More to read...

I've been busy with Chicagoist. Since its weekend work, they have me doing all kinds of stuff...enviro...music...news...politics...sports:

• Scott Lee Cohen For Governor Rumors Grow Louder - He won't go away. The weirdest political story in Illinois (that says a lot) might add a chapter soon...
  
• Could King James' Night on the Town Mean a Bulls Win? - Ummm...no...not even close enough to be wishful thinking... But it was fun conjecture before the game Sunday.
  
• Gender Bending Chemical in Illinois Water - Atrazine. Its nasty stuff. Coming from Springfield makes me all the more concerned...
  
• Hoosier State for Mercury? - Why do I care what they do in Indiana? Cuz we share a drinking water and air shed... And there's a lot of gross stuff going on that impacts both.
  
• Going Gobbler in Bronzeville - My neighborhood is not exactly a dining Mecca, so this concept is interesting.

And if you've talked with me in the last six months, you know I am completely consumed with the whole Asian carp controversy. So I've written a lot about that of late:

• Free Asian Carp Dish from a Man on a Mission - The whole "eat 'em all" solution to the Asian carp issue gets bandied about a lot, but as near as I can tell only one guy in Chicago is trying do something with it... So I stopped into the Lockwood Restaurant and ate some raw invasive fish to see if we really can fix this problem with a knife and fork (a full two weeks before the Trib or NYT did the same, thank you).
  
• Asian Carp Take Over U of C and SCOTUS - I stumbled onto the University of Chicago's brilliant Earth Week posters featuring trident wielding carp hordes. Awesome.
  
• So awesome, in fact, that I also wrote about it on Switchboard - They Came from the Canal: Asian carp brilliance from U of C.
  
• Fish are central to my favorite post of late, FirstEnergy’s Bayshore Plant: A Real Live Bass-o-Matic! on Switchboard. An enviro homage to Dan Aykroyd and a coal plant that chews up 60+ million fish every year.

Enjoy. And feel free to comment or click on the LIKE buttons.

Other stuff...

What? You are not enamored with the new addition to our family? Not interested in baby stories and pictures? WTF...?

Well, that's OK, you can find interesting and witty stuff from me in other places too.

Since I will have a lot of sit-around time on the weekends for a while, I though it would be fun to be a weekend blogger for Chicagoist. They ran my first piece over the weekend...I guess it is a tryout...hopefully they will run more soon:

• Will Celebrity Apprentice Decide Most Embarrassing Political State? - The title pretty much says it all. Which is worse these days, Springfield or Albany? Sadly, TV will decide...

On NRDC's Switchboard:

• Federal Ocean and Great Lakes Policy - Are My Boogie Boarding Rights at Risk? (no.) - Did ya hear that Obama is going to outlaw fishing? No? Then you clearly don't read right wing blogs or listen to Rush. Good for you... If you did hear that silly rumor, let me set the record straight.
  
  
• The Crude in Syncrude: Ugliness at the tar sands duck trial - This is more for our friends to the north, but if you are interested in just how yucky the Canadian oil industry is...check out this disaster (I am talking about their PR actually, though the environmental mess is startling too).
  
  
• Gefilte Fish: The solution to world peace and Asian carp - Passover is coming and the most polarizing of its traditional foods was in the spotlight recently when Secretary of State Clinton promised to break a trade impasse that would allow containers of Asian carp fished out of the Illinois River to be shipped to Israel for ground fish cakes... Problems solved? No...
  
  
• Of Carp and Kingfishers: Chicago and Guam are not so far apart - What happens when you don't take care of invasive species quickly? Some of the critters at Brookfield Zoo are a lesson on what inaction over Asian carp could eventually lead to...
  
  
• Poisoning Flipper: Chemicals Flushed in Chicago Wreak Havoc on Dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico - Another zoo-related post. It turns out that I know a guy who can explain some of the ugly impacts of the chemicals getting flushed into Chicago's water by the local metal plating industry. He's a marine biologist in Florida...ugh...
  
  
• Asian Carp: "I feel like I was in a [bleeping] prize fight” - You don't even need to read this one---just check out the embedded video. Its worth your time...

Well, you can expect a more steady diet of Isaiah stuff---but I will try to keep things diversified to keep it fun for everyone.

In Other News...

Preparing the house for Cletus the Fetus hasn't just kept me from keeping up this blog. I've been shirking on my work blog too. But now that the basement is largely finished and the nursery is close to done, I've had more time to write. I've got some personal anecdotes to post this week here---but I've posted some fun stuff on NRDC's Switchboard too. Check it out:

• Wolf Litigation...a snowball's chance - The fight over legal protections for wolves in the Northern Rockies is contentious and, well, at times unbelievably weird. A story told by an NRA member in recent filings around NRDC's suit to return wolves to the Endangered Species list is pretty over the top. It involves snowballs and elk...
  
  
• Big Win for Bees: judge pulls bee toxic pesticide - The title says it all. This one is pretty straight forward. The win occurred the day before Christmas Eve, so not much press coverage---but I think the fight will continue this week before the chemicals are due to be pulled from store shelves.
  
  
• Eat 'Em All: "Silverfin" cannot save the Great Lakes - If you haven't talked to me about work lately, this is the story I've been working on for the last six weeks solid. The imminent invasion of the Great Lakes by Asian carp. Its a pretty amazing story. If you haven't been following it, these fish can get to 100 pounds and literally take over ecosystems that they enter by out-eating and out-breeding native fish. Oh, and they freak out when they hear things like motor boat engines, causing them to launch themselves out of the water ("missiles with fins!"). They are making their way through the canal system used to reverse the Chicago River a century ago and there is a massive legal fight over what to do to prevent the carp from getting into Lake Michigan. Of late, there has been a growing chorus saying we just need to start eating these critters. While there's no doubt that the American appetite can put a dent in any animal population it is set upon, relying on gluttony to fix the problem is just a horrible idea on so many levels...

Keep an eye out here and on Switchboard for more content this week!

The other blog...

Just cuz I haven't been active here, doesn't mean I have not been writing. Check out what I've posted on Switchboard of late:

Honey Laundering: mystery bee malady may broaden an international crime wave - No. I did not make this up. Yes. It is a real crime. Yes. It involves honey. And yes, sadly, yet another ugly smudge on Chicago...

Running from a Lie: Halt Horse Butte Hazing of Bison - Here in the Midwest we don't really care much about how the animals are treated around Yellowstone National Park. We should. As taxpayers that is our land and those are our critters. And both are being grossly mismanaged right now...

Canadian Author Gets a Look at Expanding Canadian Mess: Tar Sands in Indiana and Illinois - If you did not read this one yet, clock it. I like the entry a lot. It is fun to apply colorful language to the industrial landscape of northwest Indiana...

Switch on Switchboard

OK, some of you probably are not monitoring such hotbeds of environmental thought as NRDC's Switchboard... You are missing out. If nothing else, you are missing out on some fine writing from yours truly... I have not been blogging much here of late (I'll fix that soon, I promise)---and sadly, not as much as I would like there either.

But I have posted a few things of late:

The Money Boat: Coins, Climate Change, and the Caribbean - dispose of your pennies, or the low-lying island paradises get it...

Snotty Tunnels of Love: tidewater gobies deserve protected territory - Not all of our endangered species work revolves around charismatic carnivores. This little fish has little going for it, aside from being fascinating and finding novel uses for mucous.

Wyoming Wolves: frustration on all sides...and one guy with serious guts - OK, I guess lots of the work is around charismatic carnivores... I wrote this before wolves were "de-listed" last month out of frustration with the way the rhetoric on this issue plays out from both sides. This is admittedly "inside baseball..."

Dam Those Mussels: Great Lakes invasive species now threatening Lake Mead - One of the less sexy issues I help with is reform of water ballast laws in the Great Lakes; but the impacts are astounding. Water from freighters have been bringing an average of one new species into the ecosystem every six months. Lake Michigan's ecosystem has been completely changed in the last couple of years by introduced mussels, algae, and fish. And now that stuff is moving west...

Nine Cents photo by Jonathan Pobre via Flickr

Other blog stuff...

Hey, if you haven't been clocking Switchboard lately...you have not missed much from me since I have been lazy---but I did post a few things in December:

• I took issue with a pro-tar sand Op Ed in the Rocky Mountain News...
  
  
• Expressed concerns over last second rule changes from the Bush Administration around the Endangered Species Act and some stupid stuff around the polar bear ESA designation. The completely humorless Pacific Legal Foundation took exception to this entry---admittedly not my best or funniest...but really...they need to get a grip. (The Fredo line is great though. I'd give them props if they would take comments on their blog...)
  
  
• I posted some thoughts on our petition to add the whitebark pine tree to the endangered species list. Actually, this sounds dry, but there are some really fascinating elements to this. I will likely blog more on the topic later.
  
  
• And around Thanksgiving, I wrote about the millions of dollars spent on an elite killing force that our federal government uses to take out wildlife as part of NRDC's blog storm outlining transition requests made to the Obama administration.

Holidays are over and a lot of stupid stuff went down while I was away---so plenty more here and on Switchboard.

Busy Blogging...just not here...

Howdy---

Been a while, eh? Well, now that the house is largely done, I need to slightly retool the blog and get back into the habit of writing about other stuff. That is gonna happen, I promise.

But that does not mean I have not been busy online.

I've been posting a lot on NRDC's switchboard, covering a wide array of topics:

• The Chicago Climate Action Plan: Keeping me in the Windy City
  
  
• The interesting electric car company detailed in Wired Magazine, Better Place
  
  
• Scary mutant fish found near Canada's tar sands mining operations in Alberta
  
  
• The total buzz kill that is NRDC's suit over bee documents with the EPA
  
  
• Invasive species in Lake Michigam---this is actually a pretty cool post

And just today, I posted about my trip to Wyoming to investigate global warming impacts on the Wind River Mountain chain near Yellowstone National Park (it has a great title: Zombie Trees and Bear Attacks, Halloween must be coming soon...

Oh, and if you have not seen them yet---I posted some cool shots from my recent Wyoming and Montana trips on my Flickr page---some cool moose photos!

I was pimped by CNN

So cool, CNN linked to my Switchboard blog post on the Iowa floods today. For much of the day it was the top link in the "from the blogs" section of their flood coverage! If you are not checking Switchboard, you really should. Some great stuff there these days (way more intelligent folks then me...I am the token midwesterner...) if you are interested in all things green---but especially a deeper understanding of the battles beginning to rage over our country's energy future.

New Blog...

FYI, if this is not enough Josh for you, I have started another blog...

Actually, I have joined an august team of bloggers. I posted my first entry for NRDC's Switchboard blog this week. Typical enviro rant about crazy oil profits, funky music, and Indiana... Check out BP Could Learn a Lot from James Brown. (You can also laugh at my half-smile tussled hair photo...)

But don't check Switchboard out just for my stuff. Time magazine recently named it one of the best green blogs on the Web. Most of the other folks on there are actual experts... But I think there is a place for my take on the midwest, dirty fuels and wildlife... I will try to post at least once a week there too.