By Giulia Rozzi

A number of Rite Aide stores in the west will start carrying paternity test kits.

Makers Sorenson Genomics explain the value in thier product “there is a curiosity and a need to know that can be provided discreetly, conveniently and affordably at retail,”

Hmmm, if home paternity tests become widely used, I wonder what Maury Povich will do on his show?

For more info on reproduction, safe sex and contraception visit safersex.org.

 By Kerry TruemanGoogle announced yesterday that it’s putting hundreds of millions of dollars into a project called Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal. The goal, according to Google co-founder Larry Page, “is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal.” That’s enough energy to power the city of San Francisco, and Google’s looking to provide it through advanced solar thermal power, wind power, enhanced geothermal systems and other new technologies. It figures that we have to look to a forward-looking company like Google to move us beyond dirty old coal, which we still rely on to produce 40% of the world’s electricity. How Dickensian can you get?You can read more about Google’s commitment to clean energy here.

Boulder residents lit up”and lined up”at the prospect of swapping their old fashioned, inefficient Christmas lights for super cool LED twinkle lights offered through the city’s Climate Smart program.

Within 45 minutes last night the city had handed out 700 strands of energy efficient Christmas lights, exhausting Climate Smart’s entire supply and forcing them to postpone further exchanges until reinforcements arrive. The city’s ordered an additional 1,000 23-foot strands of LED lights, paid for through the “carbon tax” that Boulder residents voted for last year, making Boulder the first place in the nation to pass a tax to fight global warming. Way to glow!

(The rest of us will have to underwrite our own upgrades to LED twinkle lights, but the good news is that the big box stores are all starting to carry them. Yes, they cost a bit more upfront, but they use only a fraction of the energy required to power conventional twinkle lights. So deck the halls with bulbs of diodes!)

By Kerry Trueman

When it comes to consumer safety, Europe’s leaving the U.S. behind in a cloud of toxic dust, as investigative reporter Mark Shapiro told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross on Monday. We don’t ask our manufacturers to try to minimize the use of harmful chemicals in their products, and we don’t even require them to list potentially harmful ingredients to give consumers the option of making an informed choice.

Shapiro, author of Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products, and What’s at Stake for American Power, compares the European Union’s proactive approach to keeping dubious chemicals out of consumer goods to our own laissez faire, let-them-eat-lead policies.

Of course, much of this stuff is made in China, which, according to Shapiro, is perfectly happy to cater to the EU’s more stringent, consumer-friendly specifications on the one hand, while still cranking out stuff for American companies using inferior materials suspected of posing a hazard to consumers.

But American manufacturers’ decision to use potential toxins in their products doesn’t just threaten our own health. It harms our economy, too, as consumers here and abroad increasingly opt to buy goods from countries who hold their manufacturers to higher standards. We’re getting a reputation, globally, for being the toxin-tolerant nation. It’s truly sickening.

You can learn more about what to look out for–and who’s looking out for you–at the Environmental Working Group’s website.

The Onion may make us laugh with fake stories but there is always some truth in what they write (or it wouldn’t be funny, right?) In fact, if there wasn’t something to their story about a blogger named Ben Tiedemann, I probably wouldn’t be writing on this site everyday. Check out the Onion’s take on the blogospehere here .

Want to get in on the whole blogging craze? Visit http://www.wordpress.com or http://www.blogger.com and set yourself up with your very own site where you can write about everything from your furniture line-up to the upcoming presidential election.

John Edwards made another appearance with the striking WGA on Tuesday in New York’s Washington Square Park, joining writers and actors in their struggle against corporations and media conglomerates.

This is the second time Edwards spoke on behalf of the WGA (earlier this month he joined them in LA). Between the WGA and the Broadway stagehands strike it looks like labor is making it’s way back into the mainstream. Speaking of which, there is a great new documentary out about the radical folk-singer, labor supporter Pete Seeger called Pete Seeger : The Power of Song that focuses on his work uniting folks with his music and the troubles he faced because of involvement with the labor movement and the communist party.

To learn more about why the writers of the WGA are striking visit http://www.unitedhollywood.com and be sure to watch the trailer for Pete Seeger below.

By Giulia Rozzi

Rock the Vote linked to a great post on CampusProgress.org which spoke out against Courtney Martin’s article about “The Problem with Youth Activism”.

Martin’s article argues that today’s youth activist aren’t as radical as the activists of the 60’s, meanwhile Campusprogress.org explains that “Young progressives have moved beyond superficial displays of anger to spend more time changing the world than complaining about it.”

For more on this debate visit the above links. To learn more about how youth can make a political difference and to register to vote, visit Rockthevote.com

By Kerry TruemanGreenpeace has a question for you; what to call the humpback whales they’ve been calling on us all to save? After being flooded with more than 11,000 submissions, they winnowed the choices down to just 30 possibilities.Most of the names sound vaguely noble and seem intended to evoke the majesty of these glorious creatures: “Kaimana,” Polynesian for ‘divine power of the ocean’; “Manami,” Japanese for “Ëœlove of the sea’; “Shanti,” the Hindi word for ‘peace,’ and so on.But the runaway winner so far”the voting’s been extended till December 7th”is the nautically nonsensical moniker, “Mr. Splashy Pants,” which has captured 72% of the votes. Mr. Splashy Pants has gone viral, with his own Facebook group, t-shirts, bumper sticker, and grassroots campaigns via Reddit and Boing Boing.You can cast your vote here, and then, once you’ve weighed in on what to call this mammoth mammal, be sure to send a letter to the heads of Germany, U.S., Chile and Brazil, and ask them to call on Japan’s Prime Minister to stop whaling.

By Katie HalperFrance isn’t the only country that knows how to get its strike on. Tuesday, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) of South Africa, announced that 240,000 miners are planning a nation-wide one day strike for December 4, which will be the country’s first industry-wide mining strike. Gold, platinum, and coal miners are protesting over little things like poor working conditions, rockfalls, poisonous gas explosions, flooding and earthquakes, which killed 200 miners last year and already killed 186 this year. A South African commission explained the relationship between mining safety (or lack thereof) and gold: each ton of gold produced in South Africa costs one life and 12 serious injuries.

By Giulia Rozzi

A British teacher in Sudan may be lashed for naming a teddy bear Mohamed. Apparently the teacher was unaware that doing such a deed was highly insulting to the Muslim faith and now may face cruel punishment for her misunderstanding. Aren’t stuffed animals suppose to provide joy and not pain?