Latest Articles

Drought in U.S. is terrible news for the whole wide world

Reading the papers this weekend probably made you thirsty.

In Copenhagen, you can check bikes out from the bicycle library

We love a good bike share, but you have to admit that the bikes all look the same. Meanwhile, people’s bicycle preferences and needs are as varied as … well, as their taste in books. Which is why Copenhagen, always first with the bike innovations, lets you borrow bikes from the bicycle library.

Are more colorful lobsters a bad sign?

More and more unusually colored lobsters are being reported, as stocks in Maine spike and those in Connecticut plummet.

The sun’s atmosphere looks like an amazing painting

Sure, the surface of the sun is hot and all, but the sun’s atmosphere is hotter — by a factor of 1,000. And as it turns out, it’s not just hot like “will burn you up faster than a Tony Robbins seminar” hot. It’s also hot like gorrrrrrrrgeous. Scientists know that the sun’s atmosphere (the […]

How to eat ice cream and end an unjust criminal system at the exact same time

Driving around upstate New York, you see a lot of abandoned dairy farms and a lot of struggling towns with prisons nearby. They’re connected: As milk prices dropped and the state’s dairy industry started suffering, politicians brought prisons upstate as a job-creation programs. Milk Not Jails aims to break that connection by creating economic opportunities […]

Bike helmets looked ridiculous in 1948

Did you know that bike helmets in the 1940s looked kind of like a cross between a Devo outfit and a bouncy castle?

Could Securitization Democratize Solar Power?

After Wall Street popularized the term “mortgage-backed securities” in their destruction of the economy in 2008, you could be forgiven for thinking “solar securities” are a pyramid scheme.  But in truth, they may hold the key to democratizing the financing and the ownership of distributed renewable energy. Right now, financing solar typically means looking for […]

Stunning map shows 11 years of U.S. wildfires

This map by John Nelson shows all major U.S. wildfires (and probably some prescribed fires) since 2001, with yellow being more intense. That bright purple over most of the country except the lucky Northeast is fires that put out maybe half as much energy as a power plant produces in the course of a year. […]

This weird artificial jellyfish is made from the cells of a rat

Watch the video below, and consider this: “Genetically, this thing is a rat,” Harvard biophysicist Kit Parker told Nature News. But, we hear you saying, that is not a rat! It’s a jellyfish! Sorta — but it’s made from silicone and the muscle cells of a rat’s heart. When the resulting “medusoid” (“jellyfishy”) creature is […]

Green investment pays off for basically everyone except coal-based power companies

Green investment increases the resale value of a house by 9 percent; it pays the government 10 percent on its solar tax credit.