holidays
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The world’s first solar menorah
Chanukah is all about fuel efficiency, so it seems appropriate that the town of Woodstock, N.Y., now has a solar-powered menorah. The menorah, one of the big electrical kinds that progressive towns put up next to their Christmas trees in order to be inclusive, has always spent the holiday season standing around unlit, because there's […]
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Here’s your holiday reading!
It is getting so close to that magical week between Christmas and New Year's where offices are either closed or abandoned by the vast majority of employees, and no work gets done. Whether you plan to be snuggled on a couch by an open fire or logging truncated days of semi-productivity in a half-empty office, […]
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The best sustainable Christmas tree ever
Book lovers can sidestep the eternal question of farmed versus PVC (they both suck) and opt for a holiday display that's a monument to reading … or bibliophilia, anyway, since trying to actually read any of the books in this display would be a holiday Jenga nightmare. You don't even have to celebrate Christmas to […]
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My holiday wish? Ixnay on the iPod
The author’s beloved crap.Photo: Thomas HaydenCross-posted from Last Word on Nothing. Black Friday is behind us, and Cyber Monday too. But those are just start dates: The pressure to buy, buy, buy isn’t going to let up for another month at least. And that has me thinking about one of my favorite gadgets — a […]
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Ask Umbra: Which Christmas tree is the greenest?
Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, Which is greener — real Christmas trees or fake? I know you answered this question in the past, but I wonder if there’s any new data? Ginger C. Littleton, Colo. All this tree needs is a little love.A. Dearest Ginger, Of the many wonderful and cherished traditions […]
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Eat leftovers, save the world
Photo: Patrick Gage KelleyAs if turkey pot pie and turkey a la king aren’t enticing enough on their own, here’s another reason to eat leftovers this holiday season: About 1 million tons of CO2, 95 billion gallons of water, and $275 million will be thrown away this Thanksgiving in the form of leftover turkey. The USDA […]
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Pardoned turkeys go to Disneyland
Did you know that the turkey pardoned by the president then gets shipped off to Disneyland or Disney World to lead the Thanksgiving parade? (It seems like short notice — maybe they only pardon turkeys who can already twirl a baton.) I didn't, but that's because I haven't thought about turkey pardoning nearly as deeply […]
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Food Studies: Thanksgiving marked the seasons in a post-seasonal world
Food Studies features the voices of volunteer student bloggers from a variety of different food- and agriculture-related programs at universities around the world. You can explore the full series here. In A still from The Miracle of the Can.The Miracle of the Can, a 1956 promotional video for the American Can Company, a husky-voiced narrator […]
