Alternative Features

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by Tom Szymanski
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Editorial cartoons by Brian Garvey
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by Helen Harrell with Carol Fischer
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by Kevin Howley
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by Gregory Travis
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James Alexander Thom

Editor's note: The following story originally appeared in the May 1 subscriber-only edition of the political newsletter CounterPunch. It has been updated to reflect additional research on the subject.

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The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) waxes futuristic on its Web site when describing nanotechnology, calling it "the next industrial revolution." New cancer therapies, pollution-eating compounds, more durable consumer products, detectors for biohazards like anthrax and "novel foods" are but a few of the nanotech applications PEN cites.

"They promise to change everything from the cars we drive to the clothes we wear, from the medical treatments our doctors can offer to our energy sources and workplaces," PEN, a partnership between the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Pew Charitable Trusts, says. "... Nanotechnologies are changing the way people think about the future."

3050

Twenty years ago the atmosphere of Monroe County and Bloomington gained a backbeat right out of a Buffalo Springfield Lyric: "There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear." And, yes, there were battle lines being drawn. Maybe nobody's right, if everybody's wrong.

Bloomington had survived the iconic 1970s, with a character and ethos frozen in time by movies like Breaking Away. But by 1990 some of us started to worry that instead of a happy time capsule, Breaking Away had become an ominous, if still nostalgic, totem to a past now gone replaced by a future not as good.

For while most of us knew what "Bloomington" meant, reality was far more harsh. During the 1980s, IU's financial minister John Hackett had dictated that every university unit become a cost center, had to earn its own way and, with that dictate, were swept away anything not amortizable no matter what the sentimental, institutional or historic value.

3049

A moment of truth on the Interstate 69/NAFTA Highway has been put off until Sept. 11, when citizens will have a better idea who will determine their transportation future -- the community or Gov. Mitch Daniels.

Mayor Mark Kruzan asked the Bloomington-Monroe County Metropolitan Planning Organization Policy Committee (MPO) on Friday to delay a second vote on a request from the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) for a "hardship" purchase of property at Tapp Road and State Road 37. The property is in the proposed I-69 right-of-way, and the 13-member MPO had voted 8-2 against the request on March 13.

INDOT asked the MPO to reconsider the request again this month, without giving any reason why, Kruzan said in a June 24 e-mail. "We (the City) asked INDOT to not put this item back on the agenda," he wrote. "But it is their right as an MPO member to make that request and have it be done."

This Modern World
by Tom Tomorrow

This Modern World
by Tom Tomorrow

 

Alternative News Features

Forty Years in Bloomington
A Memoir
by Steven Higgs

Click here

Dancing with Fire in Palestine
A Palestinian American
moves to her
ancestral home

by Deema Dabis
Click here
Tips from the District
Patriotism and recycling: It all comes back to you!
by Elisa Pokral Click here


 

In This Edition

June 28, 2009
News & Opinion
* Nanotechnology: Revolution and pollution by Steven Higgs
* CIVITAS: Home is nowhere by Gregory Travis
* Feds' letter postpones I-69 showdown to 9/11 by Steven Higgs
* Brown County landowner protects trees, makes money by Jordan Arnold
* MEDIAlternative: Moving pictures and double standards by Kevin Howley
* Costs ignored in congressional energy debate by Grant Smith
* Patriotism and recycling: It all comes back to you! by Elisa Pokral
Arts & Culture
* In the company of madmen by Steven Higgs
Editorial Cartoons Archive
See them all -- Brian Garvey, Tom Tomorrow, Keith Knight


 

In Past Editions



June 14, 2009
News & Opinion
* Damaging our children's brains? by Steven Higgs
* CIVITAS: Loving Day by Gregory Travis
* STATE OF THE UNION: Facts trump business on EFCA by Tom Szymanski
* Peace be with you, Kurt by Steven Higgs
* MEDIAlternative: The elephant in the room by Kevin Howley
* The Misfortune 500 by Rob Larson
* Finding Tony's house in Jerusalem by Deema Dabis
* Sandberg uses theater to rehabilitate inmates by Katherine Hagan
Arts & Culture
* Road tripping on the Marijuana Way by Steven Higgs
Editorial Cartoons Archive
See them all -- Brian Garvey, Tom Tomorrow, Keith Knight



May 31, 2009
News & Opinion
* The uphill struggle against King Coal by Steven Higgs
* CIVITAS: Identity politics by Gregory Travis
* House committee passes clean energy bill by LuCinda Hohmann
* Bayh and Hill: False populists by Zac Elliot
* Inspiration's end by Kevin Howley
* Black adapts to downtown student market by Benjamin Roberts
* Refugees of consciousness by Deema Dabis
* Coalition backs permanent Backcountry protection Indiana Forest Alliance, Sustainable Earth
* Job tips for a green world by Elisa Pokral
Arts & Culture
* Slumlords, sorority girls and bank robbers by Steven Higgs
* Book review: The Lonely Soldier by Linda Greene

Editorial Cartoons Archive
See them all -- Brian Garvey, Tom Tomorrow, Keith Knight



Archive of past editions
05.18.08 - current