Last week Joseph Arrieta of The Left Coaster posted an essay about the disappearance of the steelhead in California and how, sadly, the salmon will likely be the next to vanish from our state. The post was so warmly, charmingly written that it made it possible to read about the actions of the "criminal freaksContinue reading “The Dream of Co-Existence”
Author Archives: Kit Stolz
Shiver in My Bones
Shiver in my bones just thinking…about the weather. (from "Like the Weather," by 10,000 Maniacs) What Katrina looked like, approaching Alabama…
Forest Service Eludes the Law
Once upon a time, the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service administered public lands for citizens, taxpayers and extractive industries. This wasn’t ideal (it’s well-known that the costs of road-building, for example, outstrips the revenue the FS receives from timber sales) but at least some of us could walk freely on public landsContinue reading “Forest Service Eludes the Law”
Science Fiction vs. Reality
We interrupt this blog for a brief announcement: Too often, science fiction, no matter how imaginative, just plain sucks. Here’s an example, from one of the genre’s founders, Edgar Rice Burroughs. It’s from his second book The Gods of Mars. A Martian princess named Phaidor has just been rejected by a studly Virginian from earth,Continue reading “Science Fiction vs. Reality”
When Science Was Fun
From the Cornell University Library collection of "The Fantastic in Art and Fiction," the Weird Science division, and no, I’m not making that up. Is it just my imagination, or is it possible that a hundred years ago, science was a lot more fun?
Good Question. Bad ANWR.
From MoJo Blog, a question on the House floor asked during the debate over the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) by Rep. Edward Markey: So the choice comes down to this – do we raise $2.4 billion by prying open and forever destroying a national wildlife refuge, overturning forty years of established environmental policy, threateningContinue reading “Good Question. Bad ANWR.”
Quote of the Week
"Students are ill-served by any effort in science classrooms to blur the distinction between science and other ways of knowing, including those concerned with the supernatural." American Association for the Advancement of Science, in a new release backing the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association’s refusal to force biology teachers inContinue reading “Quote of the Week”
The Weather Where We Are: Holland
(from Granta this fall, by Maarten ‘t Hart) Here, in Holland, there is only one plant from which one can make reasonable deductions about climate change: the broad bean. The broad bean likes the cold and you have to plant it early. But not too early, because then it will rot in theContinue reading “The Weather Where We Are: Holland”
Saving the American Soul — Or Trying To
Terry Tempest Williams is an adventurer in prose. Although she writes thoughtfully, she has an fierceness that gives her books great power. She’s revered by many readers I know for "Refuge," which explored the connection between the cancer that struck her family and the environment in which she grew up in Utah. As worthy asContinue reading “Saving the American Soul — Or Trying To”
Whatever You Say, Dear Coal Industry
A week ago Tom Toles of the Washington Post published a sketch of a cartoon he never quite finished–quite possibly because the story it meant to illustrate never made the papers. But it’s yet another jaw-dropping example of an administration pressuring the Environmental Protection Agency to do whatever its bedmate, in this case the coalContinue reading “Whatever You Say, Dear Coal Industry”
Kit Stolz 