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Merely an excuse to mention the World Cup.
I'd been trying to find an excuse to mention the World Cup here, other than the Green Goal thingie.
And here is an amusing, feeble (though legit) excuse.
Frog Chorus Keeps Ukraine Soccer Players Awake
Ukraine's World Cup players complained on Tuesday that frogs were disturbing the sleep of the squad at their lakeside hotel in Potsdam.
Central defender Vladislav Vashchyuk told the Sovetsky sports newspaper that frogs in the Templiner See lake were keeping the players awake at night ahead of their Group H opener against Spain on Wednesday.
"We have agreed we will take fishing rods to hunt these frogs," said Vashchyuk.
Hartmut Pirl, manager of the hotel where the squad are staying, told Reuters he had not had any complaints.
"There are frogs that croak. This is a nature reserve," said Pirl.
A ready excuse for getting spanked by Spain, or a genuine gripe with nature? The world may never know.
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Possible Whaling Majority at the IWC
The International Whaling Commission will gather this Friday in St. Kitts for its annual meeting. For 20 years now, Japan and other pro-whaling nations have done everything in their power to convince the IWC to reverse the whaling moratorium it set back in the '80s.
What remains a mystery is why Japan is so obsessed with the resumption of whaling. Recent polls suggest that fewer than half of Japanese people have ever tried whale meat, and just 1% eat it regularly. Over 2,000 supermarkets have stopped selling it in the last few years, due to lack of demand. -
Help Grist and Gristmill improve
On Wednesday and Thursday, the Grist editorial team will be at a retreat in our top-secret mountaintop redoubt, plotting world domination. As a result, there will be no Daily Grist and blogging will be light.
We're discussing the next steps for this little web magazine of ours, which is growing so fast and has so much potential.
So, what would you like to see for Grist? Or more particularly, for my own selfish purposes, what would you like to see for Gristmill?
Where do you want Gristmill to go? What do you want from it? More posts? Fewer? More guest authors? Fewer? Different subject matter? (Less energy, more wilderness? Less global warming, more population?) More avenues for reader participation? More avenues for activism and organizing? An email subscription option? A print-this-post option? Anonymous commenting? A pony?
Think big. Think small. Just think, and let me know what Gristmill would become if you were emperor.
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What should I ask Anthony Flint?
On Thursday, I'm going to be chatting with Anthony Flint, author of This Land: The Battle Over Sprawl and the Future of America.
Despite a modest revival in city living, Americans are spreading out more than ever -- into exurbs and boomburbs miles from anywhere, in big houses in big subdivisions. We cling to the notion of safer neighborhoods and better schools, but what we get, argues Anthony Flint, is long commutes, crushing gas prices and higher taxes -- and a landscape of strip malls and office parks badly in need of a makeover.
This Land tells the untold story of development in America -- how the landscape is shaped by a furious clash of political, economic and cultural forces. It is the story of burgeoning anti-sprawl movement, a 1960s-style revolution of New Urbanism, smart growth, and green building. And it is the story of landowners fighting back on the basis of property rights, with free-market libertarians, homebuilders, road pavers, financial institutions, and even the lawn-care industry right alongside them.Flint is a longtime journalist and author on the subjects of urban planning, density, sprawl, land use, and related matters about which I am highly interested but woefully ignorant. Hopefully I'll learn something.
What should I ask him?
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XONSUX
Bruce Wright of the Conservation Science Institute sent us an amusing story. For six years, his wife has had a vanity plate on her car: XONSUX. She was surprised that […]
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Water power
Anybody know what's up with this? Seems too good to be true, and you know what they say about stuff like that.
(hat tip: reader Laurence)
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Craig Sams interview
Check out Treehugger's interview with Craig Sams, founder of Green & Black chocolates. I particularly like this bit:
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Yawn
Shorter Debra Saunders: I'm still able to dig up a few skeptics.
(hat tip: Katharine Mieszkowski)
