When Pacific Standard visited Spain’s ghost airport last year, thieves had just walked off with bronze fingers from a sculpture of the project’s founder, Spanish politician Carlos Fabra. The 100-foot, $300,000 sculpture—and the empty airport it graces—were not yet symbols internationally, but locally everyone knew the story. Inspired by the success of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, every half-solvent town in Spain had decided to build itself a landmark project during boom times early in the new century. In Fabra’s region, Castellón, the project was a $200 million ... Read More
State Arts Agencies Refuse to Die
July 19, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Last year, as they grappled with falling tax revenues, a number of governors proposed eliminating their state’s arts agency. As we reported, arts advocates responded with alarm, fearing the loss of a vital resource that provides grass-roots organizations needed money (including federal funds, which are distributed through the agencies), as well as information and assistance. It turns out these organizations aren’t all that easy to kill. In recent days, one such agency has returned after a brief hiatus, while another, which was shut down a year ago, has resumed operations in a slightly ... Read More
Will Japan Follow Germany’s Path to Green Energy?
April 6, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Japan is shutting down the last of its nuclear power plants. While the closure is slated to be temporary, popular opinion has shifted, and no one is certain when or if the reactor will be brought back online. Prior to the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, Japan counted on nuclear generation for 30 percent of its electrical needs. After the disaster, they turned off 53 nuclear plants, with the last one scheduled to go offline this month. Miranda Schreurs, professor of comparative politics and director of the Environmental Policy Research Centre at the Freie Universitat Berlin, says Japan ... Read More
Can Obamacare Win by Losing at Highest Court?
March 27, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
As day two of the U.S. Supreme Court’s epic three-day examination of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) came to a close, the general consensus -- from left and right--seems to be that the government’s lawyer failed to convince any of the five right-of-center justices to uphold the individual mandate alongside the court’s four left-of-center justices. The contrast between Paul Clement’s sterling performance challenging the mandate and the pointed questions from justices that marred Solicitor General Donald Verrilli’s stumbling defense (here’s a funny ... Read More
Feds Appear Clueless About Their Own E-Waste
March 21, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
You upgrade your computer every four or five years. No big deal. Discarding the old one leaves a relatively tiny e-footprint. The U.S. government, on the other hand, is the world’s largest purchaser of information technology and discards 10,000 computers each week, says a new report from the Government Accountability Office. The government has a few options when its tech bits get worn out: donate them to schools; give them to a recycler; exchange them with other government agencies; or sell them to the highest bidder at auctions. But because of the difficulty of tracking and reporting ... Read More
Easter Earthquake Pointed Out Some Faults
March 9, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Last month, Rex Dalton told us about a major earthquake in Baja Mexico that in addition to killing two people had the unfortunate local consequence of sealing off a traditional fishing spot that sustains the Cucapá Indian community. In “Quake Rescues Reserve, Shakes Baja Fishing Town,” he noted that aftereffects of the 7.2-magnitude Easter 2010 earthquake pleased conservationists as much as it annoyed the subsistence fishermen, and for exactly the same reasons. In the pleased column now add seismologists. The U.S. Geological Survey just announced that the El Mayor-Cucapah quake ... Read More
New York’s White Roofs Prove They’re Cool
March 8, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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
New Statin Warnings Include Brain-Related Effects
February 29, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Since 2009, Miller-McCune has taken a couple bites of the apple surrounding statins – a class of drugs used to lower cholesterol in the bloodstream – and whether there might be some unacknowledged health concerns for some users. Just about anything a human might ingest, from aspirin to water, might prove harmful in some cases, but we looked at statins because they were so popular (in 2009, we estimated 13 million in the U.S. alone were prescribed statins, and that figure is now believed to be north of 20 million) and yet there was little discussion of the drugs’ risks. And there are ... Read More
Global Fistula Care Map Aims to Expand Treatment
February 29, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
There are many dire medical problems that the first world has the luxury of not worrying much about. Such as obstetric fistula, which tears a hole inside the birth canal. It’s one of the most devastating birth injuries a woman can sustain, but treatable. But that’s often not the case for much of the developing world. There are between 50,000-100,000 cases of obstetric fistula each year worldwide. In 2010, only an estimated 14,000 were treated. Obstetric fistula causes 8 percent of all maternal deaths and, when it’s not fatal, leads to constant incontinence and shame. As we explained ... Read More
