The San Antonio Express-News/Houston Chronicle obtained a copy of the Texas GOP draft platform for 2014. I’m not sure what attracted me to this particular rabbit hole, but for some reason I started reading the document and couldn’t stop. Initially, I thought I’d indulge in some cherry picking and identify those items that seemed most incompatible with … More The rabbit hole that is the 2014 Texas GOP platform.
As the realization has set in that this blog will never be viewed by more than a handful of visitors each month, I have begun to view it as a place where I can write mainly to memorialize thoughts and events I don’t want to forget. The relative obscurity of this site is more liberating than … More My travels through rural Honduras with forceps, scalpels, and friends.
It would be hard to argue that America is NOT the undisputed leader in passion for owning firearms. This passion is reflected by the fact that America has the highest gun ownership of any country with 89 guns for every 100 citizens.[1] Contrast this figure with Russia having nine guns per 100 citizens and Pakistan’s … More The four reasons for America’s gun mania
Take a moment to look around. Everything probably looks more or less normal. You have your daily routine and may have settled into a comfortable life rhythm. But what you may not realize is that what you are seeing is what it looks like to be living in a mass extinction. Even though it’s all … More The Holocene extinction event. Is our species’ destiny to be known as “The Burners?”
For decades Delta has been my preferred airline. I’m not exactly sure how my preference evolved to that point but I’m sure why it’s no longer true. It’s all about how Delta’s obsession with yield management has led them down the path to treating passengers as little more than fodder for their revenue machine. Does … More Why I no longer fly Delta Airlines – The consequences of unrestrained yield management techniques.
Our perspective of everything we see, everything we do, and everything we think is distorted by the lens of our vanishingly short time on this earth as living, thinking beings. The distortion is exacerbated by our inability to fully grasp events that occur beyond the relatively small geographical boundaries imposed by our daily life. With … More Humans are a minor perturbation in the life of the earth.
Kantar Media has created a map of the amount of money spent on anti-Obamacare advertising. The geographical distribution of the negative advertising is reminiscent of other maps of the incidence of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and even the distribution of the uninsured or underinsured. Although we know that correlation is not the same as causation, the … More Anti Obamacare Advertising Targeting the Uninsured and Unhealthy.
People make decisions based on their perception of risk rather than the actual risk resulting in focusing time, effort, and angst on events that may have a limited chance of occurrence. Meanwhile, events that may be far more likely to cause harm are deemphasized, or ignored completely resulting in a greater exposure to actual harm. … More Decisions based on Perceived Risk can be hazardous to your health.
The pharmaceutical industry, a.k.a. Big Pharma, must have loved it every time the voice in Field of Dreams whispered “if you build it, he will come” because that is exactly what has happened with the skyrocketing sales of testosterone. Except Big Pharma hasn’t been whispering, they’ve been shouting. According to Consumers Reports ad spending on … More Low T? “If you build it, he will come.”
All too frequently, my original ideas turn out to be no so original. So it is with the comparison of peak oil and antibiotic resistance which has been previously made in a posting in the “Health Ecologist” blog.[1] Nevertheless, I’ll restate the comparison because the essence of both situations is the same, namely that there … More Have We Reached Peak Antibiotics? Emerging antibiotic resistant “super bugs” are an immediate, global health concern.
Confronting Mediocrity 