- The Supreme Court rules that the EPA has the authority — and the responsibility — to regulate greenhouse gases. Carl Pope of The Sierra Club says: “Today’s ruling is a watershed moment in the fight against global warming … The ruling is a total rejection of the Bush administration’s refusal to use its existing authority to meet the challenge posed by global warming.”
- Meanwhile, the court has chosen for the time being not to rule on the rights of detainees at Guantanamo to see a judge, allowing military trials to move forward — although it’s still possible the court will choose to rule on the constitutionality of the Military Commissions act once they’ve seen how the tribunals proceed.
- Speaking of detainees, here’s Terry Jones of Monty Python writing in the Guardian about how Iran is treating its British captives. Via Crooks & Liars.
- The pet food recall has expanded to include dry food for the first time, including one prescription variety of Hill’s/Science Diet (“Prescription Diet m/d Feline” is the name of the variety in question.)
- Back on the climate change thing for a moment: Scientists say global warming is causing a rise in cases of seafood poisoning.
Dozens of popular fish types, including grouper and barracuda, live near reefs. They accumulate the toxic chemical in their bodies from eating smaller fish that graze on the poisonous algae. When oceans are warmed by the greenhouse effect and fouled by toxic runoff, coral reefs are damaged and poison algae thrives, scientists say.
- The Bush administration has been attacking Speaker Pelosi for her planned visit to Syria … but somehow they’ve been forgetting to mention that a delegation of Republicans are visiting Syria right now.
- Louis Theroux of the BBC spends time with the Phelps family (you know, the “God Hates Fags” people) in an attempt to figure out what makes them tick. The result is a very interesting profile.
- Back in February, Steve Jobs called on the music industry to move away from DRM. Looks like he’s had at least one taker: EMI is teaming up with Apple to offer songs with no DRM restrictions through the iTunes store.
- SonyBMG asks bands to blog their demos instead of sending in hard copies.
- New study says that people who read their news on the Web actually have a greater attention span than print readers. I always love it when a study grabs the conventional wisdom by the ankles and plays motorcycle with it for a while.
- Nice work if you can get it: Netflix allows its salaried workers to take as much vacation time as they want.
- Cracking deal, Gromit! After breaking up with Dreamworks, Aardman Animations has signed a three-year deal with Sony pictures. Also, Gromit is the new “His Master’s Voice” gramophone dog!
- World-famous travel writer Ayun “No Touch Monkey” Halliday and her husband, world-famous playwright Greg “Urinetown” Kotis, are off on a trek to the Baltic Avenue space on the big Monopoly Board we call Earth. They’ve set up a travel blog to share photos and anecdotes from the journey, with even tyke-setters Inky and Milo getting in on the reportage. Follow along with them at Whogoslavia?
I totally forgot about the Supreme Court ruling (I was busy with the vacuous world of pop culture). It’s truly a sign that people are now doing what needs to be done (well, needed to be done decades ago, really) and won’t cave in to old Monkey Ears. It’s also a scary reminder of just how urgent things are. Even John Travolta says that we may have to colonize other planets soon (thankfully, he’s already making those exploratory journeys in spirit).
Biofuel production may actually help farming also, since we’ll need grains. Too bad Reagan basically shut all the family farms down. Now we’ll be more dependent on factory farms than ever!