Vancouver combats heroin by giving its addicts the best smack in the world
http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-02-04/vancouver-combats-heroin-giving-its-addicts-best-smack-world
It seems counterintuitive that to fight the battle of addiction, Vancouver is giving herion addicts more heroin. Vancouver is a port town and constantly have to deal with drugs coming from the Pacific, including pure heroin. Drugs are very common in a town named “Downtown Eastside”, just blocks away from the tourist sections of Yaletown.
Vancouver has been trying a theory including a safe zone, called “Insite” where addicts can shoot up in front of a nurse and won’t be arrested. This program originated in Europe, more precisely Switzerland, Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands. The nurses give addicts clean needles and sanitary wipes to clean the injection site. In addition to the clean needles the addicts are getting some of the best heroin in the world. This technique is now giving heroin addicts free drugs two to three times a day as “medicine” prescribed by a doctor. There is currently only 26 patients in this program, and they are only there because regular alternatives did not work. This program allows addicts to function normally in his daily life, without having to steal or sell their body for drug money. The program is not aimed to try to get the addicts over their battle, but to stop people from committing crimes to get the drug money.
Is Walmart Really Going Organic and Local?
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/03/walmart-groceries-organic-local-food-deserts
It seems counter intuitive that Walmart’s slogan is, “Always Low Prices”, and the prices are only low because Walmart is getting the products for cheaper. but only is worrying about their self and the company’s profits. Walmart is now pushing to sell more locally grown and organic foods. A typical produce department includes perfect spheres of cabbage, onions, and tomatoes. The greens are huge and crunchy, lemons are sizes of fists, and there are local signs posted throughout the department. Then over in the corner is a few bags of “Organic” lettuces.
Some numbers supporting Walmart trying to go organic and local are as followed: Eighteen percent of all the groceries sold buy Walmart are from the United States. By 2006 Walmart was the nations top seller of organic milk. In 2008, Walmart was on track to buy four hundred million dollars annually in local produce. In 2010, Walmart pledged to sell one billion dollars worth of produce from smaller local farms.
The move to support local growers was more for Walmart than their customers. Local produce come from near by, hence less produce spoils on the trip, leading to more profit for Walmart. A shorter trip also uses less gas and furthermore increases Walmart’s profits. Walmart’s organic push has been mostly focused on non-produce items such as milk and baby food.
Upstart lenders have started combing social media sites as they vet borrowers. You’ll be suprised what they’re looking for.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/09/lenders-vet-borrowers-social-media-facebook
It seems a bit counter intuitive that if you have a friend that is late paying a loan back, they can affect your status of a loan application.
LendUp, based out of San Francisco is a new network that can be used to look at Facebook and Twitter. This network can see how many friends people have and how often the friends interact. Companies use LendUp as a scalar to indicate stability for new hires. Neo, based out of Silicon Valley, looks at the quality and quantity of an applicant’s LinkedIn contacts. Moven, based out of New York, uses Twitter, Facebook, and other social media networks in their loan application. Lenddo, is a company that will deny a customer a loan if they are friends with someone who was late repaying a Lenddo loan. Eventually, banks across the nation will soon enough use these types of procedures to evaluate credit and other bank information.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) are the two biggest laws that ensure companies’ collection and use of the customer’s credit information is fair. With that being said, it is unclear if customers use of social media networks is covered under the FCRA. The Federal Trade Commission declined to comment on this question. On the other hand, the ECOA does not cover these new forms of discrimination found on social networks. Now applicants will not know that their social media networks were the reason they didn’t make the cut for the job.
Rowan Counterintuitive 