In Brazil, women have finally gotten their wish: pink-striped, women-only metro cars. Apparently, there’s a lot of groping and feeling going on in Brazil (shame on you, fellow men!) and it’s so bad they lobbied for women-only cars. Now they’ve got them. The article mentions how women themselves will police the cars, to make sure no men get aboard. They can call on police if needed to evict unruly men. Here’s the link to the article.
Tag Archives: people
Judge rules in favor of allowing employees to surf the net at work
A New York judge has just ruled employees can’t be fired for surfing the Internet at work, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their productivity – he talked about it as an activity similar to using the phone. Techdirt has the details on this. He is to be lauded for his wonderful ruling! Allowing employees to surf the net increases their productivity; it doesn’t decrease it. Those people who surf the net to waste time would find other ways to waste it, so they can’t be used as a reason to curtail Internet access for the productive employees.
Earth Day is today
From Gizmag: “April 22, 2006 Today is Earth Day, when millions of people worldwide will participate in events to show their concern for the planet’s environment and natural resources. The official web site lists an array of ways in which you can meaningfully involve yourself and your family and Yahoo! has also assembled a comprehensive micro site that helps people take simple steps to slow climate change. Environmental experts warn that greenhouse gas emissions will lead to disastrous consequences unless the earth’s inhabitants make lifestyle changes…” Here’s the link.
Confess your secrets: i4giveu
From TechCrunch:
“i4giveu is an Israeli site that allows people to post confessions and ask for the community’s judgement. Confessions can be posted anonymously and are tagged for easy browsing. It just launched, and some of the ‘confessions’ seem a little canned or just plain dumb. And while this isn’t any kind of substitution for real therapy, the popularity of sites like PostSecret suggest that people really do like to tell their secrets on the Internet. Bonus feature: track comments to a confession via RSS.”
This is plain silly. Why would you confess your sins publicly, albeit somewhat anonymously, when you can confess to God in private? It just doesn’t make sense. Here is the link.
Microreactor for biodiesel production
From Gizmag: “April 21, 2006 — Another wondrous enabling technology has been announced – a microreactor, about half the size of a credit card that produces biodiesel by combining alcohol and vegetable oil directly, greatly speeding and simplifying production compared to traditional methods. By stacking many of these microreactors in parallel, a device the size of a small suitcase could produce hundreds of thousands of gallons per year of biodiesel — enough to power several farms. The device could significantly reduce farmer dependence on mass-produced petroleum. ‘This is all about producing energy in such a way that it liberates people,’ said inventor and OSU Professor Goran Jovanovic. ‘Most people think large-scale, central production of energy is cheaper, because we’ve been raised with that paradigm. But distributed energy production means you can use local resources – farmers can produce all the energy they need from what they grow on their own farms.’ Jovanovic is seeking to partner in order to commercialize the technology…” Here is the link.
Raoul Pop 