I never knew

In fact, there is reason to believe that the Canadian number is actually even lower. The OECD also ranks all countries through a “General trade-related index of counterfeiting and piracy of economies.” Canada fares well – ranking as among the lowest rates of counterfeiting and piracy within the economy among developed countries – with a rate that is lower than Australia, France, Italy, Korea, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, and the United States (among others). Our low counterfeiting ranking suggests that assuming Canada is equal contributor to counterfeits in line with our trade ranking is likely wrong. Instead, Canada is a low piracy country despite persistent efforts to paint us as a piracy haven.
—OECD Confirms Canada Among Lowest Sources Of Counterfeiting

Increasingly though, I see signs that the essential freedoms of the web are being undermined by a cadre of companies through the introduction of new technologies and interfaces that, combined, may spell the death of the URL.
—The death of the URL

The country’s chief of staff, Dilma Rousseff, said Brazil would take proposals for voluntary reductions of 38-42% by 2020 to the Copenhagen climate change summit next month. The reductions are from projected 2020 emissions levels if no action was taken.
—Bright Green: Brazil Pledges Deep Emission Cuts In ‘Political Gesture’ To Rich Nations

Aux États-Unis, déjà, certaines écoles secondaires, comme la New Tech High School de Coppell (Texas), ont abattu les murs qui séparaient les classes pour créer des aires ouvertes, les lieux d’étude et de travail étant délimités par des cloisons transparentes. Les élèves, parfois d’âges divers, collaborent à des projets, guidés par des enseignants ou par des professionnels qui agissent à titre de mentors.
—Bye-bye école du 17e siècle ! (via Mario)

But if you still eat meat from factories—and, Foer reports, 99 percent of meat eaten in the U.S. is raised and/or processed in factory operations—you have not, by definition, absorbed the reality of factory farms. If you truly understood the nightmarish brutality of what happens inside these windowless animal jails and abattoirs that dot the American ruralscape, you simply would not eat this meat. Foer makes it clear that factory farming is the exceptional human activity that debases and destroys everything it touches: land, people, communities, and most of all, the innocents at the nexus, animals.
—The Moral Ferocity of Eating Animals