Author: Daniela

  • What you may not know about “God Bless America”

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    Sheryl Kaskowitz lists six surprising facts about the song “God Bless America” that you probably don’t know: It was written by Irving Berlin.  Like so many songs that have entered in American consciousness, “God Bless America” has attained the composerless status of an anthem or a folk song, but it has roots in Tin Pan Alley.…

  • The Myth of Free Trade, Cont’d. – What is the WTO?

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  • The Myth of Free Trade and Free Market Capitalism

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  • Elysium – Reaganomics on Steroids

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    n the year 2159, two classes of people exist: the very wealthy, who live on a pristine man-made space station called Elysium, and the rest, who live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth. Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster) will stop at nothing to preserve the luxurious lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium — but that doesn’t stop…

  • How Does Emotion Work?

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    Originally posted on The Dish: Shannon Fischer examines the research of Lisa Barrett: [A]s Barrett put it to me, emotion isn’t a simple reflex or a bodily state that’s hard-wired into our DNA, and it’s certainly not universally expressed. It’s a contingent act of perception that makes sense of the information coming in from the world around…

  • How Products Get Named

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    Excerpted from Dr. Ong’s article The Poetry of Brand Naming in Business World On-line: In “Famous Names: Does it matter what a product is called?” (The New Yorker, Oct. 3, 2011), John Colapinto reports that product proliferation has made creative brand-naming a growing necessity. In 1980, fewer than 10,000 hi-tech trademarks were registered in the USA;…

  • Scientific Evidence

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    Ecology is not a dirty word Here’s an educational piece I had published on “scientific evidence” – that infamous term that so many politicians and corporations throw about, but so few actually explain to their audience! If someone tells us they have scientific evidence to back up their new product or proposed political decision, how…

  • Iranian Mystic Baba Tahir

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    Baba Tahir (ca. 1000-1060 AD) of Hamadan (Hemedan, Ekbatan in Median era) is one of the very first poets in the East to write rubaiyats. Little is known of the circumstances of Baba Tahir’s birth and death. Baba Tahir’s rusticity and mastery of both Kurdish (Lekí dialect), Persian (and Arabic) have rendered his works unusually…

  • GMO Crops Mean More Herbicide, Not Less

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    By Beth Hoffman: Forbes Over the past 15 years, farmers around the world have planted ever larger tracts of genetically engineered crops. According to the USDA, in 2012 more than 93 percent of soy planted was “herbicide tolerant,” engineered to withstand herbicides (sold by the same companies who patent and sell the seeds).  Likewise, 73 percent of all corn…

  • Hawaiians fight back against GMO experiments

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    Daniela
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    By John Upton The state of Hawaii has become a lot like the island of Dr. Moreau. Except that instead of Dr. Moreau — the mad scientist in H.G. Wells’s 1896 novel who vivisected animals into beast-people — Hawaii is ruled by the GMO industry. Shutterstock: The Island of Dr. Monsanto. Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences, Syngenta, DuPont Pioneer, and BASF…