Latest Articles
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North by Northwest [VIDEO]
This Pacific Northwest is home to sea beans, clams called geoducks, and other silly seaside creatures -- all delicious with a dash of homemade salt.
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Ask Umbra at the tar-sands protests and on the radio
Ask Umbra joins the tar-sands protests and gets interviewed by a radio program called Mrs. Green's World.
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Friday music blogging: Adam Hurst and an elegy for hope 'n' change
Today's news of Obama's unforced, unnecessary, unforgivable capitulation on public health has me down in the dumps -- so here's a sad song.
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Separating fact from fiction on the Keystone XL
Both sides of the oil sands debate exaggerate their arguments. The oil sands are neither a climate catastrophe nor an energy security bonanza.
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By giving in to Big Oil, Obama seals his political fate
Obama is directing the EPA to withdraw standards that would have cut smog and asthma attacks, saved lives, and created jobs -- not a smart strategy for reelection.
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Corporate Polluters Need Not Worry, Obama's Doing their Dirty Work
Corporate polluters don't have to worry about dismantling the<a href=”http://www.epa.gov/air/caa/”> <em>Clean Air Act</em>,</a> it appears that President Obama is doing it for them. <p>As Americans prepare for the holiday weekend, President Obama has announced that he doesn’t plan on enforcing a law that would have prevented 12,000 deaths every year by protecting Americans from ozone […]
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How to assess hurricane damage using waffles
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has an idiosyncratic (and tasty) way of determining the damage caused by a hurricane: the Waffle House Index. The iconic Southern chain is so widespread -- and so stalwart -- that you can gauge a storm's severity based on whether the local Waffle Houses closed.
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Texas' official water plan defiantly includes no mention of climate change
The last time Texas created a long-term water plan, in 2007, it conspicuously and controversially left out any mention of the effects of climate change on the state's water resources. In the midst of a drought of biblical proportions, one line from that report in particular stands out:
When considering the uncertainties of population and water demand projections, the effect of climate change on the state’s water resources over the next 50 years is probably small enough that it is unnecessary to plan for it specifically.
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Obama blows smog in everyone's face
President Obama has yanked back the EPA's proposed new restrictions on ground-level ozone (i.e. smog). That's a huge win for Big Business, which had claimed it couldn't weather an economic downturn AND keep from suffocating people at the same time. But it's an equally huge loss for everyone else -- especially since the reason the EPA was revising the smog standards in the first place was because the allowable limit was well above safe levels, according to the agency's science advisors.
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Raising chickens is totally rock and roll
Jenifer Jourdanne has expensive tastes, expensive shoes, and "designer chickens." In an essay in xoJane, she talks about how her long-standing backyard coop didn't dent her rocker cred:
I will have you know I was a maverick. I was the girl in the early 90s at Viper Room where people would say things like “Slash, come over here, no really, this chick has pet chickens!" I mean I am sure they probably thought I used them in an adult act but sorry to bore you, they just walk around my herb gardens looking for snails.
