Annals of a banana republic ( Read more... )

http://www.thenation.com/print/article/secret-history-leadRead more... )

Privilege as difficulty level: straight white male is playing life in easy mode ( Read more... )

Solar zoning for cities, defining solar envelopes such that terraced buildings could be built to maximize solar access (for light and heating) while attaining high densities. High as in 100 1000-square foot apartments per acre in LA, which at 2 people per units maps to 128,000 people per square mile. Manhattan overall is 65,000/square mile. The ( Read more... )

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/09/peat-and-coal-fossil-fuels-in-pre-industrial-times.htmlRead more... )

So, say you acknowledge that the lifestyle Western culture pushes you toward involves a lot of life at the expense of other people, from environmental damage to benefiting indirectly from land theft and labor exploitation to I'm sure other things as well, and you'd like to do something about it. But you're not going to walk away from Omelas, with ( Read more... )

There are 149 million square kilometers of land, including all the desert, mountains, jungle and tundra. There are about 7 billion humans. This comes out to 2.12 hectares per person, or in snowflake units, 5.2 acres. An American football field with endzones is 5353 square meters, or 1.33 acres; a pro football/soccer field is 7140 square meters, ( Read more... )

Romney: I have great friends who are NASCAR team owners.

GOP fears it's 2012 or never, as demographics moves conservatives toward permanent minority?

Matt Taibbi views GOP primaries as their worst tendencies come to roost"The place where Canada figures most prominently into US history is as the ultimate destination of the Underground Railroad. ( Read more... )

The Do The Math blog has been going through the numbers on various forms of alternative energy, mostly with an eye to how abundant they are, e.g. solar is abundant, wind is useful, tides are niche (locally useful, globally irrelevant.) I'd been planning on summarizing and linking at some point -- but he went and did it himself, with table and ( Read more... )

imagining DC without public transit ( Read more... )