Grist List
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Potato chip advertising is a perfect metaphor for income inequality, says science
A study just published in Gastronomica proves that appealing to our tribal identifications is hardly the sole domain of liquor and cigarettes. The authors use "the language of food to examine the representation of socioeconomic class identity in contemporary America by comparing the advertising language on expensive bags of potato chips with that on inexpensive […]
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Eating rice raises risk of arsenic exposure
Sometimes it just feels like we should give up eating, particularly if "we" are "pregnant women." A new study links rice consumption with higher levels of arsenic in the bloodstream, which can increase the risks of infant mortality and low birth weight. Most arsenic exposure comes from water, and the study found that 10 percent […]
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Clean energy investment tops $1 trillion
Somewhere, sometime in the past few weeks, the trilionth dollar to be invested in clean energy made its way into the budget of some co-generation plant, wind farm, solar company, or electric vehicle innovator. To be more specific, this is the trillionth dollar to be invested since Bloomberg New Energy Finance started counting in 2004. […]
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Jon Huntsman, how could you?
Dear Jon Huntsman, You were the only Republican candidate to stand up for a truth that will have an immeasurable impact on every generation of humans from now until the earth crashes into the sun and the universe forgets what love even was. When you cravenly reversed yourself on climate change, you broke my heart. […]
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Critical List: Huntsman goes right on climate change; the Mob goes green
Among Republican presidential candidates, denouncing climate science is like a bug. They all have it now. Even Jon Huntsman. Ban Ki-Moon is not particularly hopeful about the prospects of success at Durban. Justifiably. Britain is losing three-quarters of its butterfly species. Katharine Hayhoe is a climatologist and evangelical Christian, which means she spends a lot […]
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Hungary destroys 1,000 acres of Monsanto maize
Genetically modified seeds are banned in Hungary. So when government regulators found that 1,000 acres of maize had been planted with genetically modified seeds, they just plowed the suckers under. You stick it to the Monsanto, Hungary! Leaving aside the fact that this sort of sweep-the-checkers-off-the-board move is always kind of badass, this is also […]
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Bad guys bicker over Gulf oil spill
Apparently today is the day we talk about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? The White House released its year-in-the-making report about what needs to be done for cleanup ("more better things"), and now it looks like BP is still trying to palm off blame. They're claiming that Halliburton, which produced the cement used to […]
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Prius is the only survivor of $3 million car crash
A car crash in Japan that's being hailed as the most expensive ever, even though it totally wasn't, totaled eight Ferraris, a Lamborghini, and three Mercedes…es. (Ugh, I just looked it up and Mercedes looks like a fifth-declension noun with the nominative plural "Mercedes," so I can't even make up a cutesy Latinate plural, WHATEVER […]
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White House goals for cleaning the Gulf: Fix stuff
After the BP Deepwater Horizon spill, the Obama administration decided to dig deep into the environmental problems that faced the Gulf Coast and, in the way of governments everywhere, set up a task force to study the issues. This week, that task force released its report. According to the report’s introduction, the president's directive to […]
