To understand this sprawling desert city, you have to understand its canals, whose routes Indigenous people dug as far back as A.D. 200.
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Posted inHighlight, Nonfiction, Quotes, Science & Nature
‘I’d Rather Import Water Than Export Children’
Growth advocates in St. George, Utah want a billion-dollar pipeline to support a rising population. Conservationists don’t.
Posted inBusiness, Food, Highlight, Quotes
The Unbearable Blandness of Water
Water companies go to impressive lengths to distinguish their tasteless product from their competitors’ tasteless product.
Posted inBooks, History, Science & Nature, Story
Taming the Great American Desert
By advocating for agriculture in the arid West, Major John Wesley Powell challenged the way America viewed its right to develop the continent.
Posted inBusiness & Tech, Nonfiction, Quotes
Nestlé Is Sucking the World’s Aquifers Dry
The multinational corporation is gradually privatizing a natural resource.
Posted inCurrent Events, Nonfiction, Uncategorized
California’s Housing Crisis Is About Jobs, Not Houses
It’s not the pace of housing construction. It’s that the world’s most successful companies are gathered in a small number of cities.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Separated Los Angeles from Its River?
In the early twentieth century, a booming Los Angeles was separated from the river in three decisive steps. First, an aqueduct was built more than 200 miles north to water to the city from the Sierra Nevada—a move mythologized in the movie Chinatown. Then, the city took control of all water rights on the river. Finally, the […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Rivers We Destroy: A Reading List
Here are four stories on how humans have changed local and regional river systems, and the disastrous and sometimes deadly consequences.
Posted inIllustrated Title, Story
After Water
The illustrated story of California, and what happens when the water runs out.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Childhood Development and the Psychological Roots of Disgust
Disgust has deep psychological roots, emerging early in a child’s development. Infants and young toddlers don’t feel grossed out by anything—diapers, Rozin observes, are there in part to stop a baby “from eating her shit.” In the young mind, curiosity and exploration often overpower any competing instincts. But, at around four years old, there seems to be a profound shift.