The Nation: How To Make Textbooks More Affordable
This makes me feel better about spending just under $300 for this upcoming semester (and the books will likely be used next semester as well):
College students currently spend an average of $900 a year on textbooks — a number that has increased at four times the rate of inflation since 1994, according to US PIRG.
High-tech parking meters premiere in S.F.
Starting early next year, parking officials will start adjusting the meter rates and time limits to gauge how that influences behavior. More than 8,000 wireless sensors will be embedded in the asphalt to monitor empty spaces and the amount of time each vehicle stays parked in one spot.
Rates will be adjusted based on demand.
The public will be able to track real-time parking availability online and with smart-phone applications starting next year. Electronic signs will also direct drivers to open spots.
This is a great article! I was fortunate enough to sit through several of Professor Lera Boroditsky’s lectures. She is absolutely amazing.
The Broadus Effect? Social Desirability Bias and California Proposition 19
Florida church to hold ‘Burn a Koran Day’ on 9/11
Reminds me that humanity has not come very far.
(via @abhishekg1)
Gee Whiz: Human Urine Is Shown to Be an Effective Agricultural Fertilizer
It would also mean swapping regular flush toilets for separating toilets, where a divided bowl and independent set of pipes separate urine from everything else. This detail is a roadblock, Jönsson says, because many people don’t want a toilet that looks strange. “Acceptance is a big problem for this kind of system,” he adds.
The beetroots from the urine- and urine/ash–fertilized plants were found to be 10 percent and 27 percent larger by mass, respectively, than those grown in mineral fertilizer. By subjecting some of the beets to chemical analysis, the researchers determined that all of them had comparable nutrient contents—and according to a blind taste-testing panel, their beety taste was indistinguishable.
Deportation of illegal immigrants increases under Obama administration
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency expects to deport about 400,000 people this fiscal year, nearly 10 percent above the Bush administration’s 2008 total and 25 percent more than were deported in 2007. The pace of company audits has roughly quadrupled since President George W. Bush’s final year in office.
Watched 40 minutes of Atonement, but had to stop because I was too bored.
Keira Knightley is incredibly skinny. Like.. too skinny.
In this way, Mr. Obama seemed to signal a new paradigm for black-white discussion — one in which a public figure could use language outside the defined limits of acceptability and expect to be judged in some larger context. In other words, the promise of Mr. Obama’s candidacy wasn’t a post-racial society where no one was going to notice the color of your skin; it was a society where you could talk about race — no matter what color you were — without automatically being called a racist.