The National Commission of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling released its final report this morning. (I know—you were watching the Verizon iPhone launch.) We’ll have a story up soon on the mainpage about the report and the impact it may have on the offshore drilling industry—I’m guessing not that much—I …
One of the biggest obstacles to reducing carbon emissions is the simple fact that political time and climatological time are very, very different. Politicians in elected democracies think on two- or four-year cycles—if that—while even the leaders of an autocratic state like China, without the pressures of an election, are still …
Over on the TIME.com mainpage, I have a piece about the growing number of scientific studies that have examined the Gulf of Mexico since oil spill, and found a surprising fact. Most of the oil and other hydrocarbons released by the blown Macondo well seem to have vanished, broken down and digested by bacteria. It’s a sign that the Gulf, …
Coincidences abound—just after posting an item on Representative Gabrielle Giffords’s focus on climate change and renewable energy as a national security issues, I run across a new multimedia project from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism that explores: climate change and national security. Called “Global Warning,” the website …
A lot of attention has focused on how Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords’s support for health care reform might have helped made her a target. (On Monday Giffords was still in a medically induced coma after being shot in the head Saturday morning in Tucson.) Her office in Tucson was vandalized last March after she voted in …
After decades of waiting and wishing, 2011 really is shaping up to be the year of the electric car. GM’s Volt—an electric car with a gas-powered “range extender”—and Nissan’s all-electric Leaf will soon be appearing in Americans’ garages. (Ads for the cars—Nissan has the one with the polar bear—are already almost impossible …
Internal medicine training programs in hospitals have what are called morbidity and mortality conferences—known as M&Ms. The reviews usually take place after unexpectedly poor patient outcomes—like deaths, for instance—and investigate what medical errors might have been made that contributed to the failure. M&Ms are dreaded by …
Call it the Aflockalypse, the Aquapalypse or some other clever term that will soon be trending on Twitter. What’s clear is that something odd seems to going on with the birds in the sky and the fish in the waters. First on New Year’s Day, the residents of Beebe, Arkansas awoke to find thousands of dead birds scattered over rooftops …
At noon today, Republican John Boehner will be sworn in as the 61st Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the GOP will take over partial control of the government. (Apparently the outgoing Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, actually hands over the gavel to the new leader, a ceremony that certainly has more gravitas than the Internet …
So you’re one of the lucky ones who received an iPhone 4 (or iPad, or Kindle, or Android) for the holidays. After you get over your initial excitement and manage to set up your new digital plaything (here’s a tip—buy a protective case), you still have one more task before you: get rid of your old electronics, which suddenly look so …