Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

About Michael Todd

Most of Michael Todd's career has been spent in newspaper journalism, ranging from papers in the Marshall Islands to tiny California farming communities. Before joining the publishing arm of the Miller-McCune Center, he was managing editor of the national magazine Hispanic Business. Follow him @MTodd_PSMag.

You Can Help Net a Fluttering of Data Points

May 21, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
fenders-butterfly

If you’re looking for a good measuring stick for change in the world—whether in climate, land use, pollution—consider the butterfly. Not only are they sensitive to temperature changes, hot and cold, many of them will only lay eggs on specific plants which in turn are affected by things like temperature, urbanization, and land use. Butterflies are easy to recognize, do their flying in the open, and are charismatic as heck. (Sorry frogs!) Plus, they don’t live for long, which means problems or successes can be spotted as soon as next summer. With those pluses in mind, a new citizen ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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Major Lessons From the Minor Leagues

May 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Dayton Dragons

We know—especially after viewing this graphic in Pacific Standard—what a lousy deal capturing a sports team can be for the municipal purse, especially if building a new stadium is part of the bait. What about a notch down, in the minors? Does having a team or a new stadium repay the rosy visions of small-town boosters seeking government subsidies to lure in a AAA franchise? According to a study by Nola Agha, an assistant professor of sports management at the University of San Francisco, they just may. Unlike their MLB uncles, having a minor league club in town may bring measurable ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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Study: Consensus on Climate Still Means Consensus

May 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
climate-viz

An article of faith in the climate warming community is that a “scientific consensus” exists on humanity’s role in raising the planet’s temperature. An equal and opposite article of faith among global warming skeptics (to check their temperature scroll down the comments section on any mainstream media article about climate change), or at least skeptics of anthropogenic climate change, is that this consensus is at best less than sweeping and at worst illusory. A new study published online today in the journal Environmental Research Letters puts a figure on how real this (genuine) ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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Our Planet’s Destiny Lies in Its Pastures

May 7, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
cattle-pasture

A couple of times in the past we’ve written about the work of biologist Allan Savory, a Zimbabwean wildlife ranger turned rancher whose land management of Southern Africa’s dry savannahs attempts to mimic the wild herds that the captive ones supplanted. As Judith D. Schwartz wrote for us in 2012: Savory developed a land management process, holistic management, that challenged the conventional belief that grazing can only harm land. The key, said Savory, was to manage livestock to mimic the behavior of wild herds, intensively grazing (and defecating on and trampling upon the ground) and ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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Guys, the Border Already Is Secure

May 3, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
border-fence

U.S. immigration reform has hinged on first “securing the border,” which has that sort of common sense appeal of not fixing water damage after a pipe bursts until you repair the leaky pipe. Politicians from former presidential contenders to D.C. legislators to local sheriffs all insist that the border needs to be fixed before we can talk about legalizing existing illegal immigrants or making other changes to immigration policy. This week, Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the “gang of eight” working on drafting an immigration bill, repeated the mantra that there will be no bill ... Read More

More like this: Politics
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With Electric Cars, Opening a Two-Way Road to the Bank

April 29, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
A small fleet of Mini Coopers at the University of Delaware both draw electric power from the grid and return it, based on the needs of the moment. (PHOTO: UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE)

The feds have dubbed it “tiny but promising,” but “vehicle-to-grid” electrical regulation officially has gotten off the ground in a small way. Last Friday the University of Delaware flipped the switch connecting—via car charging stations—a small fleet of electric-powered Mini Coopers to electric-grid managers PJM Interconnection. (Actually, the switch was flipped on February 27; last week’s event was a sort of debutant’s coming-out party for the technology.) In a piece subtitled "A New Spin on Car Payments," Dan Ferber told us in the November 2011 issue of Miller-McCune (the ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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Can We Expect to See the Dollar Menu Devalued?

April 23, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
dollar-menu

"Value menus" increasingly seem a bad physical deal for consumers—and now perhaps a bum fiscal deal for fast-food purveyors. The cheap chow, long a target for nutrition-focused researchers and  locavoring  advocates, has been criticized for all manner of bad outcomes, mostly centered on obesity. Fast food in general is assailed by these same sources, of course—the book is Fast Food Nation, after all, and not Dollar Menu Dominion—but value menus (and their late cousin "supersize") are seen as particularly egregious in making fat-laden crappy food—despite all the menu labeling, soda ... Read More

More like this: Health
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Offshore Drilling in Belize Falls Into Its Own Great Blue Hole

April 22, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
brain-coral

Last week the Supreme Court of Belize struck down contracts for offshore oil exploration that the nation’s government had issued in 2004 and 2007 and extended in 2009. Drilling would have been in the Mesoamerican Reef, the second largest barrier reef in the world and home to unique features like the Great Blue Hole and the Hol Chan Marine Reserve. But a couple of signal events had occurred between the issuance of those contracts and today, namely the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and a change of government in Belize. The BP spill didn’t affect Belize directly, but it ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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That Red Juice From Strawberries Might Be Blood

April 18, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
strawberries-blood

Adding real blood to the saga of blood strawberries, a farm foreman in Greece’s Peloponnese is accused of shooting protesting migrant workers, sending 29 or 30 of them (accounts vary) to the hospital yesterday. Lots of threads here: GUN VIOLENCE OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES It’s worth noting this was in a rural area, and the assailant used a shotgun—Joe Biden’s suggested home defense weapon—which certainly can be a deadly weapon but in this case left no one critically injured. According to GunPolicy.org (which is hosted by the Sydney School of Public Health and gets some funding ... Read More

More like this: Culture
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Getting the Lead Out of Both Dumps and Ammo

April 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Shell casings left at a firing range

The old rejoinder in the gun control debate that “guns don’t kill people, bullets kill people” takes on added resonance when the lead from ammo that didn’t get plucked out by surgeons remains in the environment, creating new health problems for man and beast. Now that peeling lead paint is mostly a bad memory, the concern of late has centered on the beasts. Lead shot left in the wild can poison birds (we’ve written about trumpeter swans, for example) that ingest the shot either as an aid to digestion or in bullet-riddled carrion. This week, noting that endangered California ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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