Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Commuting to an Early Grave

April 12, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: EGD/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Got a killer commute? You just may. Thursday in Los Angeles (appropriately), social geographer Erika Sandow presented her latest slice of commuting scholarship, which finds that some workers with long commutes—more than 31 miles (50 kilometers) one way—die sooner than people who live closer to their job. Sandow, with Sweden’s Umeå University, outlined her as-yet-unpublished work during the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers. There’s already enough academic research on the perils of commuting to fill a minivan, or at least a Mini. Sandow noted existing ... Read More

The Nuclear Mess at Fukushima

April 10, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
fukushima-protest

While the world sweats over nuclear mongering from a certain Chicago Bulls-loving dictator, a very real nuclear mess is happening in Japan. Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) has announced that a storage tank at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, a victim of the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami in the area, has a suspected leak. If this leak is confirmed, that will make three leaks at the plant since just this past Saturday. In addition to this, the plant has experienced two power outages that shut down a portion of the cooling systems used for spent fuel ponds. Two years and a month ... Read More

Margaret Thatcher: Convicted of Black-and-White Thinking

April 9, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
thatcher-black-and-white

Among the handful of quotes that surface repeatedly in the obituaries on Margaret Thatcher is her self-description not as “a consensus politician or a pragmatic politician, but a conviction politician.” Numerous stories published since her death Monday have used the word “conviction” in their headlines or as the organizing principle in describing her life. Paragraph-length encomiums from Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, and even Meryl Streep all feature the word “conviction” as one of the Iron Lady’s qualities. In 2009, University of Connecticut ... Read More

You Gonna Eat That?

April 9, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
cafeteria-trays

When I was a sophomore in college, a near mutiny arose on campus after the administration announced that, forthwith, all plastic trays would be removed from our cafeterias. Not only did the trays encourage students to waste food, Old Chapel argued, but washing them all—in addition to the usual slew of plates, bowls, and flatware—consumed a needless amount of chemical detergent, hot water, and worker wages. (They also had a pesky habit of winding up on the sledding hill in winter.) This being rural Vermont, and with so little else to organize against—the Dow was above 14,000, Occupy Wall ... Read More

Guinea Pigs, an Adorable—and Tasty—Dinner Companion

April 8, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
guinea-pig-meal

Feeling a little peckish but don’t want a lot? How about some animal protein already packaged in (American) snack size? According to NPR, more people are eating guinea pigs, previously best known on these shores for being, well, guinea pigs in the nation’s laboratories (and for not being hamsters). And unlike the Western world’s unwitting horse eaters, at least the guinea pigs are instantly recognizable as such since they’re usually served whole, from two-tooth death rictus to meaty rump. Having been sensitized by the writing of Jack Shafer over the years, I wondered how real this ... Read More

The Deluge Continues

April 5, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
great-rift-valley

East Africa’s largest economy is about to become a major oil producer, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The U.K. oil giant Tullow estimates that Kenya’s Great Rift Valley area—known as the "Cradle of Mankind" due to the discovery there of the earliest known human remains—could yield 10 billion barrels of oil, enough to supply the country for three centuries. Production remains years away; officials first hope to build a $5 billion network of pipelines to the nation’s Indian Ocean coast in order to facilitate shipping to, notably, China, India, and other Asian countries. With ... Read More

Is Our Disconnect From Nature a Disorder?

April 5, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: EUGENE SERGEEV/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Somewhere during the American experience, between Teddy Roosevelt and color TV, being outdoors and maybe even working up a sweat started to lose its universal appeal. There remain those who fetishize the outdoors, from Ted Nugent to REI shoppers, and the urge to connect with nature never vanished. But as Americans became more urban and more cocooned in their cars and air conditioning, the values of nature were honored more by their absence than in their activities. The price of this disconnect is usually tallied via our bodies, with a simple equation that a lack of outdoor activity must ... Read More

1,000 Days to Reach the U.N.’s Millennium Goals—and It’s Not Looking Good

April 4, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Aid-Stat-Screencap

The 2012 list of how much money the world's wealthier countries gave to international development schemes is out. They are giving less and less. The stats are from the cheerily-named Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (or OECD), which studied its members. Aid was down 4 percent last year and 2 percent in 2011, according to a statement. The downward trend is the steepest reduction in aid in 15 years. The interminable European economic crisis is a key culprit in this. The numbers show aid budgets crashed hardest in Spain, Italy, Greece, and Portugal—nations slammed by ... Read More

Is Your Cell Phone Not Ruining Your Life?

April 3, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
danielfoster437/Flickr

Cell phones can be wonderful things. You might even be reading this on a cell phone. And today is the 40th birthday of the first mobile phone. That phone—look at how cute the antenna is!—could call other people at a somewhat successful clip and not fit in your pocket, but that’s about it. Over the last 40 years cell phones have developed the ability to do so many different non-phone-call things, making calling more of “feature” or, oh no, an “app,” rather than a vital method of communication upon which this device’s existence is based. So, 40 years on, it’s time to take ... Read More

Germany Unplugs Nuclear Power, Doesn’t Plug in Anything Else

April 2, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment

Two years after deciding to phase out nuclear power, Germany's government just reported that it is still producing more energy than it needs. Europe's largest economy has suffered no shortfalls in electricity supply and quadrupled its energy exports to neighbors compared to 2010—before the phase-out. That's according to Germany's state statistical service. Before the drawdown, German nuclear plants represented 20-25 percent of the country's electricity supply. Solar and wind alternatives, meanwhile, are not yet online in sufficient force to take up the shortfall. The lights, however, have ... Read More