Quick links

Ethical microtech: WorldChanging interviews the founders of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.

Green challenges: In These Times interviews Heather Rogers, author of Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage: "If you’ve got a company and you’ve decided to go green, it’s going to cost more. You’re going to be competing with companies that aren’t doing that, and aren’t incurring the greater cost. Either that’s going to drive you out of business, or into the realm of manufacturing luxury items to sell to people who have now embraced this whole new level of consumption that’s connected to organic living, organic lifestyles. But those goods aren’t available to working class families or to people who live in public housing. Those are high-end consumer items. So, that kind of change is not going to affect a greater change across the board."

Red ink: Metafilter: "The White House has just released the budget for 2007. If approved by Congress, this budget would increase defense spending by 24%, cut money from healthcare, education, and the environment all while adding another $354 billion to the U.S. debt. At the end of FY2000, the U.S. debt--the accumulation of the deficit spending of all previous 42 U.S. Presidents--was $5,674,178,209,886.86. Today it is $8,195,544,127,376.07." The budget also calls for cutting $53.5 million set aside for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and no funding for the Department of Education’s Arts in Ed program.

Never forget: Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll has all but fallen from the headlines, yet she remains captive in Iraq. This CSM blog keeps up the vigil.

Carter cuts to the chase: Jimmy Carter on Bush's domestic spying agenda: "Under the Bush administration, there's been a disgraceful and illegal decision — we're not going to the let the judges or the Congress or anyone else know that we're spying on the American people. And no one knows how many innocent Americans have had their privacy violated under this secret act."