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Collection: Weekend Reading

Weekend Reading 5/17/13

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Alan

National Journal takes a look behind the scenes at what Republican leaders and activists are saying about climate change, and it includes some good news.

Anna

The best thing I read this week was this European history told the way we’re used to hearing about Native American history. It’s funny in that way that also makes you want to cry for shame.

The best thing I heard this week was Barbara Ehrenreich on Alternative Radio talking about how in this country we have a nasty practice of kicking people when they’re down. “Do we lend a helping hand to the poor? Barely. Let them eat op-eds about values and the virtues of hard work. There’s billions to fund the latest F-whatever fighter jet but scant little for people in distress. The pounding the needy are taking is particularly severe because much of the social safety net has been shredded. Can anyone say compassion and caring?”

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Weekend Reading 5/10/13

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Clark

Even after years of staring at it, I never realized until this week that the oh-so-familiar recycling symbol is in the shape of a Möbius strip.

Wow: Google’s Earth Engine now displays 28 years of satellite images, pretty much anywhere on the planet. Here’s an aerial time-lapse view of coal mining in Wyoming. Here’s the growth of Las Vegas. I won’t depress you with views of Amazon deforestation, but I’d encourage you to use the search tool to take a look at greater Seattle: the areas that were urbanized in 1984 didn’t change all that much, but you can clearly see the sprawl and clearcutting on the urban fringe. To me, aerial images like these help put debates about the health of Puget Sound in context: over the long haul, the biggest threats to the Sound come from the ways we’re changing the landscape of the watersheds that feed the sound—which is all the more reason to work to curb low-density sprawl, and the transportation infrastructure that makes it possible.

Anna

It’s something Washingtonians don’t like to think about, but a problem we stew about a lot nonetheless: “The most toxic and voluminous nuclear waste in the US—208 million liters—sits in decaying underground tanks at the Hanford Site (a nuclear reservation) in southeastern Washington State.” It may be worse than we thought. This Scientific American article warns that Hanford clean-up may simply prove too dangerous to carry out.

I know every little kid is tempted on hot days spent in the back yard. I know it’s way more fun than water delivered any other way. But, don’t let your kids drink out of the garden hose. Here’s the terrifying skinny on the high levels of hazardous chemicals, many of which have been banned in children’s products, that are found regularly in garden hoses. (The only good news: There’s a bit less lead in garden variety hoses than there was a couple years ago. But, um, there’s still lead in them too!)

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Weekend Reading 5/3/13

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Anna

If this was a pill, you’d do anything to get it. But sequester cuts are shutting down this simple, live-saving, life-extending health program in Pennsylvania. (h/t JDF).

You’ve probably heard the news that NBA veteran Jason Collins is gay. But if you haven’t yet, you should read his coming-out piece in Sports Illustrated. It’s really powerful.

And don’t miss Sherman Alexie’s response in The Stranger: “And there’s the rub: When we’re talking about professional athletes, we are mostly talking about males passionately admiring the physical attributes and abilities of other males. It might not be homosexual, but it certainly is homoerotic.”

When it comes to luck or pluck, luck wins out. In fact, when education in the US is concerned, it’s really ‘no rich child left behind.’ In fact, family income is now a better predictor of children’s success in school than race.

Maybe you’ve been following biologist and author (and my personal hero) Sandra Steingraber’s trip to jail for protesting what she calls “chemical trespass” of her community and her body by a fracking natural gas company, Inergy. If not, read Bill Moyers’ interview with her. And here’s more on how you became a guinea pig for big chemical corporations.

Oh, and this is just captivating: Photographs of four sisters as they age together over 30 years.

Eric

University of Washington professor Dan Jaffe is crowdsourcing the funding for a new research project: Do coal and diesel trains make for unhealthy air? Jaffe has published groundbreaking studies on the ways that pollution from Asia can travel across the Pacific Ocean to contaminate the Northwest. (I’ve written about his work here.) And as one of the nation’s leading experts on air pollution, he is likely to provide valuable insight into the risk of coal trains.

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Weekend Reading 4/26/13

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Alan

The coolest maps of America you’re likely to see for months. Notice how Oregon, Washington, and northern Idaho hold together?

John Muir: Not Just for White Folks is an essay—well, less than that. It’s a vignette about a Black woman “as fascinated by [John Muir] as he was by Yosemite.” The piece concludes, “no single ethnic community ever owns the whole story.”

Eric

My top recommendation this week is Marc Gunther’s excellent piece in Sierra magazine, Warren Buffet’s Coal Problem. Although Buffet has received justifiable accolades for his investments in solar energy, his Berkshire Hathaway is also a leading proponent of coal in various ways. In particular, it’s a major investor in BNSF, the nation’s leading coal shipper, a firm that is aggressively lobbying for big new coal export facilities in the Northwest.

Reading Gunther’s piece shortly after I read Bill McKibben’s latest, I couldn’t help but wonder how a divestment-type strategy might provide Buffet with the proper encouragement to get out of the coal business. Might activists scale up a protest of one of his more public-facing companies, like maybe Dairy Queen?

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Weekend Reading 4/19/13

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Clark:

Chinese architecture student designs a 75 square foot bamboo house –– complete with kitchen, bathroom, laundry, and patio.

The benevolent geniuses over at Walk Score have just released a new tool designed to help city planners figure out whether they’re meeting their walkability goals: ChoiceMaps. In a nutshell, the tool lets you see how many people in your city can walk to schools, grocery stores, restaurants, car/bike shares, or other amenities—and dynamically generates maps of the number of different destinations that residents can choose from, using the most up to date data on the location of each amenity. Planners can use the tool to figure out whether the city is meeting walkability targets—seeing, for example, if there are “food deserts” where city residents can’t walk to a grocery store. But to me, the fascinating thing is to look at the differences among cities. In Seattle, for example, most people are within a 5 minute walk of about 5 restaurants. That’s not bad! Yet in midtown Manhattan, the figure is closer to 85 restaurants—a cornucopia of choices that only a compact urban neighborhood can provide.

For anyone interested in environmental health, here’s a can’t-miss event: an Earth Day celebration for release of Kate Davies’ new book, The Rise of the US Environmental Health Movement.  Davies teaches at Antioch University, and her book is, to my knowledge, the first-ever look at the historical roots of a growing social movement that urges North American policymakers to think about the links between environmental quality and human health. The book has its own Facebook page, and Davies will be celebrating the book’s publication on Monday, April 22 (Earth Day) in Seattle, at the iLEAP offices in the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford. I expect that many of the city’s environmental health luminaries will be on hand to celebrate with her!

Alan:

Sometimes, people ask me how I remain hopeful, given—well—everything. The answer is that action breeds hope. No, action IS hope. And action is breaking out all over the place, as Bill McKibben relates beautifully in his new Rolling Stone piece. “After decades of scant organized response to climate change, a powerful movement is quickly emerging around the country and around the world.”

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Weekend Reading 4/12/13

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Alan

One thing that Cascadia is remarkably short on, considering its wealth and leadership in research and technology, is elite colleges and universities. The geography of selective institutions of higher education has barely changed in decades, with most Ivy League-level schools concentrated in the, well, Ivy League, as David Leonhardt explains. One reason is that founding a new college is astronomically expensive, and none of the Northwest’s billionaires seem interested. Another reason may be that those committed to dramatic new investments in higher education may now be focusing on how information technology could open up higher ed entirely, as Kevin Carey argued in September. Bill Gates, for example, is a big fan and supporter of Khan Academy, the free compilation of more than 4,000 superb but entirely homespun short lessons in everything from math to history. Initially, Khan Academy was the handiwork of one volunteer in his spare time: Salman Khan. (Here is Khan at TED. Bill Gates, his biggest benefactor, joins the video at 16:30.) During high school, my kids were among the million students who use Khan Academy monthly to supplement their learning. Khan Academy does not focus on higher education, but its offerings and especially its model are relevant to all levels of education.

Sightline Fellow Valerie Tarico has a poignant and insightful piece in Crosscut on end-of-life decisions and the expanding reach of Catholic health-care institutions in the Northwest.

As I sat with my sister in intensive care one night, she seemed conscious, and I said, “Katha, we just want for you whatever you want for yourself. If you want to try again to live, we want that too. If 40 years of mental illness has worn you down to the point that you’re just ready to be done, we understand.” She gave no indication that she heard me, but a nurse who was working not far from her bed did. As I stood to leave some time later he approached me and said—loud enough for Katha to hear if she could hear anything—“You know your sister will go to hell if she dies now.”

On a lighter note: Electronic Arts, the video game maker with operations in Burnaby and Vancouver, BC, responded with perfect pitch to an internet poll that ranked it the absolute worst company.

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Weekend Reading 4/5/13

by

Alan

Humans are rank amateurs at invention, compared with evolution. Witness: the dragonfly.

Eric

Folks in Seattle who support “apodments” are gathering on Monday, April 8 at Still Liquor from 5-7 p.m. The billing: “Learn more about small affordable apartments in Seattle, why they are so important, and what you can do to help keep this housing option available. Questions: smallaffordableseattle@gmail.com.”

This last week brought a bevy of provocative pieces on transportation policy in Washington. At Crosscut, former transportation secretary Doug MacDonald outlined the five biggest roadblocks to better transportation and then followed up with a fix-it-first approach to road investments. And at Seattle Transit Blog, Ben Schiendelman eviscerated the Columbia River Crossing megaproject in a three part series here, here, and here.

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Weekend Reading 3/29/13

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Editor’s Note: The “Weekend Reading” series issues its 100th post this Friday! Happy birthday, little guy!

Anna

Too big to fail is one thing. Now John Cassidy asks in The New Yorker if the S.E.C. is for sale.

Krugman on the claim we’re “cheating our children” with deficit spending:

Contrary to almost everything you read in the papers or see on TV, debt doesn’t directly make our nation poorer…Yet there is, as I said, a lot of truth to the charge that we’re cheating our children. How? By neglecting public investment and failing to provide jobs.

Are fast food chains coming to their senses about Obamacare?

National Geographic is releasing archived photos on its new Tumblr site. They’re either historically fascinating or breathtaking—or both.

Finally, have you hear of an instrument called a gayageum? If not, here’s your introduction in the form of a unique take on Jimi Hendrix.

Eric

Here’s a cool video on the price of carbon. Not the carbon tax I want you to pay, but rather the one you’re already paying.

This week I learned that “sailormongering” is a word. I also learned that it’s a crime. Please make a note of it.

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Weekend Reading 3/22/13

by

Alan

The incomparable Richard Manning, one of Cascadia’s great environmental reporters, has a superb article in the March Harper’s about the fracking of North Dakota for oil. Here’s a taste to encourage you to look it up. (Unfortunately, a subscription is required.)

Asked to rank American oil-producing states in order of productivity, most of us would begin Texas and Alaska. Some might think to add California. Until very recently, that was correct. But North Dakota surpassed California in December 2011 and Alaska the following March. Production in the state has quadrupled in less than a decade.

Fracking and directional drilling have turned western North Dakota into an oil patch, and Manning documents with heartbreaking clarity the costs: polluted streams, drug abuse, prostitution, and overrun communities.

Tyromancy is “divining by the coagulation of cheese.” Jirble is “to pour out (a liquid) with an unsteady hand: as, he jirbles out a dram.” But what are snoutfair, zafty, and resistentialism? 18 English words that deserve resuscitation.

Anna

Want to know how to turn a state from right wing to progressive? Look to Colorado. As David Sirota writes, if it’s true that the way Colorado goes is the way the nation as a whole goes, then America better get ready for some extremely large changes:

Part of Colorado’s story of change comes from the statehouse where Democrats control both the governor’s office and both chambers of the Legislature. But as much of the story comes from outside the Capitol, where organic grass-roots uprisings are obliterating old political assumptions.

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Weekend Reading 3/15/13

by

Alan

Another reason to fix the filibuster, beyond reducing obstructionism, is that it will be a step toward fixing the Senate more generally: “The power of the smaller states is large and growing. Political scientists call it a striking exception to the democratic principle of ‘one person, one vote.’ Indeed, they say, the Senate may be the least democratic legislative chamber in any developed nation.”

Canada’s James Hansen is Sightline friend Mark Jaccard: the ultimate insider who has followed his climate knowledge and his conscience across the line into civil disobedience. He has written a detailed account of the treachery and fecklessness of Canada’s leaders—the decisions that pushed him to join others in blockading a coal train with his body. Here’s how he begins:

The man accompanying me smiled.

“Good for you, sir.”

“Thanks. I appreciate your saying that.”

“They’re trying to build a coal mine near my parents’ place on Vancouver Island. We’ve got to stop this.”

“Yes, we do.”

“Now, watch your head, sir.”

With his final comment, the young policeman gently guided me into the paddy wagon—a difficult manoeuvre with my hands cuffed behind me.

Go read it!

Eric

If you have a young child, this is mandatory viewing: photos of kids around the world with their favorite toys. I found clicking through the pictures to be a surprisingly emotional experience, in part because of the tremendous wealth disparities in evidence, but I think more because of the intrinsic awesomeness in the way that children play. (A couple of photos are a bit concerning though.)

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