Replicating the Senate Chamber for Kids With iPads

May 31, 2015 in Science & Environment

Originally published in the Worcester Telegram May 31, 2015. BOSTON - About 100 students from Worcester’s South High Community School managed to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill Friday, and they pulled it off before lunch.

Granted, it was just part of a simulation, held at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate. But getting that many teenagers to work together on anything, much less one of the most complex and heated political issues in the country, is impressive.

15 Islands Overrun by Cute Animals

May 22, 2015 in Science & Environment

Originally published at Mental Floss, May 15, 2015. Strange things happen in island ecosystems, and occasionally—whether by accident, or design—a population of adorable creatures takes over. They draw tourists, can be a little spooky, and sometimes wreak havoc. But you have to admit: they are pretty cute.

Where the Hell Is All the Climate Funding?

April 22, 2015 in Science & Environment

Originally published April 22, 2015 on Inside Philanthropy. A growing mountain of research suggests that climate change is likely to aggravate every problem now confronting humanity: hunger, gender inequality, ethnic conflict, unemployment—you name it. So you'd think, by now, that this existential threat would be a top priority of philanthropy.

You'd be wrong. Less than 2 percent of all philanthropic dollars go to the cause, and much of it comes from just a handful of funders. Where is all the money?

Eradication Nation

April 08, 2015 in Portfolio, Science & Environment

Originally published in American Forests Magazine, Winter 2015.What Boston’s battle with the Asian longhorned beetle can teach us about stopping an invasive pest in its tracks.

Clint McFarland didn’t want to believe the pictures he was looking at on his smartphone.

Late on a Friday afternoon in July 2010, he was at a gathering in Worcester, Mass., to recognize federal and state staff who had been working long, hard hours for two years to wrangle the city’s runaway Asian longhorned beetle (ALB) infestation, the country’s largest by far. By the time a homeowner reported it in 2008, the invasive beetles had already been boring their way across the heavily forested city in the center of the state, frighteningly close to the edge of contiguous forests that span New England and reach into Canada.

Asian Longhorned Beetle Trackers Hunt for Hitchhikers

January 04, 2015 in Science & Environment

Originally published in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Dec. 22, 2014. UXBRIDGE — In a wooded residential area off Route 122, a team of foresters and entomologists took turns looking through a scope at a small hole in the bark of a maple, maybe 55 feet up. Everyone agreed the damage came from a bird, probably a woodpecker, and not the Asian longhorned beetle.

A very good thing, since the invasive insect is not supposed to be this far beyond the infestation in Worcester.

But after six years of surveying 5 million potential host trees and removing about 34,000, the team fighting the beetle is taking a closer look at outlying areas that could be at risk of satellite infestations.

Washed Away

December 03, 2014 in Portfolio, Science & Environment, Uncategorized

Beneath the water lie memories of vibrant villages.| Originally published in The Magazine, September 11, 2014.

Sally Norcross stands outside what was once her childhood home, in the heart of Dana, Massachusetts. She and her family left town 76 years ago, but she has clear memories of throwing crabapples into the yard of her grouchy neighbor Mr. Vaughn. Across Main Street is where she used to sit in school and watch out the window as the men dug up all the graves in the cemetery.

The bodies and headstones were relocated and the town of Dana abandoned. Her family’s house is an empty stone cellar overgrown with brush, like the remains of all the other buildings that made up the town. Dana is one of four towns that once lay in the Swift River Valley. All four of them are gone. Dana is unique in that its town common is the only one of the four that’s still above water and accessible.

Diller Island: Private Park Funding Gone Overboard

December 03, 2014 in Science & Environment

Consider for a moment that a billionaire is planning to literally reshape the shoreline of Manhattan by funding a floating island park, just a short walk from his office. Maybe, just maybe, private funding for parks has gone too far.

Media tycoon Barry Diller and his wife, fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg, have pledged $130 million from their foundation—around 75 percent of the total bill—to create a 2.4-acre park that will hover off the Hudson shore.

While there’s been widespread concern about outsized influence of the wealthy on New York’s public spaces following huge donations to Central Park and the High Line, this one takes things to a whole new level. See full post at Inside Philanthropy.

The New Golden Age of Urban Parks Philanthropy (And Its Controversies)

September 28, 2014 in Science & Environment

Private funding is pouring into parks lately, and not everyone is happy about it. Regardless, cities are putting together creative projects with massive backing from wealthy donors, and it’s not all happening where you might expect.

Every city, it seems, wants to launch the next High Line. The abandoned-railway-turned-park in Manhattan is the poster child for private funding developing urban green space, and giving a shot of vitality to surrounding neighborhoods. Projects like that one are sprouting up all over the country, whether by nonprofit conservancy or public-private partnership.

Parks philanthropy seems to be surging at the intersection of a few trends. For one thing, you’ve got the overall concentration of wealth and concomitant rise in philanthropy nationally. Then there’s the fact that many city and state budgets have suffered following the economic crash, and parks aren't a top priority. But there’s also what one urbanist has termed the Great Inversion, in which the middle- and upper-classes are flocking to city centers, who miss those nice parks left behind in the ‘burbs. As for urban areas still struggling to lure people back, parks and bike paths are seen as the kinds of amenities that attract educated professionals to put down stakes.

Read the full article at Inside Philanthropy.

Blue Ant > Surveillance Armor, or The Ugliest T-Shirt in the World

July 04, 2014 in Science & Environment

Surveillance is a part of how we live now, and how we respond to that runs throughout the Blue Ant trilogy. The books are laced with true developments like widespread CCTV, drone surveillance, and computer spying. Like Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, Zero History traffics in crafty ways to dodge prying eyes. One of these techniques, at the time of the book’s publication, was entirely fictional, but perhaps less so today. And of course, since it’s on the surface a book about fashion and marketing, the secret weapon in question is a T-shirt.

Uber is Driving Us to Thunderdome

March 16, 2014 in Geek, Science & Environment

Originally published at Futures Exchange. There are few things more satisfying than watching new technology and creative people conquer entrenched industries. Whether it’s Etsy, Zipcar, Airbnb, Napster, you name it. There is something deeply appealing about seeing an underdog make a clever website and knock down a power structure. It can be such a beautiful thing.

Which is why it gives me, and should give other bleeding hearts like me, great dread to see a suite of such disruptive business models, commonly referred to as the Sharing Economy, leading us toward a cyber-libertarian dystopia.