This whole “Urban Lumberjack/Heritage” trend can get a bit bulky and unflattering, don’t you think? With all the layers of flannels and thermals and buffalo plaids even a skinny guy can look overstuffed – or overfed. Leave it to an Italian, such as the gentleman above, to find a way to slim down the look and make it a flattering one. The trick is the slim cut KNIT(!) peacoat. A popped collar doesn’t hurt, either.
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Yet another Super Bowl has come and gone, and the one thing most of us will remember about the whole bloated, noisy event will be … a cute kid with a Darth Vader mask using the force on a Passat. Super Bowl ads, for all their obnoxiousness and over-emphasis in the media, do provide us one of the best reflections on the current state of American consumer culture . This year was no different — here’s a look at what this year’s commercials say about the nation’s shopping habits … … Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Photo: Green Technology In the days following Obama’s State of the Union address , Stephen Chu took center stage in the energy arena to announce a “Sun shot” — a government-funded effort to innovate the technology necessary to make solar power competitive against fossil fuels. The details of that plan have now been outlined: the Department of… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Photo: Propublica Thad Allen, the Rear Admiral of the US Coast Guard charged with heading up the BP spill response in the Gulf, has issued a frank warning about the perils of drilling in the Arctic. Simply put, we’re not ready to do so, as the US government is unprepared to contain a spill in the region. Even so, Republicans are planning to push for Arctic waters to be opened up for drilling anyhow. … Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Why Today’s Booming Export Industries, Agriculture & Mining, Easily Dodge EPA Regulations
February 7, 2011 No Comment
Non-point source pollution symbolized. Image credit: State of Massachusetts. Until now, US environmental regulation, as with financial sector regulation, had been ‘back-tracking’ steadily for decades, a trend often justified with the fantasy that producers would on their own a.) voluntarily invest in system-wide efficiency improvements; and b.) stop outsourcing if only they could had the freedom to operate without enforced pollution control standards. * There are parallel fantasies for agriculture, as discussed below. Exports rule.
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Image: G. K. MacDonald, E. M. Bennett, P. A. Potter, N. Ramankutty The map above is the first illustration of worldwide imbalances in the use of phosphorus , a key component of fertilizers and an essential plant nutrient. “Typically, people either worry about what happens when an excess of phosphorus finds its way into the water, or they focus on what happens when we run out of phosphorus,”
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Image credit: Michael Betke , used under Creative Commons license. With feed-in tariffs causing a huge surge in UK solar jobs , and even causing my parents to install solar , it seems fair to say the scheme has been a huge success. In fact, it may have been too successful. Because the massive rise in
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Spruce Gran Picea #0909-6B37 (9,550 years old; Fulufjället, Sweden); all photographs provided by Rachel Sussman Rachel Sussman photographs our planet’s oldest living organisms. From trees dating back perhaps as far as 7,000 years to Siberian Actinobacteria that could be as much as 600,000 years old, she travels the globe to fine, and photograph, the inconceivable. But how does she find the organisms, and what’s it like to be that close to living history? Sussman took some time to answer a few questions we have about her curious and amazing quests. … Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …One Photographer’s Harrowing Journey to the World’s Most Remote Active Volcano
February 7, 2011 No Comment
Photo credit: Donna and Steve O’Meara This guest post was written by Donna O’Meara, an award-winning writer and photographer living in Hawaii, who has photos currently on view in ” Extreme Exposure” at The Annenberg Space for Photography I held my breath and clanked up the metal gangplank of The Spirit of Enderby , a privately leased Russian icebreaker that would be my new home for the next month. Following “in the footsteps of Scott and Shackleton,” Enderby left port from Invercargill, New Zealand, bound for
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