The Times describes how 546 million gallons of oil have gushed into the delta over the last five decades (the BP spill is currently estimated at 2.5 million gallons a day), leaving lifeless, crude-blackened swamps in an area that once teemed with shrimp and crabs.

FORBES: BP, Nigeria And CSR

The poster landscape for the salvage logging debate can be found in the mountains of Oregon, mountains blackened in 2002 by the 500, 000-acre Biscuit fire, which was the biggest in the history of the state.

NPR: Study: Salvage Logging Boosts Forest-Fire Threat

The most beautiful, subdued and quiet section is the Lyda Hill Gems and Minerals Hall, a low-lit space with blackened vitrines in which objects are brilliantly lighted, as in an art museum: case after case of minerals you have heard of (gold, quartz and tourmaline), and others, even more dazzling, that you probably have not (rhodochrosite).

WSJ: How Dallas Does Philanthropy: Perot Museum of Nature and Science