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No matter your personal opinion on the subject, talk of climate usually conjures up images of warming, floods and rising sea levels. Those are some ecological changes predicted from coast to coast. In the Midwest, the few degrees of warming has actually benefited agriculture, on average. But in California – where they grow more than 200 crops, including perennials such as walnuts and apricots – some crops could be adversely affected. Plus, California farmers also have new climate change regulations to contend with, which worry many growers more than the weather. Rising temperatures To produce a robust walnut crop, you...

" Monsanto's pesticides contaminated the farmers' non-tobacco crops, water wells and streams meant for family use, exposing their families to the toxic substances, the farmer say."

Ten days ago, British business magnate Richard Branson announced a new Virgin venture – Virgin Volcanic: an expedition to the centre of Earth through an active volcano. As you probably guessed, it was an April Fool’s joke – a very cheesy one, too, as days earlier James Cameron had just reached the ocean’s deepest point, an (actual) expedition that was well discussed on The Conversation.

WASHINGTON — Details about a launch facility Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is considering building in Texas emerged April 9 in a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) document detailing an environmental review that must precede construction.

The music video for Notorious B.I.G.’s song “Big Poppa” has dancing and gambling, a thumping rhythm and a young Sean “P. Diddy” Combs sitting in a hot tub surrounded by scantily clad women. But if you watch carefully, you can catch a glimpse of another young man, one who darts on and off the screen wearing big, gold-accented sunglasses, taking swigs from a bottle of Champagne. He was a member of B.I.G.’s rap group, Junior M.A.F.I.A., and he went by the name Klept, or Kleptomaniac. Fast-forward 15 years. Where do you think Kleptomaniac might be now? “Real estate,” he said....

WIll ObamaCare add to the national deficit? Not sure, but I think we need to know for sure before the entire law kicks in. Yes. When taken in its entirety, it's a good law that will save billions of dollars. No. Even the Congressional Budget Office estimated last year that the law would increase the deficit. Other (post a comment)

How long before Mitt Romney realizes that the media has been basically setting him up as the "de facto" winner of the Republican nomination before then taking him down during the summer? I am guessing the attacks will commence very soon as the MSM machine is now starting to "smell the blood" of Mitt Romney now that Rick Santorum has left the race and Newt and Ron Paul are seen as very very distant chances. If the media was thinking strategically they would hold of the Mitt attacks until AFTER the RNC convention, but they think too much via emotion...

Until it was revealed last week that more than half a million Macs were infected with Flashback malware, Apple had little experience working with the community of security researchers who aim to dissect and shut down botnets. And according to the firm that discovered this new outbreak, it could use a lesson in teamwork.

The arrival of affordable, high-performance client SSDs gave us two (closely related) things: 1) a high-speed primary storage option that could work in both a notebook or a desktop, and 2) independence from traditional hard drive form factors.Unlike traditional hard drives, solid state storage didn't have the same correlation between performance and physical size. The 2.5" form factor was chosen initially because of the rising popularity of notebooks and the fact that desktops could use a 2.5" drive with the aid of a cheap adapter. Since then, many desktop cases now ship with 2.5" drive bays. It turns out that...

BRITISH OUTFIT Datawind has announced that it will upgrade its latest $35 tablet to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich following its release in India later this month. Speaking to ComputerWorld, Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli said that an upgraded version of the Aakash named the Aakash 2 will start shipping in two to three weeks. Tuli added that although the $35 tablet will ship running Android 2.3 Gingerbread, it will be upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich within "six to eight weeks". That's not all the new Aakash 2 tablet, which is also known as the Ubislate 7+, improves...

COMPUTER IN YOUR POCKET the Raspberry Pi has passed CE compliance testing and will go ahead without any hardware modifications. The testing for CE compliance came up late in the Raspberry Pi release process and was announced by the hardware distributors RS Components and Premier Farnell.When the testing was mentioned there were fears that it could have delayed the release of the hardware should any modifications be needed, but since none are required the Raspberry Pi can go on sale sooner than expected.There are still some processes to go through, but the Raspberry Pi Foundation is confident that everything can...

My Son is Learning How to Install Ceramic and Quarry Tile. Any Tool Brand Recommendations? I am providing him with tools of the trade. He needs a wet saw that will hold up for a number of installations. Tile guys out there?

Gary Goddard looks back on what really happened back in 1992 when the Downtown City Fathers were looking for a way to revitalize the downtown core and attract more visitors. In 1992 downtown Las Vegas had become a distant second to the Las Vegas Strip. Where at one time, downtown Las Vegas was the center of the action, the increasing magnitude of the Las Vegas Strip, with the expansion of Caesar’s Palace, the Mirage having opened, and with more and more mega resorts on the way, 80% of the Las Vegas market was now on the Strip, leaving only 20%...

China will accelerate the use of new-energy sources such as nuclear energy and put an end to blind expansion in industries such as solar energy and wind power in 2012, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says in a government report published on March 5.China will instead develop nuclear power in 2012, actively develop hydroelectric power, tackle key problems more quickly in the exploration and development of shale gas, and increase the share of new energy and renewable energy in total energy consumption.The guidance indicates a new trend for new-energy and renewable energy development in China from 2012. Analysts believe that the...

My boss's 2 sons want to create a casting video for the reality show Amazing Race. They are both good boys, very athletic. Key is, they want to shoot on 4/22 and have the video ready and sent for 4/23(they both work). If you are in the NY area, and willing to come to Long Island to shoot the video, edit and have it ready in 1 day for casting, this may be a side job for you. They can pay $400. The youngest asked me if I knew anyone and I told him I would post it on my...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A federal judge approved the $26 billion settlement deal reached between the nation's five largest mortgage lenders and the attorneys general of 49 states and the District of Columbia over foreclosure processing abuses. Judge Rosemary Collyer in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia approved consent judgments with Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), Citibank (C, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500), and Ally Financial (the former GMAC) late Thursday.

LEIPZIG, Germany — For 800 years, the St. Thomas Boys Choir has been filling churches with pure, young voices. Now it’s confronting a confounding phenomenon: Every year, those voices are cracking with teenage angst just a little earlier than before. Other boys choirs have been noticing it, too, as an unrelenting march of puberty sweeps voices into rebellion. Over recent decades, the already-short careers of their sopranos have started to end between six months and a year earlier, challenging them at times such as Easter, for which choral music such as J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion was written with difficult...

Former senator and current head of the Motion Picture Ass. of America Chris Dodd hopes to resurrect the reviled SOPA anti-piracy legislation in another form, but it appears the US House of Representatives is beating him to it a new bill that makes SOPA look sensible. Dodd, speaking in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, said that he hopes to get a new version of the SOPA legislation ready for debate shortly, and that the MPAA was marshaling its forces for another attack on piracy. Dodd said he was confident that the new legislation would go through, and said there...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- While the stock market put up its best first-quarter performance in over a decade, the first three months of 2012 weren't as hot for Corporate America. Analysts are forecasting a 0.1% drop in first-quarter earnings for companies in the S&P 500 (SPX), compared with a year earlier, according to FactSet. While that's not exactly a major decline, it would mark the end of a nine-quarter winning streak. And excluding Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500)'s always-impressive financial performance, the outlook is even more downbeat, with S&P 500 earnings on track for a 1.6% decline. The materials sector is...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- U.S. stocks sold off Monday as investors reconsidered the outlook for economic growth following a disappointing jobs report last week. In addition, a higher-than-expected reading on inflation in China added to the worries. The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) was down 147 points, or 1%, in early trading. The S&P 500 (SPX) tumbled 16 points, or 1.2%, and Nasdaq (COMP) slid 32 points, or 1%. On Friday, the Labor Department said the U.S. economy added 120,000 jobs in March, following three straight monthly gains of 200,000 jobs or more, a trend that economists expected would continue....