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Farming bluefins not an answer to overfishing

News of the latest negotiations on how many bluefin tuna the world can afford to kill without extinctionating the species (yes, it’s a word … to me) is yet to be inked, and that’s fine, because it’s always such a depressing story. Who us, kill too many of a disappearing fish? But it reminded me […]

Mountain gorillas threatened by violence in Congo

Due to escalating violence, Congolese rangers have been run out of the country’s Virunga National Park, threatening the safety of some 200 mountain gorillas that live there. “There are documented cases of the gorillas getting caught in the crossfire and getting killed,” says a park spokesperson. “It’s the chaos of war and they are right […]

President-elect sends YouTube message to governors

President-elect Barack Obama released a video message to attendees of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s summit on climate change, which is convening today in Los Angeles. Obama’s video is below. More Grist reporting and analysis to come:

Concerns raised about wildfire-fighting chemicals

As wildfires rage in southern California, concerns are burgeoning about the chemical mix that firefolk drop as a fire retardant. It’s “fairly well known that it’s toxic to aquatic organisms, to fish,” says one fire management officer; nonetheless, notes another firefighter, “It’s the people whose houses are not on fire that are concerned about it.”

Newsweek considers an Obama baby boom

Newsweek gets the headline of the week award as it ponders the possibility of an post-election baby boom: Hope and euphoria, says University of Washington sociologist Pepper Schwartz, are a serious aphrodisiac. And voters under 30 went for Obama by a margin of 2 to 1. When you combine those two elements — randy people […]

Gulf War syndrome exists, says scientific panel

Gulf War syndrome, an umbrella term for a batch of neurological disorders experienced by nearly a quarter of the 700,000 veterans of the 1991 war, is attributable to “neurotoxic exposures,” a scientific panel told Congress on Monday. The report specifically points to a pesticide and anti-nerve-gas drug commonly used by the soldiers. The federal government […]

NASA against offshore drilling

“It just makes it more difficult to fly. For safety reasons, we don’t want to be flying rockets anywhere near these things.” — Keith Koehler, public affairs specialist for the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, explaining NASA’s opposition to offshore drilling rigs off the Virginia coast

We should be wary of jumping on the ‘individual fishing quota’ bandwagon

I’m not sure what the marine equivalent of a bandwagon is (a love boat?), but there’s one headed our way. I’m talking about the movement called “individual fishing quotas,” as described in a recent Los Angeles Times article. The original theory is straight out of the free market school of economics: Give people the ownership […]

Friday music blogging: Q-Tip

A Tribe Called Quest is one of a small class of hip-hop groups that is beloved by absolutely everyone — rap purists, bohemians, and of course whitey suburbanites. Speaking of that latter demographic, I fell in love with Tribe in college via their stone classic The Low End Theory, which remains one of my all-time […]

Republicans refuse bailout; Obama wants auto czar

Looks like there will be no auto bailout with this Congress and this president. The NYT reports today: The prospects of a government rescue for the foundering American automakers dwindled Thursday as Democratic Congressional leaders conceded that they would face potentially insurmountable Republican opposition during a lame-duck session next week. Nor does it appear that […]