Articles by David Roberts

XONSUX update

For all of you worried sick about it, I'm happy to report that the State of Alaska has withdrawn its attempt to revoke the personal license plate of Annette Nelson-Wright: XONSUX. (Background on the case here.) To quote from the decision:

I find that the combination XONSUX is not used in the common vernacular to describe a sexual act or is vulgar in any way. I find that a person of reasonable sensibilities would not be offended by the license plate XONSUX, thought provoking yes, but not offensive.

The tide is turning, friends!

Learning to love Wal-Mart

We've done some good stuff on Wal-Mart's greening, but Marc Gunther's cover story in Fortune this week pulls it all together better than any single story I've seen, and advances it in some interesting ways.

Particularly in reference to our ongoing debate over morality, listen to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott:

To me, there can't be anything good about putting all these chemicals in the air. There can't be anything good about the smog you see in cities. There can't be anything good about putting chemicals in these rivers in Third World countries so that somebody can buy an item for less money in a developed country. Those things are just inherently wrong, whether you are an environmentalist or not.

He later says:

I had an intellectual interest when we started. I have a passion today.

What moved him from intellectual interest to passion? Morality.

I hadn't realized how big a role a Walton played in the story. This line sounds like the beginning of a joke:

Cascadia scorecard

Great excerpt from Sightline's Cascadia Scorecard on Worldchanging.

freecycle: TM, and R.I.P.

I've got a funny story for you. Here's a preview of the punchline: freecycle, once a clever, idealistic way to prevent material from entering landfills, has been made by its leadership into a clown show.

Some background.

Way back in May 2004, we did a (glowing) story on the new freecycling movement, whereby people give stuff away rather than throwing it away, via internet-based networks.

Roughly a year later, in May 2005, we did a follow-up story about freecycle's growing pains. Freecycle founder and executive director Deron Beal had accepted corporate sponsorship, attempted to secure a trademark on the freecycle name, and started exercising what some group moderators saw as dictatorial control over regional and local freecycle networks.

In Gristmill, there was a looong and heated debate over the article. Looong. And heated.

Shortly thereafter, Grist received a letter from the freecycle media relations people, urging us in unctuous tones to always capitalize the word "freecycle," never use such bastardized constructions as "freecycler" or "freecycling," and always use the trademark symbol when referring to the entity as a whole: The Freecycle Network^TM. The letter deserved, and received, mockery.

But tinpot tycoons can never get enough mockery. Which brings us to the present.