Stewart Brand's book "Whole Earth Discipline" argues that urbanization helps the environment overall. First, the birth rate of new urban dwellers falls immediately to replacement rate, and keeps falling. This can prevent overpopulation in the future. Secondly, it puts a stop to destructive subsistence farming methods, like slash and burn agriculture. Finally, it reduces land use by humans, leaving more for nature.
Moliniana
Moliniana was a botanical journal issued between 1955 and 1966 in Santiago, Chile. Its contents were botany, phytochemistry and related topics. Gunckel, Looser and Navas were writers.
You Suffer
"You Suffer" is a song by the British grindcore band Napalm Death. It is from their debut album, "Scum". "Guinness Book of Records" has mentioned the song as the shortest recorded song ever. It is precisely 1.316 seconds long.
The song was written by band members Nicholas Bullen and Justin Broadrick. This was during the sessions for the "From Enslavement to Obliteration" demo recording in March 1986. The song is featured on the album "Scum", released in 1987.
According to Broadrick, "You Suffer" was meant as a joke. He called it "retarded", "ridiculous" but "hilarious". He added that they played the song "in front of 30 local kids, like, every weekend." for about thirty times.
Nic Bullen said that the short length of the song was inspired by Wehrmacht's 1985 song "E!"
Zak Smith quotes the lyrics to the song, which he describes as the ""shortest" punk song on the subject of suffering (or any subject)" at the conclusion of his memoir "We Did Porn".
A music video produced by Earache records was released for the song in March 2007. This was on the same day that the "Scum" dualdisc was released.
Frankie Fredericks
Frank "Frankie" Fredericks (born 2 October, 1967) is a Namibian runner.
Fredericks was born in Windhoek. He went to college at Brigham Young University in the United States.
Fredericks won silver medals in the 100m and 200m in the 1992 and 1996 Olympics. He won gold medals at the World Championships and World Indoor Championships. He used to be the 200m world record holder, and is still the 200m indoor record holder. He finished 4th at the 2004 Olympics, even though he was 36 years old.
After the 2004 Olympics, he retired and became a member of the International Olympic Committee. He is the only person from Namibia to medal at the Olympics. He has also ran the 200m in less than 20 seconds more times than anyone else.
Jagged Little Pill
Jagged Little Pill is the third studio album and the first to be released internationally by Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette. The album saw Morissette changing her style and genre. Morissette's sound in the album was rock, but her previous songs were dance pop. The title is a metaphor for lessons of life that are hard to accept. The album was Morissette's breakthrough album, and contained six hits, "You Oughta Know", "Ironic", "You Learn", "Hand in My Pocket", "Head over Feet", and "All I Really Want". The album spent twelve weeks at number one on the U.S. "Billboard" 200 albums chart. By 2009, the album had sold 33 million units worldwide. It was ranked by the "Billboard" 200 as the number one selling album of the 1990s.
During the three consecutive years in the late 1990s of Grammy Awards, Morissette received five wins out of nine nominations from the album. In 1996, she won the Album of the Year & Best Rock Album. Her 1997 nominations such as "Ironic" for Record of the Year & Best Music Video in Short Form did not win her an award. But in 1998, she won again for Best Music Video in Long Form from her release of "Jagged Little Pill, Live". In October 2002, "Rolling Stone" ranked it number 31 on its "Women In Rock - The 50 Essential Albums" list, and in 2003 the magazine ranked it number 327 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". The album also holds a title in "The Definitive 200 Albums" list, in which it is placed at number 26.
Jack Layton
John Gilbert "Jack" Layton (July 18, 1950 – August 22, 2011) was a Canadian politician and the Leader of the Official Opposition. He was the leader of the New Democratic Party from 2003 to 2011, and previously sat on Toronto City Council. He was the Member of Parliament for the riding of Toronto—Danforth from 2004 until his death.
He was a son of Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Robert Layton (1925-2002). He was born in Montreal and raised in Hudson, Quebec. He rose to prominence in Toronto municipal politics where he campaigned tirelessly for the needs of ordinary citizens and for environmental issues. Eventually, he became head of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. In 2003, he was elected leader of the NDP on the first ballot of the convention, and the NDP almost doubled its popular vote in the 2004 election.
Thirty seven NDP MPs were elected under Layton in the 2008 election. In the 2011 federal election, he led the NDP to a historic total of 103 seats and formed the Official Opposition. Although recovering from illness, Layton campaigned tirelessly, and inspired many people. Importantly, the NDP had increased its number of Quebec MPs from one to fifty-nine seats, almost eliminating the previous Bloc Québécois MPs.
Layton died at his home in Toronto on August 22, 2011, aged 61, after suffering from cancer of unknown primary origin. Layton's body had a lying-in-state before a state funeral was held in Toronto. He was married to fellow MP Olivia Chow.
Green politics
Green politics is a kind of politics that has been on the rise since the 1970s. The parties and movements that follow these ideas are usually called "green":
Greens have been most successful in Germany.
QRpedia
QRpedia is a web system for mobile devices, like mobile phones. It uses QR codes to show Wikipedia articles to people. The articles are shown in the user's own language.
A user uses their mobile device to scan a QRpedia QR code. The device decodes the QR code into a web address. The address has the domain name "qrwp.org". The last part of the web address is the title of a Wikipedia article.
The device sends a request for the article to the QRpedia web server. It also transmits the name of the language used by the device.
The QRpedia server then uses Wikipedia's API to find out if there is a version of the specified Wikipedia article in the language used by the device. If there is, it sends back the article in a mobile-friendly format. If there is no translation of the requested article, then the QRpedia server offers a choice of the available languages. It also offers a Google translation.
In this way, a single QRcode can be used to find the same article, in many languages. QRpedia also records usage statistics.
QRpedia was invented by Roger Bamkin, then chairman of Wikimedia UK, and Terence Eden. who is a mobile web consultant. It was unveiled on 9 April 2011 It was unveiled at Derby Museum's "Backstage Pass" event. The event was part of the GLAM/Derby collaboration between Derby Museum and Art Gallery and Wikipedia. During the collaboration, over 500 Wikipedia articles were also created. The articles were in several languages. The project's name is a made-up word, using the initials "QR" from "QR (Quick Response) code" and "pedia" from "Wikipedia".
The project's source code is has a MIT License. This means that anyone can use it, free.
QRpedia is used at:
QRpedia is also used in other kinds of places. For example, the Occupy movement uses it on their posters.
Gun Hägglund
Karin Gunvor Sjöblom Hägglund (2 March 1932–19 August 2011) was Swedish television star. She is better known as Gun Hägglund. Hägglund is the first female in Sweden who presented news on television. She was the news presenter of Aktuellt in 1958.