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Overall, the ratio of people taking versus giving is 2-1. Stark has a truly grand vision: “It’s literally giving people hope. Ultimately the goal is for more people to do this kind of thing. I admit it seems a little frivolous to give away coffee to people with iPhones. But imagine if you had a CVS card and you could give someone $10 for their Alzheimer’s medication. The concept of frictionless social giving is very attractive. And this is just the beginning of that.” It’s easy enough to text a number to make a donation during times of disaster, and many do it, but the concern may still exist over “where” the money is going; systems with re-loadable cards are straightforward and in some way more transparent (after all, the users probably have their own, personal, cards), serving to spur people into donating even more. I say let’s expand this — I cannot wait to see it act elsewhere — some sort of school card, perhaps? Download the full-sized card here; before you go, check the balance on Twitter — updated every couple of minutes, Stark wrote the program himself. “Like” Jonathan’s Starbucks Card on Facebook to spread the word; and when you want to donate, simply log on to the Starbucks website and reload card number 6061006913522430.

even great weather cannot be fully appreciated without looking at its political slant.In analyzing how meteorologists have contributed money to political candidates and committees over the years, the Center for Responsive Politics' campaign finance data shows that they collectively donated $146,000 during the 2010 election cycle. Meteorologists split their donations exactly in half, giving 50 percent of their contributions to Republicans and 50 percent to Democrats.The National Weather Service Employees PAC also was active during the 2010 cycle, donating slightly more than $67,000 to federal politics candidates. This particular PAC, however, significantly favored Democrats over Republicans in its donations, 87 percent to 11 percent.

the 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer, published by research firm StrategyOne, which surveyed 5,075 "informed publics" in 23 countries on their trust in business, government, institutions and individuals. One of the questions asked of respondents was: "If you heard information about a company from one of these people, how credible would that information be?". Of the eight groups of individuals - academic/expert, technical expert in company, financial/industry analyst, CEO, non-governmental organisation representative, government official, person like myself, and regular employee - academic/expert came out tops with a score of 70 per cent, followed by technical expert at 64 per cent.

the film on the global financial crisis Inside Job, which won the 2011 Academy Award for best documentary. One of the documentary's themes is the role a number of renowned academics, particularly academic economists, played in the global crisis. It highlighted potentially serious conflicts of interests related to significant compensation derived by these academics serving on boards of financial services firms and advising such firms.

Often, these academics also played key roles in shaping government policies relating to deregulation - most appear allergic to regulation of the financial services industry. The documentary argued that these academics from Ivy League universities had basically become advocates for financial services firms, which blinded them to firms' excesses. It noted that few academic economists saw the financial crisis coming, and suggested this might be because they were too busy making money from the industry.

Moral naturalists, on the other hand, believe that we have moral sentiments that have emerged from a long history of relationships. To learn about morality, you don’t rely upon revelation or metaphysics; you observe people as they live.

By the time humans came around, evolution had forged a pretty firm foundation for a moral sense. Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia argues that this moral sense is like our sense of taste. We have natural receptors that help us pick up sweetness and saltiness. In the same way, we have natural receptors that help us recognize fairness and cruelty. Just as a few universal tastes can grow into many different cuisines, a few moral senses can grow into many different moral cultures.

Paul Bloom of Yale noted that this moral sense can be observed early in life. Bloom and his colleagues conducted an experiment in which they showed babies a scene featuring one figure struggling to climb a hill, another figure trying to help it, and a third trying to hinder it. At as early as six months, the babies showed a preference for the helper over the hinderer. In some plays, there is a second act. The hindering figure is either punished or rewarded. In this case, 8-month-olds preferred a character who was punishing the hinderer over ones being nice to it.

I return to the Guardian online site expressly to search for those elusive articles on Wisconsin. The main page has none. I click on News – US, and there are none. I click on ‘Commentary is Free’- US, and find one article on protests in Ohio. I go to the New York Times online site. Earlier, on my phone, I had seen one article at the bottom of the main page on Wisconsin. By the time I managed to get on my computer to find it again however, the NYT main page was quite devoid of any articles on the protests at all. I am stumped; clearly, I have to reconfigure my daily news sources and reading diet.

It is not that the media is not covering the protests in Wisconsin at all – but effective media coverage in the US at least, in my view, is as much about volume as it is about substantive coverage. That week, more prime-time slots and the bulk of the US national attention were given to Charlie Sheen and his crazy antics (whatever they were about, I am still not too sure) than to Libya and the rest of the Middle East, or more significantly, to a pertinent domestic issue, the teacher protests  - not just in Wisconsin but also in other cities in the north-eastern part of the US.

In the March 2nd episode of The Colbert Report, it was shown that the Fox News coverage of the Wisconsin protests had re-used footage from more violent protests in California (the palm trees in the background gave Fox News away). Bill O’Reilly at Fox News had apparently issued an apology – but how many viewers who had seen the footage and believed it to be on-the-ground footage of Wisconsin would have followed-up on the report and the apology? And anyway, why portray the teacher protests as violent?

people are more prone to despicable behavior if it’s masked by a crowd. So could widespread knowledge that the identity of mob participants might be made known via portable technology help reduce crime?

One of the scientists was Richard Muller from University of California, Berkeley. Muller has been working on an independent project to better estimate the planet's surface temperatures over time. Because he is willing to say publicly that he has some doubts about the accuracy of the temperature stations that most climate models are based on, he has been embraced by the science denying crowd.

A Koch brothers charity, for example, has donated nearly 25 percent of the financial support provided to Muller's project.

Skeptics of climate science have been licking their lips waiting for his latest research, which they hoped would undermine the data behind basic theories of anthropogenic climate change. At the hearing today, however, Muller threw them for a loop with this graph:

One thing is for sure–traditional publishing isn’t getting anymore lucrative. That means under the current system, if you’re not selling a sure thing, publishers probably aren’t going to buy it. Hopefully crowdfunding sites like Unbound can change all of that–it sure beats waiting for a wealthy benefactor, anyway.

All of this Internet activity is but the tip of the iceberg of a new and growing global human-tissue economy. Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that about 10% of organ transplants around the world stem from purely commercial transactions.

Trade in organs follows a clear, geographically linked pattern: people from rich countries buy the organs, and people in poor countries sell them. In my research on organ trafficking, I have entered some of these shadow markets, where body parts from the poor, war victims, and prisoners are commodities, bought or stolen for transplant into affluent ill people.

Organ trafficking depends on several factors. One is people in distress. They are economically or socially disadvantaged, or live in war-torn societies with prevalent crime and a thriving black market. On the demand side are people who are in danger of dying unless they receive an organ transplant. Additionally, there are organ brokers who arrange the deals between sellers and buyers.

For a long time, American politics has been defined by a Left/Right dynamic. It was Liberals versus Conservatives on a variety of issues. Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice, Tax Cuts vs. More Spending, Pro-War vs Peaceniks, Environmental Protections vs. Economic Growth, Pro-Union vs. Union-Free, Gay Marriage vs. Family Values, School Choice vs. Public Schools, Regulation vs. Free Markets.

The new dynamic, however, has moved past the old Left Right paradigm. We now live in an era defined by increasing Corporate influence and authority over the individual. These two “interest groups” – I can barely suppress snorting derisively over that phrase – have been on a headlong collision course for decades, which came to a head with the financial collapse and bailouts. Where there is massive concentrations of wealth and influence, there will be abuse of power.  The Individual has been supplanted in the political process nearly entirely by corporate money, legislative influence, campaign contributions, even free speech rights.

It is now an Individual vs. Corporate debate – and the Humans are losing. Consider: • Many of the regulations that govern energy and banking sector were written by Corporations; • The biggest influence on legislative votes is often Corporate Lobbying; • Corporate ability to extend copyright far beyond what original protections amounts to a taking of public works for private corporate usage; • PAC and campaign finance by Corporations has supplanted individual donations to elections; • The individuals’ right to seek redress in court has been under attack for decades, limiting their options. • DRM and content protection undercuts the individual’s ability to use purchased content as they see fit; • Patent protections are continually weakened. Deep pocketed corporations can usurp inventions almost at will; • The Supreme Court has ruled that Corporations have Free Speech rights equivalent to people; (So much for original intent!) None of these are Democrat/Republican conflicts, but rather, are corporate vs. individual issues.

It’s hard to make a living writing online. In general, those who write for the web are looked down on by their ‘in-print’ counterparts. Despite the fact that we often speak to larger and more relevant audiences, there’s still an attitude that web copy is somehow illegitimate, less professional.

A couple of years ago, LiveJournal user Monica Gaudio posted a short article on the history of the apple pie. Conclusion: It isn’t quite as all-American as you might think. Fairly innocuous stuff, until it recently resurfaced in Cook’s Source magazine. According to Monica , she only became aware of this when a friend asked her how she had managed to be published. Monica acted correctly, contacting the magazine under the assumption that a mix-up had occurred. The response showed an astonishing lack of knowledge about digital copyright, content value, and of course, the ever-looming spectre of social media fail and internet wrath. Apparently, the magazine had simply lifted the article directly from Monica’s site, publishing it in their print magazine, on their website and on the Cooks Source Facebook page. 

A few emails in and the editor finally asked what Monica wanted. Her list of demands was hardly excessive: A printed apology, and a donation of $130 to the Columbia school of Journalism, and she’d ignore the entire incident. Instead, the editor of Cook’s Source responded with a remarkable display of ignorance and condescension: Honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me... ALWAYS for free! I’m unable to fathom where the notion that all web content is public domain came from for starters. If this is true, then it should be perfectly fine for me to reprint the entire contents of The Times on my blog each day.

The Templeton Foundation claims to be a friend of science. So why does it make so many researchers uneasy?

With a current endowment estimated at US$2.1 billion, the organization continues to pursue Templeton's goal of building bridges between science and religion. Each year, it doles out some $70 million in grants, more than $40 million of which goes to research in fields such as cosmology, evolutionary biology and psychology.

however, many scientists find it troubling — and some see it as a threat. Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, Illinois, calls the foundation "sneakier than the creationists". Through its grants to researchers, Coyne alleges, the foundation is trying to insinuate religious values into science. "It claims to be on the side of science, but wants to make faith a virtue," he says.

Vigilante “hacktivist” group Anonymous has a new target: Westboro Baptist Church. In an open letter to the notorious Kansas-based church, Anonymous promises “vicious” retaliation against the organization if they do not “cease & desist” their protest activities.

Led by pastor Fred Phelps, Westboro Baptist has become infamous for picketing the funerals of US soldiers — events know as “Love Crusades” — and for their display of signs bearing inflammatory messages, like “God hates fags.” The church has long argued that their Constitutionally-protected right to freedom of speech allows them to continue their derogatory brand of social activism.

Anonymous also considers itself an “aggressive proponent” of free speech, having recently launched attacks on organizations they consider to be enemies of that right: Companies like PayPal, Visa and Master Card, who stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks after the anti-secrecy organization released a massive cache of US embassy cables; and the government of Egypt, which attempted to cut off its

Two young economists, Steve and Alison Sexton, have been looking into this question. (Not only are the Sextons twins, but their parents are also economists, and Steve is a competitive triathlete.) The result is an interesting draft paper called “Conspicuous Conservation: The Prius Effect and WTP [Willingness to Pay] for Environmental Bona Fides.” When you drive a Prius, the Sextons argue, there’s a “green halo” around you. You make new friends; you get new business opportunities. In an especially “green” place like Boulder, Colo., the effect could be worth as much as $7,000.

The Sextons focused on the distinctive design of the Prius — which was no accident. Honda, Ford, Nissan and other car makers sell hybrids, but you can’t pick them out on the road (the Civic hybrid, for instance, looks just like a Civic). The Prius is unmistakable. It marks whoever is driving it as someone who cares about the environment; it’s an act of “conspicuous conservation,” an update of Thorstein Veblen’s “conspicuous consumption.” Here’s how Steve Sexton describes it: SEXTON: A sort of “keeping up with the Joneses”-type concept but applied to efforts to make society better. I will be competing with my neighbors to donate to a charity, for instance, or to reduce energy conservation or environmental impacts.