Stumbling the Walk
Take This Bracket And Shove ItTomdispatch Jock Culture Correspondent (and former New York Times, CBS and NBC sports journalist) Robert Lipsyte says:
"This is the mud season of the sports calendar. While we await blessed baseball and its promise of renewal, here comes the National Collegiate Athletic Association Men's Division I Basketball Championship -- the Big Dance for sportswriters, the Bracket Racket for gamblers, a frat-rat party, a racist entertainment, and a subversion of higher education, perhaps democracy as well."
It all boils down to this weekend, and I really couldn't care less.
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Unfiltered Guest Column
Are Cows Really the Villains?Peter Holter, COO of Holistic Management International, discusses the recent UN report, "Livestock's Long Shadow," which suggests that the world’s cattle herds actually emit more carbon and dioxide and greenhouse gases than cars do.
The recent UN report, “Livestock’s Long Shadow,”, suggested that the world’s cattle herds actually emit more carbon and dioxide and greenhouse gases than cars do.
The issue is not really the cows, but how they have been managed in an industrialized food chain.
As best we can tell, the UN study is primarily based on animals that have been raised in an industrialized manner, confined to pens and barns where they are fed a steady slaughterhouse/feedlot diet of synthetic minerals, grains, fodder, and antibiotics. These would make anyone belch and produce unpleasant gas!
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Coffee Shops in MissoulaAhem. I know we all need to care about global warming, nukes in Idaho, delisting the wolves, and so on, but there's other things that matter too. Like coffee. Lots of coffee. Finding the best coffee. And telling others about it, since after all, we're all in this together and we might as well have a great cup of joe to help us on our way.
Here's my take on the coffee scene in Missoula...
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“unfiltered” commentary
Public Ownership of Montana Streams Under AttackWealthy Montana landowners may scream about private property rights, but the real issue is protecting public property from illegal theft by special interests represented by misguided lawmakers. [more]
Missoula Unfiltered
A Victory For Species Dependent on Old-Growth HabitatYesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court provided good news to wildlife species dependent on old-growth forest habitat by refusing to accept the timber industry's appeal of a 9th Circuit ruling in a case questioning how much scientific review is necessary for industrial logging projects in national forests. [more]
Friends remember Justin Kautz
Jackson Hole Skier Lived The Life
Fallen skier Justin Kautz did everything in life with intention, even at the moment just before he died.
Kautz, a 25-year-old Wilson, Wyo. man, died Friday from internal bleeding after skiing off a cliff to avoid being swept over it by an avalanche outside the boundaries of the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.
When he heard the avalanche break behind him, he pointed his skis downhill and jumped.
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Networking the West with Liz Ryan
Social Networking Bandits?Here in the West, we appreciate social networking - we need it. We're not thick as thieves with thousands of other people in our industries, not in places like Missoula and Boulder. We don't have the huge industry concentrations they have in New York and Chicago and London. Sometimes, we learn about a fascinating person because we find him or her online - and learn that the person lives and works maybe blocks away from us!
It happened to me last summer. I wrote to the president of an international women's organization, located in Canada. A few days later, I got an email back from the person who runs technology for this global women's organization. That person - Stephanie - lives in Boulder, maybe a mile and a half from me. That would be a small-world story anywhere, but particularly in a small city like Boulder. Anyway, my point is: the online connections are not trivial to New West networkers, because we're not overwhelmed with face-to-face networking events and industry functions like the businesspeople in LA and other megalopolae.
So imagine my horror when I read on a LinkedIn-related list-serv (it's called MyLinkedInPowerForum) that a LinkedIn user was trying to get money from another user, by acting as a sort of virtual highwayman.
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Here’s to you, Mr. Self-Righteous CyclistA lot of people are working really hard in this town to make cycling a viable, safe alternative to burning fossil fuels, and what you did today was counter-productive. [more]
News roundup
Western Headlines: Park Pass, Uranium Rush, Wolves and Wal-MartNational parks could lose money from a new pass, uranium rush hits Colorado, and those weren't jammies Sen. Pete Domenici (R — N.M.) was wearing in Congress last week. Read on for headlines from around the Rocky Mountain West. [more]
