Dependence Day: we're all singing from the same score

By revere on July 4, 2009.

I don't know what's going to happen with swine flu. I do know that if there is a nasty flu season we'll all get through it better if we help each other, not run from each other. It's national independence day in the US, so I thought this clip of the crowd singing the National Anthem (hat tip, Paul Rosenberg at Open Left) at Boston's Fenway Park (home field of the Boston Red Sox baseball team) was appropriate. It was Disability Awareness Day and to recognize it the anthem was being sung by a handicapped youngster. When he got nervous, the entire ball park came to his rescue:

More like this

Crowd dynamics, music, and magic at Fenway

Effect Measure alerted me to this very touching video, which shows the crowd at Fenway coming to the rescue of a kid who starts to lose it while singing the national anthem. Revere's set-up first, then some thoughts of my own: I don't know what's going to happen with swine flu. I do know that if…

Vacation purity contaminated

While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have…

Is it just flu season or something else?

Six days ago when commenting on the first human case in Indonesia for 6 weeks, we noted that flu season was upon us and to expect more. That's seems to be the way it is working. The virus continues to spread in poultry in Vietnam and outbreaks have been confirmed in Nigeria, Japan and South Korea.…

Swine flu: more on the genetics of the virus

A reader (hat tip, sandy) has pointed me to a very interesting interview with CDC's chief virologist, Ruben Donis, in Science Magazine's blog, ScienceInsider. In it he provides further information on the confusing reports about the species origin of the current swine flu, originally said to be of…

WOW!

Truly inspiring, revere, and appropriate for an inspiring day. Thanks.
Paul.

All Red Sock fans still deserve to burn in hell.

Wow. That has made my day!

It's good to be free. It's better to be free together.

Thanks, Revere.

Thanks, Revere, very much. But I wish you'd have suggested having a box of kleenex at hand before watching. Now I have to go change my shirt.

Advertisment

Donate

ScienceBlogs is where scientists communicate directly with the public. We are part of Science 2.0, a science education nonprofit operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Please make a tax-deductible donation if you value independent science communication, collaboration, participation, and open access.

You can also shop using Amazon Smile and though you pay nothing more we get a tiny something.

Science 2.0

Science Codex

More by this author

A note tacked to the door

May 17, 2010

The lights are out at Effect Measure. It is closed and locked. No one is there any more. So consider this a note tacked on the door. I had always intended to leave it as a way to connect you with The Pump Handle and that's still its purpose. But now I feel compelled to add a thank you note as well…

We bid you farewell

May 16, 2010

It's been a long time coming but the time has come. Effect Measure is closing up shop, after 5 and a half years, 3 million visits and 5.1 million page views of some 3500. You commented on them some 37,000 times. It's been a grand ride but to all things there is a season. It's time to simplify my…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: summing up

May 16, 2010

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death. I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter on the barn-floor. He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning. But I will not hold the bridle while he clinches the girth…

Blog matters: who is "revere"?

May 15, 2010

The person who taps the keys here over the signature "revere" (or sometimes "Revere"; it's at most one at a time) is not Paul Revere. The real Paul Revere died in 1818. If you want to know the name or names of any of the key tappers here I'm going to disappoint you right away. This post doesn't…

Reading about the hazards of what I used to do as a youngster

May 14, 2010

When I was young (high school, college) I had a variety of jobs, including golf caddy (cured me of golf for the rest of my life; there were no carts, just an 11 year old lugging two bags with 16 clubs over 18 holes) and paper boy (4 am on Sundays hauling 80 huge Sunday papers in a wagon; took about…