Latest Articles
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The bad food news of 2011
We continue digesting this year’s food politics coverage below — only this time we take account of the things that didn’t go so well. (Tired of bad news? See the year’s good food news instead.) 1. Food prices have gone up, and more people need help feeding their families The fact that 46 million people […]
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Bikestravaganza: Grist’s top bike stories of 2011
Photo: John Monoogian IIII spent the day yesterday digging through 18 — count ’em, 18 — pages of search results in a quest to find Grist’s Overarching Narrative of the Bike in 2011. I laughed. I cried. I almost blew tea on my laptop. Then I biked home on streets that were blissfully bereft of […]
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Top five New Year’s resolutions for planet and profit
It’s that time of year when someone at a holiday gathering inevitably asks about your resolutions for 2012. Feel free to plagiarize mine: 5. Grow more of my own food. China’s biggest dairy admitted that some of its products contained a toxin commonly found in corn and wheat, transmitted to the milk of cows eating […]
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Pepsi spends $3 million a year so laws don’t come between corn syrup and your kids
Ironically-named food hero Marion Nestle just calculated that PepsiCo, which pumps enough high fructose corn syrup into the American public to turn out one Ghostbusters-size Stay Puft marshmallow man every 18 hours (I made that up; you get the idea), spends $3 million a year lobbying Congress. So what is Pepsi doing dumping all that […]
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Mexico City cuts crime by banning cars
Banning cars from Mexico City's Centro Historico and replacing streets with pedestrian pathways has increased nighttime foot traffic and decreased crime, say local business owners. Before the street got pedestrianized, neighborhood business owners used to strike "unspoken" agreements with the local thieves, says Rogelio Murrieta, who owns a printing business on Regina. "The thieves who […]
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‘Evotourism’ is the new ecotourism
Why journey all over the planet visiting natural wonders that are sure to disappear by the time your grandchildren are old enough to curse your profligate ways, when you can journey into the past, which has already happened so you at least you can't screw it up? That's the premise of Evotourism, a the hot […]
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In Madrid, a highway becomes a park
Smart cities all around the world are getting rid of highways, and in Madrid, not only has the city built a tunnel to drive a urban-fabric-ripping highway underground, it has turned the reclaimed land into a park. In the New York Times, critic Michael Kimmelman tours the park and reports that, while "still a work […]
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Small spiders have TERRIFYING GIANT BRAINS
Tiny spiders are tiny, but relative to their body size it turns out their brains are ginormous. In some cases, 80 percent of a spider's body cavity contains central nervous tissues. Other spiders store parts of their brains in their legs. In other words, step on a tiny spider, and most of the goo that […]
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Critical List: Oil spill off Nigerian coast contained; demand for solar could flatline
Shell managed to contain the large oil spill in the Atlantic Ocean before it reached the Nigerian coast. In America, thousands of times each year, sewer systems overflow and contaminate the country's waterways. But nope, fixing up aging infrastructure during an economic downturn is a terrible idea, according to House Republicans. Not only are solar […]
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Driving has lost its cool for young Americans
I’d rather be texting.Amidst all the hand-wringing over distracted driving, a critical point is getting lost. The problem isn’t the texting — it’s the driving. Clive Thompson made this argument in Wired last year: When we worry about driving and texting, we assume that the most important thing the person is doing is piloting the […]
