Mongo and Found uncover the hidden pleasures of reduce-reuse-recycle

Flo and Channing, a pair of occasionally employed, twentysomething hipsters in lower Manhattan, live well. At least, they eat well. They favor sushi and vegetarian pizza and soy milk and artisan bread, and they also like to indulge in custard pastries, chocolate-covered strawberries, chocolate croissants, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. They're especially fond of waffles. And they eat it all for free. All they have to do is spend a few hours each night lurking outside restaurants, rescuing their favorite menu items from the trash. "Sometimes, people see what we're doing and say, eee-yew, how gross," says Flo. "Other times they offer to buy us a meal. We just say, no thanks, we have plenty of food here."

Bush’s pick to head the USDA is a big ethanol booster

At a White House ceremony last week announcing the nomination of Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns (R) to succeed Ann Veneman...

Lead Astray

Lead contamination in municipal water systems systematically underreported If you live in the U.S., the water you drink may contain...

Little Red Tibet

Tibet suffers melting glaciers and nuclear dumpage As if living under the heel of a repressive communist neighbor wasn’t bad...

Enfant, Terrible

Most-polluted places in California see highest infant mortality rates The results of a San Francisco Chronicle analysis of infant morality...

Joe Sherman’s Gasp! explores the history of air and finds it’s anything but empty

Oxygen may not strike you as a likely protagonist for a book. It's invisible, it's all around you, it's something you inhale 19,000 times a day and take utterly for granted. But Joe Sherman's Gasp! The Swift and Terrible Beauty of Air is a masterfully inventive biography of air, weaving together geology and history, myth and science, to deepen our understanding and appreciation of life's most precious gas.

Bush judicial nominees could shake the foundations of environmental law

William G. Myers III is George W. Bush’s choice for a lifetime position on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of...

Where the environmental movement can and should go from here

Adam Werbach presented this speech at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco on Dec. 8, 2004. Further discussion of the...

Plan B tries again

Plan B, the emergency contraceptive rejected for over-the-counter sales by the FDA in May, has reapplied after limiting sales to those 16 years of age and older.

Concern about sales of the contraceptive to young teens was the FDA's putative reason for rejecting Plan B, despite the overwhelming support for the medicine from FDA's scientific panel. Many observers believe that the FDA's director bowed to pressure from the anti-abortion movement and its allies in the Bush administration.

But Plan B is likely to slash the number of abortions. As the PI article reports:

James Trussell, director of Princeton University's Office of Population Research . . . has concluded that easy access to emergency contraception could cut by half the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions among U.S. women, ages 15 to 44.