Latest Articles

Celebrities tackle another tragedy with Larry King’s ‘Disaster in the Gulf’ telethon

When catastrophe strikes — be it asteroids, aliens, or tornadoes — it’s always best to call in the heavyweights. Celebrities, that is. After all, Hollywood deals with epic disasters and explosions every day. After an initial drought, the devastating oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico has started to see more stars dip their toes […]

‘Lunch Line’ goes behind the counters

Lunch Line has been getting some good buzz — “required viewing!!!” screamed a review by author Tracie McMillan for the Atlantic Food Channel. Filmmakers Michael Graziano and Ernie Park were originally inspired by the Organic School Project, a now-defunct school garden project in Chicago, and had intended to focus the film on it. Once they […]

Presidents keep failing to get us off oil, but Americans aren’t helping

Who’s to blame for America’s 40-some years of stagnation on energy policy — cowardly politicians or a lazy public? Time‘s Bryan Walsh finds some fault with both in a new post. The case against politicians: Energy is one of those bipartisan issues that any politician can dust off — usually whenever gasoline prices have gotten […]

Public support for offshore drilling continues to plummet, despite GOP scare tactics

On the 64th day of the nation’s worst environmental disaster, Americans’ opposition to offshore oil drilling continues to grow. Center for American Progress’s Daniel J. Weiss has the details: A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll of adults taken on June 16, the day after President Obama’s Oval Office energy address, found an 18 percent swing towards […]

Culinary boot camp whips ‘lunch ladies’ into cooking shape

School cafeteria workers, a.k.a “lunch ladies,” rank somewhere below custodial staff in the school pecking order, yet they’re expected to perform miracles in the kitchen, turning pennies into full-blown meals. As part of my Cafeteria Confidential reporting, I recently went to Colorado to observe a “culinary boot camp” in which food-service directors and workers from around […]

California considers mandating energy storage

The California Assembly has passed legislation [PDF] that takes the first step to requiring that a percentage of electricity generated in the state be stored. Electricity, of course, is the ultimate perishable commodity. If the bill is approved by the California Senate and signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, it would apparently be the first time […]

Raising water productivity to increase food security

Drip irrigation is a simple and easy way to reduce water use.Photo courtesy of photofarmer via flickr With water shortages constraining food production growth, the world needs an effort to raise water productivity similar to the one that nearly tripled land productivity over the last half-century. Since it takes 1,000 tons of water to produce […]

Big Oil plays jobs card as it fights offshore-drilling moratorium

First we saw interview after interview with out-of-work fishermen and shrimpers.  Now we’re hearing from oil-rig workers.  Jobs are the trump card of political debate in America these days and, not surprisingly, that card is now being deftly played by critics of the Obama administration’s six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. […]

Big Oil Shakes Down US Taxpayers

Last week, oil company executives testified to Congress about energy policy in the wake of BP’s ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. A casual observer may have thought we were transported to an alternate universe. At one session, Representative Joe Barton of Texas apologized to BP for what he called a White House “shakedown” […]

Measuring neighborhood diversity and liveliness with ‘JaneScore’

Perhaps you know about Walk Score, the delightfully intuitive tool that calculates how walkable a neighborhood is and ranks it on a 100-point scale. (My Seattle neighborhood gets an 85; my suburban Chicago hometown gets a 31.) It was cooked up by Seattle developer Mike Mathieu and others to help quantify walkability and promote its […]