Latest Articles
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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.
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Inside New York City’s defunct quarantine hospital
Photographer Ian Ference had to get special dispensation from the New York City parks department to visit North Brother Island, the site of a forced-quarantine hospital that closed down 50 years ago. The island, right off the coast of the Bronx, used to house people suffering from contagious diseases like tuberculosis and smallpox — including […]
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Chicken farm crates are basically never cleaned
If a bite of food falls on the ground, often we pick it up and eat it. Five second rule, right? But if it falls in something gross or we haven’t cleaned the floor in awhile, we don’t eat it. Because that’s gross. Especially if your floor is covered in chicken shit. It’s unclear, then, […]
