Source = NPR

Neighborhood organizations across the U.S. that want to improve the environment are using a surprising weapon: seed balls.
It's a technique for planting in abandoned places and often inhospitable land that was developed in Japan by Masanobu Fukuoka, a pioneer in "natural farming."

First, we mix the mulch and a seed mixture," Gallagher says. "We try to pick a seed that is native to the area and can withstand drought. We mix those together, and then we knead it like bread into a red terra-cotta clay. It is important to use the red terra cotta, because other kinds have different chemicals in it that affect growth."
The mixture is rolled into little balls, which then has to dry.

Source = English Russia

Russian scientists say that Moscow stray dogs became much smarter. The four legged oldest human’s friends demonstrate real smartness such as riding the Moscow metro every morning to get from their suburban places of living to the fat regions of Moscow center. Once they arrive to the downtown they demonstrate different new, previously unseen for the dog skills. Those skills can include “the hunt for shawarma” for example, the popular among Muscovites eastern cuisine dish. This hunt scene can be seen as this.

Source = Discover Magazine

A gang of angry Luddites in Ye Olde Middle England have set upon an innocent Google Street View car driver in an attempt to save their lives from ruin.

"Angry villagers formed a human chain to thwart the progress of a Google Street View car that was in the process of taking photographs of their homes," reads a report in The Times.

Police were soon on the scene in the leafy village of Broughton in deepest Buckinghamshire with the "furious villagers" blocking the progress of the Google Street View car.

Source = techradar

About time we had a leader who makes a strong public stand on such a dire issue.

Source = USA Today

Connecticut's Vote Working Families is offering bus-tours of the luxurious mansions of the AIG execs who are in line to receive gigantic, taxpayer-funded bonuses:

Source = BoingBoing

Source = Automotive Design

The Israeli army has been forced to open an investigation into the conduct of its troops in Gaza after damning testimony from its own front line soldiers revealed the killing of civilians and rules of engagement so lax that one combatant said that they amounted on occasion to "cold-blooded murder".
...The revelations, compiled by the head of an Israel military academy who declared that he was "shocked" at the findings

Shocked = coverup response. When are people going to realize that war is absurd?! Hmm...when the people in charge are no longer idiots or driven with an idealistic agenda?

Source = CommonDreams

Thank God for France....some level-headed people willing to take a stance against this ridiculous religious hypocrisy.

Source = BBC