Latest Articles
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Compost gets you high
“I’m holding a bowl of dirt up to my nose, in hopes of getting high on the fumes of my backyard compost pile.” That’s Pagan Kennedy’s lede for an Atlantic story on the mind-bending properties of M. vaccae, a compost-dwelling bacteria. We couldn’t really improve on it. But we can condense the dirty details of […]
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New Agtivist: Adam Berman, faith-based urban farmer
Meet the founder of Urban Adamah, a one-acre urban farm in Berkeley and a fellowship for young people that integrates organic farming, social justice, and progressive Jewish spiritual practice.
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Critical List: Groundhog says six more winter weeks; zoos need more elephants
Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, which means six more weeks of winter. But that dude has since his shadow more than 100 times; he’s only not seen it 16 times. Honestly, getting your weather forecast from a giant rodent is like getting your climate science from a weather forecaster. Locusts thrive on overgrazed lands. Accredited […]
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Protein: The lay of the lamb
Most science says lamb has a bigger carbon footprint than other foods. But could it be a better choice for sustainable omnivores than we think?
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Standing to reason: Do non-believers need temples, too?
Writer Alain de Botton wants to erect a 150-foot monument to atheism. With the religious right co-opting our secular spaces, why not create a little sacred space for the profane?
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Keystone XL opponents need a jobs program
Keystone XL supporters have successfully painted the anti-pipeline crowd as "job killers." Here's how we can fight back.
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A bill of goods: With their latest transportation bill, GOP sides with the suburbs
House Republicans rolled out a proposal for a new transportation bill on Tuesday, and if you believe what they say, the future looks a whole lot like the past. But bike boosters, pedestrian advocates, and environmentalists won’t go backwards without a fight.
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Killer tale: Lessons from a lonely orca
When a lone killer whale started befriending humans in a Canadian cove, he sparked a controversy over how we interact with animals. We talked to the journalists who filmed the story in the Ryan Reynolds-narrated documentary The Whale.
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Newly discovered fungus eats plastic
A group of Yale students, poking around in the jungles of Ecuador, has unearthed a type of fungus that digests otherwise-unkillable plastics.
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‘Gasland’ director arrested for filming in Congress
This is probably not the way for the U.S. to regain our recent huge losses on the Press Freedom Index. Josh Fox, director of the Oscar-nominated (and Emmy-winning) documentary Gasland, was arrested this morning for trying to film a committee meeting about fracking.
