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Why Not Do What Works?

Vietnam: How this country of 95 million kept its coronavirus death toll at zero – CNN Why can’t we learn to do what successful states and nations do that is working? Business as usual when usual threatens to wipe out…

On Reaching Joe Flounder

Our son-in-law is a prosperous, young, thinking Republican. He laments the mentality of his hunting and fishing buddies (Joe Flounder in our discussion) who blames current restrictions on flounder fishing on the whims of environmentalists. They are indignant over any…

The Best Time…

No MegaGlobalCorp will make billionaires in doing so, but it is perhaps the most effective and achievable intervention in the near term to take carbon out of the air–Plant a trillion trees, per this AP piece by Seth Borenstein: “……

With Freedom, Responsibility

It was just a task that Scout took on–a way to let us know that we don’t always have to be responsible for his goings and comings. Besides, if we put the leash ON the dog when we brought him…

The Root of All Weevil

Spontaneous generation? They just are there–in the five pound bag of flour you just brought home yesterday. There, in the mixing bowl that was going to hold the biscuits for dinner, but now, in a puff of white smoke, ground…

Old Dog: New Tricks? Maybe.

Just when a geezer gets comfortable with “the way things were” they morph out from under him. And that isn’t all bad. Nothing like a rocking boat to test your equilibrium. So now that I’m paid up for another year…

Common But Commonly Overlooked: Horsehair Worms

The FB post a few days ago about the Siberian worms (nematodes) that revived after 30k years in permafrost made me remember, back in my teaching days, of seeing similar-looking horsehair worms (or having students bring them in for extra…

Aging in Place

And so this is where the actuarial rubber meets the road. Baby boomers appeared of a sudden, historically. We swelled the ranks of the middle class. We demanded and got affordable housing just out of town, and cheap gas to…

Words for Things

…and smells. Petrichor (/ˈpÉ›trɪkɔːr/) is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. The word is constructed from Greek πέτρα petra, meaning “stone”, and ἰχώρ Ä«chōr, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek…