Business as usual, apparently: Despite President Barack Obama’s promises of better safeguards for offshore drilling, federal regulators continue to approve plans for oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico with minimal or no environmental analysis. The Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service has signed off on at least five new offshore drilling projects…

I gotta say, this is heartbreaking. Leeville is a hardscrabble nothing town on the marshes, but for the people who live there, it’s everything. And it’s being taken away from them by the BP oil spill. Excerpts: “This is tearing us up,” says Serigny, 57. “When everybody looks at each other, you can see it…

Is there no natural social phenomenon that levelers and militant egalitarians won’t seek to destroy to create their Utopia? From the NYT: But increasingly, some educators and other professionals who work with children are asking a question that might surprise their parents: Should a child really have a best friend? Most children naturally seek close…

I’m addicted to Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” travel food show, which I watch via streaming Netflix. Bourdain is a self-conscious cool guy, and at times, something of a jerk. But he’s compulsively watchable. Though I wish he would trash the food he’s served sometimes, the thing I like most about him is he gets passionate…

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