Environment

Suddenly, everyone wants to clean up the toxic sludge

A centuries-old hot potato just became a hot commodity.

For about as long as we've had heavy industry, the answer to "who's going to clean up this toxic mess?" has reliably been "don't look at me." That may be about to change, and the reason is gloriously on-brand for late-stage capitalism.

That rust-colored gunk seeping out of Appalachia's abandoned coal mines, the stuff staining 13,700 miles of American creek beds orange, is absolutely loaded with rare earth elements. That's been part of the problem, and it may become the solution. Rare earths are the metals inside smartphones, wind turbines, and military jets. The metals China controls 70% of, and we import 80% of. As West Virginia University researchers Hélène Nguemgaing and Alan Collins explain, the concentrations in the sludge are competitive with actual mined ore.

So the cleanup nobody wanted to fund just became the supply chain everybody wants a piece of. Now there's just one very American thing standing in the way.

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And what did we learn?

In yesterday's issue, we shared a Boston University professor's case that the paper check is nowhere near dead.

Then we asked where you personally land on the checkbook. Over 60% of you use them now and then

• Love 'em. I'm the person writing one in line at the grocery store. (13.2%)

• Only for the plumber, the babysitter, and my nephew's birthday. (61.6%)

• I own a checkbook. I could not tell you where it is. (21.4%)

• I wouldn't even know how to write one. (3.8%)

GOOD reader wdatillio voted with the majority. “Although I do most of my payments online, I still write about 4-6 checks each month and certainly hope checks will not be discontinued altogether!”

Wholesome | Courtesy of Upworthy

Science

'Star Trek' turned 60 this week, NASA has been quietly hiring its fans the whole time

Or… The night Mr. Spock upstaged the Vice President.

It probably won't surprise anyone who has read the Daily GOOD for a while that I'm a Trek guy. My first captain was Picard, but I’ve come to love all of it and I've since gotten through all 42,496 minutes of the shows and all 1,610 minutes of the movies, most of it more than once. It has had an immeasurable impact on my life. So Deana L. Weibel's reporting on what the series did to real space science doesn't surprise me in the least.

NASA was in on it early. In 1967, Leonard Nimoy was a guest at the National Space Club's Goddard Memorial Dinner, where the Vice President gave the keynote. Afterward, the engineers and officials in the room left Hubert Humphrey alone and mobbed Spock. Ten years later, NASA put Nichelle Nichols on the payroll to recruit astronauts, and the class that followed looked nothing like the ones before it.

Weibel, a cultural anthropologist, has interviewed astronomers, engineers, flight surgeons, and astronauts about what pulled them into the work. A quarter of them named the same television show, which premiered 60 years ago yesterday.

On September 9, 1956, 21-year-old Elvis Presley made his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. An estimated 60 million people tuned in, roughly 82% of the TV audience. The funny part? Ed Sullivan wasn’t there. He was recovering from a car accident, so actor Charles Laughton introduced Elvis from New York while the future King of Rock ’n’ Roll performed from a studio in Los Angeles.

Elvis was already a sensation, but that night turned him into something bigger: a shared national experience, helping rock ’n’ roll crash straight into the American mainstream. For one Sunday night, it seemed like nearly everybody was watching the same hips shake. 

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