Saturday, December 12, 2009

Top 10 quirky science tricks for Christmas parties

How fair is fair trade?

To be honest I never felt right about the market manipulation aspect of fair trade. I know that large companies have used market manipulation to exploit poor farmers for years. However the cure for market manipulation isn't different manipulation, it is an attempt to really have a free market system.

We might think of sub-Saharan subsistence economies when we think of
Fairtrade, but the biggest recipient of Fairtrade subsidy is actually
Mexico. Mexico is the biggest producer of Fairtrade coffee with about
23% market share. Indeed, as of 2002, 181 of the 300 Fairtrade coffee producers were located in South America and the Caribbean. As Marc Sidwell points out,
while Mexico has 51 Fairtrade producers, Burundi has none, Ethiopia
four and Rwanda just 10 – meaning that "Fairtrade pays to support
relatively wealthy Mexican coffee farmers at the expense of poorer
nations".

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What's wrong with this picture/vid?

Things haven't changed much with teleprompters

Invented to be used by soap stars, they are still used primarily by speakers trying to portray a false emotion.
clipped from www.csmonitor.com

Teleprompters were invented to help actors struggling to memorize soap opera lines. An operator controls the scrolling of text. Display screens can be placed over a camera, or on clear glass, or pretty much anywhere that gets speakers’ eyes up, so it doesn’t look as if they’re reading from a piece of paper.

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Nicky is HOT!

clipped from www.buzzfoto.com
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