When’s Obama gonna do something?

I must confess that my initial infatuation with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Mount Olympus) is wearing off.

Yes, he's got the charisma, the personal history, the zeitgeist on his side ... but he hasn't done anything, and shows no signs of planning to do anything, of any daring or significance. Someone in his position, with that much media attention, that much popular support, has a responsibility to use that power to make something happen -- something other than political advancement. The jury's still out, but the clock is ticking, to mix metaphors.

Obama's on the cover of two national magazines this week: Time (along with an excerpt from his new book and a photo spread) and Harpers (not online). Though the pieces are written from decidedly different perspectives, they both tell the same basic story: look how amazing this guy is ... just imagine when he does something!

Want to see something that captures my mixed feelings? Watch this video:

The history of tree-hugging, and the future of name-calling

Anyone who ever sympathized with Eric Cartman‘s declaration, “I hate hippies! … I want to kick ’em in the nuts”...

It’s time for a real ‘food vs. fuel’ debate

Can U.S. farmers keep filling the nation’s bellies as they scramble to fuel its cars? Given its evident gravity, the...

Umbra on reducing consumption

Dear Umbra, If recycling requires energy to turn one’s discarded waste into usable products, and “climate solutions take precedence over...

Mucho interesting

Yesterday I attended a luncheon put on by Seattle's excellent Plymouth Housing Group, an innovative non-profit working to end homelessness in the city. Malcolm Gladwell -- staff writer at The New Yorker, author of Tipping Point and Blink, blogger, and public intellectual extraordinaire -- was the keynote speaker. (He was invited in large part thanks to his influential piece in the New Yorker arguing that problems like homelessness are "easier to solve than to manage.")

Opinions about Gladwell are mixed and deep-rooted. For my part, I think he's great. He basically lives the life I dream about: someone who takes obscure academic research and buried historical anecdotes and popularizes them for a broad audience. (And it could have been me in his shoes, dammit, if only I lived in NYC and were, uh, smarter. And more imaginative. And a better writer. Damn you Gladwell!)

Anyway, his talk was on social change. Stripped of the anecdotes, the basic thesis of the talk was that social change has three somewhat unexpected features:

Property-rights initiatives threaten environmental protections in four Western states

Field of dreams or field of nightmares? It depends who you ask. Photos: iStockphoto When you hear the phrase “a...

Great cover story on global warming

I commend you all to this month's cover story in Mother Jones: "The Thirteenth Tipping Point," by Julia Whitty. It's written in that Malcolm-Gladwell-lite style that's so popular these days, filled with fascinating tidbits drawn from academic research you wouldn't normally hear about. It doesn't quite make its central point, but that's all right -- it's more evocative than argumentative anyway, and it's a smashing read.

Most interesting to me was something I hadn't heard of -- an effort by John Schellnhuber, research director at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, to identify the earth's 12 most vulnerable places, those most likely to flip over a tipping point into cascading and devastating changes. They are:

David Quammen chats about evolution, science, religion, and his new book

Though we do not, alas, live in the kind of world where science writers become celebrities, David Quammen has developed...

Billie Karel, advocate for pesticide alternatives, answers Grist’s questions

Billie Karel, Pesticide Education Project (PESTed). What work do you do? I am program coordinator at the Pesticide Education Project...