Foreign Policy as Practiced by Seven Year Old Children

Okay, in the past week I've been running across what seems to be story after story about animal cruelty.  Take, for example, today's article about the Ministry of Defence ending goat testing on submarines.  WHAT? We've been giving goats the bends? For how long? Why is my taxpayer money funding this?

There was also a great New York Times story about ( Read more... )

Promising new stuff via the Gristmill:

1. Nanosolar is shipping its first panels, which should work out to $0.99 a watt - cheaper than coal! We all knew it was only a matter of time.

2. A new paper has come out showing that wind energy can provide reliable baseload power with a smart grid. To be honest, I don't trust a big grid system (2003 ( Read more... )

Yes yes yes, I know I need to write about Fez but (a) I am lazy and (b) I am overworked, so I'm just going to do the briefest of brief news roundups.

First of all, the new SimCity Societies game takes climate change into account. Ooooooooooh. I wonder how many wind turbines I can build without imposing Sweden-style taxes. I haven't played a full ( Read more... )

HUZZAH! It's BLOG ACTION DAY!

Fortunately, BAD (ass) is about the environment, and so is my life (leaving aside my perpetual discussion of the false partition between 'environment', 'society', 'economy', etc. It's all the same ball of wax, people!). So, since this is a generally navel-gazing blog, this is what I'm up to:

The Application: My PhD ( Read more... )

The Guardian has a very good article about how Nestle is still evil. So, while I miss Polos, After Eights, and Kitkats, I still can't live with the little stains they leave on my soul ( Read more... )

Why do I keep reading about Iraq? Absolutely nothing else puts quite the same damper on my cheerful moods ( Read more... )

There's an article in the Guardian today about Starbucks' opposition to Black Gold, a film about the Ethiopian coffee industry. Ethiopia is trying to trademark three of its coffee lines, mostly to get a fairer price on the international market. Ethipoian coffee is some of the finest in the world, but the farmers get only a tiny fraction of the ( Read more... )

Best of Wonkette9:07 - So, our beaten nation now overwhelmingly believes we are losing the War On Terror - which is pretty awesome when you think about it, because it means Bush & Cheney have ultimately succeeded in linking 9/11 with Iraq ( Read more... )

There's a really useful article in the New York times today about the cost of the war in Iraq.

"For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign - a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save ( Read more... )