Who owns tissues?
Starting from tomorrow, in the UK, everyone will have the last word about any possible use of his/her own tissues. No more sampling without well informed consent, no more donations. People will also face up to three years in jail if they remove and store human tissue without consent. HTA will probably solves a lot of ethical problems, but in the meantime could create difficulties for researchers to find human tissues to experiment with and for all the subjects waiting for a life-saving transplant because donor’s will couldn’t be overturned by relatives. It’s very difficult to find out the right compromise between privacy, research and people’s rights, anyway the Act represents a first step in this direction. Time will tell.
Filed Under Research
Pictures lie!
Waistline in 5 minutes with Photoshop!
It is well known that photoshop is used to make models look better, flawless. In this article, we can see to what extent photo alterations can affect how we see reality. Not only in the digital era but way before masters of photo retouch were making our eye believe whatever they wanted. We can lie with images as well as we can lie with words so don’t believe whatever you see.
Filed Under Technology
Back to payphones
Italy, as a country, has become pretty obsessed with cellphones in the last years. Everybody has a mobile phone: child have mobile phones, grandparents have mobile phones, normal peple usually have at least a couple (one for work, one for private life). There are big debates about over-usage of cellphone and bad consequence of the massive diffusion they have, and even if I don’t really know what to think about it one thing is sure: in my country mobile phones killed payphones.
Oh, and i liked them. Staying in a line waiting for someone else’s coversation to end and meanwhile listening a bit. Entering in those neon lighted suburb bars and get some tokens to call.
I don’t know if payphones have disappeared from the other countries as well, but here is a project to keep their memory and charme alive. Crazy pictures of payphones all over the world (in Uganda there’s a floating one…), articles about public phones and stories connected with them. There’s even a list of payphone numbers, to encourage people to call them…
Filed Under Media & Society
Going bananas in Australia
How far would you go to buy cheap bananas? Apparently the people from Norfolk Island would fork out up to $1000 for a trip to Australia to buy cheap bananas. Why not, that’d make a holiday and fruit luxury?
The locally grown produce is selling for just $2.05/kg in the island’s shops, while mainlanders are still forking out up to $15 a kilo. That is a high price to pay for a bunch of fruit.
A strange phenomenon, I’d say.
Filed Under Modern Life
Yahoo needs you
Yahoo’s Q&A service is the second most popular Internet reference site, only after Wikipedia. This service attracted 12.3 million unique visitors only in the month of June. With this service Yahoo has managed to survive in fierce struggle between internet service providers as Google and Microsoft. To create your own content has been the answer. One company cannot rely on it self to gather so much knowledge as the Ask Yahoo service or Wikipedia but it relies on its users. This gathers collective knowledge and makes their service more effective. I think it’s a very interesting trend, this will make knowledge plural and services like this one will make internet more democratic as anyone can ask and answer.
Filed Under Media & Society
Smoking ban row
Keith Richards is being investigated for violating a non smoking law during his performance in Hampden Park. The anti-tobacco organisation Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) Scotland are adamant to enforce the non smoking law in public places, without allowing exception to celebrities. This sounds like a great news, despite it being a pain for smokers.
Filed Under Media & Society
Happy BlogDay to you!
Tomorrow, 31st of August, is Blog Day! One year ago I didn’t even know exactly what blog meant and now, as I read the news, I almost jumped on my chair. I am a blogger, so tomorrow is also my day. The BlogDay has been created to make bloggers getting to know other people like them. So tomorrow every blogger will post on 5 intereting blogs divided for interests and locations. BlogDay is meant to spread the bloggers voices. BlogDay.org uses ambassadors that collect suggestions. BlogDay.org is blocked by the big Chinese firewall, which i would assume as a warranty of this project to be a real initiative for freedom of speech. So happy Blog Day everyone, go post on the ones you like!
Filed Under Events