Daily Archives: November 22, 2014

Helen Darby - The Chaosmos of Naked Lunch
A/V#11.04 2010 Autumn http://www.actualvirtualjournal.com/2014/11/av11.html Helen Darby #39;s paper on Cronenberg #39;s Naked Lunch explores the creative potential of re-interpretation as Deleuzian...

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The owner of an Italian bistro on New York's Upper East Side says the city's Human Rights Commission is targeting business owners who unintentionally use gender-based language in job ads, the New York Post reported Friday.

Giuseppe Bruno's restaurant, Sistina, was fined $5,000 for a Craigslist ad that read "Hostess/coat check needed. Reliable, personable, organized." The commission said the ad violated the city's civil rights law, which bans gendered language in employment ads.

"This is an outrage. I'm not going to settle. I didn't do anything wrong," Bruno told the Post. "It's possible we made a mistake, but we got no warning."

State Sen. Jose Peralta said many of the cases don't come out of actual complaints, but rather from college students getting paid by HRC to troll online classifieds.

Bruno's assistant, who posted the online ad, says she received two responses via e-mail from one male and one female, who were actually testers for the commission. According to the complaint, the restaurant only opened the e-mail from the female respondent.

Bruno hopes to get off with a warning, but a commission s pokeswoman told the Post that warnings are not a part of its mission.

Click here to read the full report from the New York Post.

Provided by CNBC

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NYC bistro fined $5,000 for 'hostess' ad

Special to WorldTribune.com

By John J. Metzler

UNITED NATIONS Its one of the tougher warnings the world community has sent to the neo-Stalinist regime in North Korea; a detailed condemnation of widespread human rights abuses in the reclusive communist country and, as significantly, a call that the Case and the regime leadership be eventually referred to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

The vote in the UNs Third Committee (Political) sent a resounding message; 111 in favor, 19 against, and 55 abstentions.

Supporting the resolution were the Americans, European Union countries, South Korea, Japan and other democracies. Opposition came from the DPRKs ideological comrades such as China, Cuba, Russia, and Venezuela along with the usual suspects as Myanmar (Burma), Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe. The abstentions were cast by India, Indonesia, and South Africa.

Choe Myong-Nam of North Korea, second from left, observes as a UN committee votes on a resolution condemning human rights abuses in his country. / Bebeto Matthews / AP

Though the vote is not legally binding, the measure sends a strong political message to Pyongyang. This is the tenth year a vote on DRRK human rights has been held.

A tough European Union/Japanese draft resolution co-sponsored by 62 other countries including the USA, South Korea and Australia sets in motion a process which while condemning the quaintly titled Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) , equally opens the door to possible prosecution of the Pyongyang rulers in the ICC.

Finally, the UN has sent a message today that North Korean rulers who starve and enslave their own people must be held accountable, opined Hillel Neuer of UN Watch, a Geneva based human rights watchdog.

First however, and this is the key, the case must pass the UN Security Council where such a censure would likely be vetoed by Mainland China.

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UN committee resolution could refer North Korea rulers to International Criminal Court

The U.K.s first poop-powered bus hit the road this week, ferrying fare-paying passengers around parts of south-west England.

But banish from your mind the image of a vehicle kitted out with toilets for seats, with a bus-load of passengers happily knocking one out to get the thing to the next stop. The reality is a little different.

This one runs solely on biomethane gas generated from human sewage and food waste. The 40-seat Bio-Bus to give it its official name can travel up to 184 miles on a single tank of the gas, which is generated via a treatment process known as anaerobic digestion.

Gas production has proved so successful that some of it is also being injected into the national grid by a recently constructed state-of-the-art facility.

The green energy initiative, which is the work of Wessex Water and treatment-plant operator GENeco, is able to produce 17 million cubic meters of biomethane a year, equivalent of meeting the power needs of 8,500 homes, according to Wessex Water.

Wessex Waters vehicle, affectionately known as the poo bus, produces fewer, ahem, emissions than regular diesel engines, and therefore helps to improve air quality in urban areas. Speaking of air quality, smelly impurities are removed from the gas to ensure the bus doesnt kick up a stink among those living along its route.

The special bus is being used to transport around 10,000 passengers a month between Bristol airport and the historic city of Bath 20 miles away. The initiative comes afterBristol was crowned the European Green Capital for2015 after impressing judges with its consistently high environmental standards.

Charlotte Morton, chief executive of the Anaerobic Digestion & Bioresources Association (ADBA), said GENecos Bio-Bus clearly shows that human poo and our waste food are valuable resources. Food which is unsuitable for human consumption should be separately collected and recycled[and]not wasted in landfill sites or incinerators.

Meanwhile, GENeco general manager Mohammed Saddiq said he believes gas-powered vehicles have an important role to play in improving air quality in U.K. cities, adding, But the Bio-Bus goes further than that and is actually powered by people living in the local area, including quite possibly those on the bus itself.

The U.K.s first poop-powered bus reminds us ofthe poop-powered motorcycle which landed on Japanese roads a couple of years back as part of a green initiative run by toilet-maker Toto.

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Poop-powered bus hits British roads