Climate Culture

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  • What’s in your status symbol?

    That's right. I actually saw a Hummer pulling a trailer with stuff in it yesterday. Although stunned, I recovered in time to get a shot of his trailer as he pulled away from the transfer station. Coincidentally, I was also pulling a trailer on my bike (also visible in the lower right hand corner). We smirked at one another as we passed. I think it's adorable how he painted is little red wagon to match his big red Hummer.

    Hummers are a joke in some circles and a huge badge of honor in others. Not long ago, while I was over in Kirkland, which is a wealthy suburb of Seattle, I counted eight or so Hummers in the span of half an hour. In Seattle, just on the other side of Lake Washington, you could easily count that many Priuses in that time frame.

    Biodiversivist Culture

  • Condi in a Tesla

    I give you Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, riding in a Tesla electric car: More gape-worthy Tesla pics here. More about Rice here. (thanks LL!)

    David Roberts Culture

  • Friday music blogging: Mark Ronson

    Two of the best pop albums of the last year are Lily Allen‘s Alright, Still and Amy Winehouse‘s Back to Black. What do they have in common (besides cute, clever female singer-songwriters, that is)? Producer Mark Ronson. The guy’s a mad pop genius. As it happens, Ronson puts out albums of his own. The latest […]

    David Roberts Culture

  • More Gore

    Here’s Al Gore on David Letterman, Thursday night. Bizarrely substantive! Part one: Part two:

    David Roberts Culture

  • Funny

    Al Gore was on The Daily Show on Thursday. I thought he did quite well — and the crowd was nuts for him. Here’s part one: And here’s part two:

    David Roberts Culture

  • A South American take on Gore’s film

    Jessica Weisberg is an American journalist currently based in South America. The following is her take on the peculiar cultural dominance of An Inconvenient Truth. —– I liked Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Really, I did. But when I count off my reasons — the special effects, the wet-your-pants astonishment, the drama — I find […]

    Katharine Wroth Culture

  • From Singin’ to Smokin’

    Quit playing games (with his dolphins) Show him the meaning of being a U.N. special ambassador: former boy-bander Nick Carter will soon begin work on a campaign to save wild dolphins. This from a guy who couldn’t even save the Backstreet Boys — but wait’ll you hear his latest project, The Charismatic Megafauna. Photos: iStockphoto […]

    Sarah K. Burkhalter & Sarah van Schagen Culture

  • The media continues to prove his new book right

    As I mentioned the other day, there’s a certain irony to the fact that Al Gore is out touring behind a book about the decline of reasoned public dialogue, since his emergence on the public scene inevitably elicits paroxysms of the shallowest, bitchiest, most vacuous commentary of which our punditariat is capable — and that’s […]

    David Roberts Culture

  • My bike and kids

    The Bike-To-Work-Week gods had plans for me ... even though I don't actually work.

    On Mother's Day, May 13, a wheel fell off my stroller.

    Biking with a kid trailer. Photo: iStockphoto

    Walking is my main mode of transportation, and I love it. Even with its distance limitations, pushing a stroller felt like a safe alternative to driving and less annoying than taking the bus.

    My daughters, 18 months and 3, are too old for us to justify buying another stroller and too young to walk the two-mile roundtrip to downtown, the playground, or the library.

    Since I gave up driving almost a year ago, I've ignored the advice of cycling advocates, both on the web and in real life, because I thought walking served my family just fine.

    Now, without a stroller, it was time to buy a bike. And a trailer that hooks onto the back. And helmets. And test drive it to the downtown vegetarian coffee shop for a breakfast sandwich.

    And finally this week, I strapped in the girls for a ride to the playground -- and they loved it. Why, I think, did I wait so long?

    Christine Gardner Culture

  • LinkedIn, a social network for professionals, is introduced today

    From Mashable.com:

    Nonprofit organizations will be able to use LinkedIn as a platform for involving the LinkedIn community with their causes, leveraging the 11 million users that are present within the online community. Provided with this new feature are free badges to be placed on profiles, and registered nonprofits free job listings in order to find new members to join their teams. British rockstar James Blunt is already using LinkedIn to raise over $23,000 for Doctors Without Borders. Other featured LinkedIn for Good organizations include American Red Cross, the World Wildlife Fund and Unitis and Kiva, microfiance organizations.

    The full story is here.

    Daniel Bachhuber Culture