Latest Articles

Food Studies: reinventing the cheese wheel

Is there a science to how cheese tastes, and if so, can it be used to help artisanal food-producers?

Bombs away: Yarn bombers get out-heisted in Boulder

Clever yarn bombers give Boulder's bike-share program some fuzzy PR-love by wrapping their drab kiosks in colorful hand-knit cozies. But the prank's on them when anonymous thread thieves nick the knitting one day before they're set to come off.

'The Quest' questioned

A read of Daniel Yergin's new book, The Quest, reveals holes in his arguments, mostly centered around his discussion of peak oil.

The myth of the free market

The oil, gas, and nuclear industries have enjoyed huge federal subsidies for a century, all of which have far outpaced investment in renewable energy.

I am the population problem

Population growth tends to get blamed on other people. But actually the population problem is all about me: white, middle-class, American me.

Who’s behind the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance and why it matters

In response to Food Inc., Michael Pollan, and the growing interest Americans are showing in their food system, Big Ag has rolled out an expensive PR campaign designed as a "preemptive strike" against antibiotic and pesticide regulations.

Is my apple farmer shining me on? Ask Umbra on pesticides

A grower minimizes spraying fruit. Is that good enough? Umbra bites in.

Big Food exerts unhealthy influence on America's nutritionists

If their annual conference is any indication, the organization that defines nutrition in this country -- The American Dietetic Association -- works very closely with processed-food titans like Monsanto, Hershey's, Coca-Cola, and Cargill.

Fareed Zakaria, Daniel Yergin, and the elite disdain for clean energy deployment

In the New York Times Book Review, Fareed Zakaria has a review of Daniel Yergin's new book, "The Quest," that reads like a capsule summary of current elite conventional wisdom on energy.

Atlas error overstates Greenland's (still significant!) ice loss

Here's the good news: Greenland did not lose 15 percent of its ice cover in the last 10 years, as the Times [Usually] Comprehensive Atlas of the World said it did. This is, in fact, really good news, since this amount of melting would raise sea levels three to five feet. The publisher, HarperCollins subsidiary Collins Geo, has retracted the 15 percent figure but says it's "reviewing" the map -- but in the meantime, a whole bunch of scientists went "whoa whoa whoa there."