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Friday music blogging: Freelance Whales

The music of Freelance Whales has an immediate warmth and familiarity that’s either comforting or derivative, depending on your perspective. You could mistake them for Postal Service from across the room, what with the sweet, earnest alto vocals of front man Judah Dadone, but the instrumentation isn’t electronic. Rather, there’s a huge array of guitars, […]

Zach Weiner on how to pass climate change legislation

Buy Freedom Bonds Now

The BP oil disaster is certainly not the first oil spill in US history, but it could be the last. Nor is this the our worst oil spill – – a Chevron refinery leaked over 250 million gallons of oil and refined product into aquifers beneath Los Angeles for decades before it was discovered in […]

More ideas for Harry Reid: on energy efficiency in Senate energy legislation

Senate majority leader Harry Reid is pulling together an energy bill soon. It may or may not include a price on carbon, but it will certainly include a range of energy-focused provisions, and right now there are too few bold, progressive energy ideas on the table. As I said yesterday, Sen. Jeff Merkley’s oil plan […]

Friday music blogging: Ratatat

Ratatat is two guys in New York City, one who plays guitar, the other a synthesizer-bass-producer polymath. It’s hard to know exactly what to call their stuff. It’s got programmed dance beats like DJ music, but also guitar, strings, keyboards, and songs that actually sound like songs and not endless loops. One thing Ratatat has […]

Kansas City pioneers new models for urban farms

Seven women in ankle-length floral dresses bend at the waist in rows of kale, arugula, and kohlrabi. Their hands effortlessly scoop and pick and cut the stems and pull the weeds. The low sun is already hot coming through the hazy white sky that makes the Kansas City downtown in the distance look like a […]

'BLUE PLANET' Sends Timely Message to Protect Oceans [VIDEO]

A new music video from Barcelona-based musician Sam Lardner spreads a timely message about the importance for all people to work together to save our oceans.  With footage of the BP Deepwater disaster in the Gulf of Mexico contrasted by majestic images of beaches and marine life from around the world, the video is an […]

Just how much oil is still spurting into the Gulf?

“The immense undersea gusher of oil and gas, seen on live video feed, looks as big as it did last week, or bigger, before the company sliced through the pipe known as a riser to install its new collection device.” –From “Rate of Oil Leak, Still Not Clear, Puts Doubt on BP,” The New York […]

Obama needs to pay attention to a different kind of leak in the Gulf

There’s a lot of talk in the media about whether President Obama is sufficiently angry about the oil spill. Who cares? There are many more important questions, including: How effectively is the government managing the response? Is it forcing BP to be transparent and honest with the public? Is it making sure that the cleanup […]

Cars and People Compete for Grain

At a time when excessive pressures on the earth’s land and water resources are of growing concern, there is a massive new demand emerging for cropland to produce fuel for cars—one that threatens world food security. Although this situation had been developing for a few decades, it was not until Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when […]