Today at the Farmer's Market in front of San Francisco's iconic Ferry Building I am signing the nation's first mandatory composting law. It's the most comprehensive recycling and composting legislation in the country and the first to require residents and businesses to compost food scraps.

In the books of the laws, God tells the Israelites his plans for how they should run society and their lives. Most of what we remember is the deeply personal 10 Commandments, that set out a relationship with God and with fellow people, but in very individual terms. But then God also gives another 600 commandments. And quite a chunk of these are actually more boring, but a few are real gems, and concern concepts of limited retribution and a curtailment of power over the weak. But the very core of the Social Justice laws is the law of Jubilee.

The city of Bozeman, Montana, is requesting that potential employees hand over the login credentials for any social networking sites they frequent. It seems to me that this idea is just plain wrong on so many levels, but also an invasion of privacy of all third parties that have granted privileges to particular individuals.

"Spoof paper accepted by peer-reviewed' journal" (2009-06-11, New Scientist) gives some details about Philip Davis (assisted by a member of the New Eng J Med publishing team), who had a computer-generated "research" paper accepted for publication (providing $800 was deposited in a middle-eastern tax haven by the author).

One of the strengths of the copyright system is the acknowledgement that although authors have rights to their work, others can use copyrighted work when it falls within the boundaries of Fair Use. With the growth of international online educational opportunities, Fair Use should be reevaluated. Until the Fair Use doctrine truly incorporates the educational uses needed for Open Education, traditional copyright hinders the development of equal access.

Most people make most of their decisions in the hope of achieving the best outcome -- but because the amount of social, economic and cultural data to be parsed is too huge for most people to survey, many decisions come out pretty eccentric. "Our brains work like big coincidence detectors and use improbable coincidences to make decisions about what is real," as psychologist Tom Stafford explained. If a coincidence is neither big enough nor improbable enough, it may not register at all. MMR is a good example.

There's some buzz about Major Garrett's "What took you so long" question to President Obama today. The question was in reference to the President's toughening attitude toward Iran since Friday. If you listen to Garrett's entire question, it doesn't appear disrespectful. Most people won't know that, however, since the media isn't reporting it accurately.

The Commission assures the public that it continues to actively work with broadcast licensees, the Minister of Information, the Media Association of Jamaica, the Jamaica Association of Community Cable Operators, the Entertainment Fraternity and other stakeholders to bring a halt to the deluge of inappropriate content on the airwaves. The Commission has examined a number of songs, popularly referred to as "daggering songs." "Daggering" is a colloquial term or phrase used in dancehall culture as a reference to hardcore sex or what is popularly referred to as "dry" sex, or the activities of persons engaged in the public simulation of various sexual acts and positions.

There are so many people who call themselves free marketeers, or liberals, or libertarians that one has to always be careful about "alliances of convenience" -- consistency matters, and most people I know and read -- myself included -- are very inconsistent.

Economists from time immemorial have questioned and researched why some nations have been able to grow wealth and some have not. Transforming an underdeveloped economy to a developed economy requires long term strategic mapping as well as a huge amount of capital outlay.

Read Older Articles