Did my wife's cosmetics give her breast cancer? During her first round of chemo in 2009, some volunteers at the hospital came calling with a little red bag [from the Look Good Feel Better program] that contained products from Clinique, Estée Lauder, and Del Laboratories. Upon reviewing the contents of her bag, she realized that several of the products contained parabens — chemicals that mimic estrogen and that according to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics are linked to cancer. (
previously,
previouslier,
previousliest in AskMe)
posted by spamandkimchi
on May 11, 2013 -
38 comments
"
Trusting your child with someone else is one of the hardest things that a parent has to do — and in the United States, it’s harder still, because American day care is a mess. About 8.2 million kids—about 40 percent of children under five — spend at least part of their week in the care of somebody other than a parent. Most of them are in centers, although a sizable minority attend home day cares.... In other countries, such services are subsidized and well-regulated. In the United States, despite the fact that work and family life has changed profoundly in recent decades, we lack anything resembling an actual child care system. Excellent day cares are available, of course, if you have the money to pay for them and the luck to secure a spot. But the overall quality is wildly uneven and barely monitored, and at the lower end, it’s Dickensian."
posted by zarq
on Apr 15, 2013 -
139 comments
Ephemeral New York 'chronicles an ever-changing, constantly reinvented city through photos, newspaper archives, and other scraps and artifacts that have been edged into New York’s collective remainder bin.'
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Oct 11, 2012 -
5 comments
Welcome to the Anthropocene: A 3-minute journey through the last 250 years of our history, from the start of the Industrial Revolution to the Rio+20 Summit. The film charts the growth of humanity into a global force on an equivalent scale to major geological processes.
[more inside]
posted by quin
on May 1, 2012 -
12 comments
While
growth prospects
in the field are
incredibly high, recent trends, such as
"tools grow[ing] more advanced" (see
Adobe Flash Builder or
MS Visual Studio) have had people wondering over the past few years if computer science has much room for growth left.
Some question whether it is alive. Others,
such as Carnegie Mellon, say not so fast. In any case,
employment has been a bit iffy (
/.). There is the possibility that Computer Science
is simply growing up (PDF), then again
the U of Florida decided to say good bye to it this past week. But hey, if you are not going to that University, and still are shooting for computer science,
here are some tips.
posted by JoeXIII007
on Apr 23, 2012 -
57 comments
Most of the talk about renewable energy is aimed at electricity production. However, most of the energy we need is heat, which solar panels and wind turbines cannot produce efficiently. To power industrial processes like the making of chemicals, the smelting of metals or the production of microchips, we need a renewable source of thermal energy. Direct use of solar energy can be the solution, and it creates the possibility to produce renewable energy plants using only renewable energy plants, paving the way for a truly sustainable industrial civilization. [more inside]
posted by Bangaioh
on Jul 30, 2011 -
31 comments
Ghost shift ghost chips. A tale about a Chumby hardware developer with a keen investigative eye noticing some oddities about microSD FLASH cards from supposedly reputable suppliers.
posted by loquacious
on Feb 16, 2010 -
65 comments
Silicon Sweatshops is a five-part investigation of the supply chains that produce many of the world’s most popular technology products, from Apple iPhones, to Nokia cell phones, Dell keyboards and more. The series examines the scope of the problem, including its effects on workers from the Philippines, Taiwan and China. It also looks at a novel factory program that may be a blueprint for solving this perennial industry problem.
posted by Joe Beese
on Nov 19, 2009 -
9 comments
Smoke and Mirrors: The Subversion of the EPA. "This four-part series details how the Bush administration weakened the
EPA. It installed a pliant agency chief, Stephen L. Johnson. Under him, the EPA created pro-industry regulations later thrown out by the courts. It promoted a flawed voluntary program to fight climate change. It bypassed air pollution recommendations from its own scientists to satisfy the White House."
[Via Reality Base]
posted by homunculus
on Dec 11, 2008 -
19 comments
I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future. (The penalties apply only to fruits and vegetables — if the farmer decides to grow another commodity crop, or even nothing at all, there’s no problem.)
If you can't stop demand, curtail production.
One farmer's view on the power of commodity crops. [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan
on Mar 1, 2008 -
33 comments
Illicit Ohio has a wide range of photos and essays of
abandoned places in Ohio, from the
Cincinnati subway system (yes, there really
is was one, and it's been
discussed here before), to
various and
sundry prisons,
government installations,
hotels,
hosiptals,
houses and more. And don't miss the
old vs. new galleries, either.
posted by dersins
on Aug 29, 2007 -
20 comments
