Barbie's got a dangerous addiction to endangered Indonesian hardwood, and Ken isn't putting up with it anymore. Once he found out Mattel packaging uses wood from the fragile Indonesian rainforest, at least some of which is from evil conglomerate Asia Pulp & Paper, he was out of there, girl.  This video leans a little hard on the "Ken is gay or at least metrosexual" trope, which is dumb because a) yeah, like we need more entrenched gender roles ("OMG, boy + doll must = stereotypical swishy gay guy!") and also b) Ken has no genitals, so can he really have …

Looking for an apartment involves a lot of guesswork -- if you believe Craigslist, absolutely everything is "steps from shopping and transportation!" If you want to figure out how to maximize walkability and minimize commute, you have to actually schlep over there. Or, now, you could just hit the web. PadMapper integrates rental listings, Google maps, and Walk Score, with the result that for every available apartment you can instantly see street view, price compared to the local median, and -- critically -- how walkable the neighborhood is and what's nearby.  It's addictive, even if you're not moving imminently. I've already …

Takeout in California will never be the same. The state's legislature is halfway to forbidding restaurants and vendors from packing their products in Styrofoam containers: the California Senate's on board, and the House is supposed to vote on the measure by the end of the summer. The problem (besides that Styrofoam is an evil, atmosphere-killing substance that takes forever to biodegrade) is that people feel entitled to toss the containers in the streets, from whence they travel through storm drains into the ocean. Local governments in the state -- 50 of them — already have ditched foam take-out containers. It's …

(from Fake Science) Brilliant in its simplicity. Even better: Since we may be approaching the carbon levels that killed the dinosaurs in the first place, we could just let the fossil fuels we burn kill the cloned dinos all by themselves.

Europe’s new rail innovation is the solar equivalent of a Good Morning Burger. We take two miles of Belgian high speed rail tunnel, soak it in rich creamery butter, and then we cover it with a shelter to protect it from nearby old-growth trees, eliminating the need to cut them down. Then we top it off with 16,000 solar panels. We call it Europe's first "solar tunnel." Here's a video of the beast: "For train operators, it is the perfect way to cut their carbon footprints because you can use spaces that have no other economic value and the projects can …

Like everyone else, we've entered Super Head-Shaking Mode over Rep. Anthony Weiner and his penis picture problem. We'd be sorry to lose him, from a policy perspective -- he's had a pretty good voting record on environmental issues, although his colleages apparently cannot say with certitude that he isn't a dick. But on the subject of bike lanes, Weiner showed his ass long before he showed everything else. Here's Weiner on his goals if elected mayor of New York City, an outcome that we're going to say is off the table for the foreseeable future (try D.C.!): When I become …

If you thought the all-electric Tesla Roadster was fast -- it can go from zero to 60 in 3.7 seconds -- wait until you get a load of the forthcoming electric supercar from little-known Leo Motors of South Korea. Details are sketchy, but the company claims that within six months, it will show off a vehicle that goes from zero to 60 in 2.9 seconds. That level of acceleration would make it the second fastest electric vehicle in the world, after the all-electric Shelby SuperCars Aero EV. (The Areo EV is no slouch when compared to conventional vehicles, by the …

Japanese officials have admitted that the meltdown at Fukushima released almost twice as much radiation as they had initially allowed. ("Did we say 370,000 terabecquerels? Oops, that should have been 770,000.") They also said that the meltdown at the plant began five hours after the quake/tsunami double-punch. The plant's operator had said earlier the meltdown began 10 hours later than that. The radiation release is still only a fraction as bad as Chernobyl, releasing about 15 percent as much radiation. At least, as far as we know now. Wait a couple months, and who knows. (“Oops, did we say 770,000 …

I'm no Peggy Olson, but if someone asked me to put together an ad that would NOT cause anybody to get death threats, I'd probably say something like: "Make it positive and upbeat about the future. Throw a baby in there. Can we get Cate Blanchett? See if we can get Cate Blanchett." Positivity + babies + gorgeous actresses seems like a pretty good recipe for getting people to, if not agree with you, at least not want to KILL YOU. But this ad promotes a carbon tax, and that tends to get people really riled up. Riled up enough to threaten climate …

Global fail: The Kyoto Protocol will expire without a deal to take its place, the top UN climate official said yesterday. China's own Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a report that the country's not doing so hot on the environmental front. The report ticked off problems like acid rain (half of the China's cities are affected) and declining water quality (one-sixth of its major rivers are severely polluted), which we'd also call a "very grave” situation. Rock climbers are being hired to scale wind turbines in order to repair, clean and paint them. Now that's an awesome and potentially …