We had to know this was coming: Facebook, the uber-application that has rapidly aggregated unprecedented amounts of very personal, very detailed information about 600 million humans (and counting!), now uses facial-recognition software to identify people in photographs uploaded to the…
Month: June 2011
Robin Hood & the 400 Richest Families
Thanks to the folks at United for A Fair Economy (UFE), we now have a pretty good idea what Robin Hood might do with the wealth of the richest 400 families in America. Turns out they’re not really rich, they’re…
US of A: 466.666 times safer than Canada?
Well we should be. According to a report in The Economist we spend that much more than the Canadians on defense. In fact we spend more than the next 17 countries on the list combined. We spend 6 times more…
Don’t Straighten Your Hair in A House With Plywood and While You’re At It Avoid that Plastic Foam Coffee Cup
According to U.S. National Toxicology Program’s Report on Carcinigens, formaldehyde causes cancer and styrene is a possible carcinogen. The finding, according to the New York Times: was delayed for years because of intense lobbying from the chemical industry, which disputed…
Tale of Tangled Town Politics
A Building Inspector, A Town Manager, A Town Counsel, A Board of Selectmen & A Tree Farm That Isn’t June 10, 2011 GREAT BARRINGTON, MA There was a grim smile on Ed May’s face when he left the Town Hall…
Bankers: Taking It To The Bank
The Berkshire Eagle reports that Berkshire Hills Bancorp, the parent company of Berkshire Bank – one of the strongest supporters of 1Berkshire and The Smart Cleanup Coalition – has recently been given permission by the United States Justice Department to…
Supreme Court: No To GE Challenge of Superfund
Rising Pond, Housatonic, MA – Site of Possible GE PCB Dump In a move that has significant ramifications for the multi-million dollar PCB-cleanups of the Hudson and Housatonic rivers, the United States Supreme Court decided not to hear arguments in…
BIFF Bops Local Boosters
Has the Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF) gotten too big for its britches and too swank for the Berkshires? That would seem to be the case when it comes to the way it treated at least some of its local…
Local News: A Tree Farm, A Dump, & A Town Manager
GREAT BARRINGTON, MA It wasn’t what I had expected to hear. It wasn’t what I wanted to know. At a Memorial Day weekend picnic with friends from Great Barrington and beyond, Judith Kales said to me: “They started up again.…
C/V/ulture #1
Camille LeCrowe shares her thoughts on the end of the 2011 Spring TV season: Detective Kate Beckett on Castle THE LITTLE DEATHS Now I know the little deaths I’m thinking of hardly matter in the scheme of things. That’s The…
Musing #1
I’m writing on Memorial Day 2011, a particularly confusing Memorial Day for me. I’m experiencing a shifting mixture of pride and bewilderment. Yesterday, I was out with my peace sign again as I have been…