The European Union has copyright on furniture -- and has just extended the time span of this copyright by 50 years.

It is absurd to copyright furniture shapes, but at least they won't be trying to stop individuals from copying them. That makes the issue much less grave than the War on Sharing that is applied to books, music, etc.

The article uses the confused and confusing term "intellectual property law", which is an obstacle to understanding what copyright law says as well as to thinking about what it ought to do.

Calling on the US government to stop issuing coal leases.

The latest pipeline leak in Michigan continued for three days because the operators assumed the anomaly in their instruments was nothing serious. They did not treat it as urgent to find out if there was a leak.

Isn't that reckless?

Wikileaks made a serious mistake when it released a leak supposedly containing documents from Erdoğan's party. It had no such documents, but did have personal data about lots of Turks.

I agree with Snowden that Wikileaks ought to be more careful.

Fracking Hell: What It's Really Like to Live Next to a Shale Gas Well. The noise is a pain i the neck, but the fumes make some people physically sick. And your home will become almost worthless.