Am I the only one getting tired of listening to the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) crowd as they attempt to downplay the significance of Climategate’s leaked e-mails?  They tell us over and over that these e-mails have an alternative interpretation, that this is a move on the part of special interests to impede change, that the researchers involved in passing these e-mails around are merely the victims of a heinous crime.  Enough with the nonsense, people!  %*)#.  Wake up, man!

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Tags: environment & nature, science by Mike McGowan
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 If you decide you’d like to upgrade your Kindle, Sony Reader, or other eReader to a nifty new model, I’ll purchase your old one from you for the full retail price you paid, including the sales tax. How cool is that? There are only a couple of paltry little provisos. Read on, and I’ll explain. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, environment & nature by Michael Antman
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Ken Burns’ “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” premiered yesterday on PBS, delivering with his typically deliberate pacing, a moving portrait of how and why some of the most beautiful places in America, and on the planet, came under the protection of the U.S. government. [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, television by Mark Guerin
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I wanted to riff this week on a more light-hearted quote than those I have lately considered, so I googled P.G. Wodehouse quotes, thinking that if anyone had uttered something memorably light-hearted, it would have to be the creator of Jeeves.

Oddly, the one that caught my fancy was this: “Flowers are happy things.” [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, that's what he said, by Frank Wilson by Frank Wilson
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The following idea developed in an old barn used as an Appalachian Trail shelter in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee as, miles from civilization, I lay awake, listening to the obnoxious chatter of a girl on a cell phone:

Much of the world is tamer than it used to be; tamer than it is naturally. Buildings are zoned and coded with automatic doors, enough fire exits for every occupant, and sturdy railings over stairs with run-to-rise ratios established to accommodate even the most clumsy and out-of-shape. People climb stairs like these, into buildings like these, to watch big screens on which actors pretend to dare and risk. They become the hero. They rise and fall on plot waves designed to thrill then [Read more →]

Tags: diatribes, environment & nature by Tyler Samien
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A rattlesnake recently crashed my cousin Greg’s wedding in Sacramento.

Just before friends and family arrived, the uninvited, poisonous guest made her appearance. Greg told me that the snake, a baby, had been tossed over the edge of the property. He promised that she would return. [Read more →]

Tags: animals, environment & nature by David A. Brensilver
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The poverty-stricken urban malcontent Marcovaldo, in Italo Calvino’s suite of stories, Marcovaldo, or The Seasons in the City, “possessed an eye ill-suited to city life: billboards, traffic-lights, shop-windows, neon signs, posters, no matter how carefully devised to catch the attention, never arrested his gaze…Instead, he would never miss a leaf yellowing on a branch, a feather trapped by a roof-tile; there was no horsefly on a horse’s back, no worm-home in a plank, or fig-peel squashed on the sidewalk that Marcovaldo didn’t remark and ponder over, discovering the changes of season, the yearnings of his heart, and the woes of his existence.”  Though I myself love illuminated signs and the urban energy behind them, I have a certain sympathy for that Italian dreamer [Read more →]

Tags: animals, environment & nature by Michael Antman
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There’s so much despairing talk about the environment and the ongoing diminishment of nature these days, I want to take a few minutes to glory in what we still have — in particular, our bird life. It’s a glorious spring day in Indiana and our three crab trees are in bloom. As we’ve been feeding birds for 25 years in our backyard, my wife and I enjoy the same visitors every year at this time. [Read more →]

Tags: animals, environment & nature by Christopher Guerin
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