Yale Environment 360, a new online magazine from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental studies, launched last week. Among the stellar commentary from leading voices in the environmental movement is Beacon's own Fred Pearce, whose piece "Water Scarcity: The Real Food Crisis" ties the growing food crisis to water overconsumption (the article was also picked up by Alternet). While you're at E360, be sure to read Elizabeth Kolbert's environmental plan for the next President and Bill McKibben's sobering article about levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Big Think asked Howard Zinn ten questions about American history, democracy, race, and philosophy. Links to his answers are collected at HowardZinn.org.

Frederick Lane, whose most recent post on this blog concerned John McCain's attention to the Religious Right, has been hitting the airwaves in support of his new book, The Court and the Cross: The Religious Right's Crusade to Reshape the Supreme Court. Listen to his appearance on Equal Time for Freethought or tune in next Monday (or subscribe to the podcast) to Culture Shocks with Barry Lynn, and you can also read an excerpt of The Court and the Cross at Talk2Action.

Also for your listening pleasure, To the Best of Our Knowledge recently featured David Gessner in an episode of Nature Stories, discussing his Green Manifesto we recently excerpted here. He's about thirty minutes in, but you might also enjoy the story about David Rothenberg's clarinet duets with whales.

Making summer travel plans? Here are the top tourist spots American's can't visit (via kottke.org).

Nancy Polikoff, author of Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, blogged last week at the Bilerico Project about protecting children of LGBT families. At the Oxford University Press blog, Edward Zelinsky discusses the desirability of abolishing civil marriage altogether.

With all the press about our America's first black Presidential nominee, you might think that the days of Jim Crow are far behind us at last. Well, this Mississippi High School just held its first integrated prom.