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GUARDIAN Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:28:16 GMT
We're mapping how many Occupy protest camps are still active across the world. See the list and help us track which camps are still open here
• Get the data
• Interactive map
Since its inception in Zuccotti Park, New York, and then through a wave of activism on the global day of protest on 15 October, the Occupy movement has dominated headlines.
Attracting both celebrity endorsements and concerted police crackdowns, the protest camps have become a sign of outrage at economic inequality.
Last weekend, authorities in Oakland, California, made hundreds of arrests after violent clashes in the city.
Occupy London activists who run a "tent city" by St Paul's Cathedral face forced eviction in the coming days after talks, brokered by the cathedral authorities, broke down.
Now, three and a half months on, we'd like to know how many of these occupations are continuing. At one point, there were reputed to be 951 protests in 82 countries around the world. In mid-November, our original..
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GUARDIAN Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:30:01 GMT
Innovation offers expansion in productivity, but not employment. Where are the World Economic Forum strategies to tackle this?
The hook to every song sung at Davos is "jobs, jobs, jobs". The chorus of machers on stages here operate under an article of faith that growth can come back, that they can stimulate it, that this will create jobs, and that all will be eventually well.
What if that's not the case? I am coming to believe, more and more, that technology is leading to efficiency over growth. I've written about that here. This notion is obviously true in some sectors of society: see news and media, retail, travel sales and other arenas. But how many more sectors will this rule strike? Universities? Government? Banking? Delivery? Even manufacturing?
As I write this, I'm watching a World Economics Forum panel moderated by Reuters's editor, Steve Adler, with Larry Summers and government and business leaders. They're discussing growth strategies and so far we're hearing the same..
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BOSTON Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:48:42 GMT
Two Canadian high-school seniors, Matthew Ho and Asad Muhammad, have launched a Lego man into near-space -- about 24 kilometers above sea level. (Space officially begins at about 100 kilometers above sea level, at the Kármán line.) The camera they attached to his weather balloon clearly shows the Lego man, clutching a Canadian flag, with the curvature of the Earth behind him: According to the Toronto Star, "Ho dreamt up the project two summers ago when he saw an online video of a balloon sent to near space by some Massachusetts Institute of Technology students": He decided to try it himself. He likes building things and has an adventurous streak, he says. He wants to be an entrepreneur, so he has applied to Queen?s University and University of British Columbia for commerce.
Ho approached Muhammad in the hallway of Agincourt Collegiate Institute, where they are both Grade 12 students. Muhammad has a passion for all things flight-related. His goal is to be an aircraft technician, so..
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GUARDIAN Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:00:02 GMT
Compiled by an ardent bibliophile, this weekly report includes books about extinct birds, frogs of Australia, and New World flesh-eating plants that have been newly published in North America and the UK
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books.
Compiled by Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, the Birdbooker Report is a long-running weekly report listing the wide variety of nature, natural history, ecology, animal behaviour, science and history books that have been newly released or republished in North America and in the UK. The books listed here were received by Ian during the previous week, courtesy of these various publishing houses.
Featured Title:
Hume, Julian P. and Michael Walters. Extinct Birds. 2011. T & A D Poyser. Hardbound: 544 pages. Price: £50.00 (about $78.46 U.S.). [Amazon UK; Amazon.....
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GUARDIAN Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:30:00 GMT
January is not usually the most exciting time in the plant year, but this month has been astonishing. Flowers are bursting out ridiculously early in balmy temperatures, with daffodils and primroses making a surprising appearance far ahead of schedule, and catkins bursting out on hazel and some other trees. There are also the more usual early bloomers, such as the custard-yellow flowers of gorse and buttercup-like lesser celandine. But most breathtaking is a roll call of flowers usually seen much later in spring, such as dandelions, hogweed, long stalked crane's bill, scentless mayweed, knapweed, compact brome and many others. Unfortunately for gardeners, many of these also grow as weeds, and with grass growing lush there is plenty of unexpected garden work, although it is amazing to see camellias and roses in flower.
There is a high price to pay for all this exuberant early start to the plant season. Many of the daffodils that opened their trumpets early were also flattened to.....
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GUARDIAN Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:59:01 GMT
South Uist: Pristine and wetly gleaming, the sand stretches for miles until it disappears into a mist of sunlit salt haze
The sun is shining brightly from a blue sky across which a brisk breeze is driving a succession of shape-shifting, pillowy white clouds. Yet within minutes a dark cloud appears from nowhere and deposits a fleeting but heavy shower before speeding off into the distance. It's a day as lively and changeable as any in April. A perfect day for a beach walk. And what a beach it is this morning! A low tide has exposed far more sand than usual and the winter gales, which so often heap piles of kelp along the beaches, have conspired this winter to sweep away the weed as fast as it has been deposited.
Pristine and wetly gleaming, the sand stretches for miles until it disappears into a mist of sunlit salt haze. A whitecap-strewn, sapphire-blue sea rolls surprisingly gently on to the beach, but farther out, where water meets half-submerged rock and reef, a line of........
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GUARDIAN Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:02:36 GMT
As a metal recycler, I am directly affected by theft. But stopping cash transactions will only drive illegal trade underground
An estimated 15,000 tonnes of metal was stolen in the UK last year. Half of this was from the metals recycling industry itself. But it is the 7,500 tonnes of metal stolen from railways, statues and church roofs that has caused a public outcry, badly tarnished the reputation of metal recyclers, and is now threatening the existence of our businesses.
To an industry recycling 13 million tonnes of metal a year, 7,500 tonnes is a tiny volume – though it has a massive impact. Metals theft is a huge issue for our company. Not only do we suffer at the hands of organised criminal gangs, but we are portrayed, alongside other legitimate businesses, as a shabby "Steptoe and Son" industry; the true picture of a modern metals recycler could not be further from the truth.
Metals recycling has evolved in the last 10 years, responding to a raft of environmentally........
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GUARDIAN Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:54:59 GMT
Prime minister's lack of leadership on green issues among concerns raised by head of charity that helped rebrand party
The head of the charity that helped to arrange David Cameron's memorable husky photoshoot in the Arctic, launching the Conservatives' rebranding as the nice-not-nasty party, has warned that the PM's lack of leadership on environment issues risks "retoxifying" their image.
The striking images of Cameron posing on the ice with huskies on the way to visiting a melting glacier in 2006 marked a turning point for the Conservatives, who had been seen by many voters as uncaring. After the pictures appeared across newspapers and TV back home, Cameron's image-maker and policy guru, Steve Hilton, is said to have received a text from an ally back home: "Simply brilliant – that was worth a thousand speeches."
Reflecting on the 2006 trip, David Nussbaum, the chief executive of WWF UK, said: "What we were most encouraged about was it was part of his detoxification of the.......
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GUARDIAN Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:59:01 GMT
Sandy, Bedfordshire: I rose and went out into the night for more of the pre-dawn chorus. There were robins front, back and sides. It seemed as if every street light was illuminated with song
Fully two hours before sunrise, a robin's high voice pierced through the bedroom window. I lay and listened. Each short phrase was as a dying breath, plucked out of silence, tailing off into nothingness. This particular bird had an individual variation on the standard robin repertoire of melancholy. Out it came – a rumbustious, exuberant "tiddly-tiddly-tiddly-tiddly". This robin had sat in the hedge in late December, practising soft sibilants of sub-song. Now, a month later, it was in full-throated cry. It was impossible to stay still. I rose and went out into the night for more of the pre-dawn chorus. There were robins front, back and sides. It seemed as if every street light was illuminated with song. Every singer was fighting for its aural space, the voices clashing and overlapping in a.....
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GUARDIAN Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:32:01 GMT
Just who are the mysterious women who produced Positive Weather Solutions' forecasts and appeared in Mail articles?
This month, I questioned the credentials of the alternative weather forecasters used by the Daily Mail, the Express, the Telegraph and the Sun. I suggested that their qualifications were inadequate, their methods inscrutable and their results unreliable. I highlighted the work of these two companies: Exacta Weather and Positive Weather Solutions (PWS).
Now the story has become more interesting: do the people from Positive Weather Solutions, making its forecasts and quoted in news articles, exist?
A sharp-eyed reader has sent me a screenshot he took from the PWS website at the end of last year. As you can see, it shows eight people whom the company lists as its forecasters and experts. (Well, seven and a cup of tea, currently standing in for its chief assistant forecaster). They have, the website claims, produced PWS's forecasts and written its blogposts. They have..
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FASTCOMPANY Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:17:23 EST
Breaking news from your editors at Fast Company, with updates all day.
Google Adds Public Alerts To Maps. When natural disasters strike, the Google Crisis Response team is usually prompt with a response. For smaller scale U.S. emergencies, the group has launched a permanent alerts feature, Public Alerts, on Google Maps. Information from the National Weather Service, the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will feed into location searchers, bringing up weather, public safety and earthquake alerts. --NS
Angry Birds On Facebook On Valentines Day. A match made in app heaven, Facebook and the blockbuster mobile game Angry Birds are finally joining forces. Rovio has announced via a Facebook event page that the game will make its Facebook debut on Valentine's Day. According to the note, the fun begins at 6pm. --NS
Wii Successor Expected Late This Year. Nintendo has forecast lower sales and bigger losses this year, as gamers on tablets....
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ENGADGET Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:37:00 EDT
You can't deny that Google often hands out marvelous tools for the masses to utilize (yes, some can be a miss), and today the King of Search is launching a fresh virtual apparatus as part of its Crisis Response project. Dubbed "Public Alerts," the feature is accessible from within Google Maps, keeping you in the loop during times of high alert. Your search query will trigger things like weather relevant to your area, public safety and earthquake alerts -- all of which are provided by the NOAA, the National Weather Service and the US Geological Survey. The Crisis Response squad says its goal is "to surface emergency information through the online tools you use everyday," which is a great idea, but we honestly hope that you don't have to use it very often. Those of you stateside can start using Public Alerts now -- as for the rest, let's hope that the search giant brings its alerts to a map near you sooner rather than later...
Google adding Public Alerts to Maps, keeps you in the...
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GOOGLE Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:28:18 GMT
Prepare to waste hours and hours of your lives, NBA fans: you can now look out any box score from any game in NBA history on Basketball-Reference.com.
The site scanned newspaper box scores from really old games, and entered other digitally.
Justin Kubatko wrote a blog post about it for the site today today, and included some box scores from big games like Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game in 1962.
We've been playing around with it all day, and found that it's really addicting to look up iconic games from your childhood to see what they're like in retrospect.
For example, we looked up the box scores from the legendary (to us) 2001 playoff series between the Philadelphia 76ers and Toronto Raptors.
We found Allen Iverson had one of the most insane stat lines you'll ever see in Game Seven of that series: 21 points on a dreadful 8/27 shooting, 16 ASSISTS, four turnovers, four rebounds, two steals, a block, and he played all 48 minutes!
Try it for yourself here >>
Please...
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GOOGLE Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:55:00 GMT
Shareholder activism isn't an official form of investing, but it's part of the larger umbrella of "value investing." In shareholder activism, an "activist investor" acquires major stakes in a company, and tries to shake up the management or business in some way that will increase the company's worth—resulting in a profit for the investor.
Many investors don't like to call themselves "activist" simply because becoming activist isn't mutual exclusive of other investment styles. There are very few serial activist investors, but the ones that are have made a name for themselves.
According to a CFO.com article in 2007, less than 10% of of 8,800 hedge funds worldwide were activist hedge funds. But the investment style is certainly pick up popularity, so we rounded up some of the activist investors that have made the most noise in the past.Carl Icahn
Firm: Icahn Partners
Net worth: $13 billion
Famous Deals: Earlier - American Can, Uniroyal, Texaco and RJR Nabisco. More.......
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| Full List of Environment articles |
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Wastequip Introduces Versatile Above Frame Roll-off Cable Hoist
SOPA, ACTA and WIPO: where is the copyfight headed?
Missing ocean heat may never have been missing at all
Bringing galaxy-scale magnetic fields down to size in the lab
Ocean acidification already well beyond natural variability
Engineered E. coli produce biofuel from seaweed
Hackers put hijacked Web views up for sale for webfraud
Linux kernel chief exits SUSE, takes vendor-neutral oversight role
Incredible Photos From The Brutal Cold Front That's Killed Over A Hundred In Europe
Blueseed Cofounder Worries That His Visa-Free Boat Will Be Full Of Dudes
US Workers Are Toiling Harder And Getting Paid Less Than Ever
10 Innovative Energy Sources To Help Break Our Fossil Fuel Addiction
17 Facts About The People Who Waste Time On Facebook
The 15 Most Dominant Retailers In The World (CVS, TGT, WAG, HD, COST, KR, WMT)
Seagate Sees Hard Drive Shortage Throughout 2012
Guardian Hack Day: Day one
Game on: Kingdoms of Amalur - Reckoning
Sony warns annual loss will exceed forecast
Killer electrons headed for space, not Earth
Elephants and rhinos in Australia 'could control damaging wild grasses'
Australia's deeply troubled ecology demands fresh thinking | David Bowman
Wall Street Journal rapped over climate change stance
The zoo visitors who saw a lion kill an owl can count themselves lucky | Benjamin Mee
Scientists sign petition to boycott academic publisher Elsevier
Alpha males get a beta in the board room: Testosterone-fuelled men are stubborn and hard to work with, say scientists
Natural tilts in earth's axis alter temperature enough to cause ice ages, says Harvard scientist
Devastating hurricane allows scientists to watch evolution in action on vegetation-stripped islands
Facebook spam attack pushes diet 'miracle'
Kindle Fire No. 1 in Android tablet use: report
Isolated Peru tribe makes uncomfortable contact
