Author: Steven Guccione

Gulf Seaweed Bloom

Steven Guccione

My daughter was looking at hotels in Cancun, and they were cheap. Really cheap.  I remembered and article I read about a seaweed bloom, and also remembered a jellyfish problem in Florida from a few years back.  Both related to environmental pollution.  Turns out there has been a huge problem with seaweed in the gulf and it’s beaches.

Tourism in Cancun is way down, even with the Mexican governments attempts to remediate the problem and the Tourism industry’s attempt to brush it aside.  When you think about the problems of large scale pollution you think about toxic events or even weather disasters, but these sorts of environmental problems seem to be the more frequent and costly ones.

This is being connected to bad agricultural practices in South America, much like the Dead Zone coming from the Mississippi River every year.  I hold out hope that now that big money is being lost by large corporations, something may change.  Fron FSU:

Massive Seaweed Bloom Affects Florida’s Beaches

From the Boston Globe:

Cancun has a nasty seaweed problem, and tourists are staying away

Missing Zinn

Steven Guccione

One of my regrets from my undergraduate days at Boston University is that I didn’t take Howard Zinn’s history class.  An interview with Cornell West on Howard Zinn ten years after his death.  From Boston Review of Books.

Missing Zinn

On the tenth anniversary of radical historian Howard Zinn’s death, Cornel West opens up about their friendship and what Zinn would have made of the decade—including whether he would have voted for Bernie.