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License Plates Never Looked So Good

Inmates exposed to toxins in e-waste recycling program, says report A federal recycling program that uses cheap prison labor to recycle computers and other electronics exposes inmates to unsafe conditions, says a report released by activist and environmental groups last week. Prisoners paid from 23 cents to $1.15 an hour by government-owned Federal Prison Industries, […]

Go for Choke

Deliberate forest fires cause choking haze in Southeast Asia Southeast Asia has been suffering through hellish smog over the last few weeks thanks to Indonesian farmers and owners of timber and palm-oil plantations who have set massive fires to clear land. Slash-and-burn practices are illegal in Indonesia, but nonetheless take place every year and rarely […]

A short hike reveals various lizard, insect species

I was poking around in an empty lot today about a mile from downtown when I heard a clicking sound. I looked up and saw this owl staring at me. It was snapping its beak and may have been defending a nest. I took the picture and bailed before the confrontation escalated.

I also took a short hike today with my wife and two daughters. Dusk is the best time to hike because the nocturnal wildlife is waking up, and for a brief period, you will see twice as much traffic.

Kids love bugs. If you have kids, bookmark this site. Note the comments on the photo of the Japanese beetles while you are there. My oldest daughter (now a young woman at the college we were visiting for parents' day) was the hand model for the photos of the tarantula, mantis, and giant black-faced spider shown below:

A weekend at Bioneers

This weekend the eco/new-agey/NoCal faithful gathered in Marin for the annual Bioneers conference. I've gone several times in the past, and it's always an interesting experience, and not for the obvious reasons ...

No, seriously

I spend a lot of time contemplating priorities; it's the economist in me, I suppose. If I had my way, a campaign to end natural-resource subsidies would be near the top of the list for the environmental movement: it's a win-win-win situation for the environment, taxpayers, and innovation. The problem is that it's an opposition campaign; it's opposed to subsidies instead of "for" something. In addition, subsidies are not something people get very excited about (although they should).

A new essay

What follows is a new essay by Bill McKibben, addressing -- in the context of reviewing five new books -- just how close we are to ecological catastrophe, and what reasons there are for hope.

The essay will appear in the Nov. 16 edition of the New York Review of Books. The NYRB editors gave Tom Engelhardt's excellent TomDispatch permission to publish it in advance; he in turn gave me permission to run it here. Thanks to Tom and to the NYRB editors.

Don't miss this one.

Who’s doing what

It's official: Obama is thinking about running. Of course the knock against him -- the only one that will stick, I imagine, but a big one -- is his lack of experience. For my part, I tend to think that character and circumstance define a presidency. Presidents are out of their depth the minute they walk into the office. No one is ever prepared to become the world's most powerful human being. It's how they react, who they hire, what kind of people they are, and above all, what happens in the world around them that ultimately matters.

A recipe for baked French toast

One of the events I most look forward to every autumn is my friend Ken's Post-Vermont Brunch. He does not use the phrase "Post-Vermont" dismissively, as in "Vermont is so last season! Sugar Maples have totally jumped the shark!" No. What he means is, he has now come back from his annual trip to Vermont, and returns triumphant, bearing gifts.

He brings home local, seasonal Vermont products: bread from a small bakery, fresh-picked apples, locally-smoked bacon, and maple syrup. He beams his brunch beacon into the midnight sky, and a fuzzy image of Mrs. Butterworth hovers against the racing moonlit clouds, alerting his friends to assemble. (Actually he sends us emails.) We converge upon Ken's home at the appointed date and time and the breakfast-type merriment begins.

You listen

A Q&A with Tom Friedman on the energy crisis and his new movie Big Oil.

The one does not get the other

The mainstream media has a bead on the blogosphere. They've got their story.

"The blogs" is now short-hand for "conspiricists, wackos, and (worst of all) partisans." If a nightly news producer needs something slightly outre said, something outside the orbit of polite political dialogue, "the blogs" are happy to say it for them. There are, after all, a lot of blog posts. They're bound to say anything.

This makes the media lazy. Exhibit A: CBS Nightly News did a story on the widespread belief that Bush & Rove are manipulating gas prices in advance of the mid-term elections. We're told the blogs are fairly abuzz with suspicion.

For this, they mustered two blog screenshots: