Latest Articles

IKEA to design an entire neighborhood

Exciting news for those whose entire house is populated by IKEA furniture (we know you're out there): the Swedish furniture company is going to be building an entire neighborhood in London. We know. It'll be like living in the IKEA store! With a Swedish meatball shop on every corner and 24/7 access to lingonberry jam. […]

Livestock handouts in Africa: More complex than you’d think

Ankole-Watutsi cows are quickly being replaced in Rwanda by high-producing breeds. While the latter are an important strategy to combat hunger, the author worries about the loss of a cultural icon, not to mention biodiversity.It’s the giving time of year again, and if you feel like everyone in your life already has too much stuff, […]

Critical List: Jaczko reportedly a jerk; Gore flogs ‘sustainable capitalism’

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's commissioners are calling out their boss, Gregory Jaczko, for being a jerk. It's not exactly reassuring when the body that oversees nuclear power can't even get its own house in order. Other countries are taking way better care of endangered species than the United States is. Uh oh, there was a […]

Sorry Mrs. O, but jumping jacks aren’t enough

At a recent summit on childhood obesity, the first lady announced a shift in her well-known Let’s Move campaign — away from food reform and toward an increased focus on exercise. Instead of “forcing [children] to eat their vegetables,” she told her audience, “it’s getting them to go out there and have fun.” Yes, you […]

Highway to hell: More roads = more traffic

Photo: Cyril PlapiedCross-posted from Sightline Daily. Tuesday’s news carries a story that I’ve been expecting for a while: Connecting Washington, a task force convened by Washington’s governor, has called for $21 billion in new transportation investments over the next 10 years. I haven’t seen the recommendations themselves, only the news report. But it looks like […]

Watch a lizard play video games with uncanny precision

The theme of today is animals learning to coexist with human culture. Once this bearded dragon and the baby seal join forces to sit on a couch AND play video games, they will be an unstoppable force of lethargy at near-human scales! Who says you need a big cerebral cortex to be a couch potato?

E. coli can now make three kinds of fuel out of grass

Switchgrass, Dubya’s favorite biofuel feedstock, is back in the news. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute have engineered E. coli — the same bug that is spoiling the lives of raw cookie dough eaters everywhere — to transform switchgrass into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. The secret sauce of their solution […]

Shale gas ‘profits’ are based on accounting trickery

When you add up all the costs — monetary costs, not even environmental — of fracking for shale gas, it turns out the entire business is horribly unprofitable, reports energy analyst Chris Nelder at SmartPlanet. So why are companies engaged in an unprofitable business if it's also a fairly unneighborly way to pollute the local […]

Baby seal breaks into house to sleep on sofa

This baby fur seal snuck through a cat flap into a New Zealand home and snuggled up on the sofa. Awwww who's a good little home invader? Who? Who? Look, he's even got a pillow!  Okay, so the killjoy New Zealand Department of Conservation, which took the above photo, wants you to know that fur […]

How bikes can solve America’s most pressing problems

(click to embiggen) Air quality, obesity, commute times, strained family budgets, unnecessary deaths, runaway health care expenses — is there anything that a mass shift to bicycles transportation wouldn't solve? And it's not like this is a fantasy — Europe has demonstrated that not only is this possible, it's the future.