• Entertainment & Gaming

    FCC + Monopoly Sitting in a Tree...

    By Tom Conlon Posted on 8.28.2008 9 Comments

    Someone give FCC chairman Kevin Martin a Red Bull, because he’s definitely asleep on the job. How else can we explain the thumbs up recently given to both the Sirius/XM and Verizon/Alltel mergers on his watch? While Martin happily panders to the public with far-flung plans for free, nationwide wireless Web access (that’ll be the day…), he’s been delinquent with the most important of duties charged to him: shielding us from the unfair business practices of monopolies. What happened to the FCC that had our best interests in mind when it dismantled Ma Bell in 1984?

    8.28.2008 at 07:15am - Comment by scoobytoth

    I think the alternative to the XM/sirius merger was worse, bankruptcy. I am a subscriber to Sirius and the thought of one or the other going out of business was horrible. I look forward to the merger and the merging of services.

  • The Environment

    The Environmental Cost of Salting Roads

    By Posted on 3.25.2008 2 Comments

    Municipalities are always weighing cost against environmental concerns and quite often, cost wins out at great expense to the environment. Residents of New York City will remember the summer of 2002 when the Bloomberg administration ceased recycling glass and plastic, citing budgetary concerns. It was cheaper for the city to dump tons of reusable refuse into landfills than to continue its recycling program. After a year of no plastic recycling and two years of no glass, the city determined the savings were negligible and resumed recycling both.

    3.26.2008 at 08:59pm - Comment by scoobytoth

    About a year or two ago Popsci reported on a coating that a company had developed that lower the freezing point on the roads. It was being tested in Minnesota. I remember thinking that it was amazing. You basically sprayed it on and it would stay on the road, like a polyurethane or something. I think it stayed for years. It would have been interesting for popsci to link to that old story for this particular article.



Download Our iPhone App

Stay up to date on the latest news of the future of science and technology from your iPhone with full articles, images and offline viewing



Follow Us On Twitter

Featuring every article from the magazine and website, plus links from around the Web. Also see our PopSci DIY feed



Become a Fan On Facebook

Share links with friends, comment on stories and more


December 2009: Best of What's New

In our December issue, Popular Science names the 100 best innovations of the year: bombproof wallpaper, self-parking cars, the fastest helicopter, and 97 more. Plus inventor profiles and videos.

Check out the best of what's new here.

Popular Science Photo Pool


Share your photos in the Pop Sci pool at www.flickr.com!
tags_sprite.png
POP_embeddedForm_cover_May09.jpg