sastyk | June 29, 2010For someone in her mid-30s, I have a fairly large experience of being someone's caregiver. In high school, 'I began working in a nearby nursing home. I can't remember quite what drove me to seek that work out - it was not the kind of work that most teenagers I knew did. I think what intrigued me about it was its importance - as a teenager seeking meaning, caring for people at the end of their lives seemed urgent. It was only later that I came to realize that taking care of the elderly and disabled was, in our society, viewed as not onlyl not urgent, but not integral or important. Even as…
sastyk | June 29, 2010This weekend in the Washington Post, there's an article about a couple who first met while serving in various capacities during WWII, who just celebrated their marriage in DC this weekend after a "62 year engagement." This would be a romantic story in any context - but it isn't a story of parted lovers who finally found each other again after decades apart. Instead, it is of two men who have lived a life almost wholly together, sharing work, family and community, but who lacked legal and social recognition.
What's interesting about this story to me is not simply that it is a charming love…
ejohnson | June 24, 2010In addition to author Mark Pendergrast, we have four more outstanding contributors here to discuss Inside the Outbreaks over the next few weeks. Though they all come from public health backgrounds, their experiences in and with the Epidemic Intelligence Service are all different. Check out their bios below and tune in to see what they have to say about the book!
Liz Borkowski
Liz, who is one of our own bloggers here on ScienceBloggers over at The Pump Handle, is a Research Associate at the George Washington University School of Public Health's Department of Environmental and Occupational…
sastyk | June 24, 2010At my house today it was 82 and humid. It is hot, but there's a breeze, and shade from the trees. The air is heavy and moist, but rich and green and earthy as well, and my house stays cool downstairs. In New York City today, the temperature was above 90, and I can still smell, from my childhood in other cities, that shimmering hot urban mix of garbage, asphalt and pollution. Don't get me wrong - I love cities. But hot town, summer in the city is not always when urban life's virtues shine.
I was an urban kid for part of my childhood, which is why I remember so strongly and passionately…
sastyk | June 24, 2010From HuffPo, this article about the likely outcome that the Democrats will fail to pass an unemployment extension - unfortunately it was bound to happen sooner or later, but it will be crushingly hard on millions of people who have just been barely making it, and now aren't.
The legislation, known as the "tax extenders" bill, would reauthorize extended unemployment benefits for people out of work for six months or longer, would protect doctors from a 21 percent pay cut for seeing Medicare patients, and would provide billions in aid to state Medicaid programs.
Come Friday, 1.2 million people…
sastyk | June 24, 2010I wrote this post in 2008, which was one of my worst gardening years ever - I made the insane mistake of setting the deadline for _A Nation of Farmers_ for June 1, which meant I spent most of the planting season in front of my computer. But I knew I wasn't the only one, and I've come to worry a lot less about it - because an awesome fall garden is worth a lot. BTW, not entirely coincidentally, I'm going to teach a 4 week online, asynchronous class on fall gardening during the month of July, beginning Tuesday, July 6. The class will help you either get started or begin to make use of fall…
sastyk | June 24, 2010It is hot and sticky here - only low 80s, but humid. This afternoon we should have rain, but in the meantime the sun is shining and the very last thing I feel like doing is putting any dinner on anywhere near the house. We're out of propane for the grill, and let's be honest, it isn't like it is local, homegrown propane. What's a girl who likes dinner to do except move it outside? And my favorite way is out into to my solar oven.
I've made a lot of solar ovens over the years, and they all worked to one degree or another, so I'm kind of embarassed how much I love my Global Sun Oven, which…
sastyk | June 22, 2010I've heard from quite a number of people lately who have started gardening, but find that they can't get everyone in their family onboard with the actual eating part of all these veggies. Here are some thoughts (from 2008) on how to to convince people to try the kohlrabi. Really.
I think I get more requests for ideas for helping people who are on-board with the idea of sustainable eating get the rest of their families on-board than on any other food storage topic.
In a perfect world, of course, our partners, roommates, children and other assorted members of our lives would say "Oh, I'm so…
ejohnson | June 22, 2010We here at ScienceBlogs are pleased to announce that beginning today, we will be helping to spark the next generation of research communications by introducing new blogs to our network from the world's top scientific institutions. The initial list includes: CERN, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), SETI Institute, Weizmann Institute of Science, and Brookhaven National Laboratory. The SETI Institute, the Weizmann Institute of Science and Brookhaven National Laboratory blogs are live now - you can find them at:
http://www.scienceblogs.com/SETI/
http://www.scienceblogs.com/weizmann/
http://…
sastyk | June 21, 2010"No Till" is a confusing term. For most people who know nothing about agriculture, the word "till" isn't particularly revealing - it sounds like there's no cash register. Given that level of knowledge, when you are reassured that no tillage means less erosion, you aren't going to crticize. Those with home gardens often know something about a different kind of "no till" than "no till agriculture" - they may envision gardens with permanent mulch in formal beds, and assume that field-scale no-till looks something like that.
I'm pleased that Gene Logsdon then points out what I've also…
sastyk | June 21, 2010Jon Stewart somehow seems to grasp the real importance of Obama's speech:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
An Energy-Independent Future
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes
Political Humor
Tea Party
If only we'd thought about getting off oil before! But at least the dinos didn't die in vain!
The good news is that GWB is probably right - we won't be using as much foreign oil in 2025.
Sharon
ejohnson | June 21, 2010
Before writing Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, Atlanta native Mark Pendergrast authored a history of another of the city's cornerstone institutions, the Coca-Cola company, in addition to a history of coffee and two other books.
Pendergrast graduated from Harvard with a degree in English literature before receiving his Masters degree in library science from Simmons College. In 1991 he began writing full-time, and his articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Financial Analyst, among other…
sastyk | June 17, 2010
(I really wanted to post Ronnie Gilbert's version of this song, because not only is she a fine old folkie of the sort you are damned grateful exists, but she has one of the finest set of pipes out there. But there's no video anywhere I can find of her singing. I like Mississippi John Hurt's as well, though)
One of the inevitable realities where people get poorer and are subject to more climate-related and infrastructure failure disasters is that people have to take in friends and family who have no other place to go. Hurricane Katrina, for example, for several million people represented…
sastyk | June 17, 2010My husband turns 40 this weekend, and we are celebrating. When asked what he wanted to do for his birthday, he said he wanted a party, just like the ones we have for the kids on their birthdays - lots of food, lots of friends, very casual. We've managed to collect 40-50 friends and family together, and are going to eat a lot of lasagna and strawberry shortcake, watch the kids play with the animals and in the creek, drink beer and maybe make some music.
Despite our intention (and we still intend) to do more work together on this blog, Eric still mostly exists for the purposes of this…
sastyk | June 16, 2010Reader Stephen B. pointed me to this comment at The Oil Drum by someone who argues that there's more going on under the Gulf that we think. For those who think it is strange that I be highlighting a comment in a thread, I should note that TOD attracts many, many petroleum geologists and other professionals, and while sometimes the comments are the same "pulled it out of my ass" as on every other website, often, the technical knowledge on offer is pretty astounding. This one passes my smell test, which is usually pretty good - that doesn't mean I claim commenter Doug R is right - it means I…
sastyk | June 16, 2010In 2006 when I first met Julian Darley, author of _High Noon for Natural Gas_ and the founder of the Post-Carbon Institute, the world was excited by then-famous "Jack" oil field find in the Gulf of Mexico. Both of us were watching the way the world was interpreting the data - people were claiming that there might be 10, 12, 15 billion barrels of oil - five miles down underneath the ocean. The media was excited, ignoring the fact that large oil field potential reserves are routinely revised - and almost always downwards. The public and the media, without enough knowledge of oil production…
sastyk | June 15, 2010The Sharks and the Jets are fighting over by the compost pile. Well, ok, maybe not quite, but it has that feel to it. You see, we have two street-gangs of ducks. The first ones, Pekins and one ratty looking Rouen who is shooting for the "oldest living duck record" have been around for a bit. The Rouen was the only duck on our farm for about two years, after his girlfriend succumbed to the siren song of the creek and got eaten by something. Then, this year on Christmas morning (which would make a great Christmas miracle story if a. I were a Christian and b. it weren't ducks ;-)), a group…
ejohnson | June 14, 2010Is it distant thunder? A passing freight train? World Cup fans celebrating a goal?
Nope...that's the sound of the ScienceBlogs Book Club becoming active again!
It's been awhile since we hosted a Book Club discussion here on the blog - not since Paul Offitt's Autism's False Prophets back in 2008 - but we thought it was about time to get things going again. Luckily Mark Pendergrast, author of the recently published Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service agreed to lead a discussion of the book, and starting next week you can follow along…
sastyk | June 14, 2010I spent my weekend in Washington DC with folks from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, talking about the future of peak oil research and advocacy. It was an interesting weekend, but for a farmgirl who spends most of her waking hours during the summer outside and working in the dirt, it was a strange weekend. Two hermetically sealed 8 hour train journeys to Washington and 48 intense hours in a equally hermetically sealed hotel gave you that "I'm in the Matrix" feeling.
I admit, I don't sleep well in a room with windows that don't open and such, and even though I could have technically…
sastyk | June 10, 2010A newly produced UN Report rightly points out, among other things, that the western model of meat and dairy production simply won't work on a planet of 9 billion people. The report, which quantifies the basic unsustainability of affluent societies and the challenges facing us in satisfying needs we've spent a century creating and can't possibly actually fulfill, is generally a good one. But I do want to take issue with the underlying assumptions in the report, including the ones that lead the UN to the most controversial and media-attention gathering claim - that we need to move towards a…