Jennifer

The adaptation of Michael Lewis’ new book Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt in the New York Times Magazine this week bodes well for the entire book. Here’s just one observation, about a Canadian’s first experience working on Wall Street: “Everything was to excess…. I met more offensive people in a year than I had in my whole life.”

To put that in perspective, scroll through these pictures from photographer James Mollison of where children sleep around the world.

And, sometimes, I run across something that is so honest, smart, and well written that you wish you were friends with the person who wrote it. This essay is one of them.

Eric

Everyone with children should be required to read Hanna Rosin’s latest at The Atlantic: the overprotected kid. I wanted to underline and highlight almost every sentence in her article, as she elaborates on the ways that well-meaning modern parenting conventions can systematically stunt the natural development of kids, making them less resilient, less self-reliant, less socially adapted, and (I strongly suspect) less happy human beings.

In this short video, Australian coal mining executives are leading the way with a frank acknowledgement of their industry’s relationship to climate change. If only American and Canadian fossil fuel industry leaders would speak as forthrightly. I highly recommend watching it.

Speaking of fossil fuels, Northwest songwriter Peter DuBois adds another tune to the growingcollection of music opposing fossil fuel exports.

I also recommend reading Roger Annis on the appalling news that the mayor of Lac Mégantic, Quebec—the site of the deadly oil train explosion last summer—is now shilling for oil trains to resume traveling through the town.

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    Thanks to David L. Allen for supporting a sustainable Northwest.

  • And on the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez spill, Art Sterritt, and Rick Steiner had what I think may be the clearest and most concise case statement about the risk of oil spills in British Columbia if the industry successfully builds new pipelines.

    I’ve come to love the corny and wonky weekly videos from Dupre+Scott. In this one, they demonstrate that the new Seattle development explosion is, in many ways, just a return to the way things were in the 1950s and 1960s: less parking and smaller square footage. Fascinating, I thought.

    I have an inordinate fondness for the empty wild country of eastern Oregon, and I loved reading Daniel Jack Chasan on archeological finds in the Summer Lake region that give us hints about the people who lived in the Northwest more than 14,000 years ago.

    Serena

    Campaign finance laws got you down? Check out Public Citizen‘s photo stream of people protesting the McCutcheon decision nationwide this week. This one is probably my favorite:

    This Jezebel piece on the #CancelColbert fiasco over the weekend very incisively addressed the important of context and the art of satire, particularly when talking about race. You can watch the clip in that article, then see Colbert’s response to the uproar in the first ten minutes of his show from Monday—and please watch the whole thing: again, context, but also, art. Props to Ja-mes!

    A father—and specifically, an African-American attorney and professor of criminal justice law—reflects on his son’s experience of racism under Stop and Frisk in New York:

    When I heard that my 21-year-old son, a student at Harvard, had been stopped by New York City police on more than one occasion during the brief summer he spent as a Wall Street intern, I was angry. On one occasion, while wearing his best business suit, he was forced to lie face-down on a filthy sidewalk because—well, let’s be honest about it, because of the color of his skin.

    A great two-part series (one and two) on the big business of food stamps, the reluctance of the government to share key data on their agreements with vendors, and the irony of many full-time grocery workers—especially at places like Walmart—having to buy their own staples with food stamps:

    When Stephanie Ballam finishes her shift at a Walmart Supercenter near Columbus, Ohio, she sometimes picks up a few groceries—items she might have put on the shelves herself hours before: a box of oatmeal, a can or two of mini ravioli.

    At the checkout, first she swipes her Walmart employee card to get her store discount. Then, because she doesn’t earn enough money at her job to make ends meet, she will often pay for the groceries with food stamps, using her Electronic Benefit Transfer card. Eventually, that money will show up in Walmart’s annual earnings report as sales.

    …[T]he same company that brings in the most food stamp dollars in revenue—an estimated $13 billion last year—also likely has the most employees using food stamps.

    On a final, happier note, check out this gorgeous photo essay from Jason Miner of 1000 Friends of Oregon: The Shared State.