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Collection: Weekend Reading

Weekend Reading 4/19/12

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Eric dP:

My favorite piece of the week was republican meteorologist Paul Douglas explaining why climate change is real and frightening, and why it shouldn’t be treated as a partisan issue.

EarthFix reporters Amelia Templeton and Bonnie Stewart have a terrific feature on the history and future of coal in Coos Bay, Oregon. Among other fascinating elements, we see that Oregon’s state economist acknowledges that coal exports will yield little benefit for jobs or the overall economy.

I loved Erica C. Barnett’s recapitulation of the contents of a 1962 time capsule from the Seattle city council. Maybe it’s just me, but they sound a bit like a bunch of kooks:

“In the year 2,012 Seattle will either be a mighty metropolis of more than 1,000,000 residents—or it will have become a charred, deserted relic of a fearful age of nuclear warfare.”

Alan:

350.org’s latest video is about connecting the dots between the victims of global warming with the fossil-fuel companies that are blocking change.

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Weekend Reading 4/13/12

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Eric H:

Check out this infographic/comic, exploring the astonishing depths of our oceans.

Slate has a fantastic series up on walking: why Americans don’t do it, the science of sidewalks, and more. Here’s part one of four.

Nicole:

I just came across Elaine McMillon’s engaging short documentaries of communities in the southeastern US. This short film about the Muscogee tribe’s fight for federal recognition in Washington’s catercorner national neighbor, Florida, caught my eye. I was particularly interested in the way federal treaties and mandates continue to have a significant impact when they are so clearly outdated—in this case to the extreme of not even recognizing the existence of an entire People, because the code said they must be dead or gone. While the video is under three minutes long, it is also a powerful testimony to the slipperiness of standardized racial categorization. The good news? Times can change.

Valerie:

Simpsons’ creator Matt Groening reveals the true location of the elusive Springfield, and it’s right here in Cascadia. No report on the secret locale of Shelbyville, though.

Alan:

Gen Y wants to live in the urban core, not the ‘burbs.

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Weekend Reading 4/6/12

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Clark:

Robert Shiller (co-creator of the Case-Shiller Index, which tracks US real estate prices) says that suburban housing prices may not recover “in our lifetime.”

We don’t have to have an upturn in the market. [I]f you look at…home prices back to 1890, they go through decades of stagnation. It’s not like it’s always booming, it just hasn’t been that way.  And there’s no reason why it should boom.  Economists used to think that home prices fall in general.  Here’s the argument: we get better and better at making houses. Technological progress: prices go down.  That could still be true, let’s not forget it.  They’re going to build better houses now…people won’t want the old ones. So your price will decline. … If you’re young and you don’t really need to buy, just think what kind of nice new high-rise apartment buildings with all the modern exciting things built in you might get in the city…maybe some people are thinking that way

In the wake of the tsunami, Japan shut down its nuclear reactors—and as of January, 49 of the nation’s 54 nuclear power plants remained offline.  So to cut its energy vulnerability, Japan is boosting renewable energy projects, such as this 16 megawatt floating wind farm on off-shore barges.

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Weekend Reading 3/30/12

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Eric dP:

At the Seattle Times, I’ve really enjoyed Linda V. Mapes’ latest round of features on the restoration of the Elwha River, here and here. It’s fascinating to learn about how the national park plans to restore a landscape that’s been submerged for decades. At present, it’s not exactly fertile ground for the sort of plants that will one day make the river valley flourish.

I’ve scarcely followed March Madness this year, but I did enjoy reading Chuck Klosterman’s take on Kentucky coach John Calipari. The truth is, I’m wildly conflicted about Calipari’s approach to college sports.

Clark:

Sports fans, beware:  if your team wins a hotly contested game, you’re more likely than usual to die in a car crash on the way home.

An analysis of major sporting events (2001–8) shows that closer games are significantly correlated with more fatalities. Importantly, increased fatalities are observed only in locations with winning fans (game site and/or winners’ hometown)… Ultimately, this finding has material consequences for public welfare on game days and suggests that one silver lining for losing fans may be a safer drive home.

The authors hypothesize that post-game testosterone surges can make the winning team’s fans drive more aggressively.  So for folks going to Final Four parties: even if you’re stoked that your team won, please keep a cool head on the way home…

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Weekend Reading 3/23/12

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Eric dP:

For Northwest history geeks, I recommend reading the introduction to this assessment of Latinos in Washington. It traces the history of Latinos in the region from the earliest Spanish explorers in the region, through settlement, the mid-century Bracero program, and up to the present day. I learned more than a couple of things.

Plus, all kinds of fun stuff related to coal trains.

Over at Climate Solutions, Ross MacFarlane has a great blog post pointing about the carbon benefits of efficient rail shipping are somewhat silly if the product you’re shipping is the planet’s dirtiest fossil fuel. The accompanying chart is a keeper.

Then, Jean Melious, a professor at Western Washington University does yeoman’s work to show how BNSF rail improvements actually got paid for in two Midwest towns. The answer? The railway picked up fully 2 percent of the tab; taxpayers got stuck with everything else.

Also at WWU, I thought this experimental clay stop-motion video by grad student Jeff Fitzgerald was a pretty clever criticism of Bellingham-bound coal trains.

Clark:

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Weekend Reading 3/16/12

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Clark:

WSU researchers find that exposure to toxic chemicals can affect the next three generations of offspring.  From the press release: “While toxicologists generally focus on animals exposed to a compound, [this] work…demonstrates that diseases can also stem from older, ancestral exposures that are then mediated through epigenetic changes in sperm.”  Ick!

A short, readable guide to Tactical Urbanism: how to create mini-parks, greener streetscapes, safe places for kids to play in cities, and more!

Apparently, 2010 was a very good year to be in the 1 percent. Of course, the issue of economic inequality wouldn’t be so crucial if there was lots of economic mobility—that is, if people moved from the bottom to the top of the income ladder all the time.  But as the numbers clearly show, there’s less economic mobility in the US than in many other rich countries; and most studies show that economic mobility is static or perhaps decreasing—though women may now be more upwardly mobile than men.

Thank goodness:  the USDA is allowing school cafeterias to opt out of serving “lean finely textured beef,” also known as “pink slime.”

The low-cost ingredient is made from fatty bits of meat left over from other cuts. The bits are heated to about 100 F and spun to remove most of the fat. The lean mix then is compressed into blocks for use in ground meat. The product…is exposed to “a puff of ammonium hydroxide gas” to kill bacteria, such as E. coli and salmonella.

I have no particular opinion on whether “pink slime” is healthy.  It certainly doesn’t sound appetizing, but I don’t actually know. Regardless, it’s a brilliant example of effective anti-branding: pithy, memorable, disgusting, and (for anyone who remembers school cafeteria lunches) believably evocative.

If you’re a fan of bioregionalism, check out this Kickstarter project to help fund a film about Cascadia. The nature footage is gorgeous, and the message is worth listening to. (Full disclosure – the filmmakers interviewed me, and you can actually hear me stuttering like Elmer Fudd just before minute 6 of the trailer.)

Migee:

A new type of male birth control?

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Weekend Reading 3/2/12

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Clark:

Steve Mouzon explores how urban highways kill nearby property values. I feel like the idea could use more and better data—but this is certainly an interesting argument. Mouzon estimates that for every billion dollars spent on interstates, urban real estate has lost nearly three billion in property value.

Does wealth affect your ethics?  These researchers say yes.

“Occupying privileged positions in society has this natural psychological effect of insulating you from others,” said psychologist Paul Piff of the University of California, Berkeley. “You’re less likely to perceive the impact your behavior has on others. As a result, at least in this paper, you’re more likely to break the rules.”

The study was based on seven different experiments, several of which were rather clever. Two looked at the real-world behavior of drivers: apparently, folks who drive more expensive cars are more likely to cut off other vehicles or pedestrians at a 4-way stop. I’m not trying to bash the rich here. Even the act of imagining themselves as rich made experimental subjects less generous—suggesting that the attitudes around wealth are deeply ingrained, either in the DNA of our culture or in our actual genes.

Nicole:

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Weekend Reading 2/24/12

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Eric dP:

As inspiration for the upcoming Mercer Island Half Marathon, I read Haruki Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,” in which he describes his discipline of long distance running.

Literary types will recognize that the title is a nod to Raymond Carver, whose work Murakami has translated into Japanese. That Murakami is a student of Carver’s writing has always seemed to me to be entirely fitting. Both writers pare their language down to something so lean and unadorned that it can seem flat at first. And then you catch the quiet cadence in the prose, get fixated by something uncanny in it, and everything else begins to seem cloying and cluttered in contrast. (Fellow Murakami fans may also enjoy this long NYT profile, which I just discovered.)

I enjoyed reading the brief history of Fort Lawton on the occasion of its final closure. (Not mentioned in the official account is that my dad was briefly stationed there in the early 70s.) Fort Lawton is, I think, the last remaining military site in the city of Seattle and it will soon become entirely subsumed by Discovery Park.

I also encourage folks to check out “Energy Democracy,” a new report from the good folks at the Center for Social Inclusion. It details some of the ways that people of color can lead the way toward community-based clean energy solutions.

Alan:

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Weekend Reading 2/17/12

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Alan:

Kurt Hoelting has a thoughtful discussion of the “intensity gap” between climate science deniers and climate hawks. Kurt, who lives on Whidbey Island, is author of the wonderful 2010 book The Circumference of Home, about the challenge of living responsibly in place in Cascadia, and he’s launched a blog on the same theme.

Take a car-sharing company, add electric bikes. A marriage made in heaven? Could be.

A Street View for Rivers: “We want to start crowd sourcing a library of America’s rivers.”

Pam:

106 really awesome street art photos.

Nicole:

Plant sentience has been a pseudoscience standby for a long time, but especially since Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird’s 1973 book, The Secret Life of Plants. Well, researchers at Exeter University are finding that plants do indeed warn each other of danger.

Eric dP:

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