The smell of a humid Washington summer is rising from the concrete like steam off a blood-sticky slaughterhouse floor as the Nation's capitol winds down from a week of chasing our tails, and switches to chasing mocha-frappa-cuppa-crappa from head shops that charge the annual GDP of Togo for drinks whose designer-names put the joe-camel PR campaign to shame. It's one of those late Saturday mornings where all the morning chores are done, and it isn't time yet for the afternoon ones, when I lean back with the computer and a cup of iced crappa and catch up on my email. 

To my delight, GoozNews.com has just dumped its weekly newsletter into my inbox. Yay! This week is especially intriguiging, with an excellent interview with a bioterrorism expert on the investigative bungling of the anthrax-guy-that-probably-did-it-and-may-have-acted-alone-but-we-will-never-know. The main point is that by diverting funding from medical research to terrorism research we have increased the numbers of lab staff with access to deadly biological materials, failed to employ any additional safety measures on these researchers, and diverted funding away from medical research that would actually save lives.

We interrupt this previously scheduled post for an important announcement: NRDC bloggers are participating during the upcoming week in the inaugural NRDC Bulwer-Lytton © Environmental Blogging Competition to select the worst opening sentence of a post on Switchboard. The competition follows the deliciously dreadful example of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a literary parody contest that San Jose State University sponsors each year. This year’s awesomely awful winner in the actual contest can be read here.

NRDC’s competition will follow the same model, with the difference being that the opening sentence of a Switchboard post must address an environmental or energy or public health topic that an NRDC blogger otherwise would cover. Plus, the blogger must go on to complete a post that otherwise would stand on its own on Switchboard.

The competition will run for a week, starting today, and the winner will be announced at the end of the week after next, following voting by Switchboard’s bloggers. Switchboard readers are encouraged to cast their votes by commenting on individual posts, and those votes will be factored heavily into the final tally.

Let the contest begin!

I'd encourage you to sign up for the GoozNews, grab a cup of enjoyment and dig in to the latest misdeeds of corporate America!