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Cheerios is getting slammed for GMOs on their Facebook page. Consumers used Cheerios’ Facebook marketing campaign to give the brand an earful about GMOs, also known as genetically modified foods.
Facebook Fail
Cheerios had posted an “app” on their Facebook that allowed fans to post a word or two about how they felt about Cheerios. Due to all the consumer backlash against GMOs, Cheerios pulled their app off the web.
General Mills and Prop 37
General Mills, makers of Cheerios, donated over one million dollars to defeat California Proposition 37 last month. Prop 37 was a ballot initiative asking brands to label their products, giving consumers the right to know what is in their food.
Unfortunately, due to the massive amount of money spent on advertising by chemical and pesticide companies and industrial food corporations, Prop 37 was defeated in California.
Lots of Comments from Unhappy Customers
Although the app has been removed, consumers are still vociferously complaining on Cheerios’ Facebook wall, telling the cereal maker that they will no longer buy their product because they don’t want GMOs.
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The funniest poll of the afternoon comes from the folks over at Public Policy Polling, who have results that are new and legitimate results (if a bit heavy on the forced fantasy questions) finding that 49 percent of Republicans and six percent of Democrats believe ACORN stole the 2012 election for Barack Obama — despite the pesky fact that ACORN folded in 2010. How … wait … huh?
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The Times of London reports that several American churches are now offering concealed firearms training in order to attract worshipers to their pews. One of these churches, Heights Baptist in San Angelo, Texas offers a particularly unusual reason why they are now training their parishioners to pack heat — in order to prevent worship services from being disrupted by armed Mexicans
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At a meeting convened in 2011 to boost safety at Bangladesh garment factories, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) made a call: paying suppliers more to help them upgrade their manufacturing facilities was too costly.
The comments from a Wal-Mart sourcing director appear in minutes of the meeting, which was attended by more than a dozen retailers including Gap Inc. (GPS), Target Corp. and JC Penney Co.
Details of the meeting have emerged after a fire at a Bangladesh factory that made clothes for Wal-Mart and Sears Holdings Corp. killed more than 100 people last month. The blaze has renewed pressure on companies to improve working conditions in Bangladesh, where more than 700 garment workers have died since 2005, according to the International Labor Rights Forum, a Washington-based advocacy group.
As long as companies can externalize costs like this, things won’t improve. We should be able to drag the whole Wal-Mart board into The Hague International Court of Justice for crimes against humanity.
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Sen. Dennis Kruse, who tried and failed in the last legislative session to let schools teach creationism along with evolution, said Tuesday he’s trying a new approach: Requiring teachers to provide evidence if students challenge their science lessons.
Kruse, an Auburn Republican who is chairman of the Senate Education and Career Development Committee, said he will dub it “truth in education.”
“If a student thinks something isn’t true, then they can question the teacher and the teacher would have to come up with some kind of research to support that what they are teaching is true or not true.”
I hope this guy is increasing education funding. Proving the Higgs Boson exists takes a whole bunch of money.
And I guess that will be the end of abstinence only education as well, right?
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Tonight we’re going to tell you about a place so brutal and horrific it’s hard to believe it exists. It is, by all accounts, a modern-day concentration camp, a secret prison hidden in the mountains, 50 miles from North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang. It’s called Camp 14, and according to human right rights groups, it’s part of the largest network of political prisons in the world today. Some 150,000 people are believed to be doing hard labor on the brink of starvation in these hidden gulags. But it’s not just those who have been accused of political crimes; it’s their entire families — grandparents, parents, and children. A practice called “three generations of punishment.”
Very little was known about Camp 14 until a young man showed up in South Korea with an extraordinary tale to tell. His name is Shin Dong-hyuk and he said he had not only escaped from Camp 14, but he was born there. He’s believed to be the only person born and raised in the camps who’s ever escaped and lived to tell about it.
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News of her pregnancy and her hospitalization has generated a worldwide media frenzy with journalists excitedly reporting any update on her condition along with the facial expressions of William when he arrives and departs.
However, two presenters from the Australian 2Day radio station managed to go one step further after calling the hospital pretending to be William’s grandmother Queen Elizabeth and his father, the heir-to-the throne Prince Charles.
Despite putting on unconvincing impressions of the royal duo, they were put through to the ward where Kate is being treated and given intimate details about how she was faring.
Dear media, you are fucking insane.
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Verizon has filed a patent for a DVR that can watch and listen to the goings-on in your living room. In the application, the company proposes to use the technology to serve targeted ads appropriate to whatever you’re doing in the, uh, privacy of your own home—fighting, cuddling, or hanging out with your cats.
Verizon is far from the first company to think of this unassailably creepy use for a set-top box. Comcast patented similar monitoring technology in 2008 for recommending content based on people it recognizes in the room; Google proposed yet another patent for Google TV that would use audio and video recorders to figure out how many people in a room are watching the current broadcast.
Verizon filed for the application in May 2011, and it was just published last week. (By law, all patent applications are published after 18 months.) In the document, which was first noticed by FierceCable, Verizon gives two examples of the context-sensitive DVR’s use in a couple’s living room: sounds of arguing prompt ads for marriage counseling, while sounds of “cuddling” prompts ads for contraceptives. Charming.
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“One of the concerns is that decisions taken there may make the Internet less a medium that can be used to enhance personal freedom than a tool for state surveillance and oppression. The new Y.2770 standard is entitled ‘Requirements for deep packet inspection in Next Generation Networks’, and seeks to define an international standard for deep packet inspection (DPI). As the Center for Democracy & Technology points out, it is thoroughgoing in its desire to specify technologies that can be used to spy on people. One of the big issues surrounding WCIT and the ITU has been the lack of transparency — or even understanding what real transparency might be. So it will comes as no surprise that the new DPI standard was negotiated behind closed doors, with no drafts being made available.”
General Mills clearly out of touch with popular opinion. I have always been irritated by Montaigne’s * criticism of democracy which runs along the lines that a million ignorances do not constitute one knowledge. Montaigne, not quite as wealthy as General Mills, would have been sobered by the vocal public rejection of GMO foods demonstrated by this reaction to their campaign. Until some proper assessment of the actual risks of GMO experiments is made we would be right to avoid them if we can.
*Yes I am right up to date with political philosophy.
Well, I guess cheerios ultimately got what they wanted. Feedback from customers. Now maybe they will use this information to address the issues…if that is even feasible at this point.