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Clothesline Bans Void in 19 States
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Weekend Reading 2/17/12
Alan:
Kurt Hoelting has a thoughtful discussion of the "intensity gap" between climate science deniers and climate hawks. Kurt, who lives on Whidbey Island, is author of the wonderful 2010 book The Circumference of Home, about the challenge of living responsibly in place in Cascadia, and he's launched a blog on the same theme. Take a car-sharing company, add electric bikes. A marriage made in heaven? Could be. A Street View for Rivers: "We want to start crowd sourcing a library of America’s rivers."Alan: Kurt Hoelting has a thoughtful discussion of the “intensity gap” between climate science deniers and climate hawks. Kurt, who lives on Whidbey Island, is author of the wonderful 2010 book The Circumference of Home, about the challenge of living responsibly in place in Cascadia, and he’s launched a blog on the same theme. Take a car-sharing company, add electric bikes. A marriage made in heaven? Could be. A Street View...Read more » -
The Northwest’s Black Residents
I’m a number cruncher, so one way I’m observing Black History Month is by examining census figures for the Northwest’s African-American and African-Canadian populations. (Another way is here.) Although the Northwest does not have a large black population relative to many places in the United States, the region is home to nearly 340,00 residents who self-identify as black, representing 2.1 percent of the population. Among Cascadia’s African-descended people the vast majority, 71...Read more » -
The Places We Love
Editor’s note February 2017: For all the Northwest lovers out there this Valentine’s Day—as in, people who love the Northwest, of course!—a throwback to this article from five years ago, in which Eric de Place took readers on a tour of Cascadia’s love-themed locales. How many of the following have you visited? Any we’re missing? Add ’em in the comments. Ah, Valentine’s Day, the most risible of holidays. Because I...Read more » -
White Pages: Theater of the Absurd
When was the last time you used the white pages? Be honest now. I, for one, can’t remember the last time I used the phone book for anything but holding open a door. And apparently I’m not alone: see these two articles and the comment string here for more examples of white-pages fatigue than you can shake a stick at. Add to the chorus the totally real, 100-percent not-made-up person in this video:Read more » -
Gaming Behavior Change
On some level, most of us are in the business of behavior change—whether we’re trying to lose a few pounds ourselves or whether we’re promoting energy efficiency more widely. It goes without saying that habits are hard to break, even when someone has gone out of their way to make the better choice fairly easy. As communications guru Andy Goodman points out in his “free-range thinking” column this month, most...Read more » -
Legalize Couchsurfing
Tight budgets and the internet have given rise to the hottest new thing in travel accommodations. Web-based company Airbnb has received a lot of press recently for its for-profit service that matches travelers with spare bedrooms, such as mine (pictured above). It’s already growing like moss in the Northwest winter, but the potential is much bigger than most have considered. Airbnb and other companies that create a market for guest...Read more » -
What Coal Dust Looks Like in Alaska
We’ve already seen how coal dust looks near export terminals at Point Roberts and Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Now let’s take a gander at the export facility at Seward, Alaska. As a 2010 article in the Anchorage Daily News calls it: When the north wind blows in Seward, dust flies off a large pile of coal and covers the town’s scenic boat harbor in black grit. Photos make the problem...Read more » -
Recent Coal Export Trends: Q3 2011
Here’s a look at the latest coal report from the US EIA, taking us up through the third quarter of 2011. In this chart, you see the past 15 years of quarterly data. I’m showing Customs Districts here, not ports. The Port of Seattle does not move coal. But some coal does get exported out of the Seattle Customs District region by way of the rail crossing at Blaine, Washington. It is, by all accounts,...Read more » -
The Northwest’s Chinese Residents
In honor of Chinese New Year, I thought it would be fun to crunch some Census numbers to get a sense of where people of Chinese heritage live in the Northwest. In the tables below, I’ve ranked-ordered places in the Northwest according to their share of people who self-identify as Chinese. As you’ll see, a couple of interesting stories emerge. British Columbia, and especially the Vancouver metro area, have a...Read more »