Tag Archives: times

California (finally) gives cyclists a little more room to ride

by Candela40R Posted on September 17, 2014

BUFF IS BEAUTIFUL

California (finally) gives cyclists a little more room to ride

By

17 Sep 2014 7:38 PM

Share

Share

California (finally) gives cyclists a little more room to ride

×

Thanks, California! You are now the 24th state to require that drivers pass a cyclist with at least three feet of clearance. Local officials even have a snazzy name for the mandated breathing room: the buffer zone.

Until now, California’s only buffer rule advised cars to pass “at a safe distance” — and “safe,” as everyone knows, is relative. The penalty for ignoring the buffer zone is only $35. But hey, small victories. The fine jumps to $220 if a cyclist is injured in the zone.

More from the Los Angeles Times:

Colin Bogart, the programs director for the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, a cycling advocacy organization … said he hopes that the law will encourage drivers to take a deep breath and wait before speeding past a cyclist.

“Every cyclist can cite a really harrowing moment where someone came way too close and really spooked us in the process,” Bogart said.

Truth. As a longtime California cyclist, I gotta say, the whole buffer thing had me spooked. If I cruised a few feet away from parked cars, to avoid getting doored, I’d be at the mercy of the crazy traffic behind me. If I swerved away from the crazy traffic, I’d put myself back in the line of door-flinging fire. According to the Los Angeles Times, in 2012, 5,000 cyclists were injured or killed in Los Angeles County alone.

But no worries, bike haters, the legal language around this stuff will still be nice and vague:

Under the new law, if traffic is too heavy to change lanes — or if other conditions make a three-foot buffer impossible — drivers must slow to a “reasonable and prudent” speed and wait to pass until the cyclist is safe.

“Reasonable and prudent”?! In afterwork gridlock? Ha, that’s a good one.

Source:
California’s 3-foot buffer zones for cyclists takes effect today

, Los Angeles Times.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Get stories like this in your inbox

AdvertisementAdvertisement

Link: 

California (finally) gives cyclists a little more room to ride

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on California (finally) gives cyclists a little more room to ride

Amazon’s cloud is about to get dirtier

by NestorHPOM Posted on September 17, 2014

SERVER HARM

Amazon’s cloud is about to get dirtier

By

17 Sep 2014 3:18 PM

Share

Share

Amazon’s cloud is about to get dirtier

×

In the latest effort to satisfy our desire to save every photo, thought, and fragment of information in cyberspace, Amazon plans to build a fat new server farm that will offer “cloud” storage for such companies as Yelp, Netflix, Pinterest, Dropbox, Spotify, Soundcloud, Tumblr, and Vine, to name more than a few.

According to the Seattle Times, the $1.1 billion server farm will be located in Dublin, Ohio. The city is served by an electric utility that gets two-thirds of its juice from coal-fired power plants, and has a history of lobbying for the coal industry.

As a Greenpeace report from earlier this year shows, not all energy-hogging data centers warm the climate equally, and Amazon’s are among the worst of the worst. Fossil fuel burning provides over half the energy used by Amazon’s colossal digital network — and nuclear power supplies another quarter. Here’s the breakdown:

Greenpeace

By contrast, the Greenpeace report raves that Apple powers the iCloud with 100 percent renewables; Facebook put a data center in Iowa to spark the world’s largest purchase of wind turbines; and Google is signing long-term contracts to buy cleaner power for some of its centers. What’s more, these three web giants teamed up in North Carolina to pressure Duke Energy, the largest U.S. utility and one of the country’s biggest emitters, to offer customers — including their data warehouses — the choice to buy greener electricity.

(Before heaping too much praise on all that progress, recall that these companies and their founders don’t have perfect track records when it comes to caring for the climate.)

To avoid adding to Amazon’s dirty energy use (and supporting its labor-abusing, writer-exploiting, bookstore-bullying, and publisher-extorting ways) we can host our websites and store our digital stuff elsewhere until the company cleans up its act — and maybe even shop in a real store like back in the old days.

Yet given Amazon’s’s dominion over many of the apps and sites we use for fun, entertainment, information, and procrastination, we’d basically have to give up our computers and all other devices to steer clear of its sovereign realm.

If all the less desirable impacts of the internet were as palpable as the gratification we get from instantly streaming the last five Parks and Recreation episodes (made possible by Amazon’s web infrastructure), it would be a lot easier to make an informed decision about how much digital property we really want.

Maybe we need an app that’ll kick a could of smoke out of the back of our laptops every time we order a bag of groceries from Amazon Fresh.

Source:
Investors may balk, but Amazon plans to boost cloud spending

, The Seattle Times.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Get stories like this in your inbox

AdvertisementAdvertisement

Visit source: 

Amazon’s cloud is about to get dirtier

Posted in Anchor, Cyber, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Amazon’s cloud is about to get dirtier

Need a fracking supporter? Hire a homeless person.

by LashawnJudy Posted on September 16, 2014

That’s fracked up!

Need a fracking supporter? Hire a homeless person.

By

16 Sep 2014 5:32 PM

Share

Share

Need a fracking supporter? Hire a homeless person.

×

In bizarre energy industry news of the day, the North Carolina Energy Coalition seems to have brought in some homeless men to stand in as fracking supporters at a state hearing on developing fracking operations in the state.

The men were bussed 200 miles from Winston-Salem to Cullowhee, N.C., where the hearing took place, for the day.

From Asheville’s Citizen-Times:

“They were clueless,” said Bettie “Betsy” Ashby, a member of the Jackson County Coalition Against Fracking. “At least two of them I met definitely came from a homeless shelter. One of them even apologized to me and said, ‘I didn’t know they were trying to do this to me.’ One said, ‘I did it for the…’ and then he rubbed his fingers together like ‘for the money.’”

Several of the men were wearing turquoise shirts or hats that said “Shale Yes” on the front and “Energy Creates Jobs” and “N.C. Energy Coalition.com” on the back.

It’s not a new tactic: If you can’t find people who actually support your cause, just pay uninformed members of underprivileged groups to fake it!

What is the mission of the N.C. Energy Coalition, exactly? From the group’s website:

Our website will provide the facts about the offshore and onshore production processes, environmental issues and economic impacts with no political spin. The Coalition will not advocate on issues but instead, provide the facts to let the public, business community and elected officials decide for themselves.

The organization is also sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute.

Just this June, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed off on the legalization of fracking in the state. At the same time, the state also passed a bill that makes the disclosure of the ingredients in the chemical cocktail used in fracking punishable as a misdemeanor. (For what it’s worth, the originally proposed version of that bill would have made said disclosure a felony.)

I’d be interested, at the very least, to know if the N.C. Energy Coalition will help its paid protestors to get actual jobs at the state’s new fracking wells. Because that’s supposed to be the huge benefit of this “energy boom,” right? I guess a few bucks an hour and a bus ride to Cullowhee is a good place to start!

Source:
Did energy group bus homeless in to support fracking?

, Citizen-Times.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Get stories like this in your inbox

AdvertisementAdvertisement

Jump to original – 

Need a fracking supporter? Hire a homeless person.

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, solar, solar panels, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Need a fracking supporter? Hire a homeless person.

Why millennials aren’t going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

by CandacePapst Posted on September 12, 2014

Cheeri-NOs

Why millennials aren’t going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

By

12 Sep 2014 5:40 PM

Share

Share

Why millennials aren’t going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

×

The New York Times crunched the nation’s cereal-eating numbers this week, and it looks like the typical American breakfast is starting to include fewer sugary flakes and moon-shaped marshmallows.

The Times’ Stephanie Stroml reports that in the past decade, Americans have been eating less boxed cereal, preferring healthier options like juiced fruits and veggies and probiotic-rich Greek yogurt. Between 2003 and 2013, sales of the once-beloved flaky cereals (Corn Flakes, Frosted Flakes, etc.) decreased by 5.5 percent. Children’s cereals (Lucky Charms and good ol’ Cap’n Crunch) have plummeted 10.7 percent. Meanwhile, Muesli, a favorite of health nuts everywhere, is steadily gaining popularity, increasing in sales by 1.8 percent.

The article reads:

For the last decade, the cereal business has been declining, as consumers reach for granola bars, yogurt and drive-through fare in the morning. And the drop-off has accelerated lately, especially among those finicky millennials who tend to graze on healthy options — even if Cheerios and some other brands come in whole-grain varieties fortified with protein now.

As a millennial myself, I’d like to take this opportunity to say a little something to big breakfast cereal companies to give them a heads-up on why young people like me are opting out of their morning Cap’n Crunch:

Dearest Big Breakfast Cereal Companies (BBCCs),

Hello, I am your loyal fan Liz. I am particularly fond of Kellogg’s Raisin Bran Crunch, the perfect blend of whole-wheaty oats and sun-dried raisin chewiness. It’s my favorite thing to snack on while I scroll through my Instagram feed. So, to you I extend the deepest of gratitude.

But, BBCCs, I’m writing to tell you to CUT THE CRAP. We millennials are having a tough time believing the whole “Lucky Charms are a great source of whole-grains” thing when they actually contain 40 percent more sugar by weight than typical adult cereals. C’mon, people, we both know this is bogus. Sugary breakfast cereals are not health food, even if you pump them up with protein. It’s like trying to make “fetch” happen. And it’s not going to happen.

You see, it’s not that we don’t enjoy the taste of sugary deliciousness, it’s that we’re becoming smarter consumers. We’re smarter, BBCCs, because we’ve seen these tricks before. Other companies have been trying to sell us products that cater to millennial interests — by making cars more tech-friendly and fast-food look quaint and local. But those marketing ploys that tell us we should be slaves to the automobile, or that food products are healthy when the nutrition label reads, “sugars: 19 grams” — well, they’re starting to feel a little stale.

I probably won’t give up eating a bowl or two of cereal for dinner once in a while, but if you’re wondering why your sales continue to drop despite your new “heath conscious” advertising campaigns — it’s because when millennials want to get their daily fix of whole grains, we’ll reach for the organic barley, not the box of Fruit Loops.

Source:
Cereals Begin to Lose Their Snap, Crackle and Pop

, New York Times.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Get stories like this in your inbox

AdvertisementAdvertisement

Link:

Why millennials aren’t going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

Posted in Anchor, ATTRA, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why millennials aren’t going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

Empty study paves the way for fracking in California

by AimeeL49cfr Posted on August 29, 2014

Empty study paves the way for fracking in California

By

29 Aug 2014 5:10 PM

Share

Share

Empty study paves the way for fracking in California

×

Well, there you have it, ladies and gents: Fracking’s just fine! A study found no significant evidence to suggest that fracking and similar extraction techniques are harmful to the environment.

Energy companies poised to dig into California’s reserves are breathing a sigh of relief. The findings pave the way for the Bureau of Land Management to resume issuing oil and gas leases on federal land in California next year, following a temporary halt to the practice last year and the defeat of an attempted statewide moratorium on fracking this spring.

But here’s the catch: The study didn’t contain much information.

From the Los Angeles Times:

For example, the report found no evidence of water contamination from fracking in California, but the scientist directing the research, Jane Long, said researchers also had no data on the quality of water near fracking sites.

“We can only tell you what the data we could get says,” said Long, a former director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “We can’t tell you what we don’t know.”

Other unresolved issues, besides “the location, depth and quality of groundwater in oil- and gas-producing regions”: Any information about the toxicity of a third of the chemicals involved in fracking and whether or not plants or animals would be harmed by chronic exposure to those chemicals. Scientists behind the study had asked for more time, but the BLM had a seven-month timetable and wouldn’t budge.

BLM admits that this report doesn’t tell the whole story, and that — don’t worry — there will be more environmental impact studies done. They’ll just be done, you know, “as oil and gas development resumes.” Greeeeeeat.

Source:
Fracking report clears way for California oil, gas leasing to resume

, Los Angeles Times.

Feds to Resume Leasing for Fracking in California

, ABC News.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Get stories like this in your inbox

AdvertisementAdvertisement

More: 

Empty study paves the way for fracking in California

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, KTP, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Empty study paves the way for fracking in California

Fracking wells at the Pittsburgh airport? Sure — what could go wrong?

by AnnelieHollande Posted on August 12, 2014

Fracking wells at the Pittsburgh airport? Sure — what could go wrong?

By

Fred

Here’s a great idea: You have a fairly new and extremely unregulated technology that’s used to extract a natural resource with a known tendency toward explosion. Why not install that technology at a major international airport?

Alright – to be fair, applying the title of “major international airport” to Pittsburgh International Airport is a bit of a stretch these days. If you’re going by The New York Times’ description of its once-great terminals, it’s about two tumbleweeds shy of American ghost town candidacy. When US Airways abandoned PIT as a hub in 2004, its annual traffic dropped from 21 million passengers in 1997 to eight million in 2013. The airport is broke.

As has become business as usual in Pennsylvania, PIT has turned to the massive deposits of natural gas buried under its runways as a source of revenue. Consol Energy will set up a well right alongside the airport parking lot this month. The gas deposits themselves lie roughly a mile directly underneath the airport.

From The New York Times:

“It’s like finding money,” said Rich Fitzgerald, the county executive of Allegheny County, which owns the airport. “Suddenly you’ve got this valuable asset that nobody knew was there.”

As was made abundantly clear by the Times’ income-focused coverage, this has been painted as an economic boon for the county with no mention of the potential health and environmental hazards associated with fracking. But that policy has worked out great for Pennsylvania so far, so why not run with it?

The real potential for crisis, however, lies in endangering one of the state’s greatest monuments, which can be found opposite the airport TGI Friday’s. I’m talking about George Washington, our nation’s founding father, standing proudly next to Franco Harris, former Steelers running back, captured mid-Immaculate Reception:

This is fine art and it needs to be protected! Clean water, uncontaminated air, and potential for earthquakes are essentially an afterthought here. When Franco Harris is threatened, every limbic system in Western Pennsylvania should leap to attention, so I’m frankly appalled that no action has been taken against this well. Come on now, yinz!


Source
Now Arriving at Pittsburgh International: Fracking, The New York Times

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Cities

,

Climate & Energy

Credit:

Fracking wells at the Pittsburgh airport? Sure — what could go wrong?

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, Hagen, LG, ONA, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Fracking wells at the Pittsburgh airport? Sure — what could go wrong?

The Strange History of Tacos and the New York Times

by BlondelMcBurney Posted on August 12, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Neil Irwin does a bit of interesting gastronomic sleuthing today using a New York Times tool that counts the number of mentions of a word in the archives of the Times. The question is, how fast do new food trends go mainstream? Take, for example, fried calamari:

Now, of course, every strip-mall pizza place and suburban Applebee’s serves fried calamari. But not all that long ago it was an exotic food. The term “fried calamari” did not appear in the pages of The New York Times until 1975, according to our nifty Times Chronicle tool, and didn’t show up frequently until the 1980s. Lest you think it is only a change in vocabulary, the term “fried squid” made only a couple of scattered appearances before that time.

Fried calamari made a voyage that dozens of foods have made over the years: They start out being served in forward-thinking, innovative restaurants in New York and other capitals of gastronomy. Over time, they become more and more mainstream….In the last decade alone, the list includes tuna tartare, braised short ribs, beet salad and pretty much any dish involving pork belly, brussels sprouts or kale. In an earlier era, the list might include sun-dried tomatoes, pesto and hummus.

Fascinating! But readers with long memories will recall that I was surprised at how recently tacos became mainstream. In 1952 they were apparently uncommon enough that the Times had to explain to its readers what a taco was. So how about if we use this nifty new search tool to get some hard data on taco references? Here it is:

Sure enough, there are virtually no mentions of tacos in the 40s and 50s. There’s a blip here and there, but they don’t really get commonly mentioned until the 70s.

But that’s not what’s interesting. Back in 1877, a full 3 percent of all Times articles mentioned tacos! In fact, tacomania was a feature of the Times during all of the 1870s and 1880s, before suddenly falling off a cliff in 1890. What’s up with that? Why did tacos suddenly become verboten in 1890? Did a new editor take over who hated tacos? And what’s the deal with the blip from about 1917 to 1922? Did World War I produce a sudden explosion of interest in tacos?

This is very weird. Does anyone have a clue what’s going on here?

UPDATE: On Twitter, Christopher Ingraham suggests that this is an artifact of bad text recognition of ancient microfilm. I don’t have access to the full version of Times Chronicle, but a look at some of the summaries of articles that allegedly mention tacos makes this seem like a pretty good guess. It’s quite possible that there are no genuine mentions of tacos until the 40s or 50s.

This is a sadly boring explanation, but it seems pretty likely to be right. However, I’m still curious about the sudden dropoff in 1890 (did archive copies suddenly improve? did the Times start using a different font?) and the blip after World War I.

See original article here:

The Strange History of Tacos and the New York Times

Posted in alo, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Sprout, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Strange History of Tacos and the New York Times

Keystone XL could be even worse than you thought

by UlrichFocken Posted on August 11, 2014

Keystone XL could be even worse than you thought

By

Rena Schild /

Shutterstock

If the Keystone XL pipeline is built, it could lead to up to four times as much CO2 pollution as the State Department has estimated, according to a new study. And the study wasn’t written by activists. It was conducted by scientists at the Stockholm Environment Institute and published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Why are these new figures so much higher than previous ones? The Associated Press explains: “The U.S. [State Department’s] estimates didn’t take into account that the added oil from the pipeline would drop prices by about $3 a barrel, spurring consumption that would create more pollution, the researchers said.”

Here’s more from Climate Central:

The researchers found that for every barrel of increased crude oil production in the Canadian tar sands, global oil consumption could increase 0.6 barrels because the additional oil on the market would cause a decrease in global oil prices.

Depending on how much new oil production Keystone XL allows, the net yearly impact of the pipeline may range from nearly zero to 110 million tons of CO2 emissions each year — a range four times wider than that forecasted by the State Department, the study says.

The State Department’s position on Keystone XL, which is expected to pump 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta to Texas, is that it will have an impact on climate change, but a much smaller one than if the pipeline isn’t built. That’s because Canada will find other, more carbon-intensive ways of getting that oil to refineries, such as via rail or other pipelines to the Canadian coast.

Danny Harvey, a University of Toronto professor whose research focuses on energy and climate change, said the paper shows strong evidence that the climate change effects of Keystone XL would be significant if it’s built.

He said he is “baffled” by the State Department’s conclusion that Keystone XL will have a minimal impact on the climate, and that he doubts the department’s statements that rail and other pipelines are likely to be sufficient to make up for the lost oil transporting capacity of Keystone XL if it isn’t built.

This debate matters because President Obama said last year that he won’t approve the pipeline if it would “significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” He’s expected to make his decision after the November midterm elections.

New concerns about CO2 pollution won’t dampen GOP enthusiasm for the pipeline, of course. If Republicans take control of the Senate after the midterms — Nate Silver says they have about a 60 percent chance of doing so — they plan to make approval of Keystone one of their top priorities.


Source
Keystone XL Emissions Could Be Four Times Higher Than U.S. Calculated, Says New Study, Associated Press
Keystone XL Will Spike Oil Demand and CO2, Study Says, Climate Central
Uniting to Take Congress, G.O.P. Tries to Become the Party of ‘Yes’, The New York Times

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Read more:

Keystone XL could be even worse than you thought

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, Hagen, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Keystone XL could be even worse than you thought

Yet More Benghazi Conspiracy Theories Are Only a Day Away

by RoseanneQVJ Posted on June 17, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

After a year of planning, US commandos have captured one of the militia leaders thought to be a ringleader in the Benghazi attacks. For political junkies, however, it was the 17th paragraph of the Times story that drew the most attention:

Mr. Obama’s Republican critics, who have sought to portray the Benghazi attack as an administration cover-up and efforts to prosecute those responsible as weak, were cautious in their initial response to news of Mr. Abu Khattala’s capture.

Indeed. I wonder just how long that caution will last? I’d give it no more than 24 hours. More than likely, it’s just a publicity stunt meant to draw attention away from the IRS/EPA/ISIS/Iran. Amirite? In turn, all of those things are publicity stunts meant to draw attention away from Benghazi. It’s like a finely tuned Swiss watch, isn’t it?

By the way: does anyone know why this guy is referred to as Mr. Abu Khattala on all references in most news stories? It’s never shortened. I’ve never noticed that with any other Arabic name.

UPDATE: Sorry about that. I thought I had seen “Mr. Abu Khattala” used repeatedly elsewhere too, but apparently not. Only in the New York Times, where it’s house style.

View original:  

Yet More Benghazi Conspiracy Theories Are Only a Day Away

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Yet More Benghazi Conspiracy Theories Are Only a Day Away

Watch: Is the NRA So Different Than a Jihadi Terrorist Group? Fiore Cartoon

by ReneeQuisenberr Posted on June 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

Excerpt from:  

Watch: Is the NRA So Different Than a Jihadi Terrorist Group? Fiore Cartoon

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Watch: Is the NRA So Different Than a Jihadi Terrorist Group? Fiore Cartoon