Reading List: Sustainability

A first sustainability conference for the Freeport Apollo Group (FLAG) near Pittsburgh:

Notable speakers on historic preservation, outdoor recreational tourism, stormwater management, urban forestry, green building practices, and locally grown food and agriculture are at the crux of a “sustainability conference” being hosted by the Freeport Leechburg Apollo Group.

Also interesting is that they’re including a panel

Continued

April 17th, 2010 | Category: Agricultural, Climate Change, Environmentalism, Landscape Architecture, Pittsburgh, Public Policy, Readings of the Day, Sustainability, Sustainability

Fatima Cigarette Ad from Dragnet

Jack Webb Shilling for Fatima Cigrarettes

Jack Webb Shilling for Fatima Cigrarettes

This audo advertisement (click the Fatima picture for the audio) for Fatima cigarettes originally aired on April 15, 1954 during a Dragnet episode called “The Big Pug.”  Fatima, a Liggett and Myers tobacco company brand, was the sponsor of the episode and ran similar ads as “public service announcements”

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March 15th, 2010 | Category: Ads, American, Controversy, Medical, Popular, Public Health, Public Health, Public History

Economic Inequality Matters

Income inequality is the ratio of the wealth of the top 20% compared to the lowest 20% in each country. Health and social problems is an index of mental illness, trust, life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity, educational performance, teenage birth, homicide, imprisonment, and social mobility.

According to the 1870 federal census, one percent of the people owned 72 percent of all the wealth in the great industrial city of Pittsburgh.  What’s more, just half of these wealthiest one percent (0.5% of the population) owned 59 percent, well more than half of all the wealth in historic Pittsburgh.  In fact, all

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March 11th, 2010 | Category: American, Behavioral Ecology, Controversy, Economic, Economy, Pittsburgh, Politics, Psychology, Public Health, Public Health, Public Policy, Research, Urban, Victorian

Review of ECONned by Yves Smith

Outsourced to James Kwak of the excellent Baseline Scenario blog who writes that Yves Smith in ECONned :

describes how trading in CDOs built out of mortgage-backed securities drove mortgage lending, and not the other way around. In the conventional account, unscrupulous lenders and investment banks were the creators of those toxic assets; in Smith’s account,

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March 5th, 2010 | Category: Business, Current Events, Economy, Politics, Public Policy, Reviews

Exxon Mobil Posts Record Profit (Again)

Of course. We’re in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, but Exxon Mobil still pumps out the dough:

Exxon Mobil Corp. set a quarterly profit record for a U.S. company Thursday, surging past analyst estimates.

Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500), the leading U.S. oil company, said its third-quarter net profit was $14.83 billion, or

Continued

October 30th, 2008 | Tags: , , , | Category: Economy
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