May 2009

Witness the lame-duck period for mammals

More apocalyptic news from the Earth watch (sorry!). While we had you looking up at the sky, fretting about global warming, equally terrible things were happening around your feet. In the current issue of The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert offers an…

Thank the heavens for the pace of innovation. Just yesterday I was lamenting the beautiful places and vast lands that will be scraped barren to make room for vast arrays of solar panels, and already today someone has a better idea:
It sounds like…

Checking in on Tribune after latest layoffs

The Chicago Tribune’s motto used to be “World’s Greatest Newspaper.” The Tribune’s new motto is, “It’s a Whole New Day.” It sure is. Unlike the old motto, the new motto fits. It’s a whole new day without copy editors, a whole new day in which…

Two groups oppose increasing U.S. ethanol blend rate
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Blending more than 10 percent ethanol into U.S. gasoline will result in more air pollution and more damage to engines, said an environmental group and a boating industry…

There is a place in Central California that calls itself the Middle Kingdom. It features unscarred mountains, pristine beaches, green and golden hills–some of the best terrain California can conjure. When William Randolph Hearst was looking for a…

[kaltura-widget wid=”40sniyz9v4″ width=”260″ height=”252″ style=”margin-left: 6px; margin-right: 6px;” addpermission=”2″ editpermission=”2″ align=”right” /]Proposed antonyms for “environmentalist” have flown in on the four winds, and it seems wise to…

Is Obama changing anti-intellectualism in America?

I thought I’d noticed a difference lately: that one could use a French phrase without meeting rolled eyes, mention a philosopher without killing a conversation, have a dinner-table chat that focused on something other than American Idol. Is Obama’s…

It’s not like Chicago has a lot of natural environment to destroy, but if it did, this would be the way to go about it: a new 75,000 square-foot grocery store with no less than 42 check-out lanes and 400 gridlock inducing parking spaces. Imagine the…