Things Happen
First, everything not fairly closely-related to environmental issues:
- “Krugs” throws old, familiar charges of alienating his primary base of support, in a futile quest for “postpartisanship,” at President Obama. Charges still stick.
- While subjecting Facebook and its pimple-faced kid billionaire to growing scrutiny, let us not forget about that other Great Cyber-Satan.
- Optimistic (or worried?) that Americans have learned a new and lasting sense of thrift? Rejoice (or despair).
- Flipboard: I wonder if this is anything like how John Henry felt while watching technicians set up the version 1.0 steam drill.
This one is borderline: A Times op-ed calls the much-ballyhooed, and much taxpayer-subsidized, Chevy Volt an overpriced flop. (“W” encouraged talk of the “hydrogen highway,” and now electric cars are having their moment… bets on whether the next administration will raise flywheel technology to the rank of automotive savior?)
And the rest:
- The Economist arrives about a week late with coverage of the fizzling out of climate change legislation, apparently hoping to make up for the delay by publishing two largely interchangeable articles. The picture is, of course, bleak, but hey! Schadenfreude: “a patchwork of different rules in different states… may leave big energy firms regretting their opposition to cap and trade.” (Though we’ll probably just end up bailing them out, as we do with everything else that big businesses have cause to regret.)
- NPR’s science blog seems to spend a lot of time indulging in elliptical ruminations on the authors’ personal unresolved issues about science and non-secular philosophy. But this item was one of the rare breaks, and remarkably poignant; I thought about posting some sort of commentary, but there’s probably no just no real need.