Uh-oh. A new study shows that people can get addicted to ice cream. Time to lay off the Ben & Jerry’s. Addiction to ice cream, the study finds, is similar to drug addiction, as It affects the brain’s pleasure centers much like drugs.
Barely two weeks after the New York District Attorney asked Twitter to hand over data about an Occupy Wall Street protester, the company says it will not comply with the request, at least for the time being.
The D.A.’s office had sent a subpoena to the microblogging service’s headquarters seeking information about the account belonging to Jeffrey Rae, one of several hundred activists arrested during an Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York on March 1.
Every year 800,000 tonnes of so-called single-use plastic bags are used in the European Union – the average EU citizen used 191 of them in 2010, the Commission says, and only 6% were recycled.
More than four billion bags are thrown away each year.
“The impact of this plastic waste can be seen littering our landscape, threatening our wildlife and accumulating as ‘plastic soup’ in the Pacific Ocean, which may cover more than 15,000,000 sq km,” says Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik.
Here’s a little story for you. Once upon a time, one of the greatest threats to the lives of American children was the common household refrigerator. This was because refrigerators closed with big honking latches that couldn’t be unlatched from the inside. Kids, being creatures with underdeveloped brains as a rule, climbed inside them to pretend to be glazed hams or something, and they couldn’t get out and suffocated.
So people got upset about this, as Americans are wont to do when children die and are American, and the refrigerator manufacturers quickly formed a commission dedicated to informing consumers that a commission had been formed. They did not redesign the refrigerators. They resisted any government attempts to force them to redesign the refrigerators. They used a set of excuses that are so standard they should be sold on Amazon as the Corporate Excuses Starter Kit.
• The problem is not really a problem.
• To the extent that the problem is a problem, the problem is not our problem.
• You know who we blame? The victims. If they weren’t so dumb, they wouldn’t have been victimized.
• The problem cannot be solved.
• To the extent that the problem can be solved, it can’t be solved by us.
• To the extent the problem can be solved by us, it can’t be solved by us without destroying the United States economy and plunging us into a despotic nightmare of government mandates and low-quality products.
The Festival of Balloons, which extends from a World Convention, showcases the meticulous artwork (constructed from thousands of Qualatex-brand variety). The balloon constructions were on vivid display at the Sheraton Hotel.
