Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Articles”
On a Friday evening in January, a thousand people at the annual California Native Plant Society conference in San Jose settled down to a banquet and a keynote speech delivered by an environmental historian named Jared Farmer. His chosen topic was the eucalyptus tree and its role in California’s ecology and history. The address did not go well. Eucalyptus is …
Differences between them are stark. Sanders is more opportunist than populist, nearly always supporting Democrat pro-war, pro-Israel, pro-business, anti-human/civil rights policies – voting with party members 98% of the time, more than most Democrats, polar opposite his high-minded rhetoric, hiding his real agenda. In over three decades as a Labour party member, Corbyn opposed its policies over 500 times – …
Nearly three weeks after Donald Trump was first asked to name his favorite Bible verse, he finally has an answer: He likes what the Book of Proverbs says about not bending to envy. “Proverbs, the chapter ‘never bend to envy,’” Trump said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “The Brody File” on Tuesday evening in California. “I’ve had that thing all of my life …
Steven Erlanger in the New York Times, asks: Are Western Values Losing Their Sway? Here’s my two cents: The problem with our “Western values” is not the values in themselves, although some are certainly questionable. The real problem is the triumphalism that came with them after the West’s ‘victory’ at the end of the Cold War, a dangerous triumphalism that …
First, the herbicide chemical glyphosate was found in breast milk of mothers around the country. Now, there is a new study showing that the DNA in goats fed transgenic, GM soy feed is altered, and the milk itself is of lower quality, affecting the offspring. Kid goats were studied both in vivo and post mortem, and what the researchers of this study …
Usually, we don’t stop to think about how the whole economy works together. A major reason is that we have been lacking data to see long-term relationships. In this post, I show some longer-term time series relating to energy growth, GDP growth, and debt growth–going back to 1820 in some cases–that help us understand our situation better. When examining these …
On Monday, presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders spoke to a self-professed conservative Christian group. We live in a time of perpetual war, and Sanders—who sometimes touts his 2002 vote against authorizing the invasion of Iraq—apparently couldn’t bring himself to raise the subject of war with people who profess to be followers of the Prince of Peace. In his speech at …
Already we’re deep into September and Congress has reconvened in Washington, prompting many commentators to compare its return after summer’s recess to that of fresh-faced students coming back to school, sharpening their pencils, ready to learn, be cooperative and prepared for something new. For this particular Congress to cooperate and do something new would require a miracle on the order …
No one bats 1000, but according to Ignacio Chapela, a microbiologist from UC Berkeley in California, the biotech industry. He says they’ve only come up with 2 genetically modified traits in 40 years despite fouling our air, water, and soil, while genetically engineering our food to withstand copious amounts of toxic chemicals. Chapela says that no one talks about just how …
Finnish diplomat and Nobel laureate Martti Ahtisaari suggested that there was a moment early on during Syria’s hideous war when a political solution could have been thrashed out. Ahtisaari claims that in February 2012, when the conflict had claimed under 10,000 lives, Russia’s envoy to the United Nations outlined a peace plan that could have led to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s …
