Coal is a hydrocarbon that, to the profound annoyance of a lot of people, sustains civilization as we know it. It's mainly used to generate electricity, and nearly half the electricity used in the U.S. comes from coal-fired power plants. Another 20 percent comes from natural gas-fired ones.]]> In the case of the Aurora massacre (12 dead so far, 58 injured), there were more than 300 people in the theater when James Holmes allegedly started shooting and no one shot back; that suggests the theater was 99.66 percent gun free. And that alone tells you that the sort of disarmament gun control advocates want does not prevent mass murder, it enables it.]]> Karlin Real Estate, the company that bought the building at 11th and Pearl that once housed the newspaper that was once known as the Boulder Daily Camera (before it dropped “Boulder” and “Daily” from its name), recently presented its plans for the redevelopment of the site to the Boulder Planning Board and the Landmarks Board — which were underwhelmed.]]> The New York Times columnist David Brooks wants to bring back the draft. Or at least some form of compulsory universal national service. He thinks it will bring Americans back together again.]]> About the anti-corporate personhood referendum that might be on the Boulder ballot this November — I smell a rat. Several, in fact. The ballot proposal put forward by Councilman Macon Cowles would put Boulder voters on record as favoring an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to “abolish corporate personhood and prohibit the granting of constitutional rights to any entity other than a human being.” ]]> At a recent debate on fracking, Peter Champe of the Longmont anti-fracking group Our Future, Our Health, Our Longmont, summed up his group’s brief. Fracking is a major industrial activity, he said, and major industrial activities aren’t allowed in residential neighborhoods. Trouble is, that’s not quite accurate.]]> According to a story in the Sunday edition of Brand X paper, Boulder planners are looking for ideas about how to further develop Boulder’s “civic heart” — by which they mean the area bounded by Ninth and 17th Streets on the west and east, and Arapahoe and Canyon on the south and north, with Boulder Creek running through it.]]> “Why should I do anything for posterity? What has posterity ever done for me?” —Groucho Marx Good question that, even if it was intended to be a joke. The correct answer is because half a billion years of evolution on this planet preclude you from doing anything else — unless you happen to be one of natural selection’s culls.]]> DAccording to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, 88 percent of the 2011 U.S. corn crop consists of genetically engineered varieties — either herbicide-tolerant types like Monsanto’s Roundup Ready corn, or insect-resistant types containing genes from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), or both. The figure for the 2011 U.S. soybean crop is 94 percent genetically modified. For the 2011 cotton crop the figure is 90 percent genetically modified.]]> Let’s begin with a short quiz. What two things do the following nine states have in common: Colorado, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Ohio, Louisiana, Texas, Montana, Oklahoma and North Dakota?]]> The use of marijuana and its possession for personal use shall not be punished. Legal residents of the state of Colorado may cultivate up to six marijuana plants for their personal use within their domiciles.]]> If you want to know why fracking is here to stay, consider what’s been going on in Weld County. The Wattenberg gas and oil field, which sprawls across 1.9 million acres of Weld County, is a pin cushion of more than 20,000 wells, more than 12,000 of which are still producing.]]> WHeh. According to a paper published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Climate Change, windmills can cause global warming.]]> One of the latest — and sillier — local whines against fracking is that it is a profligate consumer of water that takes 33,000 acre feet of the stuff permanently out of the state’s hydraulic cycle.]]>