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As we’ve mentioned before, the Food and Drug Administration has spent the better part of a year stalling on allowing over-the-counter access to Plan B, a medication that reduces the chances of pregnancy if taken within 72 hours after intercourse. (We’ve written on the importance of wider access here.) This Monday, on the eve before his Senate confirmation hearings to become the new head of the FDA, Dr. Andrew von...

A quick vacation to Washington’s Olympic Peninsula reminded me of two things.  First—dang, those trees are huge!  And second—dang, there’s still a lot of clearcut coastal forestland that’s still just basically sitting there:  no trees, just scrub and piles of decaying stumps. Which got me to thinking:  how much CO2 could the clearcut land store if returned to its full rainforest glory?  Enough to take a serious bite out of...

I recently got a call from a casting director at Fox TV’s reality show Trading Spouses. (It’s not as salacious as it sounds!) Fox saw us during our first 15 minutes of fame (actually, 2.5 minutes, on CNN) and wants us on their network, too. We’ve never seen this program before, but we’re told it involves two moms from wildly different families swapping places for a week, while America gawks...

This month’s all-photograph issue of Price Tags, Gordon Price’s urban design newsletter, takes a look at the Fourth Vancouver Sculpture Biennale. The Biennale incorporates an outdoor gallery space with a way for its visitors to view Vancouver, BC’s community and surroundings in a new light. The Biennale features the work of renowned sculptors from eleven countries. Each of the 22 pieces is strategically placed along a waterfront, a walkway, in...

Can this really be true? StatCan is reporting that residents British Columbia slashed their driving last year—and by quite a lot. Total passenger miles in the province fell rom 56 billion passenger miles in 2004, to 51 billion in 2005. Meanwhile, driving in Canada overall edged upwards. Translink, the lower mainland’s transit authority, attributed the fall to rising gas prices and rising transit usage. According to a spokesperson: “If they...

A number of major papers are reporting on a new study linking the increase in forest fires to climate change. (The Sacramento Bee actually broke this story yesterday.) The Los Angeles Times offers the best summary of the findings. This comes on the heels of another finding in the seemingly endless series of numbingly grim global-warming reports: Climate change is making our oceans more acidic, which the Washington Post called...

Fascinating report on diminishing social ties in the US. Americans now report having only 2 close friends, on average, and 1 in 4 say they have no one to discuss important matters with. [The study] found that men and women of every race, age and education level reported fewer intimate friends than the same survey turned up in 1985. Their remaining confidants were more likely to be members of their...

“There are two key ways to reduce abortion—by making it less necessary or by making it less available,” as Jessica Arons and Shira Saperstein write for the Center for American Progress. The former means preventing unwanted pregnancies, by reducing sexual abuse, domestic violence and rape; by enabling couples to make better choices through, for example, comprehensive sexuality education in schools (and, above all, better educational and economic opportunities in general);...

The Olympianreported yesterday that a local grocer with a pharmacy is refusing to stock the emergency contraceptive Plan B. He told the paper: “. . . people have to choose when they believe life begins. There are questions about this drug on that issue.” Um, actually, there aren’t. Plan B prevents about five times as many abortions as it causes, even if you assume human life begins at conception. And...

That’s the Vancouver Sun headline from reporter Chad Skelton’s front-page story on Cascadia Scorecard 2006, Sightline’s third annual progress report on the Northwest. The Seattle P-I also covered the book, in the paper’s Health & Fitness section, as did the Surrey Leader in BC; the Daily Journal of Commerce in Portland and the DJC in Seattle (both require subscriptions to access content); Oregon’s KTVZ; and a slew of radio stations....