Bill McKibben says we're stuffed | Salon Books

Bill McKibben says we're stuffed | Salon Books: "Bill McKibben says we're stuffed

We've eaten, developed and drilled to near oblivion, says the environmental writer. It's time to realize that having more stuff is not the road to paradise. Oh, really?"

The Year Without Toilet Paper - New York Times

The Year Without Toilet Paper - New York Times: "Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By

March 22, 2007
The Year Without Toilet Paper
By PENELOPE GREEN

DINNER was the usual affair on Thursday night in Apartment 9F in an elegant prewar on Lower Fifth Avenue. There was shredded cabbage with fruit-scrap vinegar; mashed parsnips and yellow carrots with local butter and fresh thyme; a terrific frittata; then homemade yogurt with honey and thyme tea, eaten under the greenish flickering light cast by two beeswax candles and a fluorescent bulb.

A sour odor hovered oh-so-slightly in the air, the faint tang, not wholly unpleasant, that is the mark of the home composter. Isabella Beavan, age 2, staggered around the neo-Modern furniture — the Eames chairs, the brown velvet couch, the Lucite lamps and the steel cafe table upon which dinner was set — her silhouette greatly amplified by her organic cotton diapers in their enormous boiled-wool, snap-front cover.

A visitor avoided the bathroom because she knew she would find no toilet paper there.

Meanwhile, Joseph, the liveried elevator man who works nights in the building, drove his wood-paneled, 1920s-era vehicle up and down its chute, unconcerned that the couple in 9F had not used his services in four months. “I’ve noticed,” Joseph said later with a shrug a"

History, Digitized (and Abridged) - New York Times

History, Digitized (and Abridged) - New York Times: "These Steinbeck artifacts are not the only important pieces of history that are at risk of disappearing or being ignored in the digital age. As more museums and archives become digital domains, and as electronic resources become the main tool for gathering information, items left behind in nondigital form, scholars and archivists say, are in danger of disappearing from the collective cultural memory, potentially leaving our historical fabric riddled with holes."

"If researchers conclude that the only valuable records they need are those that are online they will be missing major parts of the story," said James J. Hastings, director of access programs at the National Archives. "And in some cases they will miss the story altogether."