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With Habitat for Humanity

In a recent collaboration with U2 on "The Saints Are Coming," Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day sang about a house in New Orleans. But he spent this weekend hammering soffit onto one, as a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. Armstrong brought along some friends and his fam to help with the project as well, […]

Virginia Tech

What can you say about this? Words are inadequate. You can only ache for the victims and their families, and redouble your kindness toward those around you. You just never know what’s going to happen.

Will campaign coverage drown out or draw out competing stories?

Can you believe we're already several galloping laps into horse race reporting on the 2008 presidential campaign? Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi describes this phenomenon more eloquently than I can (and with more profanity than I would probably dare) here. For anyone already snorting in disgust and tuning out the constant stream of chatter about who's raised more money, who's realigning their image this way or that (with what hunting photo-op or change of hairdo), and who's notched up a point and a half in Iowa polls, Taibbi is spot on:

The election, after all, is nearly a full Martian year away, with a Super Bowl and two World Series still to play out in between -- which means that the "urgency" of breaking campaign news is now and will remain for at least a year an almost 100% media concoction.

Is the information age killing off honeybees?

For a while now, scientist have been scratching their heads over the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, a phenomenon in which bees away from their hives never return after going out to collect pollen.

But according to a recent report filed by The Independent, scientists are now considering the possibility that the cause of CCD may be electromagnetic interference from mobile phone networks. From the article:

Can you hear me now that I’m standing in the field with no yield?

Don't know if this story will turn out to be a tempest in a teapot or kick like typhoon in a tender spot, but the implications if the latter are profound.

 

For you youngsters, Jack Benny's stage persona was as a miser; he used to do a bit where he would get held up and the robber would say, "Your money or your life!" Then there'd be this pause. "Well?!"

And Jack would reply "I'm thinking ..."

Quit with the coal boosting already

Down in Salt Lake City, the National Governors Association is holding a three-day Energy Summit. Tired of federal slacking, the NGA has for the first time in its history drawn up a specific list of priorities for Congress to consider this session. Here’s what they said: At the top of the list – in fact, […]

The Talmud and global warming

As global warming deniers move from "it's not happening" to "it's not human-caused" to "but it's good for you" to "it's too expensive to fix," I'm reminded of a tale from the Talmud.

It seems a family was accused of returning a clay pot they had borrowed cracked beyond repair.

The accused family had three defenses:

1. They never borrowed the pot.
2. The pot already had a crack in it when received.
3. They returned the pot completely unharmed.

Perhaps it is unfair to assume this story is about global-warming deniers just because it centers on a cracked pot.

The basic approach of the Bright Lines project

((brightlines_include))

After a decade of brutal political trench warfare, the surreal debate in the U.S. on the reality of climate change is over. A Democratic Congress looking to put climate in play in 2008, serious buy-in for federal regulation from a band of corporate heavyweights, and a rash of climate conversions from the likes of Pat Robertson and Frank Luntz (author of the infamous strategy memo advising Bush administration operatives how to muddle the climate change debate) demonstrate that a significant and probably permanent shift in climate change political gravity has taken place within the last year.

U.S. environmentalists have a very brief opportunity to reshape our climate agenda in order to meet the demands and seize the opportunities of new circumstances, and the stakes could not be higher. It is likely that the actions of U.S. environmentalists in the next two or three years –- more so than any other group of people on the planet -– will determine whether a functional global response to abrupt climate change is advanced.

Maybe the Pentagon can persuade red-staters

The military -- which tends to insist on operating in a reality-based world, as a matter of self-preservation -- thinks global heating is a big threat.

A bit from the story:

Today, 11 retired senior generals issued a report drawing attention to the ability of climate change to act as a "threat multiplier" in unstable parts of the world. The Army's former chief of staff, Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, who is one of the authors, noted he had been "a little bit of a skeptic" when the study group began meeting in September. But after being briefed by top climate scientists and observing changes in his native New England, Sullivan said he is now convinced that global warming presents a grave challenge to the country's military preparedness.

"The trends are not good, and if I just sat around in my former life as a soldier, if I just waited around for someone to walk in and say, 'This is with a hundred percent certainty,' I'd be waiting forever," he said.

The Polar Excise

U.S. Interior edited document relating climate change to polar-bear fate Remember when U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced that the agency would propose listing polar bears under the Endangered Species Act? And he said that, while the bears’ home was indeed melting, “that whole aspect of climate change is beyond the scope of the [ESA]”? […]