Over at Grist, Mike Tidwell writes about how ExxonMobil, "the biggest contributor to global warming of any company in the world," has become the target of some Nats fans who see the oil company's sponsorship of the 7th-inning stretch at Nationals Park as hugely hypocritical given that the stadium is touted as being the first "green" ballpark in the country. Tidwell is spot on when it comes to pointing out the best ironies in the......

Today, Radiohead kicks off its In Rainbows world tour in West Palm Beach, Florida, which means that D.C.-area fans are mere days away from getting their fix. The boys from Oxfordshire dispatched a press release today, announcing the launch of a new section on their website: The Most Gigantic Flying Mouth For Sometime. Die hards will undoubtedly note the allusion to the Hail to the Thief-era video series, but this particular announcement has far less......

With springtime comes anticipation of blooming gardens and leafy green trees. The federal government doesn't have quite the same excitement, we would guess, based on their recent slashing of the U.S. National Arboretum's budget, as the Washington Post reported this weekend. The $2 million eliminated from next year's budget could drastically cut public programming, research on rare and new species of plants, and permanently stall much needed expansion projects. Even worse:Supporters of the arboretum say......

Washington, D.C. has quickly become a pioneer for environmental sustainability. The new Nationals stadium, for example, is the first baseball stadium in the country to receive LEED certification. Certification for LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is given by the U.S. Green Building Council, when buildings qualify for a certain number of points in five categories: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality. The District......

By now, everyone knows that some fish in the filthy Potomac River have developed both male and female reproductive systems. They've been dubbed "intersex" by the media, and we've all had a nervous laugh about how the pollution we've poured into the river is probably to blame for creating the first ever bi-gendered fish. Whoops! How were we to know? Well the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments sponsored a conference in West Virginia last week......

The Post reports on Virginia's move to ban the sale of dishwasher detergents that contain phosphates. Phosphorus has been found to be a major source of pollution in the struggling Chesapeake Bay. The ban won't go into effect until 2010, however. The Soap and Detergent Association successfully lobbied several states, including Virginia and Maryland, the latter of which which already passed a similar ban, to wait two more years to put their bans in place......

If you're the kind of person who gets excited reading about green roofs and community building projects, Washington Parks & People may be able to fuel your desire to put a hand in making your neighborhood a better place to live. This 18 year-old community group has played a vital role in turning D.C. parks, like Meridian Hill and Marvin Gaye Parks, from dangerous, crime-ridden areas to places where people play and see performances and......

The name may be unfamiliar, but the players behind Club Tiger Promotions are highly recognizable to any one who follows the D.C. music scene. Local artists Carol Bui and Jay Smith of Middle Distance Runner have started an all-ages venue, The Lab in Alexandria, which will both give under-age bands a place to play with their more seasoned peers and serve as an environment where, as Bui puts it, "kids feel totally comfortable and safe......

Impressionism, one of the most popular and accessible art movements, continues with yet another show at the Phillips Collection — on the heels of American Impressionism, comes Impressionists by the Sea, an exploration of the rise of plein air painting and vacationing on the northern coast of France. Opening tomorrow, the exhibit features the major French Impressionists, along with some of their predecessors, to present a lush visual experience. The exhibit is a feast for......

Many of you have already visited the "Solar Village" since it opened its gates last Friday on the National Mall. Last weekend the long lines literally wrapped around each house entered into the 2007 Solar Decathlon, with people eager to get a tour from the students, alumni and faculty from each university competitor. The ten competitions have been judged all week, from Architecture last week to Engineering today, with individual winners announced for each leg......

Written by DCist contributor Amy Cavanaugh With all the Smithsonian museums clustered around the mall, it’s easy to overlook the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, which has been chronicling the life of the area’s residents since 1967. Their new exhibit, East of the River: Continuity and Change, celebrates 500 years of southeast Washington in a sweeping overview of its triumphs and tragedies. From archaeological artifacts to paintings to documents to video, the multimedia components of East......

Morning, Washington. We hope you were out enjoying the fantastic weather, especially since the environment has been front and center in the news this weekend. As you must have heard, our former Vice President turned Global Warming Guru had to shove over the Oscar on his mantle to make space for half of a Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe after the news you were inspired to go check out the 20 amazing houses built on the......

We may write all the time about our developing neighborhoods, but one D.C. block is getting super-developed as we speak. Stroll down to the National Mall between today and October 20 and you'll find yourself in the middle of the Solar Village, where twenty universities have descended on the strip with their brilliant innovations costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, to compete in Solar Decathlon 2007. The entire event is open to the public with......

If you missed the Green Festival at the Convention Center this past weekend, you missed an incredible event. Luckily event organizers will be posting video and audio of the plethora of speeches to their website in about two weeks. You'll also be able to download speech audio from this year’s upcoming San Francisco, Seattle and Chicago festivals. The Green Festival is sponsored by Co-Op America and Global Exchange. The event is largely volunteer-run, with 1300......

Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues. Brookland recently got the news that Dwellings, a home furnishings store and one of our most promising main street retailers, was closing due to slow growth in sales. The announcement touched off a neighborhood discussion on what was wrong, exactly, with the shopping environment in the leafy, residential neighborhood. Many locals noted that low residential density made running a retail business a......

Cultural Tourism DC's free WalkingTown DC event this Saturday, Sept. 29 has a walking tour for everyone, but one of the tours that most interests us is the "What’s Going On: Marvin Gaye Park" tour, led by volunteer Steve Coleman and presented by the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development. From 10 to 11:30 a.m., participants will have the opportunity to follow the path of famed soul singer Marvin Gaye’s early life growing up......

Written by Buy Indie's Vince Wadhwani It's easy to justify going to an independent clothing boutique to find a unique outfit. After all, who wants to walk into a bar wearing the same thing as everyone else? But when it comes to our housewares and hardware, the equation often becomes a lot less complicated. Though you may not find a pink toolbelt over at the Home Depot, you also won't find too many people fretting......

>> Earl Cunningham's America, which opens this Friday at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, features 50 paintings by one of the foremost folk artists of the 20th century. Known for his use of space and brilliant colors, Cunningham juxtaposes the ordinary with the unexpected and puts familiar subjects in unfamiliar settings. The result is an insightful commentary on American life and culture. >> Those looking for something new will have the chance to make their......

David Macaulay, the self proclaimed “explainer of things,” has been drawing and illustrating architecture for the past 30 years. In The Art of Drawing Architecture, the National Building Museum showcases Macaulay’s knack for deconstructing buildings and showing their many layers from various perspectives. Preferring simple materials, such as pen and ink, Macaulay recreates vast spaces on single sheets of paper. Spanning his career, the exhibit starts by documenting his most recent work, Mosque, a book......

Every year since its opening in 1989, the DC Arts Center has held its 1460 Wall Mountables show as a fundraiser for the non-profit Adams Morgan art center. A non-juried opportunity for artists of varying styles and skill levels to display work in a respected D.C. gallery, Wall Mountables comes off as a mini-Artomatic. Work is displayed floor-to-ceiling salon-style, with photographs next to drawn portraits next to abstract oils. And, just like at Artomatic, some......

Via Atrios, this little geographically motivated blog spat between Ben Adler at TAPPED and Brian Beutler, about whether New York or California has a better environmental record, misses the more important point: This study shows that it's Washington, DC that actually has the lowest per capita gasoline consumption of any place in the country, by an impressively wide margin. We've certainly explored issues related to the relative greenness of densely populated urban environments, compared......

A few more tidbits keep trickling out about decisions made during the D.C. Council's action-packed final summer session earlier this week, and this one is ripe for a cascade of debate. Running enthusiast Mayor Adrian Fenty is determined to see the Nation's Triathlon, scheduled for Sept. 29, go forward this year, complete with a one-mile swim in the Potomac River. Last year, the swim part of the event was canceled after the health department determined......

The D.C. Council's Committee on Public Works and the Environment voted unanimously Tuesday to move forward on legislation that would place a 3-year moratorium on single sales of alcohol at stores located between 700 to 1400 block of H Street, NE -- the same area that developers have dubbed "The Atlas District," which is now home to a number of new bars and restaurants. The proposal still requires approval by the Council, but the committee’s......

The 5th annual SILVERDOCS AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival officially kicked off last night at the AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center in Silver Spring with the Washington, D.C. premiere of Jim Brown's film Pete Seeger: The Power of Song. Even though the film was playing in three separate theaters within the complex, there weren't enough seats to go around for all the invited guests who RSVP'd for the opening ceremony. Festival volunteers indicated they had......

Good morning, Washington. You know, it didn't seem like that much of a storm. But apparently last night's brief thunder and lightning wrought more than their fair share of havoc: lightning struck a shopping center in Maryland, badly damaging it. In fact, WJLA had footage of the shopping center's laundromat last night — it had been completely obliterated. We had no idea! Still, it at least appears that the power system wasn't too badly affected:......

Written by DCist contributor Kelly Rand With Leonardo DiCaprio riding around in a hybrid car and Al Gore winning an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, “green” seems to be all the rage these days. But glass artist Erwin Timmers was “green” before “green” was cool. Co-founder and director of the Washington Glass School and Studio, Timmers experiments with firing techniques to incorporate discarded tempered glass into his art, giving it new life and diverting it......

Hook, now open on M Street in Georgetown, is a restaurant focused on serving “responsibly sourced seafood and local products.” We loved the idea, but naturally had a few doubts. Like: "is it going to cost me an entire week’s worth of pay to dine at another overpriced trendy Georgetown restaurant?" Or, "is there going to be a pretentious presence about the place because they are focused on sustainable seafood and feel that everyone should?"......

The controversial plan authored by Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham to relocate a number of strip clubs displaced by the new Nationals stadium into Ivy City, a neighborhood in Ward 5, got even more interesting this week. The D.C. Council on Tuesday agreed to spend $3.6 million to reduce the "impact" of the relocated clubs, in a rare earmarking of funds for a specific neighborhood. Ivy City is bordered by Bladensburg Road, New York......

After seeing two plays in a row based in a mental institution, it’s hard not to go a little crazy. But when the harrowing environment comes with the finessed performances and thoughtful themes of Theater Alliance’s latest, Blue/Orange, it’s worth the trial. In director Jeremy Skidmore’s Blue/Orange, two doctors are treating Christopher (Cedric Mays), a disturbed individual who may or may not be schizophrenic – and also thinks he’s the son of African dictator Idi......

>> Well, we know who Diane Rehm won't be supporting for President in 2008: Newt Gingrich. The former Speaker of the House was on her WAMU-produced NPR show this morning, but ducked out 20 minutes short of his hour-long segment; Ms. Rehm was not pleased. "I think he just came on the show to sell his book," a caller said, to which Diane replied, "I think so too, and I'm FURIOUS about it." Another......