Category: News and Views

Third Pole Melting Down | scientificamerican.com

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Image:flickr/rao.anirudh(Image:flickr/rao.anirudh)

Himalayan glaciers have been the subject of intense debate amid growing concern that melting ice could imperil a wide swath of South Asia that relies on groundwater from the “Third Pole.”

Scientists have struggled to improve their understanding of the glaciers’ fate using satellite data and limited ground measurements, bumping up against the limits of the region’s extreme topography and political barriers.

The picture that has emerged is complex, with wide variation among ice in the Himalayas, Hindu Kush and Tibetan Plateau. Studies suggest glaciers are stable or accumulating in the Karakoram Range on the Pakistan-China border. But in the eastern Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, they appear to be shrinking.

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iNflation: Americans Spend Less On Food, Movies To Pay For Soaring Cell Phone Obsession | ZeroHedge

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That trend is evident in the home of 40-year-old Scott Boedy, a neighborhood service representative for a cable company.

Mr. Boedy said he and his wife now pay $200 a month for cellphone service, up by about $50 from early last year, even as they have managed to cut spending on groceries by shopping at discount chain Aldi and on “fun stuff” by going out to dinner and movies less often.

Looking over the family budget on Sunday night, Mr. Boedy said, his wife marveled at how much of it was going to the phone company.

“It stinks,” Mr. Boedy said. “I guess it’s the cost of modern-day America now.”

No Scott, it isn’t. It’s the consequence of your choices. But as long as one has the ability to do what every other borderline insolvent entity in the world does, namely to “charge it”, sweep it under the rug.

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Crowdfunding: What’s All The Noise About? | Lydia Mehit

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Crowdfunding is the latest buzz to hit the entrepreneur community, but no one really knows how it is going to work.  What we do know is that it will allow people like you and me (non-accredited) investors to use our money to help small businesses to start or grow. The problem is that the funding entrepreneurs need to prove, start and grow their ideas into companies has been at a premium since 2008.  The question now is whether the excitement will translate into a meaningful solution.

The turn of the century already saw a slow down from the tech investing of the 90’s, but when the recession hit, bank funding ground almost to a stop.  Where could the entrepreneur go to seek funding for their idea or startup?

Continue reading “Crowdfunding: What’s All The Noise About? | Lydia Mehit” →

Get ’em When They’re Young! | OnlineDegrees.org

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Guess what?

You can become a debt slave on autopilot as part of your college education. Institutions of higher learning have partnered with banks to dole out Pell grant and student loans through debit cards that double as student identification cards.

Now you can get a degree that you can’t pay off and be nickle and dimed to death doing it.

It up to us to stop this.

Click on image at left to enlarge.

Gold Counterfeiting Goes Viral: 10 Tungsten-Filled Gold Bars Are Discovered In Manhattan | ZeroHedge

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The Post has learned as many as 10 fake gold bars — made up mostly of relatively worthless tungsten — were sold recently to unsuspecting dealers in Manhattan’s Midtown Diamond District. The 10-oz. gold bars are hugely popular with Main Street investors, and it is not known how many of the fake gold bars were sold to dealers — or if any fake bars were purchased by the public.

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Make sure you read some of the comment thread. Some of it’s hilarious, some if will make you think. Some of it’s offensive and some of it’s NSFW. – Ed.