What happens if and when current subsidies for solar panels are phased out? Doesn't matter -- the cost of solar photovoltaics continues to fall even as the cost of grid electricity continues to rise, which means eventually the two trends will meet and it will make more sense to put panels on your roof than to continue sending a check to your utility company. In San Diego, this will happen sometime around 2013, according to a new animated map from John Farrell at Energy Self-Reliant States. The high cost of grid electricity and the fact that San Diego gets 367 …

McDonald's, Taco Bell, and Burger King just stopped using a product popularly known as "pink slime" in their burger meat. The "slime" comes from the tiny bits of beef in leftover fatty trimming. Those bits are doused with ammonia in order to kill E. coli and are then made into human food. Or “human” “food.” The resulting "meat" isn't necessarily unsafe -- in fact, industry people are bitching about how food activists are making them reduce food safety, to which we say if your meat needs to be doused with ammonia to make it safe to eat then maybe you …

The Asian tiger prawn, a gigantic shrimp that can grow to more than a foot long, is invading the Gulf of Mexico. This year the species was found for the first time in Texas waters. This giganto breed of crustacean threatens the survival of crabs, oysters, and regular old normal-sized shrimp. It could disrupt the thriving Gulf ecosystem and also the incredible bounty of seafood that cities like New Orleans serve up. How'd these suckers get into the Gulf? One likely culprit is aquaculture: storm surges could have swept them from fish farms into the open water. As with any …

The death toll for flooding in the Philippines is over 2,500. For the first time in six decades, harbor porpoises are hanging out in the San Francisco Bay. First Solar, a company that makes thin-film solar panels, has spent $2.2 million on D.C. lobbying in the past four years. That’s a pittance by Washington standards. But in California the company spent triple the amount BP did on lobbying. Sick of your Christmas tree yet? Here's how to get rid of it responsibly. And here's how to prepare your house or apartment for the less-fun part of winter.

Ironically-named food hero Marion Nestle just calculated that PepsiCo, which pumps enough high fructose corn syrup into the American public to turn out one Ghostbusters-size Stay Puft marshmallow man every 18 hours (I made that up; you get the idea), spends $3 million a year lobbying Congress. So what is Pepsi doing dumping all that loot on 1-percenters who supposedly represent the American public on Capital Hill? One motivation, according to the Sunlight Foundation, is the company's effort to stop the government's Interagency Working Group from proposing guidelines on food marketing aimed at kids. As Nestle explains (emphasis mine): As …

Banning cars from Mexico City's Centro Historico and replacing streets with pedestrian pathways has increased nighttime foot traffic and decreased crime, say local business owners. Before the street got pedestrianized, neighborhood business owners used to strike "unspoken" agreements with the local thieves, says Rogelio Murrieta, who owns a printing business on Regina. "The thieves who were from this area they went to other areas, they didn’t rob people from here," he says. "We’d give them something, support, and they respected us. It was a purchase basically." Increased security in the area has also helped, and the historic district still has …

Why journey all over the planet visiting natural wonders that are sure to disappear by the time your grandchildren are old enough to curse your profligate ways, when you can journey into the past, which has already happened so you at least you can't screw it up? That's the premise of Evotourism, a the hot new dance invented by the bow-tie-wearing hipsters at the Smithsonian. The highlights: • Skip dour, economically depressed London and head to England's Jurassic Coast, where even in winter "heavy rains beat against the cliffs, washing away clay and revealing bones dating back hundreds of millions …

Smart cities all around the world are getting rid of highways, and in Madrid, not only has the city built a tunnel to drive a urban-fabric-ripping highway underground, it has turned the reclaimed land into a park. In the New York Times, critic Michael Kimmelman tours the park and reports that, while "still a work in progress," it's connecting neighborhoods once cut off from each other. The idea to bury the highway came before the move to transform the land into a park, but the redesign is also part of a build-out of public transit that connects the outer boroughs …

Tiny spiders are tiny, but relative to their body size it turns out their brains are ginormous. In some cases, 80 percent of a spider's body cavity contains central nervous tissues. Other spiders store parts of their brains in their legs. In other words, step on a tiny spider, and most of the goo that comes out will be braaaaains. Or think of it like this: If dogs breeds had a similar relationship to brain size, chihuahuas would have brains all the way to their tails.

Shell managed to contain the large oil spill in the Atlantic Ocean before it reached the Nigerian coast. In America, thousands of times each year, sewer systems overflow and contaminate the country's waterways. But nope, fixing up aging infrastructure during an economic downturn is a terrible idea, according to House Republicans. Not only are solar panels getting cheaper, they're getting waaaay more efficient. Too bad demand for solar projects could "flatline" next year. Finding Nemo lied to us all: Tropical fish stuck in small tanks aren't friendly and helpful. They turn mean.