Maddie Oatman

Research Editor

Maddie worked as a travel guide in Argentina and a teacher at several educational nonprofits in San Francisco before joining Mother Jones. She’s written about media and the arts for The Rumpus. A proud Boulder native, she makes time for mountain climbing, stargazing, and telemark skiing.

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Which Kids' Sunscreens Should You Avoid?

—By Maddie Oatman

| Tue May. 15, 2012 1:45 PM PDT

Kirtelisa/Flickr

Ahhh, May. Time to don your sunnies, dig out the sandals, and head for the nearest beach or park for about the next four months. By now, you've probably been lectured enough about the perils of sunburn and skin cancer to bring a tube of sunscreen along, too. But while the stuff is important for staying safe from harmful UV rays, there are still enough confusing labels, dangerous ingredients, and misleading SPF designations in so many common products that you may want to opt for a day under the nearest tree instead. Or pay very close attention to exactly what's in your sunscreen, and how often you'll want to reapply. So says the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which today released its 2012 Sunscreen Guide.

The guide comes less than a week after the FDA pushed back the compliancy requirement for a news set of guidelines (33 years in the making) meant to urge manufacturers to more clearly label their products and toss out misleading terms like "sweatproof" and "sunblock." But even the now-delayed FDA guidelines, says EWG, fall short in some important ways.

For starters, the FDA's new guidelines fail to address the risk of trusting a sunscreen with an SPF higher than 50. For sunscreens that boast SPF 100, for instance, "there's no evidence they provide additional health benefits," says David Andrews, a spokesperson for EWG. The higher value "lends to a sense of invincibility, so that people spend more time in the sun longer," Andrews argues.

[Read more in the Blue Marble blog]

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Buzz Bissinger's Trip

The "Friday Night Lights" author on his new book, Twitter rampages, and raising a disabled son.

—By Maddie Oatman

| May/June 2012 Issue

Buzz Bissinger and his son Zach

Coach Eric Taylor he's not. You'd never catch Buzz Bissinger, author of the book behind the wildly popular TV series Friday Night Lights, rousing teenagers for an early morning practice. (And for that matter, you'd never catch his football coach protagonist going off on Twitter about "juice douching.") Yet Bissinger has remained engaged with the world of sports, regularly churning up strong reactions with his columns, which tackle subjects like Linsanity and how Americans love football because of its violence. A 57-year-old father of three boys, he has managed a successful career as a journalist and author, nabbing a Pulitzer Prize for his investigative reporting at the Philadelphia Inquirer and serving as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.

But for his new nonfiction book, Father's Day, Bissinger turns to something a little more intimate: his tumultuous journey as a parent. The book centers on his relationship with his son Zach, then 24, a sweet-natured savant destined to spend his life bagging groceries and believing in Santa due to brain damage incurred at birth. In an attempt to feel closer to Zach, Bissinger drags him on a road trip from Philly to Los Angeles—"the worst cross-country route ever contemplated," it turns out, thanks in part to his son's predilection for amusement parks and distaste for scenic landmarks.

While Zach is compelling, it is Bissinger's wry and uncharacteristically self-deprecating meditations on his shortcomings as a father, a guardian, and a writer that elevate the book from a troubled parenting memoir to a worthwhile rumination on the meaning of life. I spoke with him a month before the release of After Friday Night Lights, a Kindle Single published as a follow-up to his best-selling 1990 book—despite Bissinger's insistence that he's sick to death of hearing about that book.

Mother Jones: What led you to drag Zach on a road trip?

Buzz Bissinger: I wanted to do something where we could spend real time together. Cross-country trips to me have been seminal, whether it was with college friends or my future wife Lisa, and I wanted to share that with Zach. Unfortunately, he really didn't like the car very much. But as the trip progressed, we really became closer and closer and fell into a rhythm of being on the road.

[Read the full article]

Map: The Cross-Country Fight Against Coal

The Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign seeks to stop new coal plants and shut down existing ones. Our handy map shows you which proposed plants have been blocked, which ones are still progressing, and which ones are already operating.

—By Alyssa Battistoni, Hamed Aleaziz, and Maddie Oatman

| Mon Apr. 2, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

For the past decade, Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign has helped toss out two-thirds of 249 new coal plant proposals, avoiding more than 654 million metric tons of carbon that would have seeped into the atmosphere each year. Since 2001, only 23 of those proposals have transformed into functioning coal plants, while 167 have been defeated. Next up on the agenda? Closing all of the some 580 coal plants already existing around the nation. Beyond Coal hopes to close a third of them by 2020 and all of them by 2030, and has employed a full-time staff "working on nothing but figuring out how to shut down these plants and replace them with clean energy," says Sierra Club's executive director Michael Brune.

Haunting Tunes for the Hunger Games

—By Maddie Oatman

| Tue Mar. 20, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Universal Music

Various Artists
The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond
Universal Republic

The soundtrack to the highly anticipated film version of The Hunger Games (opening Friday) draws inspiration from the futuristic Appalachia that's home to Katniss, our young protagonist. Funny, then, how it sounds much like a playlist one might create from some of this era's hottest indie, roots, and pop stars. Featuring tunes from the likes of The Decemberists, Taylor Swift, Arcade Fire, and Punch Brothers, the star-studded roster didn't exactly transport me into author Suzanne Collins' post-apocalyptic world. But The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond has its moments. Its piercing lullabies, for instance, ring true to the story's emotional angst and loss of innocence, and...District 12 makes for good listening, even if its intended identity is never fully clear.

Set in a future Dark Ages, Collins' dystopic young-adult trilogy reimagines America as a feudalistic society controlled by a decadent Capitol where reality TV, plastic surgery, and brutal repression reign supreme. Katniss lives in one of 13 zones under the Capitol's control, a mining province called District 12. The plot surrounds a morbid annual competition forced on the impoverished districts, each of which—in a distant echo of Shirley Jackson's classic short story "The Lottery"—must select two of its teenagers to battle to the death in the Capitol's surrealistic amphitheater until one champion remains. The battle is broadcast as entertainment for the citizens of the Capitol, whose hunger for melodrama rivals the literal hunger of the combants and their families back home. Katniss is a scrappy and fearless heroine (weapon of choice: bow and arrow). The story centers on her struggles to protect her younger sister and mother, choose between love interests, and, oh, yeah, dodge her bloodthirsty opponents.

[Read more in the Mixed Media blog]

The Woman Who Skied Antarctica Solo

Adventurer Felicity Aston on her 59 days amid ferocious wind storms, treacherous glaciers, and breathtaking white solitude.

—By Maddie Oatman

| Tue Mar. 13, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

The meteorologist-turned-adventurer Felicity Aston has had a soft spot for Antarctica ever since she learned of the ill-fated British explorer Robert Falcon Scott, who loomed as large for her growing up, she says, as characters like King Arthur and Robin Hood. But unlike most of us, Aston never abandoned her dream of emulating her childhood hero. In January the 34-year-old became the first woman to cross Antarctica alone and the first human to traverse the 1,084 mile-long continent without dogs or snowmobiles—although, because she had two food drop-offs, Guinness World Records won't credit her for a solo crossing.

In any case, the trek took her 59 days of pulling two sledges behind her on skis, securing her tent against ferocious windstorms, navigating glaciers, and rationing a small tub of peanut butter—her only luxury. In the process, she fell even more in love with "that white place at the bottom of the globe." I spoke with Aston last month, two weeks after her return from the Hercules Inlet, where her journey ended.

Mother Jones: When did you first become interested in Antarctica?

Felicity Aston: I've always had this appreciation that Antarctica was somewhere where you went to prove yourself and where all these kind of legendary people were made. After university, I got a job with the British Antarctic survey and was sent to a research station for three years as a meteorologist looking at climate and ozone. And that kind of bit me with the bug, really. How do you follow that up? Certainly not a 9-to-5 in a London office somewhere.

[Read the full article]

Book Review: Zona

—By Maddie Oatman

| Mon Feb. 20, 2012 4:00 AM PST

Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room

By Geoff Dyer

PANTHEON BOOKS

Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 sci-fi film, Stalker, left such an impression on Geoff Dyer that he felt obliged to pay it homage decades later. The film—not a prerequisite for the book—follows three men through a postindustrial paradise toward a room where one's ultimate wish is granted. Even if Stalker bored many observers ("Tarkovsky is the cinema's great poet of stillness"), Dyer's musings on everything from on-set disasters to his desire to join a threesome make for a rich and wacky sojourn. At its heart, Zona is about how art changes perceptions: "If I had not seen Stalker in my early twenties, my responsiveness to the world would have been radically diminished."

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Virginia Legislature Votes to Slash Abortion Funding for Low-Income Women

—By Maddie Oatman

| Thu Feb. 16, 2012 5:02 PM PST

In Virginia, a low-income pregnant woman who wishes to abort because her fetus has a totally incapacitating deformity or mental disability may no longer be eligible for the aid she needs to do so. On Thursday the Virginia Senate Committee on Education and Health approved House Bill 62, which would repeal the section of the state code that authorizes the Board of Health to fund abortions for pregnancies with certain complications.

The bill puts no restrictions on women who can afford to abort these types of pregnancies. That's why the Pro-Choice Coalition of Virginia (which includes NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia and the ACLU) has deemed the legislation discriminatory. "When a woman receives a catastrophic prenatal diagnosis, she should have the same options her wealthier counterparts enjoy to end the pregnancy safely and with dignity," the Coalition said in a press release sent out Thursday morning.

It's worth mentioning that the state shells over almost nothing for these types of abortions each year—in 2011, funding was approved for 10 abortions, costing the state a grand total of $2,784. Which makes the bill's passage that much more of a social, rather than a financial, issue.

HB 62 comes on the heels of two other Virginia bills aiming to limit abortions in the state. Just this week, the state's House passed a different bill redefining a "person" to include a zygote, which, as my colleague Kate Sheppard points out, could potentially make abortion and some forms of oral contraception illegal. And another Virginia bill would require all women to get an ultrasound before getting an abortion and be offered a chance to see the imaging, for apparently no other reason than the belief that women don't understand what's happening inside their bodies during pregnancies.

Women Who Use Birth Control Are the 99 Percent

Reality check: Nearly every American woman has used some form of contraception.

—By Dave Gilson and Maddie Oatman

| Fri Feb. 10, 2012 4:00 AM PST

Regardless of race, age, or religion, virtually every American woman who's ever had sex has also used some form of birth control. Yet efforts to block millions of women's access to contraception have reached new heights. Below, a quick reality check on just how widespread (and uncontroversial) contraception use is for the overwhelming majority of American women.

We Are the 99 Percent

Contraceptive use among American women of reproductive age who have had sex (2006-2008). Note: Excludes natural family planning

Source: Guttmacher Institute (PDF)

The Body Politic

American women ages 15–44 who have had sex and used contraception, by race (2006-2008)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (PDF)

By Any Means Necessary

Contraceptive methods used by American women ages 15–44 who have had sex (2006-2008)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (PDF)

With web production by Jaeah Lee, Tim McDonnell, and Samantha Oltman

Is Sugar as Addictive as Alcohol?

—By Maddie Oatman

| Thu Feb. 2, 2012 3:10 AM PST

EvilShenanigans/Flickr

As I sit down to write this post, I'm munching on a chocolate-orange cookie, something I grabbed to get me through a mid-morning energy slump. Packed with processed sugar, this treat could be considered just some empty calories I burn off as long as I take a rigorous walk at lunch or practice yoga after work. But scientists from the University of California–San Francisco, whose article "The Toxic Truth About Sugar" came out yesterday in Nature, are hoping to change this mindset. "There is nothing empty about these calories," they write, arguing that a growing body of evidence places the blame of the worldwide increase in chronic diseases such as liver toxicity, obesity, and pancreatitis squarely on the shoulders of this pervasive ingredient.

If UCSF researcher Robert H. Lustig and his team had their way, sugar would be regulated similarly to alcohol and tobacco, and would be knocked off of a USDA list of foods "Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS)," which allows food manufacturers to add unlimited amounts to any food. Using four criteria established in 2003 to justify regulating alcohol, these scientists make a case for why sugar is a public health concern and should be regulated:

Sugar is unavoidable: In recent years, it is being added to almost all processed foods. Even if I avoid cookies and desserts, for example, and I think I'm controlling my intake, I'm probably still taking in more sugar than what's necessary through processed snacks, bread, condiments, and beverages. According to the USDA (PDF), the average American ate the equivalent of 52 teaspoonfuls of sugar a day in 2000, compared to the 10 teaspoonful daily maximum recommended. Per capita consumption was up 39 percent from the 1950s.
It's toxic: The paper maintains that excessive consumption of sugar affects health beyond just adding empty calories. The food has been linked to metabolic dysfunction and its ensuing diseases, and Lustig asserts that fructose (one of two molecules that along with glucose makes up sugar) can have the same impact on the liver as alcohol. For more on fructose, read my coworker Kiera Butler's piece on sugar versus corn syrup. Also, see Gary Taubes's article on sugar's toxicity, which features Lustig, in the New York Times magazine last spring.
It's addictive: This claim appears a little extreme (hard to imagine a group called Sugarholics Anonymous), but the paper cites various studies that examine human dependency on sugar. The sweetener dampens the suppression of hormones that signal hunger and satisfaction to the brain, so the more we eat, the less likely we are to realize when we've had enough of the stuff, and the more likely we are to want more.
Sugar has a negative impact on society: It's been linked to metabolic dysfunction, which can lead to heart disease, obesity, liver disease, and diabetes. In 2011, the United Nations declared that for the first time ever, chronic non-communicable diseases like these posed a greater burden on the world than infectious diseases. A 2011 University of Minnesota study linked the uptick in sugar consumption over the last 30 years to an increase in average body weight. Currently, seventy-five percent of all US health-care dollars are spent on treating metabolic syndrome and its resulting diseases.

So what's to be done to curb our demand for sugar? The pie in the sky solution for the UCSF scientists is to get food manufacturers to stop adding it to everything under the sun. "But sugar is cheap, sugar tastes good and sugar sells, so companies have little incentive to change," write Lustig and crew. Another solution is to make it less accessible by taxing it. Denmark is considering a sugar tax, and the United States may soon start taxing sugary sodas per ounce.

But the idea of regulating sugar is going to face plenty of protest from the massive sugar lobby, something that Lustig and colleagues recognize. Taking hope from the success public health officials have had in fighting the tobacco lobby and regulating smoking in places nationwide, the UCSF researchers are optimistic about the government's ability to take on sugar like it has taken on smoking.

It Ain't Easy Skiing Green

—By Maddie Oatman

| Mon Dec. 19, 2011 3:30 AM PST

Squaw Valley Lodge/Flickr

As a skier, I'm constantly in search of empty fields of white far from the crowds. So the idea of my local ski area acquiring new mountainsides to plunge down sounds like a good way to disperse hoards of fellow snow bunnies into wider pastures. This year in California, skiers and boarders have been gushing over the merger between Tahoe's Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows, a connection that now allows patrons to access the two resorts using one lift ticket. Even more exciting is the potential that we'll get to ski in the undeveloped wilderness behind each resort to get from one to the other through a backcountry access gate (an internal pilot program to test this traverse starts this winter). Eventually, says Squaw Valley spokesperson Amelia Richmond, there may even be a series of chairlifts connecting the two mountains. It's also rumored that JMA Ventures, Alpine's former owner that still owns nearby Homewood Mountain Ski Resort, has looked into connecting Homewood to Alpine–clearing prized backcountry wilderness in its path.

But the Ski Area Citizens' Coalition, which grades ski resorts on their green practices, sees this type of development as something else entirely: a devastating blow to untouched natural reserves. Transforming a mountainside into a ski hill makes it unavailable as habitat to most species, and denudes land, making erosion more likely. New ski runs also mean more energy-guzzling chair lifts, which add to the emissions you've already created by driving to the resort. And making new snow to cover these runs depletes streams in already drought-ridden areas, as well as uses energy and contributes to global warming. That's just the beginning, says SACC: Ski resort land development paves the way for a real estate creep from incoming hotel chains, condos, and outlets. At the core of SACC's research efforts lies the nagging question: Do we really need to ski more terrain?

The SACC grades Western ski resorts on 36 criteria, ranging from snow-making practices to investment in biodiesel, to educate winter sports nuts about which ski area to choose if they care about their environmental impact. Released in an annual report card, the grades reflect info culled from public records, development plans, and surveys filled out by each resort.

[Read more in the Blue Marble blog]