Panama Day 2: Into the woods.

We didn't have to travel far from Panama City to hit the rainforests. Soberania is just outside the city, while Metropolitan Park is WITHIN Panama City. Every major world capital should have a rainforest within its borders.

The rainforest is THE place to go to get bitten by every creature ever made with 6 or more legs. When red itchy bumps covering the whole body is the new fashion trend, you'll thank me.

My rainforest pics suck and don't do it justice. Scenery shots are bad because everything is green and it's hard to distinguish what's so cool about it. And it's hard to capture all the little things that make a rainforest such a treasure - the rivers of leaf-cutter ants hard at work; the flourescent butterflies that flutter around; the shit-your-pants sound of a gang of agitated howler monkeys nearby; the feverish sunstroke, diarrhea, and dehydration; your willingness to strangle a harpy eagle to death for a shower and air conditioning. It's those little magical things that make the rainforest so special and yet so difficult to document.



I think it was in Metropolitan that I almost literally ran into this sloth, who has since become my Animal Spirit Guide. He was just a foot or two away from me.





I don't know what's in Slothy McSlotherson's gaping hole. I'm hoping it's candy.



Slaty-tailed trogon? Black-tailed trogon? Is it even a trogon?? Help!



Thick-billed Euphonia, perhaps? In any case, I named him Chirpy O'Houlihan.



A rare picture of a hummingbird taking it easy. He sat there looking pensive for awhile. I named him Freddie and pretended he was worried about his stocks portfolio.



We saw around 150 different birds throughout Panama: honeycreepers, woodcreepers, tanagers, parrots, parakeets, manakins, wrens, motmots, grosbeaks, antbirds, woodpeckers, puffbirds, kingfishers, hawks, kites, frigatebirds, egrets, jacobins, herons, doves, hawks, boobies (heh heh), flycatchers, hummingbirds, vultures, toucans, and the omnipresent kiskadee.

It would've been awesome if I enjoyed bird-watching.

Panama: Day 1: Casco Viejo.

After the Canal, we went to Casco Viejo, an old, fascinating corner of Panama City by the shore. It's an area of stark contrasts that somehow works together. The buildings are beautiful and ornate, and yet also dilapidated and decrepit. The architecture is both classically Spanish and French, looking somewhat like the French Quarter in New Orleans. And yet the buildings are home to poor residents and squatters. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and yet it's also surrounded by what appeared to be a shantytown.

Like most poor places that have inherent coolness, Casco Viejo is slowly gentrifying, with some acclaimed restaurants and hip bars moving in. Still, it's a place the guide books warn about treading at night or veering off a certain path. The cabbie rolled up the windows and locked the doors as we approached, and looked queasy when we asked to be let out in a rather decrepit street. But the neighborhood was instantly appealing, at least to us.

Panama: Day 1: The canal, of course.

We had no intention of going to the Panama Canal. We proud, jaded New Yorkers wouldn't be caught dead at places like the Eiffel Tower, the Tower of Pisa, the Space Needle, or the Long Island Duck. But two things changed our mind: 1) Unlike the aforementioned tourist traps, the Panama Canal actually serves a purpose. It doesn't need to make money off of stupid Americans with fanny packs in order to exist; it makes money off of stupid countries that don't know how to ship things by plane. And, 2) There's not a whole lot to do in Panama City.

I suppose I had a different idea of what Panama City would be like. I booked the Panama trip on a whim, or more accurately, out of panic: I saw a deal for shockingly low airfare and flashing words bordered by flashing lights said the deal wouldn't last. What's an impulse shopper to do?

After clicking submit, I sat back and fantasized about what the trip would be like. Surely, Panama City would be a clean, sun-bleached metropolis peopled by tall men in white suits and thin mustaches, speaking English in a classy accent, punctuating tales of coffee bean prices with long puffs on hand-rolled cigars, while women in yellow flower-print dresses giggled or brought the men lemonade. Of course, everyone would be wearing hats. Panama hats (Ecuadorian-made, actually), fedoras, stetsons, pork pies, maybe the odd bucket cap.

The men would all be named Roberto or Manuel and they'd show me their yachts that once fought back both the Spanish armada and British pirates. Later at the hacienda, the sugarcane workers would come in from the fields to break for dinner. There would be some class tension at first, but then an old worker with gnarled hands would pull out a guitar from behind a tree and begin strumming, singing in a throaty, passionate voice, the guitar and vocals creating a magical sheen of calm surreality to the hazy evening. Soon, an upbeat song would begin, the women would joyfully dance in their yellow dresses, and we'd all be swept up in rum-fueled egalitarian revelry.

In actuality, Panama City is "the armpit of Panama" as one Panamanian put it. It reminded me of Port-of-Spain, Trinidad - a dingy, trafficky, noisy city that somehow encompasses a lot of sprawl within a small space. It's one of the least pedestrian-friendly cities I've been to, and that includes Salta, Argentina, where cars are driven with the intent to maim. Panama City has a number of areas bereft of sidewalks, crosswalks, stop lights and anything else that might help someone strolling around not get flattened into a tortilla. But it makes sense - with Panama's stifling humidity, no one just "walks around" unless you're looking to open a Turkish steam bath inside your boxers.

So cars, cabs, and buses rule the road, giving the searingly hot air a nice, greasy diesel quality. Cabs are embarrassingly cheap - rides around town can be a paltry $3. What's odd though is that the price of gas is comparable to the US. How Panamanian cab drivers make money is a mystery of the universe that still keeps me up at night.

(Another oddity of Panama City is that no one speaks English. Now, I don't go to a foreign country expecting people to know English, and in fact I try to speak/mangle the native tongue of wherever I am, but we're talking about a country that has had a huge U.S. presence for most of the 20th century. And Panama uses U.S. dollars, for crying out loud!)

Anyway, back to the Canal. So we arrived in the afternoon, and set out to see the city by walking around, which was like starring in a live-action adaptation of Frogger. Abandoning that, we cabbed to a couple of destinations that disappointed (I don't even remember what they were). Not knowing how to kill a couple of hours until dinner, we gave in and took a 15-minute, $3 cab ride to the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal.

The Canal is really something. I'm not going to be cliched and call it an engineering marvel. The way I see it, once 27,500 people die constructing something, it ceases to become a marvel and resembles more like grotesque trial and error.

But it is pretty neat. I won't get into the technical aspects of it, but water gets drained or pumped into various sections via artificial lakes, which raises or lowers the water level for one reason or another. Honestly, I don't quite get it and think a heavy-duty conveyer belt would work just as fine. But it's cool watching the water levels flip around, and there's even something oddly transfixing about watching giant cargo boats inch their way through the system. It takes small eternities for each boat to make it through, and it is the absolute perfect way to kill time before dinner.

(Dinner, by the way, was great and in a very cool part of town that warmed me up to Panama City. I'll post about it next time!)

Ship incoming from the Atlantic.



Ship outgoing to the Pacific.



Locks!

China eases media freedoms for foreign journalists.

This is a good sign, right? Why do I feel uneasy and skeptical? From Reuters:

BEIJING (Reuters) - China made a last minute extension of media freedoms for foreign reporters on Friday, enshrining rights originally granted only for the Olympics.

Foreign journalists will be allowed to travel freely across most of the country for reporting, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said at a news conference, unveiling the new rules just minutes before the old ones were due to expire at midnight local time.

The new regulations, approved by Premier Wen Jiabao, came after a day of resounding silence on what would happen to one of the high-profile changes Beijing made as part of its efforts to host the August Games.

Plants cry for help.

Don't read this if you're prone to depression. From LiveScience:

When injured, plants can cry for help via a chemical phone call to the roots.

If under attack by a pathogen, such as disease-causing bacteria, a plant's leaf can send out an S.O.S. to the roots for help, and the roots will then secrete an acid that brings beneficial bacteria to the rescue, scientists announced today. The finding builds on research earlier this year showing that parasitic plants can tap into a host plant's communication system.

"Plants are a lot smarter than we give them credit for," said Harsh Bais, assistant professor of plant and soil sciences at the University of Delaware. "People think that plants, rooted in the ground, are just sitting ducks when it comes to attack by harmful fungi or bacteria, but we've found that plants have ways of seeking external help," he notes.

500 Posts!!

Zoooom! We've sped our way to 500 posts faster than you can say "professional car racing is a waste of fuel and not really a sport." We rule!

Post in the comments and tell us what you'd like to see for the next 500!

Teens saved from sewer after getting lost playing Ninja Turtles.

I LOVE BEING A TURTLE!!!!! From NY Daily News:

Three blockheaded teenagers were busted playing in a sewer Wednesday in Queens - after getting lost while pretending to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, police sources said.

Schiller Milfort, 16, of Hollis, and Marvin Ottley, 17, of Bellaire, along with an unidentified 15-year-old boy, were shirtless and in their shorts and sneakers when firefighters plucked them out of a sewer in Kissena Park.

The make-believe heroes were crawling around the sewer system when they got confused and lost their way, police sources said.

They were not injured, officials said.

"These three idiots were playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and wanted to go into the sewers," said one police source. "They were never in danger, just goofing off and being stupid."

Coozer-Bits.

Daily Mail: Dubai beach sex couple jailed for three months.

Chicago Tribune: Ohio elections chief asks US Supreme Court to intervene over GOP dirty tactics.

Reuters: Hugo Chavez welcomes Bush as his socialist comrade.

IHT: Rich French guy arrested in NYC for in-flight, crotch-grabbing fracas.

McClatchy: Cheney in hospital for abnormal heartbeat. (Don't worry Dick, it's supposed to beat.)

Moscow Times: Russia seeking law to protect sober drivers from corrupt police.

New Scientist: Read each technology's first message!

Raw Story: Pentagon bans more interrogation techniques.

NSF: Function of dinosaurs' bizarre crests discovered.

Joe the Plumber doesn't have a plumbing license.

I wouldn't let this guy fix a faucet leak let alone influence a presidential campaign. From the Chicago Sun-Times:

HOLLAND, Ohio — Joe the Plumber said Thursday he doesn’t have a license and doesn’t need one.

Joe Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, the nickname Republican John McCain bestowed on him during Wednesday’s presidential debate, said he works for a small plumbing company that does residential work. Because he works for someone else, he doesn’t need a license, he said.

Wurzelbacher was cited by the GOP presidential candidate as an example of someone who wants to buy a plumbing business but would be hurt by Democrat Barack Obama’s tax plans. Wurzelbacher said he was surprised that his name was mentioned so many other times.

‘‘That bothered me. I wished that they had talked more about issues that are important to Americans,’’ he told reporters gathered outside his home.

Family cremates mom on BBQ, steals her benefits.

This is precisely why I'm not having kids. From Breitbart:

CORNING, Calif. (AP) - The family of a dead elderly woman cremated her remains on a makeshift barbecue and continued collecting her retirement checks amounting to more than $25,000, authorities in Northern California said. Ramona Allmond's daughter and grandson were arrested Sunday on suspicion of embezzlement, elder abuse and disposing of a body without a permit.

Allmond, 84, likely died of natural causes, though investigators were still trying to determine the exact cause of death, said Tehama County sheriff's Capt. Paul Hosler.

Amazingly ancient fossil found behind strip mall.

Hey, my mall has a Fossil! (Designer name brand humor there for ya.) From the Boston Globe:

When it comes to jaw-dropping fossil discoveries, distant places where T. Rex and other prehistoric beasts once roamed come more quickly to mind than southeastern Massachusetts. But yesterday, Tufts University announced the discovery of what may well be the world's oldest fossil imprint of a whole flying insect - found by researchers behind a strip mall in North Attleborough.

Tufts geology senior Richard J. Knecht, working with paleontologist Jacob Benner, uncovered an exquisitely etched impression made some 310 million years earlier by a primitive insect - probably an early form of the common mayfly. The insect lighted on a damp outcropping in what was then a steamy Carboniferous Period flood plain - and in that fleeting moment left a 3-inch-long outline that was captured for eternity in mud that hardened into rock. That was the same rock discovered by the Tufts team.

Lawsuit against God tossed over lack of address.

I'm pretty sure God lives in the North Pole. Bummer they couldn't find Him. From AP:

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A judge has thrown out a Nebraska legislator's lawsuit against God, saying the Almighty wasn't properly served due to his unlisted home address. State Sen. Ernie Chambers filed the lawsuit last year seeking a permanent injunction against God.

He said God has made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents in Omaha, inspired fear and caused "widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants."

[...] On Tuesday, however, Douglas County District Court Judge Marlon Polk ruled that under state law a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a lawsuit to move forward.

"Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice," Polk wrote.

Chambers, who graduated from law school but never took the bar exam, thinks he's found a hole in the judge's ruling.

"The court itself acknowledges the existence of God," Chambers said Wednesday. "A consequence of that acknowledgment is a recognition of God's omniscience."

Therefore, Chambers said, "Since God knows everything, God has notice of this lawsuit."

Mm-Mm Militant: Campbell's attacks Progresso.

Wow, the soup companies are really at it. I don't think I'm ever eating soup again. Story here.

America's top 10 most confusing traffic signs.

Funny piece from Jalopnik. I'm glad I don't drive anymore.

McCain is creepy.

Just a quick aside, but who else felt that McCain in tonight's debate was like that old guy in your neighborhood who walks around shirtless and doughy and curses a lot under his breath and smells faintly of urine and you always wonder if perhaps he is homeless and sorta think he is awesome in his own weird, creepy way?

I have to say this - after tonight's debate, there is no doubt in my mind that I want John McCain to be my cantankerous boxcar hobo pal. Obama could be president all he wants, but me and Johnny Fruitcakes are gonna get drunk on the curb and give you the ol' stinkeye. Joe the Plumber is welcome to join.

After 436 years, Austrian stables take in women.

Women riding horses??! My god... Soon they will want to join the workforce and vote! From HappyNews:

It's no longer a man's world in Austria's most sophisticated stables.

The country's prestigious Spanish Riding School, for centuries a bastion of masculinity, is modernizing: On Wednesday, the 436-year-old institution officially presented its first female riders-in-training.

The school, which was founded in 1572 and is part of Vienna's former imperial Hofburg Palace complex, is known for elegant white Lipizzaner stallions.

Every year, throngs of tourists from around the world watch as the horses, led by male riders in identical uniforms, gracefully perform exercises and jumps.

Allowing women to sit in the saddle marks a distinct break with tradition. But for Elisabeth Guertler, the director, opening up the exclusive club reflects the realities of modern life.

"What speaks against it?" Guertler told reporters. "Today, ladies and gentlemen both have to earn their keep and prove themselves."

25 best songs ever (as per Vanity Fair).

Vanity Fair choosing the top 25 best songs of all time is sort of like... well... my grandfather choosing the top 25 best songs of all time. Though he's actually hipper than these guys. The most modern song is from 1982!

List here.

Sorry, but just about anything recorded after 1982 (except for Aqua's Barbie song) is better than the Beatles "Day Tripper."

(Oh, and Rush got snubbed again.)

Being generous is sexy.

Women like guys who buy them things? No! From the University of Nottingham:

Displays of altruism or selflessness towards others can be sexually attractive in a mate. This is one of the findings of a study carried out by biologists and a psychologist at The University of Nottingham.

In three studies of more than 1,000 people Dr Tim Phillips and his fellow researchers discovered that women place significantly greater importance on altruistic traits that anything else. Their findings have been published in the British Journal of Psychology.

Dr Phillips said: “Evolutionary theory predicts competition between individuals and yet we see many examples in nature of individuals disadvantaging themselves to help others. In humans, particularly, we see individuals prepared to put themselves at considerable risk to help individuals they do not know for no obvious reward.”

Scientists develop cancer-killing compound from salad plant.

I have to quote generously from this one because it's very interesting and sounds promising. From the University of Washington:

Researchers at the University of Washington have updated a traditional Chinese medicine to create a compound that is more than 1,200 times more specific in killing certain kinds of cancer cells than currently available drugs, heralding the possibility of a more effective chemotherapy drug with minimal side effects.

The new compound puts a novel twist on the common anti-malarial drug artemisinin, which is derived from the sweet wormwood plant (Artemisia annua L). Sweet wormwood has been used in herbal Chinese medicine for at least 2,000 years, and is eaten in salads in some Asian countries.

The scientists attached a chemical homing device to artemisinin that targets the drug selectively to cancer cells, sparing healthy cells. The results were published online Oct. 5 in the journal Cancer Letters.

"The compound is like a special agent planting a bomb inside the cell," said Tomikazu Sasaki, chemistry professor at UW and senior author of the study.

In the study, the UW researchers tested their artemisinin-based compound on human leukemia cells. It was highly selective at killing the cancer cells. The researchers also have preliminary results showing that the compound is similarly selective and effective for human breast and prostate cancer cells, and that it effectively and safely kills breast cancer in rats, Sasaki said.

Cancer drug designers are faced with the unique challenge that cancer cells develop from our own normal cells, meaning that most ways to poison cancer cells also kill healthy cells. Most available chemotherapies are very toxic, destroying one normal cell for every five to 10 cancer cells killed, Sasaki said. This is why chemotherapy's side effects are so devastating, he said.

"Side effects are a major limitation to current chemotherapies," Sasaki said. "Some patients even die from them."

The compound Sasaki and his colleagues developed kills 12,000 cancer cells for every healthy cell, meaning it could be turned into a drug with minimal side effects. A cancer drug with low side effects would be more effective than currently available drugs, since it could be safely taken in higher amounts.

Bush's legacy of an "ownership society" not quite working out.

Cutting piece from Newsweek. I had forgotten about all that ownership society mumbo-jumbo.

Remember the ownership society? President George W. Bush championed the concept when he was running for re-election in 2004, envisioning a world in which every American family owned a house and a stock portfolio, and government stayed out of the way of the American Dream.

These families were, of course, conservative, or at a minimum traditional and nuclear, consisting of a heterosexual married couple and at least two kids living in a stand-alone home with a yard, a car or two and a multimedia room with a flat-screen television. The latter was a new addition to this 21st-century simulacrum of the 1950s "Leave It to Beaver" idyll. But the dream was the same.

Such a country would be more stable, Bush argued, and more prosperous. "America is a stronger country every single time a family moves into a home of their own," he said in October 2004. To achieve his vision, Bush pushed new policies encouraging homeownership, like the "zero-down-payment initiative," which was much as it sounds—a government-sponsored program that allowed people to get mortgages without a down payment. More exotic mortgages followed, including ones with no monthly payments for the first two years. Other mortgages required no documentation other than the say-so of the borrower. Absurd though these all were, they paled in comparison to the financial innovations that grew out of the mortgages—derivatives built on other derivatives, packaged and repackaged until no one could identify what they contained and how much they were, in fact, worth.

As we know by now, these instruments have brought the global financial system, improbably, to the brink of collapse. And as financial strains drive husbands and wives apart, Bush's ownership ideology may end up having the same effect on the stable nuclear families conservatives so badly wanted to foster.

Thieves steal 660 pounds of deadly hazelnuts.

Who steals 660 pounds of nuts? (Juvenile delinquent elephants?) From Reuters:

Thieves who stole 660 pounds of hazelnuts in Germany have been urgently warned not to eat them.

Hamburg police spokesman Holger Vehren said the sacks containing the nuts were full of poisonous hydrogen phosphate gas, used to extend their shelf life. The nuts must first be treated to make them safe for consumption.

"We're looking for the perpetrators because they could face a very serious health risk if they eat these hazelnuts," he said. "The gas is even lethal if they inhale it."

New gene found that helps plants beat the heat.

From Science Daily:

Michigan State University plant scientists have discovered another piece of the genetic puzzle that controls how plants respond to high temperatures. That may allow plant breeders to create new varieties of crops that flourish in warmer, drier climates.

The MSU researchers found that the gene bZIP28 helps regulate heat stress response in Arabidopsis thaliana, a member of the mustard family used as a model plant for genetic studies. This is the first time bZIP28 has been shown to play a role heat tolerance. The research is published in the Oct. 6 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Viagra spam emailers busted.

This is precisely why I don't trust any email, unless it's written by a Nigerian prince. From the Chicago Tribune:

The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday that it has busted a global spam network responsible for sending billions of illegal messages encouraging consumers to buy unsafe male-enhancement and weight loss pills.

The FTC, which handles the civil aspect of illegal spam cases, asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois to issue a temporary injunction against two men in New Zealand and Texas, prohibiting them from sending spam and making false product claims. The court also froze their assets, which may eventually be returned to consumers who bought the drugs.

[...] The spam network, which processed credit card information in Cyprus and Georgia, used servers in China to host its Web sites and also employed a "botnet," which is a network of computers -- including ones in ordinary homes -- that are hijacked to send spam. The FTC said the botnet used by this operation compromised tens of thousands of computers around the world and was capable of sending up to 10 billion spam messages per day. The drugs came from China and India.

Internet use good for the brain.

According to this, I must be the smartest man alive.

For middle aged and older people at least, using the internet helps boost brain power, research suggests.

A University of California Los Angeles team found searching the web stimulates centres in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning.

The researchers say this might even help to counter-act the age-related physiological changes that cause the brain to slow down.

Coozer-Bits.

Science Daily: Baldness gene found. 1 in 7 men at risk.

Live Science: Circadian rhythm affects memory.

New Scientist: White wine might be good for you too!

Computer World: Judge orders Palin to preserve Yahoo emails.

Slashfilm: Ghostbusters' Ecto-1 for sale.

YouTube: McCain supporters spouting scary, vile stuff while queuing up for a rally.

The Hill: Democratic congressman paid mistress $120,000 in hush money.

Bush critic wins Nobel Prize.

Paul Krugman is an economist? From the Boston Globe:

PRINCETON, N.J.—Paul Krugman, whose relentless criticism of the Bush administration includes opposition to the $700 billion financial bailout, won the Nobel prize in economics Monday for his work on international trade patterns.

The Princeton University professor and New York Times columnist is the best-known American economist to win the prize in decades.

The Nobel committee commended Krugman's work on global trade, beginning with a 10-page paper in 1979 that knit together two fields of study, helping foster a better understanding of why countries produce similar products and why people move from the small towns to cities.

Krugman (pronounced KROOG-man) is best known for his unabashedly liberal column in the Times, which he has written since 1999. In it, he has said Republicans are becoming "the party of the stupid" and that the economic meltdown made GOP presidential nominee John McCain "more frightening now than he was a few weeks ago."

But at a news conference, Krugman said he doesn't think he won the prize because of his political views.

"Nobel prizes are given to intellectuals," he said. "A lot of intellectuals are anti-Bush."

Jobseekers duped into getting face tattoos.

From News.com.au:

Two Indonesian jobseekers have been tricked into getting their faces tattooed by a bogus official offering government jobs.

Village chief Sawiyono - who was helping the men find jobs in Jakarta - claimed he had received a text message from a government official offering them work as intelligence officers but saying they would have to be inked first with a dragon tattoo, Antara state news agency said.

Sawiyono realised he had been tricked after checking with the subdistrict chief of the Bojonegoro district of East Java who told him there was no such requirement.

But by then it was too late and the men had already been tattooed, the report said.

British government loses 20,000 cows.

Don't have a cow, man. From Ananova:

Government officials have been forced to admit that they have lost more than 20,000 cows.

Officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) admitted in Parliamentary questions that 20,979 of the animals had been mislaid.

The livestock should have been logged on Defra's Cattle Tracing System, devised to protect public and animal health after the BSE and foot and mouth epidemics.

However the cattle have disappeared from the system, while another 1039 are believed to have been loaded onto cattle trucks and never heard of again.

Prince Charles snubs Doctor Who.

Shameful snubbing by the crown prince, considering the number of times the good Doctor has saved Britain. Unless.... he's a Cyberman?!! From Ananova:

Prince Charles has reportedly turned down an invitation to appear on Dr Who.

Russell T Davies wrote to Clarence House asking if Charles would like to make a cameo appearance in the hit BBC drama

Speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Mr Davies OBE joked: "He turned us down, the miserable swine."

Green websites' traffic yet to blossom.

One victim of the tanking economy is the environmental movement, as now consumers will be flocking back to cheap production/low cost alternatives. Surprisingly, I haven't seen much written about this. AdWeek today talks about how traffic for green sites have recently plummeted or were nipped in the bud:

In the past year, green-themed Web sites have sprung up like weeds. But perceived consumer enthusiasm for the green movement hasn't translated into major traffic for most publishers in this fledgling space, making some wonder whether the media business overestimated the trend. Meanwhile, publishers said that many consumers' interest in green has shifted this year from, "How can I save the planet?" to "How can I save some cash?"

In 2007 alone, both MSN and Yahoo! unveiled green channels, while Washingtonpost Newsweek Interactive (Sprig.com) and Hearst (The Daily Green) launched standalone green content sites. Meanwhile, Discovery Communications snatched up Treehugger.com, former cable net/Web property Lime.com was sold to green retailer Gaiam, and a handful of green ad nets (Burst, SustainLane) popped up. Thus far, traffic reports for these properties are less than promising.