treatment ought to mimic the regimen applied to these diseases: go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source.
There’s justifiably a lot of skepticism regarding this organization. But there is some evidence that they are doing some good:
in a report due out later this month, independent researchers hired by the Justice Department (from which CeaseFire gets some money) conclude that CeaseFire has had an impact. Shootings have declined around the city in recent years. But the study found that in six of the seven neighborhoods examined, CeaseFire’s efforts reduced the number of shootings or attempted shootings by 16 percent to 27 percent more than it had declined in comparable neighborhoods. The report also noted — with approbation — that CeaseFire, unlike most programs, manages by outcomes, which means that it doesn’t measure its success by gauging the amount of activity (like the number of interrupters on the street or the number of interruptions — 1,200 over four years) but rather by whether shootings are going up or down. One wall in Slutkin’s office is taken up by maps and charts his staff has generated on the location and changes in the frequency of shootings throughout the city; the data determine how they assign the interrupters. Wes Skogan, a professor of political science at Northwestern (disclosure: I teach there) and the author of the report, said, “I found the statistical results to be as strong as you could hope for.”
(via OVO)
The photos of his severed finger tip are pretty graphic. You can understand why doctors said he’d lost it for good.Today though, you wouldn’t know it. Mr Spievak, who is 69 years old, shows off his finger, and it’s all there, tissue, nerves, nail, skin, even his finger print.
‘Pixie dust’
How? Well that’s the truly remarkable part. It wasn’t a transplant. Mr Spievak re-grew his finger tip. He used a powder - or pixie dust as he sometimes refers to it while telling his story.
Mr Speivak’s brother Alan - who was working in the field of regenerative medicine - sent him the powder.
For ten days Mr Spievak put a little on his finger.
[…]
The process he has been pioneering over the last few years involves scraping the cells from the lining of a pig’s bladder.
Full Story: BBC (includes videos)
(via The Agitator)
This just in… A federal court in Argentina has decriminalized the personal consumption of drugs in that country. According to the court’s ruling, punishing drug users only “creates an avalanche of cases targeting consumers without climbing up in the ladder of [drug] trafficking.”Last month at a UN meeting in Vienna, Argentina’s Minister of Justice, Aníbal Fernández, said that the policy of punishing drug consumers was a “total failure.
(via The Agitator)
The Alaska Court of Appeals on Friday put law enforcement agencies on notice that it would not tolerate “implicitly coercive” search requests during traffic stops. The warning came in the form of a ruling on the case of Susan S. Brown, a driver pulled over on November 24, 2004 allegedly because of the light illuminating her car’s rear license plate was dirty.On that night, Alaska State Trooper Maurizio Salinas never explained to Brown the reason for the stop, nor that he had no intention of issuing a ticket. Instead, Salinas convinced Brown to allow him to search her car and her body — even though Brown had no warrants and showed no signs of illegal conduct. Salinas testified that his policy was to conduct as many random searches as possible during traffic stops. In this case, Salinas discovered a crack pipe hidden in Brown’s coat. Speaking for the unanimous court, Judge David Mannheimer found that such search requests not based upon any reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct abused the rights of motorists.
(via The Agitator)
A group of volunteer engineers are finishing the design for a home-brewed wind turbine that will bring electricity to off-the-grid Guatemalan villages by this summer.[…]
We’re shooting for under $100, which is a challenge, but we’re in that range.”
The effort comes amidst recent efforts to bring new light and power to small towns in the developing world. An estimated 1.6 billion people worldwide are without electricity, and many of them are forced to light their homes with kerosene. Using one of these lamps is like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, says the World Bank, and the lamps present a significant fire risk. That’s why many startup companies, such as d.Light, are trying to bring cheaper LED lights to homes, but they still need a solution for producing power locally.
(via Cryptogon)
Rose Colored News 2.0
Rose Colored news highlights the progress made by activists, scientists, engineers, and everyone else who strives to make the world a better place.
After the crushing defeat of the Democrats in 2004, it was hard to have much optimism for the future of the United States, or the world. The Republicans were bent on continuing the war in Iraq, and possibly expanding it into Iran and/or Syria. The Democrats seemed to lack the spine to stand-up to them, shouting down any amongst their ranks who dared speak out. And the American voters’ embrace of “family values” didn’t bode well for the future chances of any more progressive or libertarian politicians.
However, the “netroots” movement that gathered around Howard Dean’s presidential campaign was not lost. Some people were looking to the successes of Democrats in the “libertarian” mountain-west (such as Brian Schweitzer in Montana and Dave Freudenthal in Wyoming) as the model for the future of the Democrats. Howard Dean become the DNC chairman, pushing his “50 State Strategy.” It appeared to me that there was a new liberal/libertarian fusion alliance budding, and that its strategies were starting to work and win voters over. Meanwhile, Harry Reid seemed to be whipping the remaining Dems into some sort of a cohesive opposition party, giving me some faith that the Dems were finally ready to stand-up to the Republicans.
I started Rose Colored News in 2005 partially to track the successes of this “new progressivism.” The crowning achievement of the netroots movement came in 2006, with the Democrats taking back both the Senate and the House and, of course, wins by Jim Webb and Jon Tester.
But all that work and hope lead only to disappointment. Back in charge, the Dems seem to have accomplished precious little and have taken to playing it safe now that they’re in charge (Reid has been particularly infuriating). And don’t even get me started on the 2008 primary race. For the past several months, it’s felt more appropriate to critique (which I continue to do at my other blogs Technoccult and Klintron’s Brain) than to grasp at straws of hope.
But there is hope, and there always will be. I may be done being hopeful about politics (though I do still plan to vote for Obama) - but there are more solutions out there than political solutions. Rose Colored News has never exclusively covered politics anyway. So it’s with a renewed sense of purpose that I return to this site to highlight the progress made by activists, scientists, engineers, and everyone else who strives to make the world a better place. Keep up the good work.
-Klint Finley
Portland, OR 2008
Researchers in Texas report development of a gel-like material that could help speed the long-awaited arrival of insulin that can be taken in a pill by mouth, rather than with injections.In the report, Nicholas A. Peppas and colleagues point out acid in the stomach destroys insulin, preventing its administration by mouth. Many different research groups worldwide are searching for ways to overcome that obstacle. However, an ideal material for safe, effective oral delivery remains elusive.
(via Grinding)
