The Daily Omnivore

Seven generation sustainability is an ecological concept that urges the current generation of humans to live sustainably and work for the benefit of the seventh generation into the future.

It originated with the Iroquois – Great Law of the Iroquois – which holds appropriate to think seven generations ahead (a couple hundred years into the future) and decide whether the decisions they make today would benefit their children seven generations into the future. ‘In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation… even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine.’

Poor mans copyright is a method of using registered dating by the postal service, a notary public or other highly trusted source to date intellectual property, thereby helping to establish that the material has been in one’s possession since a particular time. The concept is based on the notion that, in the event that such intellectual property were to be misused by a third party, the poor-man’s copyright would at least establish a legally recognized date of possession before any proof which a third party may possess.

The PMC was originally used by authors who sent copies of their own work to themselves through the mail without opening the envelopes in the hope that it would grant them legal protection by establishing a date at which the work was created. Use of this method may not hold up in a court as it is simple for individuals to pre-send envelopes which can then be used later by placing the materials inside.

A debate exists within the United States government, and American society at large, over whether the one-cent coin, commonly known as the penny, should be eliminated as a unit of currency in the United States. Two bills introduced in the U.S. Congress would have ceased production of pennies, but neither bill was approved. Such a bill would leave the nickel, at five cents, as the lowest-value coin. The chief argument for its elimination is the fact that pennies are produced at a loss. In 2012, it costs about 2.4 cents to mint a penny. By 2007, even the price of the raw materials it is made of exceeded the face value, so there is a risk that coins are illegally melted down for raw materials.

Additionally, pennies are of limited utility; they are not accepted by all vending machines or many toll booths, and pennies are generally not accepted in bulk. In addition, people often do not use cents to pay at all; they may simply use larger denominations and get pennies in return. Pennies end up sitting in jars or are thrown away and are not in circulation. The purpose of the monetary system is to facilitate exchange, but… the penny no longer serves that purpose. Many countries outside the United States have chosen to remove low-value coins from circulation including Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, and Australia.