Slow TV
An Icelandic public broadcast station aired 24 hours of live sheep birthing, part of its “slow TV” campaign, which also featured chess, knitting, and wood-burning.
Read moreCategory: Facts & Trends
IS CLIMATE CHANGE LARGELY THE RESULT OF HUMAN ACTIVITY?
The pollster Ipsos MORI put the question to people in 20 countries. Here’s a sampling of how many said yes:
Read moreBy the numbers
141: The number of seasonal former IRS employees rehired by the agency between 2010 and 2013 despite having botched or failed to file their own tax returns, according to a February report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. 8.8 Million: The number of tons of plastic waste dumped into the oceans every year, according to a study in the journal […]
Read moreHOW HAPPY ARE YOU?
Gallup ranked 143 countries by how great a share of respondents said they had recently had positive experiences such as laughter or enjoyment. A sampling, from greatest to least: 1 – Paraguay 8 – Costa Rica 15 – U.S. 134 – Afghanistan 143 – Sudan
Read moreHow Pot Affects Driving
Reduced awareness Brain imaging shows that it’s harder for people who are high to focus on several things at once, such as a changing stoplight, an approaching bicycle and a car signaling a turn. Hallucinations Research is sparse, but pot-related cases can happen and are an “underappreciated” threat on the road. Slower decisions Being high can impair users’ executive function and problem-solving […]
Read moreMonitoring your tweets
What happened to the Conservatives’ promise to roll back the surveillance state? said James Ball. The British are already the most-spied-upon people on the planet, with hundreds of thousands of video cameras recording our comings and goings. Junior-level bureaucrats have the authority to “ping” our mobile phones to find out where we are at any given moment. Now they also […]
Read moreForced Labor
Estimated number of people held in forced labor worldwide: 21,000,000 Portion who are 18 or younger: 1/4
Read moreTHE FUTURE OF RELIGION
The Pew Research Center forecast that by 2050 the number of Muslims globally will nearly equal the number of Christians. Here is how major religions are projected to grow from 2010 to 2050: Islam: +73% Christianity: +35% Hinduism: +34% Judaism: +16% Buddhism: – 0.3%
Read moreMilitary Suicide
259 – Number of U.S. military active-duty suicides in 2013
Read moreCannabis Selfie From Prison
A Polish prisoner triggered a crackdown on other inmates after he posted a photo of a large Cannabis plant that he’d grown in his cell. To boast about his green thumb, Dozy Zendarski took a selfie with the plant using a smuggled smartphone and posted it to Facebook. When it went viral, prison officials searched the entire jail and seized numerous phones and other banned items from […]
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