| Thursday, June 22, 2006 |  |
| AT&T to customers: We own your data | 2 comments |
| 22 Jun 2006 @ 20:01 AT&T to customers: We own your data It revised its privacy policy; changes take effect tomorrow Reuters Today’s Top Stories or Other Privacy Stories June 22, 2006 (Reuters) -- AT&T Inc. said yesterday that it was revising its privacy policy, explaining to customers that it owns their phone records and can hand them over to law enforcement officials if necessary. The changes take effect tomorrow and come at a time when AT&T and other phone companies face lawsuits claiming that they aided a U.S. government domestic spying program by giving the National Security Agency call records of millions of customers without their permission. AT&T said the updated policy was aimed at helping customers understand its practices better and does not change how it treats customer information. The new policy, unlike the old one, spells out the fact that AT&T owns its customers' data. It says that customer information constitutes "business records that are owned by AT&T. As such, AT&T may disclose such records to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others or respond to legal process." The earlier policy had simply said that, aside from normal business operations such as billing and service provisioning, the company could share customer information to "respond to subpoenas, court orders or other legal process, to the extent required and/or permitted by law" as well as to "to establish or exercise" its legal rights. Under the new policy, which is being mailed out to AT&T's more than 7 million Internet customers, the company also said that it would track viewing information for customers of a television service it's developing, in order to help it make recommendations to customers based on their viewing habits. It also said that before customers use its services, they must agree to the policy, an element that was not in its previous guidelines. Spokesman Michael Coe said the company, which was formed in November by the merger of AT&T Corp. and SBC Communications Inc., had been working on the new policy for the past six months. "We are not changing how we treat customer information," said Coe. "We updated our policy to make the language clearer and easier for our customers to understand." More > |
| Chocoholic germs can reportedly provide hydrogen | 1 comment |
| 22 Jun 2006 @ 05:31 Chocoholic germs can reportedly provide hydrogen, the clean-burning energy of the future. British scientists fed Escherichia coli bacteria a diluted mix of waste caramel and nougat. The germs tucked into the sugar and in the process produced hydrogen, using their own enzyme, called hydrogenase, New Scientist reports. The hydrogen was used to power a fuel cell, generating enough electricity to drive a small fan. The experiment has applications far beyond the lab. Waste chocolate, instead of being thrown away by confectionary companies, could be turned into hydrogen and used to help power their factories or sold to energy companies. The British team, led by Lynne Mackaskie at the University of Birmingham, central England, got the same bacteria to tuck into catalytic converters from old cars. The bacteria cleverly recovered the precious metal palladium after they were immersed in a vat with hydrogen and liquid waste from spent converters. The work is reported in full in a specialist journal, Biochemical Society Transactions, the report says. More > |
| Local Boy Makes Food | 0 comments |
| 22 Jun 2006 @ 05:28 From miaminewtimes.com Originally published by Miami New Times 2006-06-22 ©2005 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved. Local Boy Makes Food This Miami Beach hippie is not like the others By Emily Witt Courtesy of Stephen Brooks Miami Beach native Stephen Brooks's TV show debuts this week Late afternoon on May 5 in a windowless, wood-paneled North Miami office, Stephen Brooks feeds his family and friends. His grandparents sit on a low pleather couch, chewing on pieces of dried mango. His father and business partners look up from a topographical map of a hill in Costa Rica to accept an offer of dried Cape gooseberries. They're planning some houses down there, and pause from deliberation just long enough to pucker severely at the berries' tartness. "Yeah, it's sharp," Brooks concedes. "But isn't it amazing? You could put it on a salad." Brooks is a tan, blue-eyed 32-year-old who is wearing corduroy cut-offs, a button-down shirt, and sandals. His frizzy hair is bound in a ponytail. Assorted leather pendants hang around his neck. With evident glee he dips plastic spoons in small pots of banana jelly (from Brazil) and maple sugar spread (from Maine) and delights visibly at the chorus of mmms from his family members. His exuberance would give an aerobics instructor an inferiority complex. Stephen Brooks knows the power of delicious food. Just a few months ago he walked into the executive offices of the Travel Channel in Silver Spring, Maryland, bearing a box of exotic fruits he had grown. He fed everybody, gushing with the same enthusiasm he displayed for his family. Brooks was trying to land himself a television show. And it worked — the pilot for the as-yet-untitled show (Edible Planet? Edible Journeys?) will air Monday, June 26, at 8:00 p.m. "Prime time!" crows a very satisfied Brooks. The show is about where food comes from. But not in a Fast Food Nation or Omnivore's Dilemma kind of way. Brooks will travel around the world to document the cultivation of food in a style called permaculture. "It's about trying to figure out how we can meet our goals and use less energy — our mental energy, our physical energy, and most importantly the planet's," he says. The television show is only the most recent phase of Brooks's role as a green-food prophet. Last year, to promote Kopali Organics, his farmer-friendly food company, Brooks drove a vegetable-oil-fueled coach bus (with coconut wood floors, natural rubber latex seats, and hemp upholstery) to Whole Foods stores around the nation. In the late Nineties, he founded an ecotourism company and organic farm on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast. And Brooks is of a rare breed: a second-generation Miami Beach native. "He was always a little crazy, a little adventuresome," says Bonnie Brooks, Stephen's pretty, well-coiffed, decidedly not countercultural mother. She moved to Miami Beach at age eleven. His father, Norman Brooks, a retired dentist, was born here. Both Miami Beach High graduates, his parents have been together since eighth grade. "They're still madly in love," Stephen gushes. "He was the ringleader that everyone followed," recalls his mother. "It was always something unusual. Like getting everybody to start jumping into my pool from the roof." Brooks graduated from North Miami Beach Senior High and then attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison. At the end of his senior year, he visited a girlfriend who was studying abroad in Costa Rica. Not only did he fall in love with the country, but he also found his calling — in a banana field. "We were going to visit a Bribri village," he says, referring to an indigenous Costa Rican culture. "We came around a turn that opened out into a view of endless banana plantations. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw an airplane swooping down. It had a white plume of pesticides trailing behind it. Suddenly it flew right over us and my eyes, my nose, everything was burning." Then Brooks saw the crop duster buzz over a group of children playing. At first he was outraged, but then he had an epiphany. "Who was responsible? I was. Every morning, when I ate my Chiquita banana with my Cinnamon Life growing up," he says. In 1996 his paternal grandfather passed away. With $38,000 — the inheritance left to him — he purchased a 30-acre tract of land on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast. It had no roads, no electricity, and no running water. He moved there. The land had once been part of an Afro-Caribbean community. Brooks quickly befriended its only remaining inhabitant, Blas "Padi" Martínez. Like his elderly neighbor, he learned to live off the land. At first he ate only yuca, plantains, and fish. "I came up with some pretty funky recipes," he insists. Within a year, however, his gardening skills improved. Soon he found himself growing a grove of 50 trees, collecting useful plants, and getting "really into" agriculture. The farm, which he named Punta Mona, grew into a botanical breadbasket, completely self-sustaining. With the help of friends who eventually joined him, he constructed buildings from fallen trees, and roofs from thatched leaves. Solar panels provide the only electricity. Methane gas from the septic system powers the stoves in the kitchen. ("Did you have a brother? Did he light his farts on fire?" asks Brooks.) The biofuel bus tours began in 2003. "I got into a conversation with a friend in Punta Mona, this crazy hobo anarchist named Spider," Brooks says. Spider asked him how he justified flying back and forth to the United States. "He pointed out that each flight was like 600 car trips' worth of fuel." Spider's indignation planted the seed of an idea in Brooks's mind. In November 2003, after raising $25,000 to outfit the ride, Brooks and others piloted two buses filled with 26 people from San Francisco to Costa Rica. Their fuel? Discarded vegetable oil, picked up from restaurants along their route through Central America. They would pull into tiny towns and draw crowds. Univision's news show Primer Impacto followed them on a leg of the trip. Newspapers branded them ecological missionaries. The journey was repeated in 2004. Another bus tour will travel through Mexico this year. Brooks also embarked on epic journeys — to the Amazon, to the jungles of Borneo — collecting seeds and useful plants. He met farmers, both in Costa Rica and other countries, and wanted to help them achieve financial independence. To do so he founded his company, Kopali Organics, in 2004. Whole Foods agreed to distribute its products, which will be in Florida stores this summer. Back in the windowless office in North Miami, Stephen's parents explain they try to eat organically now, and their back yard has a new crop of fruit trees. Stephen and Norman are also planting a garden with vegetables, herbs, and flowers. Stephen admits he feels a little culturally isolated from the place where he grew up, although he's been looking to purchase some land in Homestead. "I'm obsessed with the Fruit and Spice Park," he says. |
| Bill To Permit Farming Of Industrial Hemp Passes Senate Public Safety Committee | 0 comments |
| 22 Jun 2006 @ 05:22 For Immediate Release June 20, 2006 Contact: Shannan Velayas (916) 319-2013 Leno-Devore Bill To Permit Farming Of Industrial Hemp Passes Senate Public Safety Committee U.S. consumers spend $270 million each year on hemp products, increasing by $26 million annually SACRAMENTO - Assembly Bill 1147 authored by Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine), permitting California farmers to grow industrial hemp for the sale of seed, oil and fiber to manufacturers passed the Senate Public Safety Committee today on a vote of 4 to 2. "California farmers are missing out on a multimillion dollar market that already exists in California," said Assemblyman Mark Leno. "Hundreds of hemp products are made right here in California, but manufactures are forced to import hemp seed, oil and fiber from other countries. This measure will allow California to lead the way in tapping into a $270 million industry that's growing by $26 million each year." Sponsored by Vote Hemp, AB 1147 would permit California farmers to grow industrial hemp, a variety of cannabis that grows up to 16 feet tall, resembles bamboo, and has no psychoactive properties. Under the bill, industrial hemp is defined as cannabis having 0.3% THC or less and its cultivation is only permitted as an agricultural field crop or in a research setting. Cultivation in groves, yards, or other locations is prohibited. "Our bill is about letting California farmers grow a crop that's legal worldwide. We can import hemp, we can process it into shampoo, plastics, and food, but we won't let our farmers grow it. AB 1147 is a common sense measure that regulates the industrial farming of hemp to conform with federal law while relieving law enforcement of the burden of having to discern legal hemp from illegal marijuana grown in clandestine groves," said Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. Hemp is one of the strongest natural fibers known and is grown and processed throughout the world for paper, fuel, clothing, building materials, canvas, rope, beauty care products, food and automobile parts, among others. The seed has many nutritional benefits because it contains essential amino acids, including omega-3 commonly found in fish, and is an alternative source of protein. Hemp also has strong environmental benefits. It's a source for paper that could enable us to save our trees for higher end uses such as lumber. Hemp can be used as a raw material for ethanol fuel with no net addition to greenhouse gases. It requires little or no agricultural chemicals, smothers weeds, and improves soil conditions, making it an excellent rotational crop. "Once this bill is enacted, it will create a more efficient market, leading to better prices for the consumer, and provide an opportunity to expand the market for the nutritious hemp seed," said David Bronner, head of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, an Escondido-based company is the number one producer of natural soaps in the world with sales near $20 million annually. Mr. Bronner says his company has spent $800,000 in the last five years importing hemp oil from Canada. For years, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has scheduled live cannabis plants as a controlled substance despite the fact that hemp has no psychoactive effects. Hemp has less than three tenths of one percent THC while marijuana contains five to twenty-five percent THC. In 2004, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the DEA did not have the authority to regulate industrial hemp under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act. The DEA decided not to appeal that decision and the Court's ruling now stands as U.S. law on the issue. #### Capitol Office: State Capitol - P.O. Box 942849 - Sacramento, CA 94249-0013 - Phone (916) 319-2013 San Francisco District Office: 455 Golden Gate Avenue, Suite 14300 - San Francisco, CA 94102 - Phone (415) 557-3013 |