Los Angeles and water sure have a sordid history together.  Of course there’s the 1974 movie, Chinatown, that sums up the backroom deals and violence that worked to bring water to a thirsty and ambitious Southern California.  Now we are on the verge of another chapter in the “water wars,” as years of drought, increasing [...]

Last week I was in Aptos, California, visiting my parents for Christmas.  They have lived in Aptos (just east of Santa Cruz) for over 12 years, yet until last Saturday, I was completely clueless about a treasure two miles from their home:  The Forest of Nisene Marks, a California State Park.
 
For forty years, this area [...]

Halloween holds a special place in my heart—my birthday is close to the holiday, so growing up, my mother often had very creative ideas for my Halloween-themed birthday parties . . . I remember one birthday party where we made individual caramel apples, using licorice, of course, for those 70s moustaches.  Years later, in my [...]

My dear friend in Ottawa announced several weeks back—on Facebook—that she had bought a dual flush toilet.  I remember seeing these all over East Asia, especially in Korea and Japan.  It makes sense, right?  Smaller flush for #1, and well, a bigger flush.  That’s actually how I figured out the Chinese characters for “big” and [...]

I recently had a discussion with like-minded folks where we bantered about what it meant to be “green.”  It’s gone from fringe to fashion, activist to academic, from mocked to a true movement.

Growing up, the debate had always been so polarized.  Remember the spotted owl controversy of the early 1990s?  Then there was the urban [...]

Like millions of American boys, I spent a few years in Boy Scouts.  I wasn’t a fan:  I made some friends, but I found many of the adult leaders sanctimonious windbags, I hate the fascist youth uniforms, and disagreed with some of the indoctrination in the Scout handbooks.  I admit I use the term “boy [...]

Who would have thought South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford would become the latest joke on the talking head shows?  Isn’t it bizarre that he took off for a few days, his wife didn’t know where he was (didn’t anyone learn from John Edwards?), and that he went away on Father’s Day?  Oh yeah, not to mention hiking on [...]

I’ve always believed the debate over green technology and alternative fuels should focus on the technology and fuel used on the back-end, not on “exotic” or “sexy” products such as hybrid cars.  So much of the basic manufacturing and processing of materials that we use in our daily lives use a lot of energy. (more…)