You have to love the internet: I noticed that New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin started a new sustainability blog, Dot Earth, last week, so I asked him to speak with me on the blog I’m now editing: Intelligent Travel. He returned the favor today, and an interesting discussion ensued about whether we should limit travel to endangered places or visit them to better understand how to save them. Thanks to Andrew for stimulating some great conversation, on both fronts, and for sending along this beautiful photo, which I adore.

Photo: Andrew Revkin (c)

I was lucky enough to meet President Jimmy Carter this week for a press screening of his new documentary. This piece went up on the Daily Intel blog for New York Magazine:

Jimmy Carter has a new title on his Nobel- and Grammy-studded résumé: movie star. But the other night at a screening of The Man From the Plains, Jonathan Demme’s new documentary about the former president, Carter was still adjusting to being a leading man. “I’m waiting to see whether I’m going to be a villain or a hero,” he joked. Making the movie, he said, made him empathize with the plight of reality-TV stars. “Demme intruded in my life sixteen hours a day, week after week,” Carter said. “When I got up in the morning, he was there with two or three cameras; when I walked down the corridors, he was there in front and back with two or three cameras. He would excuse me on occasion — always when I went to the restroom.” The movie followed Carter on the book tour for his controversial Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, the 25th book he’s written during his activist post-presidency. Right! That doesn’t make us feel lazy or anything! So, does he have any advice about what the current president might do once he leaves the White House? “I’d be a poor adviser for someone who wants to ‘replenish the coffers,’” he said. Snap!—Janelle Nanos

My first piece for Slate came out today, an Ad Report Card about this over-the-top All-Bran cereal commercial:

I’d been meaning to check out the article in the New York Times T Magazine about my new stomping ground, if only for the pictures, which a friend mentioned would be rather interesting to see. The accompanying piece started as I was afraid it would:

“Washington, D.C., is many things — the center of the universe, the destination of all political protests, the site of some spectacularly balmy, mosquito-free nights every fall. But hip? Get real.”

Gulp. But it went on:

“Still — the white men in blue suits have suddenly woken up to discover that the gate-crashers have not only broken into their old boys’ clubs but are starting to run the show. Nancy Pelosi tore down one wall in January when she became speaker of the House, and Clinton and Barack Obama are fighting over which one of them might get to tear down the next one.”

Ok, slightly more promising…and it gets better…

“…after waiting decades for some of its blighted neighborhoods to amount to something other than block after block of boarded-up abandonment, Washington is buzzing with energy.”

The article was published the day before I got here, so maybe my timing is just about right. Coincidence? I think not.