Archive: Feb 2012
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Killer tale: Lessons from a lonely orca
When a lone killer whale started befriending humans in a Canadian cove, he sparked a controversy over how we interact with animals. We talked to the journalists who filmed the story in the Ryan Reynolds-narrated documentary The Whale.
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Newly discovered fungus eats plastic
A group of Yale students, poking around in the jungles of Ecuador, has unearthed a type of fungus that digests otherwise-unkillable plastics.
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‘Gasland’ director arrested for filming in Congress
This is probably not the way for the U.S. to regain our recent huge losses on the Press Freedom Index. Josh Fox, director of the Oscar-nominated (and Emmy-winning) documentary Gasland, was arrested this morning for trying to film a committee meeting about fracking.
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Inside New York City’s defunct quarantine hospital
Photographer Ian Ference had to get special dispensation from the New York City parks department to visit North Brother Island, the site of a forced-quarantine hospital that closed down 50 years ago. The island, right off the coast of the Bronx, used to house people suffering from contagious diseases like tuberculosis and smallpox — including […]
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Chicken farm crates are basically never cleaned
If a bite of food falls on the ground, often we pick it up and eat it. Five second rule, right? But if it falls in something gross or we haven’t cleaned the floor in awhile, we don’t eat it. Because that’s gross. Especially if your floor is covered in chicken shit. It’s unclear, then, […]
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Julianne Moore wants clean air for kids
Did you guys know Julianne Moore wrote a children’s book? This is apparently the thing celebrities do when they’re over 25 (under 25, they start a perfume line). It’s about the heartbreak of being a ginger, and not about environmental stuff at all, but that isn’t stopping Moore from plugging it in her video for […]
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Did NYPD falsify account of cyclist’s death?
In October of 2011, a truck hit and killed artist Mathieu Lefevre while he was biking in Brooklyn. Since then, Lefevre’s family and their lawyers have been trying to find out what exactly happened that night. The NYPD’s investigation includes descriptions of surveillance footage showing Lefevre trying to pass a truck on the right. But […]
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Critical List: Connecting climate change to the Texas heat wave; ditching plastic straws
Climate scientist James Hansen says he can prove that climate change caused the Texas heat wave. Maine fishermen caught more lobster last year than ever before. Wave and tidal energy could provide enough electricity to meet 15 percent of current demand in the United States. In London, plastic straws are the new plastic bags. No […]
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No, that’s not snow: Pesticides coat California’s Central Valley
Take a photo journey through America's fruit basket, where excess nitrates and pesticides contaminate drinking water and showering with tap water can lead to rashes.