By Dr. Robert Thorson Last week, I got my annual news jolt about shoreline pollution, this time from the river that divides Clinton and Madison. At issue is whether the Department of Environmental Protection should help a multinational corporation (Unilever) construct a mile-long pipe so that its factory wastewater can discharge directly into the larger, […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Saturday’s extra-tropical cyclone needs an official name. Otherwise we’ll forget the Halloween havoc it wreaked: dumping heavy snow that snapped leaf-laden branches and sending an estimated 884,000 Connecticut customers into the dark. We name tropical storms like Irene, the ninth in a series of alphabet soup for the 2011 hurricane season. […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson It’s been several weeks since the trapped Chilean miners were rescued from the San Jose Mine in Copiapo. On that day, I was asked to comment for a radio program. I declined because I wasn’t willing to repeat the obvious, had no relevant personal angle and couldn’t interest the producer in […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Here’s my remake of the song “America the Beautiful”: O beautiful for spacious skies For ever crowded lands For purple landfills majesty Above the flooded plain. America, America Junk shed its grace on thee And crown thy goods with anti-brotherhood From sea to shining sea. This tune just keeps popping into […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Sisyphus, from Greek antiquity, was eternally condemned to roll a boulder up to the top of Mount Olympus, only to have it roll back down again. Although ostensibly about gravity, his plight also symbolizes the futility of work that goes nowhere. The same can be said for the never-ending job of […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson I’ve got a gripe against bottled drinking water. Just because it is healthier to drink than soda doesn’t make it healthier than tap water. And what might be healthy for your inside environment is actually unhealthy for your outside one. For starters, trucking this heavy product around the country consumes petroleum. […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson The price of gasoline and diesel is spiking upward toward $5 per gallon. I don’t think it’s high enough. Were it high enough, the drive-through lanes at fast-food restaurants and doughnut shops would not be lined with mostly oversized vehicles carrying mostly oversized people toward food energy. Were the price of […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Riverfront Recapture? Who captured whom? For many Hartford residents, the state-funded urban development by that name is a concrete wharf, re-establishing pedestrian access to the Connecticut River. The project was a great idea. The name, however, is little more than a lovely literary alliteration, with more illusion than allusion. Whatever committee […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Bikini atoll? Agent Orange? Cape Cod toxics? Humans have polluted the Earth in the name of national security. Why not the heavens as well? That was my first thought after reading about last month’s anti- satellite test by the Chinese. In the name of national security, they wanted to make sure […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Architecture hasn’t changed that much. The Roman architect Vitruvius defined this most complex of disciplines as the union of “firmness, commodity and delight.” Using more familiar language, architecture strives to produce buildings and spaces that are structurally sound, useful and beautiful. This trinity of criteria also applies to the Connecticut River […]