Donate Newsletters

Collection: Weekend Reading

Weekend Reading 5/30/14

by

Eric

For those following the raging debate over coal and oil train safety, I high recommend Walter Bogdanich’s Pulitzer Prize-winning NYT series, “Death on the Tracks.” It’s a decade old now, but the findings are damning and they shine a light on an industry that can be hostile to its workers, careless of public safety, and arrogant in its  near-immunity to regulation.

Alan

In Victoria, some barn swallows have figured out how to use motion sensors to get to and from their nests.

Serena

[Completely consumed this week by the Santa Barbara shooting and fallout.] I sat at my kitchen table this past Tuesday morning, tearing up before work as I watched the utterly heartbreaking video of Richard Martinez, father to one of the Santa Barbara shooting victims, beg of the audience, “Why did Chris die? Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the N.R.A. They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to live? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say, ‘Stop this madness; we don’t have to live like this’?”

Martinez later added, “I don’t care about your sympathy. I don’t give a shit that you feel sorry for me. Get to work and do something. I’ll tell the president the same thing if he calls me. Getting a call from a politician doesn’t impress me.” Wow: exactly. And his compassion for the father of the shooter was equally stunning. Read more in the above-linked article.

Read more

Weekend Reading 5/23/14

by

Serena

To the girl who can never recall even her close friends’ respective birthdays (sorry, guys!), this is absolutely unfathomable: remembering, as an extreme sport.

The 9/11 Memorial Museum opened last week: here’s one unflinching reflection on the institution, from a man especially close to the event’s tragedy.

A Boston doctor treats lots of poor teenagers, many struggling with weight and nutrition problems. His prescription? Bicycles. And he even gets the city to pay for them.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has found herself a little tearful or outraged while getting ready in the morning listening to another NPR story on the VA scandal in not treating its patients to adequate, timely care. It is profoundly sad and offensive. Yet we live in a world of many profoundly sad and offensive events, about which we are supposed to be perpetually outraged, and so, reflects Slate‘s John Dickinson, “We have nothing left when something genuinely terrible is exposed.”

This is fascinating: Buzzfeed founder Jonah Peretti published a paper in a cultural studies journal about ten years before founding the list-obsessed outlet that essentially explained exactly why it works:

In brief, the paper argues that, going forward, capitalism will need to be constantly producing identities for people to adopt at an ever-increasing rate. And now Peretti’s at the helm of a firm that’s doing exactly that.

I absolutely love this. Maybe not scalable to all of the homeless need in our communities (or is it?), but absolutely stunning for the impact. Note: there are two videos, the second being a how-to video from a couple in Tacoma. Go Washington!

Alan

How Vancouver, BC, got some of the most expensive real estate in the world, even though its per-capita income is like Reno or Nashville’s: globalist 1 percenters hedging their investments, according to the New Yorker.

Read more

Weekend Reading 5/16/14

by

Clark

John Oliver shows us how the media should be handling debates between climate scientists and climate deniers:

A white girl remembers Billy Frank.

Jen

This long, personal, and wildly popular essay from Bike Portland’s Michael Andersen on the evolution of Portland’s bike culture shows just how compelling it can be when people who normally write about policy write from the heart.

As someone who just yesterday found herself rescuing (successfully!) a strawberry ice cream cone that landed in the dirt, I was glad to see my faith in the five-second rule confirmed yet again.

And these arresting images of what the human body looks like at the age of 100 have stayed with me all week.

Alan

Cascadian transportation policy’s top priority, like Sweden’s, should be zero traffic deaths. No one should die for moving around. No one. New York City is already emulating Sweden’s program, with dramatic results. The New York Times reports that “Others [in Sweden] appreciate the country’s zeal for traffic safety only in hindsight. In 1998, . . . a driver who had survived after crashing into a newly constructed barrier sent the transport administration a cake.”

Read more

Weekend Reading 5/9/14

by

Eric

Oh, Kinder Morgan. When you’re not busy blowing up gas pipelines, bribing ship captains to dump waste at sea, or spilling coal dust into the Mississippi then you’re probably scheming to build a huge tar sands pipeline to the Salish Sea. And while locals worry about oil spills, you say things like this:

Pipeline spills can have both positive and negative effects on local and regional economies, both in the short and long-term… Spill response and cleanup creates business and employment opportunities for affected communities, regions and cleanup service providers.

Joel Connelly explains.

On a related note, Cliff Mass breaks down the extreme hazards that the Northwest’s weather and marine environment poses for large-scale coal and oil plans. He highlights the particular risks of Puget Sound and the Columbia River bar.

Yet in a mind-bendingly stupid editorial, the Oregonian editorial board goes after Governor Kitzhaber for opposing Ambre Energy’s ill-conceived proposal to export 8 million tons of coal from two sites on the south side of the Columbia River. If you live in Oregon, please consider sending them a letter.

Serena

Another author crush of mine, Teju Cole, paints a brief, poignant, and stark picture of the crisis of the Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram.

Read more

Weekend Reading 5/2/14

by

Jennifer

First of all, I feel so much better about sharks after seeing this chart on the Earth’s deadliest animals.

This GIF on the amazing progress we’ve made in the search for potentially habitable planets makes me hope NASA can get the disabled Kepler telescope back in business.

And I have personally watched this video of people dancing their answers to questions about equal pay for women (thank you, Jimmy Fallon) more times than I care to admit.

Eric

A Canadian runner sets a new world record in the beer mile. As a former high school track runner, I have to admit that I am absolutely in awe of the fact that his last split was 63 seconds(!!!) after three-quarters of a mile and four beers.

Almost as important, Bill Moyers interviews finance industry leaders in the divestment movement.

Read more

Weekend Reading 4/25/14

by

Clark

Cats may be as smart as dogs, but they’re a lot less cooperative—which drives feline researchers crazy! Apparently, elephants, chimps, and even fish are easier to study than cats. (I’m sure that cat owners out there wouldn’t be surprised…)

And while we’re talking about animal intelligence, honey badgers sure are crafty little buggers.

How We Die: a great data visualization of US mortality trends. The cliff notes version: we’re dying later and living longer; AIDS really was a major health crisis; car crash deaths are down, but suicide and drug deaths are up; and longer lifespans mean a greater risk of Alzheimer’s. But my summary doesn’t do the original justice: you really should see the charts!

Read more

Weekend Reading 4/18/14

by

Alan

A better way to measure inequality: focus on the 1 percenters.

“It’s time to step up to the plate,” are the final words of this promising trailer for a documentary on people taking action against climate change.

RIP Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of the best opening line of a novel ever.

Clark

A tax week reminder: by some estimates, 45 percent of federal outlays go to the military, past and present. That figure includes current spending on the Department of Defense and veterans’ benefits, and also assumes that 80 percent of debt payments can be traced to military spending (which is debatable, but not crazy). It also strips out Social Security spending, since that’s mostly paid out of a separate account. Social Security often gets lumped in with other federal spending… which can lead to as much confusion as clarity when looking at federal spending priorities. Regardless of whether you buy into these particular calculations, it’s clear that the military remains a huge part of the federal budget.

Read more

Weekend Reading 4/11/14

by

Jennifer

If you haven’t already seen this Washington Post infographic, it’s brilliant. It’s nominally about the search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370. But the story it actually tells is just how mysterious and unknowable the deep ocean remains.

Plus, UW researchers have developed new software to show what a child will look like as he or she ages. Cool or creepy? You be the judge.

Because I am one of the 7 percent who would be affected by the city of Seattle’s proposed small lot legislation, I encourage other homeowners living on smaller lots to check out these perpsectives here, here, and here. I, incorrectly, thought new rules would only apply to teardowns and new construction, but the city is also proposing to limit heights of existing homes on small lots. How a small number of cranky neighbors managed to prevent many more middle-class homeowners (potentially) from expanding their homes to accommodate growing families or aging parents is, frankly, completely baffling. As are DPD’s supporting documents, which make it nearly impossible for an average homeowner to figure out how they might apply.

Finally, here is a sampling of the incomparable photographs made by Anja Niedringhaus, the AP photographer and my friend killed in Afghanistan last week. Anja went to war zone after war zone because she believed that people needed to see what happened there, and no one captured that reality in the same way. She will be missed, terribly.

Alan

Rebecca Solnit has again produced an essay of bracing moral clarity. It’s called, “Call Climate Change What It Is: Violence.”

Exxon says:

We are confident that none of our hydrocarbon reserves are now or will become ‘stranded’. We believe producing these assets is essential to meeting growing energy demand worldwide.

Stranded assets that mean carbon assets—coal, oil, gas still underground—would become worthless if we decided they could not be extracted and burned in the near future. Because scientists say that we need to leave most of the world’s known carbon reserves in the ground….

Exxon has decided to bet that we can’t make the corporation keep its reserves in the ground, and the company is reassuring its investors that it will continue to profit off the rapid, violent and intentional destruction of the Earth.

Almost nothing is better than Solnit. But this is.

Read more

Weekend Reading 4/4/14

by

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.

Read more

+ More
×