Author: vargocity

I am not good at keeping up with politics. I picked up the New York Times today and learned more about Johnny Greenwood’s classical composition for strings than the results of Michigan’s primary. I like to watch results but know little about what’s going on behind it all. If you want to read a review of the Democratic race that is considerably well researched I recommend this from Ben and Katy.

One of the first questions I have about the whole political game is what is the difference between the primary and a caucus and why do we have them. I guess that a caucus is a meeting that you are invited to by the party at which you choose who you want to support, while a primary is an actual election. But why do we let the people of Iowa and New Hampshire make early decisions that have important effects for us all? I am not so sure that the populations of the two are representative of the rest of the country. In terms of race/ethnicity they certainly are different from the US composition. They are both far more white and less everything else, especially Latino. This also includes foreign born persons and immigration is an issue of the day. New Hampshire also seems significantly better educated and wealthier than most of the US. However even if they were right on the averages of the US, that is not a reason to have them choose which candidates we’ll ultimately have a choice on.

I would do some more research but like I said I am not good at (interested in) all things political. I AM American enough to state that this is exactly what’s wrong with this country.

Iowa’s Stats

New Hampshire’s Stats

My New Year’s Resoultion is 1280 x 960.

I know it’s already the 11th but now is as good a time as any to make my intentions for the new year known. I thought long and hard about some of these and since October wrote down some of the best actions I could take in 2008 to improve my condition in the world.

First and most important on the list was my resolution to stop farting near/around Lauren. It started horribly with a real loungefest in front of a football-filled tv on New Year’s Day, but when I saw that she would help hold me to my commitment I really made the change. I was/am dissappointed that I tried to get away with it for awhile but now I am making real progress. Even though this only applies to Lauren it is disappointing that neither her or anyone else notices my efforts. It is like some many other horrible things the world has endured; we only notice them when we are forced to deal with them and do not comment on our delight of their absence as often as we should. I’m glad that Khmer Rouge is gone forever. It works the other way for things of beauty and grace; in their absence we long for their presence. MLK, wish you were here.

My second resoultion strays from the ethic of the whole practice but I like it. I plan to use the phrase “my wife works in __________” to reinforce my opinions/knowledge of certain topics. I will only use this in casual settings, and obviously it will only work on those who do not Lauren and for jobs that she could fill. Nobody is going to buy “My wife plays in the NFL”, but “my wife works in the Falcon’s front office” might help others form a little trust in the trade rumors I start spreading. Of course telling all of you hurts the efficacy of this ruse but I will still find my opportunities.

Thirdly, I would like to change the way I eat. This stared out as a goal to eat seasonally even though I hardly know what that means. The idea was that seasonal foods would be fresher, grow outside naturally, come from places nearer to where I eat and hence require less energy to produce and to get them to me. It has expanded into considering more vegetarian options. This requires less knowledge than the eating seasonal thing. I guess I’m trying all this in an effort to ease my personal impact on the ecology of the planet. This has to do with the energy, land, and the other food required to raise animals for food. Getting away from the huge animals, like cow, are the easist way to make a dent in that food production bar of the graph.

Email me (or Lauren in the case of #1) to find out how we progress as 2008 continues. Happy New Year!

What food is in season (in the UK) now
Seasonal Food Calendar (UK)
The Cheeseburger Footprint

WE GOT HIM!!!!!

We tried some tuna bait outside and attracted another cat but I went out to look one more time and saw him creeping into the crawlspace of the house nextdoor. He didn’t come home but we found him.

Here we come 2008!

Sometimes I think there could be an entire blog about my neighborhood, if only seen through the right lens. It’s at those same times I hope I am carrying a camera. It might be there and gone or something static and I’ll have a chance to go back and snap a shot. Last week presented one such opportunity and I took full advantage.

This shot was taken at the church on the corner two blocks from my house. It’s about that time of year when everyone goes through the chore of cleaning up the leaves in the yard (it took em awhile but they finally fell off). Most people use the heavy-duty brown paper bags which you can buy at the hardware store. The city comes around once every other week and picks up the yard waste. The church decided to take a different approach. Maybe they didn’t want to spend money on the bags from the hardware store but the bags they ultimately chose seem like they would be even harder to get your hands on. What’s more, they chose bags that no one would pick up without thinking twice.
I’m happy to report that the bags were picked up, though I am not by whom or when.

School is now over but I thought I would give you a taste of one last assignment. It was about measuring walkability on street segments. All of the segments were around homes of students in the class and two students rated each segment. The segments were initially rated using Walkscore.com but it is mostly based on crow-fly proximity to businesses so it doesn’t say anything about walkability (for example how pleasurable it is to walk on the segment). The only real outcome we could obtain from the assessment tool that we used was a rating of the other pedestrians on the segment. We turned it into a presence/absence indicator and found that the number of land uses on a segment as well as a higher rating of the segment’s sidewalk quality and interesting sights all increased the odds of observing pedestrians on a segment. It was a first look at some rough data but the results are not too unbelievable. We even controlled for median income, auto ownership, age of the neighborhood and density.

But why look at that? Is walking to the store or a bus stop really physical activity? I have a hard time convincing myself of that sometimes. Regardless educating people about what IS physical activity and how they can fit it in their lives is something that is talked about a lot in the field. I found this graphic (originally published in the New York times Magazine with an article about France’s jogging President) to be very interesting. I think it is getting at the point that information about a behavior like physical activity can affect an individuals’ behaviors. There was not much more than this graphic and it didn’t fit with the article exactly but judging by the metrics and the jogging part of the piece I think that’s what they’re talking about. If I find more I will let you know but take a look it’s really interesting. One thing I wonder about is why is the ‘informed’ group skinnier than the control at time 1?

In an effort to increase public health awareness around anthrax as well as show off some of my classmates’ work, I’ve offered this space to Micah (a classmate). Here she is with a guest post.

So as Jason said, we had an assignment for our Toxicology class to make a video about a toxic exposure of some kind. My group (me and my main peep, Kim) chose to do the 2001 USPS Anthrax attacks. While the assignment was more synapse-stimulating than a paper or an exam, we spent significantly more time on the creation of this video. Coming up with the idea for the creative genius you see before you took a good day or so, and the “hours” of footage (aka, 2 minutes of good film and about 80 of us laughing) took another good chunk of time. iMovie is a horrible creation unless you have vargo there for inspirational words and to show you how to do anything cool, and the walk to the video lab at school seemed farther and farther away every time we went. All in all, it was fun to complain about during the ordeal, but we didn’t kill each other and who knows who might see this thing on this widely-read public domain. Anybody hiring?

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=9028634942451066680&hl=en

Sometimes my own understanding of where I am in life and who I am can seem really off. I think I’m in one place and acting a certain way and then I catch a glimpse of myself from another angle and I see of myself in a completely different light.

Grad school can be like that. Everyone is idealistic and determined and at the same time sick of it and fed up. And even though we’re in our 20s sometimes we act really childish but we still feel like we’re qualified to handle really big problems. If you’re in the middle of it you may not even notice what you’re doing. Plus we hardly have time to reflect on our work (if we get it back). Sometimes you get to put your work in front of people and then it becomes a good lens or perhaps a mirror in which to see yourself.

In my efforts to work on the really big problems that grad school presents (assignments) this is the latest creation of which I was a part. It’s a mock newscast about a toxic exposure, in this case tetrodotoxin. Enjoy.

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=8255090133169770103&hl=en