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When we moved into our house 10 years ago, no one on our street had kids. Now, there are eight on our side alone. My daughter lurks at the bottom of our neighbors’ front stairs, hoping she can round up a gaggle of kids. But figuring out where they can physically play outside can be awkward. Some of us have small decks and front yards, but they’re high off the...

We northwesterners tend to be proud of our direct democracy. We are the birthplace of the citizens’ initiative and pioneer of trend-setting ballot measures on everything from direct election of Senators to women’s suffrage, from death with dignity to marriage equality. But behind this civic mythology lies a reality that is decidedly more mixed and worrisome. Initiatives do create a channel to circumvent sometimes-hapless or lobbyist-bound state houses, and they...

In case you don’t check the coal futures markets every day, you may have missed the trend: after it looked like international coal prices had bottomed out in late 2013, starting in January they continued their three-year collapse. To understand just how dramatic the decline has been, all you need to do is look at the chart of futures prices for coal at Newcastle, Australia. If you’re a coal buyer in Korea...

Andrea Miller’s third-grader has never been to school on May Day. She stays home each year, rather than risk the chance that her school bus will become hopelessly mired in the occasionally violent protests that engulf downtown Seattle streets. Theoretically, it’s only an 8-minute drive between the Millers’ downtown Seattle apartment and John Hay Elementary, the public elementary school near the top of Queen Anne Hill to which (until recently)...

Despite its widely discussed woes, every year the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) cuts more carbon pollution than the entire state of Oregon spits out. That’s no small feat. The EU cap-and-trade program limits carbon dioxide emissions from more than 11,000 power stations and industrial plants in 31 participating countries, covering 45 percent of the EU’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The market has operated for nearly a...

Can a girl get pregnant if she has sex standing up? Will my boyfriend be able to feel my IUD? What are dental dams, and why do people use them for sex? Does everybody shave or trim down there? If a guy pays for dinner, what does a girl owe him? If the goal of school is to help kids become healthy, prosperous adults who contribute to thriving communities, then...

Parents know how tempting it is to “rescue” a child that’s about to run smack into something unpleasant—to stuff the left-behind homework into a backpack or intervene in tough situations. But this shields them from consequences and sets them up for a painful reckoning when they realize the real world doesn’t work that way. That’s why King County Executive Dow Constantine’s decision to veto the county council ordinance passed yesterday...

A few years back, Chip and Dan Heath discovered the secrets to “stickiness.” They examined hundreds of naturally successful messages—from urban legends, wives-tales, and proverbs, to advertising slogans, conspiracy theories, and corporate mottoes—and identified a handful of characteristics that the most shared, talked about, and enduring stories shared. They distilled these into Six Principles of Stickiness in their bestselling book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die....

The Bakken oil train that derailed and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec killed 47 people. It also made clear that the oil-by-rail industry is radically underinsured for the risks of shipping volatile Bakken crude. The financial risk falls instead on the taxpayers who would ultimately be expected to pick up the nearly incalculable costs of an oil explosion in an urban area. The Lac-Mégantic disaster generated an estimated $2 billion in...

Update: Lyft, Uber, Sidecar, and their supporters announced on Friday (3/28) that they will launch their own referendum to overturn the Seattle City Council ordinance that capped ride-for-hire drivers and required the parent companies to comply with a host of other regulations. If Seattle Citizens to Repeal Ordinance 124441 gathers enough signatures, the ordinance will be suspended from taking effect until a citywide vote.  If you thought the City of...