A satellite photograph of New York City reveals a dark blot fronted to the north, west, and east by a sea of light green forest, and to the south by an actual sea: the pastel blue of the Atlantic Ocean. Into this blot, on hot summer days, soaks enough solar radiation to turn its denizens into sweaty, irritable, iced-latte swilling malcontents prone to cranking the air-conditioning full blast 24/7 while daydreaming about a weekend upstate. Those who live in fear of sweltering July subway rides days may soon have a respite, from an unlikely source. A just published study by researchers at ... Read More
Researchers Re-Open Their Minds to Psychedelic Drugs
May 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Mike is hunched over a pile of soggy wood chips at the bottom of a glade in Golden Gate Park. It's a clear winter afternoon and sunlight filters through the eucalyptus trees, landing on grass still damp from a recent storm. Mike sifts through the wood chips, slowly and deliberately examining the soil beneath. Two paper bags fill a pocket of his Patagonia fleece jacket. Mike is a 28-year-old engineer at a prominent software company in San Francisco. He is soft-spoken and self-possessed; on weekends he drives his Subaru Forester to his time-share in Tahoe to ski. He donates to public radio, ... Read More
WikiLeaks: Saudis Overstating Oil Reserves
February 9, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
On any given day, a story emerges in the press that requires a second look, and then a third. Though these stories often do not appear on the front page, they frequently pertain to an issue more lasting in importance and more impressive in scope than most or all of the other news topics du jour. Today is one such day. A secret cable newly released by WikiLeaks reveals that a senior Saudi government official has been warning American diplomats that the Arab nation’s oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 40 percent, or 300 billion barrels. Saudi Arabia is by far the world’s ... Read More
Marijuana, Dark Horse Savior of California Agriculture
October 29, 2010 • By • 15 Comments
This story originally posted on April 1, 2010. With Californians asked to determine whether to legalize marijuana this Tuesday through the Proposition 19 ballot initiative, we offer it again. The three-hour Northern California drive from San Francisco to Nevada County passes through some of the cream of the state’s agriculture industry: dairy, alfalfa, rice, almonds, grapes. On both sides of the freeway stretch enormous crop rows, interrupted only by the state capital of Sacramento and a number of small towns. Last fall, I made the trip north to visit a medical marijuana farm in the ... Read More
White House Signs Up for White Roofs
July 23, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Back in spring 2009, Miller-McCune reported — in two separate articles (here and here)—on the impressive virtues of “cool roofs” in the fight against climate change. Simply by painting urban surfaces white or a light color, we noted, “the carbon emissions of all 600 million of the world’s cars could be off-set for 18 to 20 years — at a savings equivalent to at least $1 trillion worth of CO2 reductions.” At the time, scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the Bay Area were lobbying the Obama administration to embrace the “cool roofs strategy” as a ... Read More