Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

The No Nukes That Turned to Slow Nukes

September 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The No Nukes That Turned to Slow Nukes

"No Diablo," chanted thousands of protesters at the gates of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, Calif., in September of 1981. "No Diablo over me." The 10-day gathering came two years after the accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and the big anti-nuclear rallies in New York City and elsewhere, including 30,000 protesting in San Francisco against the nascent Diablo plant, that incident inspired. But complete with rock star Jackson Browne and friends, plus plenty of national media coverage, the 1981 Diablo Canyon protest was viewed at the time as the most ... Read More

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New Studies Help Boy Scouts ‘Be Prepared’

August 17, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The Boy Scouts of America, while last year celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding, reviewed and commissioned much research into how the organization is accomplishing its core mission of promoting good character traits and prosocial behaviors — as well as reaching out to a new generation of kids. Scout leaders hope that the studies will offer guidance to program leaders for the organization's next 100 years. If Scouting is to maintain influence in the next era, it must reverse its declining membership. Participation peaked in 1973 with 4.8 million scouts and has since plunged 42 ... Read More

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Old Buildings Combine Sustainability, Preservation

June 6, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Much to the consternation of developers and redevelopment agencies intent on demolishing historic buildings and constructing new ones, these days, in the name of going green, preservationists are making the case that “the greenest building is the one already built.” “When we first started working on sustainability issues and tried to get people thinking about the environmental value of reusing buildings, rather than tearing them down and building new ones, we were greeted with arched eyebrows and polite nodding heads,” explains Patrice Frey, director of sustainability research for ... Read More

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Thoreau Was Right: Nature Hones the Mind

January 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

A long line of the world's thinkers — from Immanuel Kant to William James to Deepak Chopra — have recommended we take walks in nature to relieve stress and refocus our thoughts. And nature writers — from Henry David Thoreau to John Muir to Edward Abbey — have extolled the restorative benefits of nature. "Everybody," Muir said, "needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul." Turns out they were ahead of their time. "Attention Restoration Theory" or ART, which posits that a walk in the woods helps refocus the ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Health
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Suburban Trail Use Not a Sure Thing

October 5, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

For decades a walking/biking trail near a suburb has been considered a universal good: the most preferred amenity (more so than golf courses and tennis courts) of suburbanites and regarded as a major contributor to good health and fitness. Studies have shown that a location near a trail increases property values and even suggested that homebuyers are drawn to a specific neighborhood by the proximity of a pathway. “Build it and they will come,” is a core conviction of suburban trail builders and policymakers alike from Fullerton, Calif., to Farmington, Conn. New research, however, casts ... Read More

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After the Oil Runs Out: Rigs to Reefs

July 15, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
mmw_rigstoreefs

As recorded by Dr. Love's submarine cam — and no, that's not something from an Austin Powers movie — it's an underwater world as colorful as any exotic locale. Thousands of rockfish, including the distinctive boccacia (Italian for "big mouth") swim past tall colonnades layered with mussels and topped by bright white-, orange- and strawberry-hued anemones. Imagine the best tide pool you've ever seen, flipped from horizontal to vertical. Above the surface, though, the camera reveals a marine scene that's anything but pristine. Turns out, what appears to be a reef is really a rig — an ... Read More

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Don’t Throw Away Your Paper Maps Just Yet

March 22, 2010 • By • 9 Comments

Pity the poor paper map. Once admired for its accuracy, it is now scorned for being less precise than digital maps and hopelessly passé when compared to handheld GPS and satellite navigation systems. Many government agencies and longtime private sector cartographers have stopped or slowed production of paper maps, including the California State Automobile Association, which produced maps that are the standard of excellence for road maps around the world and closed down its mapmaking division at the end of 2008. The U.S. and Canadian governments have greatly reduced paper map production, as ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society, Environment
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Drought, Not ‘Old Chaparral,’ Aiding Wildfires

August 25, 2009 • By • 1 Comment

The communities of scrub and shrub known as chaparral have been the scenes of the biggest — and most expensive-to-fight — wildfires in California, many of which have occurred during the last five years. The increased frequency of these fires, as well as their size and intensity, have accelerated the study of chaparral especially as millions of people and billions of dollars of property now nestle alongside it. Attitudes toward chaparral and fire have changed drastically since Europeans arrived. During the 19th century and half the 20th, chaparral — found along the Pacific Coast and ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Science & Environment
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The High Price of Inactivity

May 1, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

Inactivity is killing us. Researchers in the United States, as well as those from universities and think tanks in Europe, Australia and China have documented the causal relationship between inactivity and poor health in general, and between inactivity, obesity and diabetes in particular. In the U.S., inactivity is now the No. 2 cause of death, ranking just behind the No. 1 cause (smoking) and ahead of No. 3 (alcohol). Costs are enormous for what the Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute calls "the constellation of unhealthy diet, physical inactivity and excess body weight." ... Read More

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For Good Health: Take a Hike!

March 22, 2009 • By • 2 Comments

From William Wordsworth's poetry to the Boy Scout hiking merit badge pamphlet, tramping through the countryside has long been considered a tonic for good health. "Walk out the door and find good health. There is no fever that a 10-mile hike can't cure," suggests Garrison Keillor, the wry host of National Public Radio's Prairie Home Companion. Millions of Americans who like to hike believe that hiking contributes to good physical and mental health. And yet, until recently, nearly all evidence offered for the benefits of taking a hike was anecdotal, and very little hiking-specific ... Read More

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