In 1994, on his second trip to the United States, Derreck Kayongo was staying at a Philadelphia hotel when he noticed that every bar of soap he’d use in the morning was replaced magically with a new one by the time he returned that evening. “I asked the concierge what they did with the partially used bars, and he actually told me they threw them away!” Though Kayongo grew up in a well-to-do family — his father, in fact, owned a soap factory in Uganda — the 42-year-old Ugandan native ended up living as a refugee with his family in Kenya after Idi Amin came to power. “That was the ... Read More
That’s Disgusting: Researcher Studies Gag Reflex
March 12, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Not many people have had the fortunate pleasure of judging the “Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneakers Contest” held yearly in Montpelier, Vermont. But Rachel Herz, who served as the event’s celebrity judge in March 2008, didn’t just come away with a gag-worthy tale to shock her friends and colleagues. As a fragrance consultant and research psychologist investigating the sense of smell since 1990, Herz was inspired to immerse herself into the study of the emotion of disgust, culminating in her book That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion, published by Norton & Company in ... Read More
Conservation’s Earnest Message Could Use Levity
January 30, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
In a move that stunned environmentalists across the globe: the Coalition of Financially Challenged Countries with Lots of Trees (CoFCCLoT) recently recommended reforesting G8 nations back to pre-industrial levels in the hopes of countering the ravages of climate change. The coalition also has called for reintroducing gorillas into Spain and lions into Greece with the goal of revitalizing the ailing Eurozone economies. OK, the CoFCCLot doesn’t really exist, despite the press release cited above sent out last April 1. But the ersatz organization’s founders, Erik Meijaard and Douglas ... Read More
Simon Johnson Critiques Democracy vs. Financialization
December 6, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
For many on the right side of the U.S. political spectrum, the financial meltdown that began in 2008 resulted from a government push to bring the American Dream of home ownership to the masses. And while President Clinton made home ownership a central tenet of his economic plan — a goal George W. Bush also embraced — there were greater forces at work, according to Simon Johnson, professor of Global Economics and Management at MIT and the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. In his 2010 bestseller, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and The Next Financial ... Read More
Solutions to Water Supply Issues Surface in the West
May 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
It's easy to grow disillusioned in the face of so many grim statistics and pessimistic forecasts about the ramifications of the West's relationship with its water supply. But, as with so many of our challenges, the biggest barrier, according to international water expert Peter Gleick, is the need to overcome antiquated — in this case, 20th-century — water conservation thinking. As Gleick has written and lectured about frequently, the philosophy of water managers during the last century was, "Whatever we need, we'll build it." During those decades of unbridled industrial expansion, there ... Read More
Water Shortages Threaten the American West Lifestyle
May 13, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The next time you fly into a parched, western sprawl such as Phoenix, glance down at the amorphous blots of green and the splattering of aqua blue rectangles. Squint into the blinding sun and behold the glories of irrigation. But along with the golf courses and swimming pools made possible by a seemingly endless flow of H2O came people — and lots of them. Between 1920 and 2000, the seven states that share the Colorado River grew from 5.7 million to almost 50 million people. Peter Gleick, co-founder and president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and ... Read More
Greening the Desert? Not So Fast!
May 6, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
When Marc Reisner published his groundbreaking — and self-proclaimed apocalyptic — analysis of the West’s water woes in 1986, geographic information systems were in their infancy and climate forecasting models could take months to run. Not that Reisner’s predictions in Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water were without merit. Indeed, his concerns that water shortages would pit urban population growth against food production are fast becoming a reality. At the time of publication, Reisner’s text wasn’t viewed as a scientific piece of work, but it did make ... Read More
As Environment Degrades, Our Well-Being Grows?
April 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Earth's ecosystems are steadily deteriorating thanks to unsustainable practices like overfishing, rainforest clearing and natural gas "fracking." So, wouldn't it follow that human beings around the globe are getting sicker, poorer and less satisfied with their lives? Not so, according to Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne, an environmental consultant and part-time lecturer at Montreal's McGill University. In "Untangling the Environmentalist's Paradox: Why Is Human Well-being Increasing as Ecosystem Services Degrade," published i n the September issue of BioScience, Raudsepp-Hearne and colleagues found ... Read More
Europe’s Muslims Get to be the Continent’s New Jews
December 12, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
In part two of the Miller-McCune interview with Islamic scholar Reza Aslan, we explore the various manifestations of Islamophobia in Europe, from the banning of minarets and religious clothing to the rise of ultra-right wing anti-Islam parties. Aslan — the author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam and Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East, published this month — addresses the mythos surrounding Europe's Muslim population while offering some positive alternatives to the negative rhetoric and fear-mongering perpetrated both in Europe and ... Read More
