The United States has just had its first official case of home-grown mad cow disease. “Just had” in this case corresponding to seven months ago but, well, you know. While it took seven months from the first suspicion of this lone mad cow to positively identify its condition, at least it wasn’t entered into the […]
Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy
…is a new, open-access journal available online. Only online, in fact. In its own words, Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy is a new peer-reviewed, open access journal that provides a platform for the dissemination of new practices and for dialogue emerging out of the field of sustainability. I hope to see some interesting—and, ideally, useful—things […]
Posted by Ben on June 23, 2005
https://www.swordbilled.com/sustainability-science-practice-and-policy/
Fire medicine
This is not new news, nor is it relevant in the sense of being anything anyone needs to worry about, but it certainly is curious: Seattle police launched an investigation on Friday to determine how a patient undergoing emergency heart surgery caught on fire at a local hospital in 2003. The male patient, who was […]
Posted by Ben on June 23, 2005
https://www.swordbilled.com/fire-medicine/
Eco-Tools, Part II
Local Harvest lets you find organic food grown close to where you live. Browse/search for farmers’ markets, restaurants, farms, co-ops, and the like.
Posted by Ben on June 22, 2005
https://www.swordbilled.com/eco-tools-part-ii/
Astounding new scientific advantages
Maggots. They may not ever be the life of the party, but now they are qualified by the FDA for use in medical treatments. (via BoingBoing) Time travel. …is now okay. Which is to say that researchers have finally gotten around to speculating that, in the event of time travel at any point in the […]
Posted by Ben on June 20, 2005
https://www.swordbilled.com/astounding-new-scientific-advantages/
Eco-Tools
Check the facts on power generation with EPA’s eGRID database. Get info on regions, states, individual power plants, etc. Find out the mix of power generation (i.e., wind power [ha!] vs. nuclear vs. coal, etc.). Find out how dirty the plants are. And all sorts of other useful info. (via Gristmill)
Posted by Ben on June 19, 2005
https://www.swordbilled.com/eco-tools/
The Starbucks Effect = Gridlock
The idea is that additional stops—for, say, coffee—tacked onto already painful commutes translate into even more gridlocked traffic and a powerfully negative ecological impact. The idea’s originator is one travel behavioral analyst by the name of Nancy McGuckin, who based her ideas on a survey of 70,000 households. It might not actually make that much […]
Posted by Ben on June 9, 2005
https://www.swordbilled.com/the-starbucks-effect-gridlock/
The Point of Death
Execution by lethal injection may not be the painless procedure most Americans assume, say researchers from Florida and Virginia. They examined post-mortem blood levels of anaesthetic and believe that prisoners may have been capable of feeling pain in almost 90% of cases and may have actually been conscious when they were put to death in […]
Posted by Ben on June 9, 2005
https://www.swordbilled.com/the-point-of-death/
What can I do?
Via the Waterboro Public Library, I stumbled across a blog called, appropriately enough, So what can I do? The site explores ways to enact social change. A lot of them, in fact. A lot of the tips seem to be the ‘easy’ sorts of things of which I’m endlessly suspicious—I tend to be skeptical of […]
Posted by Ben on June 6, 2005
https://www.swordbilled.com/what-can-i-do/
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
It’s difficult to remain optimistic when “the most comprehensive survey into the state of the planet concludes that human activities threaten the Earth’s ability to sustain future generations.” On the other hand, at least the report exists. (I’ll form more of an opinion once I’ve read the report, which you can download online in PDF […]
Posted by Ben on May 21, 2005
https://www.swordbilled.com/millennium-ecosystem-assessment/