An obscure legal ruling muddied U.S. water-protection standards, leaving Western intermittent streams and rivers unprotected.
Carrying your own load
Lessons from off the grid
Dust to dust
Colorado’s vanished town
The darkest element
Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the WorldTom Zoellner317 pages, softcover: $26.95.Viking, 2009. Writer Tom Zoellner has a great sense of timing. His latest work, Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World, hits the shelves as media attention zeros in on Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs, the explosion…
Catch him if you can
The Runner: A True Account of the Amazing Lies and Fantastical Adventures of the Ivy League Impostor James HogueDavid Samuels192 pages,hardcover: $23.New Press, 2008. Palo Alto High School believed James Hogue was a recently orphaned 16-year-old from a Nevada commune. Princeton University thought he was a self-educated ranch hand who lived alone in the…
Putting our house back in order
While Barack Obama was making his inaugural speech, I was vacuuming. I hadn’t planned to be engaged in that particular activity at that particular moment, but the deliverymen turned up early, bringing us a new bed at precisely the moment the new president began to speak. The floor was covered with dropcloths when the bed…
The HCN miracle
Well, you’ve done it again. Just when we were worried that the worsening economy would seriously cripple our financial condition, you stepped up in December with a blizzard of support. All told, our readers provided $150,000 in Research Fund gifts — a record amount for a single month. The presses (and the electrons at hcn.org)…
Is America ready for the rails?
I’ve always loved the idea of traveling by rail. I’m scared of flying, and trains are more efficient and greener than cars. I once enjoyed zipping through the French countryside at 200 miles per hour in a sleek train, and whenever I’m in a city, I make it a point to ride the commuter rails.…
Non-navigable River Blues
Muddied water-protection standards leave Western streams without oversight
No news is bad news
For Westerners interested in the news, one of the biggest stories lately is the crisis in the news industry itself. A few highlights: Washington state’s second-largest newspaper, the 146-year-old Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was put up for sale Jan. 9. Its owner — Hearst Corp., a privately held chain based in New York — says that unless…
Political guns
Wyoming calls the shots on a pass in Yellowstone National Park
Pay to play — with water
Regarding your recent story “Up in Smoke,” while the Bushies may have outsourced with a particular vengeance, the Forest Service’s downsizing actually started early in the Clinton years, with “government reinvention” (HCN, 12/22/08). The story does touch upon a real dilemma for the Forest Service: Whatever it thinks its mission is, it does not have…
Blood quantum myth
Regarding your “Blood Quantum” story, back before the first European contacts, marriage outside the tribe was the norm (HCN, 1/19/09). In my studies on biology and genetics, I learned that our Native elders did have extensive knowledge of biology, ecology, genetics, lethal recessives and the like. The only difference is that Western science quantifies, categorizes…
Ich bin ein stupid-zoner
In Ed Quillen’s article “Change We Could Believe In,” the term “stupid zones” is defined as “an area that is stupid to build in on account of predictable dangers — avalanches, forest fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, mudslides, floods, etc.” (HCN, 12/22/08). A quick search on the Web site for the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association reveals…
The center did not hold
The thing that has kept me reading HCN through the years has been the balanced reporting and presentation of different viewpoints, a refreshing voice in a nearly bipolar political world. But I have to say that I am sensing a shift in the flavor of HCN articles and editorials. The Dec. 22/Jan. 5 issue is…
… and the rivers clapping their hands
Thank you for your Dec. 22/Jan. 5 issue “What a Mess.” The entire Beltway community — Republicans, Democrats, media/corporate America — is busily sweeping the ugly, and illegal, Bush legacy under the red carpet being rolled out for Obama. Bad enough that the Constitution lies crumpled in the trash (not the recycle) bin, but most…
All Aboard
A classic American transit system seems poised for a comeback