Portside

Did you know that some of the fruits and veggies out on supermarket shelves are grown using wastewater from oil and gas operations? For the past several years, many drought-stricken farms in California’s Central Valley, which produces 40 percent of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, have been increasingly irrigating their crops with wastewater. Chemicals present include 16 the state classifies as carcinogens or reproductive toxicants, says EWG report.

Pseudoscience is perpetuated by self-declared experts with no scientific background or understanding of food science, or even scientists with credentials but who conduct poor, unscientifically sound research and spread unreliable, false or even debunked results. The trend has hit the pet food industry.

The North won the Civil War, but the South won the Reconstruction. The victorious Northern armies preserved the Union and the slaves were emancipated but the Confederates won the historical interpretation of those events by perpetrating the myths that became the accepted story over the next one hundred years.

When we talk about the problem of oil industry accidents, we tend to focus on dramatic events like the deadly 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon explosion off the coast of Louisiana, or the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil tanker crash in Alaska's Prince William Sound. But the industry is far more accident-prone than such relatively rare high-profile disasters suggest.

Pete Seeger tribute. Abiyogo. We Shall Overcome. Waist Deep in the Big Muddy. If I Had a Hammer. Worried Man Blues. This Land Is Your Land.