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Sunday, November 24 2002

Where Computers Go to Die

Mercury News article on an area of south China where many U.S. "recycling companies" ship the computers which people pay them to recycle in an environmentally safe manner. Instead of dealing with the waste material here, they ship it to where environmental laws don't stop workers from poisoning themselves and the environment with computer waste.

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition report on the subject: Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia.

Wednesday, November 20 2002

Extreme Life Extension Conference

How speakers at the Extreme Life Extension Conference say they expect life extension to work.

Monday, November 18 2002

Ray Kurzweil's Plan: Never Die

Kurzweil is interviewed at a life-extension conference: "I don't think we have to die. And the technology and the means of making that a reality is close at hand."

Wednesday, November 13 2002

Antitrust suit vs. MasterCard, Visa

Linked to from Macintouch, an MSNBC story about the federal antitrust suit against MasterCard and Visa. One of the main reasons they're the big two of the credit card industry is they've paid off banks not to issue debit or credit cards from other companies; they've also worked to wreck the debit card industry for other potential players.

Tuesday, November 12 2002

Major changes in China's leadership

From the Washington Post: Jiang's Liberal Rival May Be Ousted in China's Transfer of Power.

From the San Jose Merc: China's Communist Party leaders step aside.

Monday, November 11 2002

Environment Impact of Microchip Creation

Eureka Alert has a statement from the American Chemical Society which says, in part:

"Scientists have estimated that producing a single two-gram chip — the tiny wafer used for memory in personal computers — requires at least 3.7 pounds of fossil fuel and chemical inputs."

Aside from worrying about the environmental effects of getting rid of your old computer (you do worry about that, right?) you might want to consider the effects of its initial creation.

Distributed Proofreaders

Interesting project: guy came up with an interface to allow web users to help proofread books to be placed in Project Gutenberg.

Mindy Klasky - The Glasswright's Journeyman

Just read my ex-fellow-writing-group-member Mindy Klasky's latest two Glasswright novels, The Glasswright's Progress and The Glasswright's Journeyman, and was impressed - interesting, wide-ranging plots, with a nice cast of three-dimensional characters. If you're into fantasy novels, check 'em out; the first novel in the series (Glasswright's Apprentice) doesn't seem like a prerequisite for getting into numbers two and three.

(Funny thing about Amazon.com these days: seems like for a lot of the books, their cross-marketing includes the statement "Customers who shopped for this item also wear: * Clean Underwear from Amazon's Gap Store").

Tuesday, November 5 2002

Allegations of Republican attempts to suppress voting

References to numerous news articles citing Republican Party officials making efforts to suppress minority voting. (Check the PDF links.)

Sunday, November 3 2002

Instant Runoffs

Slashdot article (and opinions) on Science News article regarding the superiority of just about all other election systems over the U.S.'s current, plurality-based, system. Tom Paine article on San Francisco's recent decision to use instant run-off voting for a bunch of local offices.

Friday, November 1 2002

The Confederate States of America was a fundamentally evil institution

Writer John Scalzi quotes from the Confederate States of America's vice-president to ridicule the argument that the Civil War was about states' rights instead of slavery.

Michael Moore on The Sniper

Michael Moore, the man behind Bowling for Columbine, talks about a few more people shot and killed in "everyday" occurrences, after the capture of The Sniper. Shootings that don't make the news because they're rather ordinary, and such things happen all the time.

He's also got some interesting info tying the CEO of the company that manufactured John Mohammad's rifle to George Bush Junior.

About this site

This is the personal web site for Edward (Ed) Piou. Consisting mainly of a blog (operational since 1999) and various photos.

Some online projects I'm working on

Politics

Charity, Non-profits...

A while ago, I decided to put my money where my mind is on a (roughly) monthly basis and give to:

Photos

Public events documented through pictures...