Finally, someone has paid me money to write about monks and beer!

December 20, 2019

My latest piece for the Weather Channel involves two of my favorite things: sustainability, and beer!

Specifically, it’s about a Trappist Monastery in Belgium that has instituted a cool new way to clean their beer tanks using phytoremediation, or plant-based fining. This is not only an environmentally-friendly method of beer production, but it’s also a scalable project that can ultimately help the monastery to produce more microgreens, legumes, and other human-edible food products, making the entire beer production process that much better for people, and the planet.

I also spoke with some other religious leaders about the role of God in environmental stewardship. While the popular narrative tends to show climate-denying Evangelical Christians, there are in fact many devout Christians whose faith actually calls them to actively protect God’s planet from the greed of mankind. And that’s a really powerful message that the world could use right now.

Trappist Monks Are Brewing Award-Winning Sustainable Beer (The Weather Channel / IBM)

The word of the week is "Float-o-voltaics" →

November 18, 2019

In my latest piece for the Weather Channel, I spoke with the folks at the Anglo-American Mining Company in Chile, who have created one of the first major commercial floatovoltaic energy systems on one of their mining tailing ponds. What this essentially means is that they’ve floated a bunch of arrays of solar panels onto the semi-toxic water residue from their mine. The water actually helps to make the solar panels more efficient, and the solar panels help to re-purpose the otherwise-wasted space from the mine tailing pond.

It’s actually some pretty fascinating, forward-thinking science, and I’m really glad to have learned about it. Maybe you’ll be into it, too!

Floating Solar Panels Are Helping This Mining Company Save Water (IBM / The Weather Channel)

Hello I am the Weather Channel now

July 22, 2019

…Or at least, I’m writing things for the Weather Channel. Which is also pretty cool.

My first piece is for a partnership between the Weather Channel and IBM (who is also their parent company), on some of the cool climate calculation work they’ve been doing together to help better understand the multitude of factors that can affect water quality across the country.

This piece was culled from an hour-plus interview, chock full of a lot of fascinating stuff. I’m pretty pleased with the final product, but the interviewee Lloyd gave me so much more to work with. Maybe I’ll share it here some day.

How One Pristine Lake Is Shaping the Next Stage of Climate Resiliency (The Weather Channel / IBM)

I Drove A Lyft To Rate The Best Standard & Wireless Charging Car Phone Mounts →

April 24, 2019

My latest work for Wirecutter is about phone mounts for your car, including those with wireless charging capabilities — and this one’s particularly fun, because I got to drive a Lyft for a week in order to do my testing, with a dozen mounts and 3 phones and an iPad all spread across my dashboard the entire time.

I do have some weird/interesting stories to share, although you won’t find them in the articles. Mostly it was just chauffeuring Cornell kids between frat parties and Target. But perhaps the weirdest part was that … no one thought it was weird that I had a dozen mounts and 3 phones and an iPad in my car at any given time? 🤔

4 things the Left keeps getting wrong about gun reform. →

October 10, 2017

Another day, another awful tragedy. Several months ago, I'd pitched a story to Huffington Post about tangible, rational, fact-based suggestions to help curb the epidemic of gun violence in America—specifically, things that might be a little uncomfortable for Left-leaning liberals to acknowledge, but things that would actually make a difference (and have a chance of getting passed).

But every time we planned to publish it, it was always felt too uncomfortably close to another mass shooting. So we put it off for a while longer, again and again and again.

Then Las Vegas struck. And if it wasn't clear before (it was), then it certainly is now (it is) that the time to talk about gun violence is right now, and the longer we put it off out of some kind of expectation of polite social courtesy, then the higher the body count will climb.

So here it is. Now let's do something about it.

(I also had the privilege of speaking with Chris Frates on the Smerconish Show on Sirius XM Potus Politics. You'll need to be a Sirius subscriber to listen, but we had a great chat about finding common ground on gun violence issues, which inspired some wonderful call-in comments from listeners as well)

A Round-Up Of Terrible People Who Still Received More Flattering News Coverage Than The Late Michael Brown

August 26, 2014

For those who don't know, The New York Times recently posted an article about the life of Michael Brown, the teenager who was recently gunned down in Ferguson, MO. The piece, which ran opposite of a flattering profile on the life of the (surviving) police officer who shot the poor boy six times for the crime of walking down the street, criticizes the dead teenager who can't even defend himself for being "no angel." His numerous faults include occasionally disagreeing with his parents, drawing on the walls as a toddler, trying to escape from his crib, dabbling in drugs and alcohol, and listening to "the rap music." These behaviors reflect a common psychological condition known as "being a god damn kid" — a condition which, yes, is fatal, but usually not for another 70 years or so.

If you're struggling to understand why painting a dead black teenager as a "thug" because he did the things that teenagers do, The Boston Globe offers a particularly eloquent takedown of the problematic of this piece. I suggest you read it. Meanwhile, I've rounded up some of my favorite responses from the around the web (read: seen on Twitter), comparing Brown's obituary to similar mainstream retrospectives on other individuals who are almost universally accepted to be more deservedly reviled.