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Nuclear Waste Is Allowed Above Ground Indefinitely...

Aug 31, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] By MATTHEW L. WALDAUG. 29, 2014 NY TIMES As the country struggles to find a place to bury spent nuclear fuel, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided that nuclear waste from power plants can be stored above ground in containers that can be maintained and guarded indefinitely. The decision, in a unanimous vote of the commission on Tuesday, means that new nuclear plants can be built and old ones can expand their operations despite the lack of a long-term plan for disposing of the waste. The chairwoman of the commission, who voted with the majority but dissented on certain aspects, said Friday that the vote risked allowing Congress to ignore the long-term problem. “If you make the assumption that there will be some kind of institution that will exist, like the Nuclear Regulatory...

10 Scientific Reasons To Add Cinnamon To Your Diet...

Aug 31, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] AlterNet / By Jodie Gummow The delectable spice has amazing healing propensities you may not be aware of. August 27, 2014 | Many of us love to sprinkle cinnamon over our toast, drink it in our beverages, devour it in pastry desserts and cook with it for aromatic flavor, but did you know this exotic spice which comes from the dried inner bark of a tropical evergreen tree has been used medicinally since ancient times due to its healing propensities. In fact, cinnamon is one of the most common and popular ingredients in homeopathic medicine today, treating everything from muscle spasms and vomiting to loss of appetite and erectile dysfunction. Yet, the veracity of its health benefits continue to be hotly debated in medical circles, particularly over an ingredient called coumarin which has been linked to liver damage in a small number...

What if Marriage Were Temporary?...

Aug 31, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Sex & Relationships AlterNet / By Lynn Stuart Parramore Nearly half of millennials support the idea of “beta” marriages. Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com August 26, 2014 | For most of the history of marriage, till death do us part did not mean 50 years wedded to the same person. A century ago, death regularly transformed a new mother to a corpse in the blink of an eye. A sip of water from an infected source or a slip on the road could quickly fell the young and the fit. Cholera, consumption, smallpox…death had many names and predictable results: widows and widowers usually found another partner and remarried, sometimes more than once. As sanitation, hygiene and medical advances prolonged human life in the 20th century, married couples in the West faced a new and...

Shocking Picture of What Life Will Look Like When You Can’t Afford to Retire...

Aug 31, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Economy AlterNet / By Lynn Stuart Parramore Will you be ready for the life of a nomad, permanently in search of temporary work? Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com August 25, 2014 | In a must-read article in the current issue of Harper’s magazine, journalist Jessica Bruder, adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, adds a new phrase to America’s vocabulary: “Elderly migrant worker.” She documents a growing trend of older Americans for whom the reality of unaffordable housing and scarcity of work has driven them from their homes and onto the road in search of seasonal and temporary employment across the country. Packed into RVs, detached from their communities, these “Okies” of the Great Recession put in time at Amazon warehouses, farms and amusement parks, popping free over-the-counter pain reliever to...

Climate Change Will Ruin Hawaii, New Study Suggests...

Aug 31, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] The Huffington Post | By James Cave Climate change has its sights on its next victim, and it’s one of America’s favorite vacation spots. Hawaii is known for its near perfect weather, but a new report from the University of Hawaii’s Sea Grant program states that islands in the Pacific might be unrecognizable in the coming years as climate change makes them hotter, arid, stormy and even disease-ridden. According to “Climate Change Impacts In Hawaii: A Summary Of Climate Change And Its Impacts To Hawaii’s Ecosystems And Communities,” which was paid for by Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA), the oceans, rainfall, ecosystems and immunity of people who live on islands in the Pacific are all at peril. But what’s more, tourism — an industry responsible for most of the state’s annual revenue — might all...

TRAINS TO NOWHERE

Aug 31, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Government Looking For Trains To Haul Radioactive Waste, But There’s Nowhere For Them To Go | By By RAY HENRY HUFFINGTON POST ATLANTA (AP) — The U.S. government is looking for trains to haul radioactive waste from nuclear power plants to disposal sites. Too bad those trains have nowhere to go. Putting the cart before the horse, the U.S. Department of Energy recently asked companies for ideas on how the government should get the rail cars needed to haul 150-ton casks filled with used, radioactive nuclear fuel. They won’t be moving anytime soon. The latest government plans call for having an interim test storage site in 2021 and a long-term geologic depository in 2048. No one knows where those sites will be, but the Obama administration is already thinking about contracts...

We Are On The Verge Of An Electric Car Battery Breakthrough...

Aug 31, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] by Emily Atkin CLIMATE PROGRESS An electric plug decal is seen on the back of a Tesla electric car. CREDIT: AP Photo/Mel Evans Electric vehicles are cool. They’re inexpensive to operate, can make our air cleaner, and help reduce the amount of climate change-causing gases released into the atmosphere. But right now, they’re also mostly just for rich people. The initial cost of buying the car, combined with their limited availability, is just too much for most people to justify making the switch. That could soon change, though, because investment pundits think that Tesla Motors is on the verge of achieving something big: A battery cheap enough to make electric vehicles cost-competitive with conventional cars. Daniel Sparks at Motley Fool is reporting that the company is on the right track towards developing...

Cataclysm in suburbia: The dark, twisted history of America’s oil-addicted middle class...

Aug 31, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] How the same things that contributed to the rise of the middle class are also now leading to its downfall Robert O. Self SALON.COM Houses, cars, and children. For a century, they have defined the family economy, and they have driven the national economy. They organize our lives and shape our debts. Their presence all around us seems so natural, and they are so tightly bound together in how we measure personal milestones and record family stories, we can forget just how recent and fragile their combination is, historically speaking. Developments in the last decade have served to remind us. When the housing market and the automobile industry crashed between 2007 and 2008, signaling the onset of the Great Recession, two pillars of the national economy crumbled simultaneously. American households lost $16 trillion in net...

Vladimir Putin goes rogue: Ukraine, NATO, nuclear weapons — and a very dangerous new reality...

Aug 31, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Post-Cold War era’s over. Dealing with Putin means learning to talk to him, and respecting some legitimate concerns Jeffrey Tayler SALON.COM (Credit: SB Nation) On Aug. 22, a convoy of more than 200 white-painted trucks carrying, according to the Russian government, humanitarian aid trundled into war-ravaged eastern Ukraine, suddenly and without permission from Ukrainian authorities, through a border post under the control of pro-Russian rebels. There were suspicions that the vehicles were really transporting Russian troops and materiel, but humanitarian aid (mostly food and water) was, in fact, reported the BBC, the cargo. Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko nevertheless quickly denounced Russia’s dispatch of the trucks as a “direct invasion,” the United States demanded Russia withdraw the convoy, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel decried the affair as “a dangerous escalation.” But a day later...

Salt Water Powered Car Gets European Approval...

Aug 31, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] By Aaron Jackson INTELLIGENT LIVING A car which uses an electrolyte flow cell power system is now certified for use on European roads. The car is called the Quant e-Sportlimousine, which made its debut at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show. Not only can this car run on salt water, but it is claimed that the car has peak power of 920 horsepower (680 kW), 0-62 mph (100 km/h) in 2.8 seconds and a top speed of 217.5 mph (350 km/h). “We are delighted as pioneers to be able to present an automobile driven by flow cell technology on public roads, and one which achieves not only fantastic performance values but also zero emissions, a projected top speed of over 350 km/h (217.5 mph), acceleration from 0-100 in 2.8 seconds, a torque of four times 2,900...

Would You Have Sex With a Robot? The Age of the Sexbot Is Fast Approaching...

Aug 30, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Sex & Relationships AlterNet / By Lynn Stuart Parramore Some experts predict a not-so-distant future of human-robot sex …and love. Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com August 18, 2014 | What exactly makes the sex act sexy? Is it the rush of pheromones and invisible storm of sex-chemicals? The emotional uncertainty and fear that accompany intimate encounters with fellow humans? The pillow talk? Proponents of robosexuality hold that you don’t need homo sapiens for a satisfying sexual experience. For them, the sleek proportions and permanent willingness of mechanical contraptions beat the complexity and messiness of sexy time with living, breathing organisms any day of the week. Robots, after all, don’t tattle; they don’t reject you, and they don’t give you STDs. Soon enough, they may be able to simulate the verbal and cognitive responses...

The Future of Abortion Is Here—No Clinic Needed...

Aug 30, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] News & Politics AlterNet / By Allegra Kirkland The Dutch organization Women on Web sends abortion pills to women in countries that restrict or ban the procedure. Photo Credit: Ivanko80 August 29, 2014 | The word abortion usually conjures images of tile-floored clinics, doctors in white lab coats and waiting rooms full of anxious women. But one Dutch doctor is working to revolutionize access to the procedure, bypassing the clinic and turning to a novel method of delivery: the Internet. In a powerful New York Times Magazine piece coming out this weekend, Emily Bazelon profiles Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch doctor and abortion rights activist who runs Women on Web, a “telemedicine service.” The Amsterdam-based group connects with women in countries where abortion is severely restricted or illegal, providing them with medical advice, support and prescriptions...

Woman with 4 Jobs Dies While Napping in Car...

Aug 30, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Labor AlterNet / By Alyssa Figueroa ‘This is someone who tried desperately to work and make ends meet.’ Photo Credit: KieferPix/Shutterstock.com August 28, 2014 | Maria Fernandes, 32, of Newark, NJ, worked four jobs, including two at different Dunkin Donuts stores. In between working, she would often park in public lots and catch up on sleep. She kept a can of gasoline in her car because she had occasionally run out of gas in the past during her job commutes. On Monday, Fernandes pulled into a WaWa convenience store parking lot in Elizabeth, NJ, to nap. Concerned employees called 911. When emergency workers arrived and opened her car door, they were met with a toxic odor. Workers determined that Fernandes was dead and called Hazmat workers to the scene. Fernandes died...

10 Frightening Promises by GOP Senate Candidates Secretly Taped at Koch Brothers Summit...

Aug 30, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Election 2014 AlterNet / By Steven Rosenfeld Excerpts show what’s at stake in November if GOP wins control of both chambers of Congress. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, was one of several top Republicans making promises to donors at the Koch brothers annual right-wing summit in June. Photo Credit: www.mcconnell.senate.gov August 27, 2014 | When politicians talk, money listens. So it was this past June when Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and three other 2014 Republican senate candidates told the millionaires in Charles and David Kochs’ anti-government network exactly what the return would be on their political investments if they bankrolled their electoral campaigns. Politicians running for national office aren’t blunt. But from McConnell on down, these office holders and candidates made it clear that investing in the prospect of a Republican...

Burger King May Leave U.S. and Dodge Paying Taxes...

Aug 30, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace AlterNet / By Cliff Weathers In a whopper of an announcement, the fast food giant says its new home may become Canada. A Burger King storefront in Beijing, China. Photo Credit: Shutterstock August 25, 2014 | Iconic fast-food chain Burger King is seeking to merge with Tim Horton’s, the Canadian doughnut and coffee retailer, according to a report in today’s New York Times. But what’s notable about the merger, which may be finalized within days, is that the union with Tim Horton’s could make Burger King a de facto Canadian company, allowing them to skip out on paying U.S. corporate taxes in favor of Canada’s much lower rate. The American corporate tax rate is about 35% before deductions, while Canada’s is 15%. Burger King reportedly pays around...

The climate movement is way too focused on market-based solutions...

Aug 29, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Shutterstock To market, to market — or not to market By Patrick Mazza Cross-posted from Cascadia Planet There was a time when we met overarching challenges with bold public purpose and concerted action as “we the people.” When the Depression hit, we created large public works projects, building roads, airports, and power dams. When murderous tyranny threatened the world, we became the arsenal of democracy and won World War II. When Europe was sinking in post-war turmoil, we staged the Marshall Plan to rebuild the continent. When John Kennedy set a target to reach the moon in a decade, we assembled the resources and will and made it happen. Then, in the 1980s, something happened. We stopped believing in acting together in the common interest. With Ronald Reagan in the U.S. and Margaret...

David Roberts’ top 10 greatest hits...

Aug 29, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Shutterstock By Grist staff Grist climate and energy blogger David Roberts is about to return from a year-long sabbatical. So it’s the perfect time to revisit the top 10 posts from his 10 years of writing for Grist. • The medium chill. Roberts describes his efforts to step off the “aspirational treadmill” and accept some material constraints in exchange for a life with more free time, relationships, and experiences. This is the post that ultimately led him to take a year off. • Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed. This is Roberts’ much-loved TEDx talk, with extra insights sprinkled on top. • The left’s gone left but the right’s gone nuts: Asymmetrical polarization in action. Political polarization has risen sharply in recent years, Roberts writes, but Republicans have moved further to the right than...

This 3,300 foot crack in the Mexican desert is nothing to worry about...

Aug 29, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] By Amelia Urry GRIST That? Oh, it’s just a spontaneous rift in the surface of our planet. (Déjà vu.) No biggie, right?That’s what officials in Sonora, where this 3,300-foot-long 25-foot-deep crack in the earth appeared last week, would have you believe. As one geologist told the Washington Post, it’s probably just a “topographic accident”: … the fissure was likely caused by sucking out groundwater for irrigation to the point the surface collapsed. “This is no cause for alarm,” Inocente Guadalupe Espinoza Maldonado said. “These are normal manifestations of the destabilization of the ground.” To which David Manthos of SkyTruth responded: I’m sorry, no. These are not normal manifestations of natural activity, this the result of human activity run amok. Just because Cthulhu isn’t clambering out of the breach to wreak havoc on humankind DOES NOT MEAN we...

Louisiana is drowning, quickly

Aug 29, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Edmund D. Fountain, Special to ProPublica/The Lens Losing Ground By Bob Marshall, Brian Jacobs and Al Shaw GRIST vis PRO PUBLICA Cross-posted from ProPublica and The Lens In just 80 years, some 2,000 square miles of its coastal landscape have turned to open water, wiping places off maps, bringing the Gulf of Mexico to the back door of New Orleans and posing a lethal threat to an energy and shipping corridor vital to the nation’s economy. And it’s going to get worse, even quicker. Scientists now say one of the greatest environmental and economic disasters in the nation’s history is rushing toward a catastrophic conclusion over the next 50 years, so far unabated and largely unnoticed. At the current rates that the sea is rising and land is sinking, National Oceanic and Atmospheric...

Architecture for the people, by the people...

Aug 29, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Public Architecture By Isa Hopkins GRIST Kids today — they may not have much in the way of job opportunities, but, as all those resume-padding trips to build Guatemalan orphanages attest, they’ve got plenty of idealism. Still, as architect Steve Badanes points out, it’s all too easy to “walk past a guy living in a box on the way to the airport to save the planet.” Enter community architecture, a process designed to connect architecture students with the people and communities around them — and bring good design to problems, people, and places that wouldn’t be able to afford the high-priced field without it. Community architecture programs are a variation on the design/build model in which students develop designs in consultation with clients and then provide the hands-on labor to turn their own...

Oceans Agency Lists 20 Coral Species as Threatened...

Aug 29, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] oceans By ANDREW C. REVKIN Download the NYT Opinion app for free on iPhone. » Photo Orbicella faveolatta, one of 20 coral species listed as threatened on Aug. 27 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.Credit NOAA After two years of assessment and public comment, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has whittled down an initial list of 66 coral species considered for protection under the Endangered Species Act in 2012 and today listed 20 as threatened and no species as endangered — the most protective category. Five of the newly listed species are from the Caribbean and 15 from the Pacific or Indian Oceans. Two coral species, elkhorn and staghorn, were listed as threatened in 2006. The move was a response to a 2009 petition to list 83 coral species filed by...

Accounting for the Expanding Carbon Shadow from Coal-Burning Plants...

Aug 29, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Climate Change By ANDREW C. REVKIN NYTDOT Download the NYT Opinion app for free on iPhone. » Photo A coal-fired power plant at night on the outskirts of Datong, Shanxi Province.Credit Jason Lee/Reuters Steven Davis of the University of California, Irvine, and Robert Socolow of Princeton (best known for his work dividing the climate challenge into carbon “wedges”) have written “Commitment accounting of CO2 emissions,” a valuable new paper in Environmental Research Letters showing the value of shifting from tracking annual emissions of carbon dioxide from power plants to weighing the full amount of carbon dioxide that such plants, burning coal or gas, could emit during their time in service. This makes sense because of the long lifetime of these plants once built — typically 40 years or so — and the long lifetime of carbon dioxide...

Architecture 101: Residential Behaviour...

Aug 29, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] inShare2 David Friedlander LIFE EDITED Architecture The above image was taken from an article in a Wall Street Journal article about the book “Life at Home in the 21st Century.” The UCLA group responsible for the book followed 32 middle class Los Angeles families around their homes, for sale tracking their every move to see how people actually live nowadays. This image shows “the location of each parent and child on the first floor of the house of ‘Family 11? every 10 minutes over two weekday afternoons and evenings.” In other words, primetime for their waking hours at home. The activity on this floor, which measures around roughly 1000 sq ft, is concentrated almost exclusively in three rooms: The dining, kitchen and family rooms; the latter room’s activity focused around the TV and computer. We estimate that around 400...

Europe’s Warming Raises Tropical Disease Risk...

Aug 29, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Posted on Aug 29, view 2014 Spreading fear: the Aedes aegypti mosquito biting a human. Photo by US Department of Agriculture via Wikimedia Commons By Tim Radford, Climate News Network This piece first appeared at Climate News Network. LONDON—Add one more horror to the list of awful threats that climate change poses: it could introduce dengue fever in Europe. Dengue fever is already a hazard for 2.5 billion people in humid tropical regions, and 50-100 million people a year are infected by the mosquito-borne disease. It puts 500,000 of them in hospital each year, and kills around 12,000—many of them children. And there is still no widely effective vaccine. Since Europe will get warmer as greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere rise, conditions for the carrier mosquito will become more inviting. Paul...

TINY HOUSE MOVEMENT – infographic...

Aug 29, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Click to Enlarge Image Less Is More:The Tiny House Movement Infographic by...

Spanish Apartment Expands the Notion of Micro...

Aug 28, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Design your life to include more money, health and happiness with less stuff, space and energy. inShare David Friedlander Architecture As we saw a couple weeks ago with Share House in Japan, shared housing can cut one’s spatial footprint as much or more than an single-occupant micro-apartment. And with the right design, shared living can provide a great, private living experience. We found another elegant example of how this can be achieved from Spain’s Miel Arquitectos and Studio P10. They were commissioned to divide this long and narrow 700 sq ft apartment in Barcelona into two live/work spaces with a shared kitchen and dining room. The apartment is actually designed as a “tourist apartment” according to Miel’s website, though we think it would be quite livable for more permanent residents. Each bedroom is more or less a self-contained apartment,...

Not Even Toxic Waste Stops Gentrification: 3 New York Superfund Sites in Developing Neighborhoods...

Aug 28, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Environment City Limits / By Jarrett Murphy Archive articles, federal documents, slideshows and more on the three big cleanups now underway in New York. The Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. Photo Credit: bobistraveling/Flickr August 27, 2014 | In the past five years, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has designated three sites in New York City to be part of the Superfund program, which goes after past polluters for financial penalties that it then employs to offset the massive cost of cleaning up decades-old industrial toxins. One site is on the northern border of Brooklyn with Queens at Newtown Creek, tainted largely by oil. Another is the Gowanus Canal, whose bottom is coated with a sludge referred to as “black mayonnaise.” The newest is the former Wolff-Alport Chemical Company on the Ridgewood-Bushwick border,...

California’s 1-Percenters Are Flush With Water as Rest of the State Remains Parched...

Aug 28, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] AlterNet / By Cliff Weathers Celebrities and moguls aren’t doing without while the region suffers from a disastrous drought. Photo Credit: eteimaging/Shutterstock August 27, 2014 | While most of California worries, cuts back and braces for the worst of this epic drought, the Golden State’s 1-percenters are staying flush with water. While some are obeying public water restrictions and having it shipped in by the truckload to their mansions in the tony exurbs of Santa Barbara County, others are just breaking the rules and paying hefty fines for not obeying local water restrictions. Politico reports that tanker trucks filled with water make routine deliveries to the grand manors of the rich and famous, carting up to 5,000 gallons of water to the region’s wealthiest residents. The beltway newspaper reports that Oprah Winfrey, one of...

The Guns of August

Aug 28, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Posted on Aug 27, 2014 By Amy Goodman In her epic, Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Guns of August,” historian Barbara Tuchman detailed how World War I began in 1914, and how the belligerence, vanity and poor policies of powerful leaders led millions to gory deaths in that four-year conflagration. Before people realized world wars had to be numbered, World War I was called “The Great War” or “The War to End All Wars,” which it wasn’t. It was the first modern war with massive, mechanized slaughter on land, sea and in the air. We can look at that war in retrospect, now 100 years after it started, as if through a distant mirror. The reflection, where we are today, is grim from within the greatest war-making nation in human history, the United States. In the...

Is Design Making Us Sick?

Aug 28, 2014 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Point of View The METROPOLIS Blog Susan S. Szenasy Patients take air on the patio of the Butaro District Hospital in Rwanda. The hospital’s design emphasizes access to fresh air, sunlight, and views of nature. Courtesy Iwan Baan The following letter was written in response to Michael Kimmelman’s article “In Redesigned Room, Hospital Patients May Feel Better Already” and was sent to the New York Times. “Can good design help heal the sick?”, asks architecture critic Michael Kimmelman. A more important question may be, “Is design, the way it’s being practiced today, making us sick?” Yes, so the evidence on contagion shows; in fact it’s killing us. Our sealed buildings breed the kinds of superbugs that no caustic (read poisonous) cleaning agents can wipe out. And while architects debate if MASS Design...