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Reference Assistant (Map & GIS / Science), York University Libraries

The following is a job posting for the York University Libraries for a Reference Assistant position. Note that a library degree is not required. The job involves both regular science reference and supporting maps & GIS users and will be both in my unit and the Map Library here at York. For basic questions about the science-y part of the position, you can contact me at jdupuis at yorku dot ca. For the maps/GIS part, you can contact Rosa Orlandini at rorlan at yorku dot ca. Posting Number: YUSA-7280 Position Title: Reference Assistant (Map & GIS/Science) Department: Steacie Science…

Reimagining the University Press and the Post-Collections Library

A portentous-sounding title for a not-so-portentous post, full of half-baked thoughts and idle musings. I was just thinking about the recent Jounal of Electronic Publishing issue on Reimagining the University Press and without actually reading very much of the issue in question (ignorance is so liberating sometimes...) the most pressing question in my mind was: So what exactly do we need university presses for anyways? And I got to thinking some more and figured that there are probably tons of people in university presses thinking to themselves, So what exactly do we need academic libraries…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Monarch Butterflies Help Explain Why Parasites Harm Hosts: It's a paradox that has confounded evolutionary biologists since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859: Since parasites depend on their hosts for survival, why do they harm them? A new University of Georgia and Emory University study of monarch butterflies and the microscopic parasites that hitch a ride on them finds that the parasites strike a middle ground between the benefits gained by reproducing rapidly and the costs to their hosts. The study, published in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of…

Cool posts from InsideHigherEd

Usually every day brings one or two interesting things at InsideHigherEd, but today is a bonanza. The Ed Tech Sonic Boom Today, we are able to leverage a set of well-developed and stable technologies to build in pedagogically advanced active learning methods into a wide variety of courses and modes of instructional delivery. To be a great teacher it is no longer a prerequisite to be a dynamic and gifted lecturer. Rather, faculty can partner with learning designers, librarians, and teaching specialists to create dynamic, student-centered courses that allow students interact and create with…

Revenge of the pollsters

The pollsters in question being Bray and von Storch, who get ratty on Prometheus about Gavin "too sexy for my model" Schmidt's RC piece dissing their latest survey. Slightly confusingly, although the piece is signed by B+vS, it says I am a sociologist and Hans von Storch is a climate scientist... I attend first to the blog posting... which suggests to me that Bray wrote it. I'm going to go with the asserted attribution for the moment. Anyway... oh, before I head off, there is also First a thanks to those... who contributed favorable comments on the RealClimate blog. Yup, thats science for you…

Collaborative Community Legislation

Senator rel="tag">Dick Durbin has started a project using an innovative method of writing legislation: href="http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=318">What should be America's national broadband strategy? by: Dick Durbin Sun Jul 22, 2007 at 13:06:58 PM EDT (This diary will remain at the top of the page for the next day. New content will continue to appear below. For example, check out Jenifer Fernandez Ancona's The Role of Candidates in Movement-Building, and Matt's Why Are Men Overrepresented in CNN/Youtube Debate Submissions? - promoted by Chris Bowers) Today I'm…

The Illusion of Net Neutrality

Jurvetson's Flickr photostream Do you think that there should be universal access to the internet, regardless of how it is accessed? Should the internet be regulated by the federal government? If so, to what extent? Is "Net Neutrality" possible? For now, "neutrality" when it comes to accessing the internet is an illusion. These questions, to some degree, have been addressed by the approval of new rules by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today. Below are some key things to consider: Excerpted from an NPR story today: A divided FCC has approved new rules meant to prohibit…

Books: "Snooze...Or Lose! - 10 "No-War" Ways To Improve Your Teen's Sleep Habits" by Helene A. Emsellem, MD

My regular readers are probably aware that the topic of adolescent sleep and the issue of starting times of schools are some of my favourite subjects for a variety of reasons: I am a chronobiologist, I am an extreme "owl" (hence the name of this blog), I am a parent of developing extreme "owls", I have a particular distaste for Puritanical equation of sleep with laziness which always raises its ugly head in discussions of adolescent sleep, and much of my own research is somewhat related to this topic (see the bottom of this post for Related Posts). So, I was particularly pleased when Jessica…

An antivaccine "Thinker" calls for a boycott

There is a perception that strikes me as common enough to be considered "common wisdom" that antivaccine views are much more common on the "left" of the political spectrum than they are on the "right." I've discussed on multiple occasions how this perceived common wisdom is almost certainly wrong, or at least so incomplete as to be, for all intents and purposes, wrong. Frequently, the accusation that the left is antivaccine, usually coupled with the stereotype of the crunchy, affluent, liberal elite living on the coasts being antivaccine, is often thrown back by conservatives stung by…

Quick ConvergeSouth08 recap

I am back from the 4th ConvergeSouth, the do-not-miss Greensboro conference about the Web, blogging, journalism and community (and the model/inspiration for our own science blogging conferences, including the third one) . Big kudos to Sue Polinsky, Ed Cone and the cast of thousands for putting together the meeting again, making it better and better every year. And of course, thanks to Dave Hoggard for hosting the legendary BBQ with (even more legendary) banana pudding. I rode to Greensboro with Kirk Ross and came back home with Anton Zuiker, having interesting conversations with each. Dave…

Science News

Clipped from CultureCat Bacterial Communication Pathways; Super Computer to Mimic Brain Language Area; CDC: Breastfeeding Gap in US. Hospitals; Online Checklist of Bee Species; Bird Flu Strains that have Acquired Nasty Properties MIT researchers unravel bacteria communication pathways MIT researchers have figured out how bacteria ensure that they respond correctly to hundreds of incoming signals from their environment. The researchers also successfully rewired the cellular communications pathways that control those responses, raising the possibility of engineering bacteria that can…

Government transparency groups ask Labor Dept to restore info scrubbed from website

The Pump Handle reported on May 4, 2012 that the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) had scrubbed clean its website of documents on an abruptly withdrawn proposed regulation to protect young workers from being injured or killed in agricultural jobs.   Two weeks later, a group of organizations dedicated to government transparency and accountability wrote to Obama Administration officials asking them to "re-post the documents online relating to now-withdrawn proposed rules concerning child labor in agriculture." The DOL's Wage & Hour Division proposed in August 2011 a rule to prohibit children…

The wonders of melatonin

Arousal of a thirteen-lined ground squirrel from hibernation. By Uncredited; Walter L. Hahn [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons   In a new study published in the American Journal of Physiology Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, researchers at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse were interested in understanding how thirteen-lined ground squirrels protect their brains during arousal from hibernation. This is a period of time in which the animals experience major changes in their body temperature and increased blood flow to the brain. The researchers knew that levels of…

Nature Publishing Group and the University of California – Some pointers and thoughts

Besides watching this like the finals of Olympic hockey, I've been seriously impressed with the thoughtful and insightful commentary from a huge bunch of my libr* online contacts. Interesting stuff, too, from scientists and other folks interested in scholarly communication. About the confidentiality of the discussions.... Walt Crawford reminds us of various freedom of information requests and state laws in California that essentially mean that the terms of the final agreement won't be confidential Beth Brown thinks that this can only help with transparency in the future - which would be a…

Friday Flotsam: Iceland update, Kilauea slows down, videos of Colima and more!

News! Colima in Mexico erupting in 2008. The current activity at Eyjafjallajökull is more-or-less unchanged, with strombolian activity producing a 3-4 km tall ash-and-steam plume and the lava flows at the crater moving northward towards the GÃgjökull glacier. You can check out an extensive page on the state of this eruption at the Nordic Volcanological Center - along with a new page with thermal and LIDAR information on the eruption from France. The Icelandic Met Office notes that the lava has been producing meltwater from the glacier - which many Eruptions readers have noticed as floods…

Twitter Is a Cocktail Party That I'm Not Invited To

As I go through my daily routine, I find myself sort of out of phase with a lot of the Internet. My peak online hours are from about six to ten in the morning, Eastern US time. That's when I get up, have breakfast, and then go to Starbucks to write for a few hours. This means that most of the other people awake and active on my social media feeds are in Europe or Australia. And my standard writing time ends right around the time things start to heat up in the US. I do continue to have access to the Internet through the afternoon, of course, but unless I have a deadline coming up, I'm often…

Overseers on the Galtian Planation

I've always understood why the very rich would favor economic ideologies that support their self-interest. What I've never quite understood is why so many people who aren't Galtian overlords buy that crap. Lance Mannion puzzles over the same thing (italics original): The Koch Brothers are under a different delusion, that we live in a feudal society and they are Medieval land barons and the rest of us are their serfs and retainers. Never mind them for now. I'm talking about the retainers. The country is lousy with people who are essentially corporate flunkeys who think they are John and…

'Deserving' Public Spending, Fiscal Conservativism, and the New Welfare Queen

A while ago, I made the following observation in "A Nation of Deluded Dependents" about how many who receive government assistance don't even realize (or perhaps admit) that it's government assistance: This seems a case of willful ignorance by definition. Government aid is for lazy slackers, for 'welfare queens', and, in some people's minds, for those people. Decent, hard-working people don't receive government aid, even when they do. In other words, any program that helps middle-class people, people like themselves, is, by definition, not aid, because government aid is inherently…

Big Sh-tpile and Why Geithner's Plan Won't Work

Paul Krugman succinctly lays out why the Geithner/Obama* plan won't work: Yes, troubled assets may be somewhat undervalued. But the fact is that financial executives literally bet their banks on the belief that there was no housing bubble, and the related belief that unprecedented levels of household debt were no problem. They lost that bet. And no amount of financial hocus-pocus -- for that is what the Geithner plan amounts to -- will change that fact. You can't walk back a lost bet, and doubling down isn't an option. We can spin this around and around and throw up spaghetti code arguments,…

Around the Apocalyptic Web: The sharing economy and getting paid for your work

I find the whole idea of a "sharing economy" where people barter and exchange and free up excess capacity in their own lives and situations to make others' lives a little easier and cheaper an interesting notion. And worthwhile. After all broadly speaking the open access and open source movements do partake of this same spirit. Libraries too, in that we pool the resources of a community to acquire stuff for the benefit of all the members, so that everyone can share the wealth. But is there a dark side to sharing? With the advent of companies like AirBnB and it's ilk not to mention the whole…

Why is this night different from all the other nights?

Or, to tell the traditional Passover joke: A Jewish physicist in the UK was about to get knighted by the Queen. There was a long line of recepients waiting for the ceremony and they were all instructed what to say/chant once they come to face the Queen. The physicist kept silently practicing the obligatory words, but when his time finally arrived he got so nervous he forgot what he was supposed to say. So he started singing the only song he could remember "Ma nishtanah halailah hazeh mikol haleilot..." The Queen looked at him, then looked at her advisor and asked: "Why is this knight…

I don't believe in colleges and universities, I believe in libraries

A thought experiment. It all started with this Ray Bradbury quote in the New York Times: "Libraries raised me," Mr. Bradbury said. "I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years." I've bolded the chunk that has resonated most strongly around the Internet, especially Twitter where it was widely tweeted and retweeted. The tweeter that most piqued my interest was…

The Great Labor Department Conspiracy to fake new jobs

One of the characteristics of defective thinking, particularly of cranks (see theHOWTO) that we've discussed on scienceblogs is their poor ability to process information that is contradictory. Last week there were some interesting reports on a study which suggested those who believe in conspiracy theories can hold two seemingly contradictory pieces of information in their heads and not see the conflict. For instance: "The more people were likely to endorse the idea Princess Diana was murdered, the more they were likely to believe that Princess Diana is alive," explained Douglas. People who…

The Geekoff Intensifies

Orac is refusing to surrender and acknowledge the obvious fact that he simple *is not* as much of a geek as I am. So I am obligated to point out several further facts in my attempt to make him surrender the crown of geekiness. ---------- First: compare our professsions. Orac is a cancer surgeon: a person whose professional life is dedicated to *saving peoples lives*. There are people living today who would be dead but for the efforts of Orac. It is an honorable profession, deserving of nothing but respect. In contrast, I am a software engineering researcher; aka a professional computer geek…

A DIY biology project idea: making yeast that sense heavy metals

I don't know if any DIY biologists are looking for projects, but I think engineering yeast with a gene to detect heavy metals might be a good DIY biology project and I have some ideas for how to do this. What are the advantages of using yeast and working on this kind of problem? This could have a socially beneficial result. Contamination of soils, water, and even toys with heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and others, is a growing problem. If DIY biologists could make a cheap test, it could be helpful for a large number of people. Yeast, at least the ones I'm thinking about, Saccharomyces…

Congratulations to Occupational Health & Safety Honorees!

One of my favorite parts of the American Public Health Association annual meeting is the Occupational Health & Safety Section's awards lunch. It's always inspiring to hear about and from the award recipients, who bring dedication, creativity, and much-needed stubbornness to the cause of ensuring safe and healthy workplaces. The 2011 honorees are: Alice Hamilton Award: Martin Cherniack of the Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW), author of the book The Hawk's Nest Incident: America's Worst Industrial Disaster Lorin Kerr Awards: Lamont Byrd of the…

Pimp Me New Cars

As Kate and I set out to run errands the other day, the "Service Engine Soon" idiot light came on in my car (a 1999 Ford Taurus LX). This may or may not mean anything-- Kate got one of those in her Prius a while back and it was nothing-- but if it's actually an indicator of anything serious, I'll be in the market for a new car. I was already planning to unload this car in December, because the warranty on the rebuilt transmission runs out not long after that, but if I'm facing more than $1,500 in repairs, we'll bump that up. So, my question for the bloggeratti is this: What kind of car should…

Matt Ruff, Bad Monkeys [Library of Babel]

I first encountered Matt Ruff on Usenet, as a poster on rec.arts.sf.written. When I found out he had books published, I picked up Sewer, Gas, and Electric, which was good enough to put him on the buy-immediately list. Of course, that hasn't cost me a great deal of money, as he's only written two books since then, Set This House in Order back in 2003, and the new Bad Monkeys, which I bought and read on the way to St. John. Bad Monkeys is the story of Jane Charlotte, a woman who is in prison for a murder that she cheerfully admits committing, who has a remarkable story to tell. She claims to be…

An Open Letter to the People of London

Hey, I just wanted to drop you all a note to say sorry about that football game yesterday. I know I've already admitted that rugby is a superior game, but honestly, the NFL can do better. You see, the thing is, the Miami Dolphins are a really bad team this year. And the New York Giants, much as I love them, have a long history of playing down to the level of their opponents. You match those two up anywhere, you're going to get pretty much what you got yesterday. I'm just sorry it had to happen in your fine city. (Though, honestly, the conditions of the field didn't help. You know, in American…

I've eaten food, hell yeah. And some of it's good too.

But most of it isn't. You've eatin it, this food they speak of, good or bad or middling. I bet. No no, think again. I'm sure of it. I think later today I'll do it again. Mmmm, foody. I'll be posting something next week in response to this week's wildly interesting "Ask a Scienceblogger" topic of Organic Food. They query: What's up with organic foods? What are the main arguments for buying organic? Is it supposed to be better for me, or better for the planet, or what? Are organics, in any sense, worth the higher price?... For today, this Friday, here's a discussion forum from The Nation…

All over the 10 o'clock news...

John Mayer told us that "when you trust your television/What you get is what you got/Cause when they own the information, oh/They can bend it all they want." Well, it turns out it's worse than that - even if you think you're somewhat knowledgeable in an area, the media's coverage may affect the way you think. At least that's what a new study published in PLoS ONE has found when it comes to diseases. Researchers at McMaster University wanted to see how media coverage of diseases affects the perception of their prevalence and severity. To do this, they asked undergraduate and medical students…

The Manatees of Crystal River

Many of you will recall my passion and compassion for the illustrious sea cow (and for those of you who haven't watched it, the exploding manatee heart is a must). A few weeks ago, after I attended the International Coral Reefs Symposium I went back to my old stomping ground (water?) of Crystal River, Florida, to visit these gentle giants. I have been traveling to Crystal River off and on for 10 years and, even over this brief time, I have witnessed a shifting baseline... Crystal River is a beautiful area, particularly in the early morning when the fog clings to the water and air is filled…

Off in the wilds of... Melbourne

Hi folks. It's conference time again, and of course we have organised to have the Australasian Association of Philosophy/Australasian Association for the History Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (AAP/AAHPSSS) conferences in the coldest place on the mainland - my home town Melbourne, at the depths of winter. At least it's not Vancouver. So I'm going to be a bit quiet for a while. Play Mornington Crescent amongst yourselves until I get back (not you, Grossman. You're supposed to be fully engaged at the conference. If I see you in the comments after Sunday, I shall refuse to buy you a…

She offered me pleasure, satisfaction, and a flower. What I really wanted was a million dollars.

I was fifteen or so years old. That was back in the old days, before everyone who was 15 was world-wise and even world weary. I was a bit world wise for my age, though, as I was living on my own and was fully supporting myself with a couple of paying jobs. Waling home from work one day, a pretty young woman approached me, as though she was asking for directions. She was foreign and her English was poor, but I eventually came to understand that she wanted me to come over to her house later that evening for dinner. She promised a nice dinner, and she promised more. She was using words like…

Some Money for the Blind?

Being able to see is so fundamental to the daily activities of the vast majority of us that we rarely give it a second thought. Take away that ability to see, though, and suddenly everyday tasks become a little trickier. Much of this difficulty can be overcome--to a degree at least--by a variety of means, including seeing-eye dogs for getting around or braille for reading. If you are a blind American and need to buy a mid-afternoon snack, though, you might be out of luck--unless, of course, you're willing to blindly trust the honesty and generosity of every stranger with whom you exchange…

What is "ethnic skin"?

One of my bibles of clinical medicine is Fitzpatrick's Color Atlas and Synopsis of Clinical Dermatology. It's basically a field guide to skin, with hundreds of pictures matched up with brief summaries. The introduction states, "We have endeavored to include information relevant to gender dermatology and a large number of images showing skin disease in different ethnic populations." The book devotes a section on each disease to racial differences. For example, the section on superficial spreading melanoma (p. 312) states that "white-skinned persons overwelmingly predominate. Only 2% [of…

Health Insurance in Mass

So one of the most important stories over the past week (besides the immigration bill in congress), was the health insurance bill in Massachusetts. I won't give you a summary of what's been going on but instead give you some links to articles & opinions on the whole topic. Then I'll give you some interesting links to Malcolm Gladwell's view on American style Healthcare vs. the Canadian Healthcare system. So about the Mass plan: Boston Globe: Mass. bill requires health insurance Legislative leaders say their plan would: Cover 92,500 people by bringing more people onto MassHealth, the…

More money = more sex?

A lot of evolutionary psychology goes into the "They did a study on what?" category. So check out Daniel Kruger's paper, Male Financial Consumption is Associated with Higher Mating Intentions and Mating Success: Cross-culturally, male economic power is directly related to reproductive success. Displays of wealth and social status are an important part of human male mating effort. The degree of male financial consumption may be related to variance in life history strategies, as differences in life history patterns are fundamentally differences in the allocation of effort and/or resources.…

Sunday Sermon: We Have Met the Enemy and It Is...

...the Crazy Twenty-Sevens. From driftglass: If you replay the video, and listen under Stephanopoulos' interruption, this is point Koppel was trying to get across: "And I think there is just a small but significant fraction of Americans for whom...the truth in this instance is never going to matter." Which sounds like a small thing, but for me it was almost a cultural event, because it is almost the only time in my memory when a Big Time Newscritter sat in front of a camera and called bullshit on some specific, identifiable group other than "bureaucratsinwashington" or "liberalelites".…

You Don't Have to Be in Academia to Be a Scientist

I'm currently working my way through Unscientific America, and I have the sneaking suspicion that I'm going to wind up agreeing with ScienceBlogling Janet's assessment (actually, it will probably be harsher). But speaking of Janet, I want to take exception with one thing in her review: her emphasis on academic science. From her review (italics mine): In addition to the research, the grant writing, the manuscript drafting, the student training, the classroom teaching, the paper and grant refereeing, and the always rewarding committee work, academic scientists should be working hard to…

Pity the Poor Couple Who Make $250,000 Per Year (Haven't We Been Through This Before?)

The Fiscal Times, a propaganda arm for Pete Peterson (although how one could tell the difference between The Fiscal Times and the ostensibly non-partisan Washington Post), has an article that purports to describe how difficult it is for the 'average' family that makes $250,000 per year. If we spot The Fiscal Times most of the expenses (I'll return to that in a bit), the article really shows the effect of hidden assumptions. Two big expenses are saving for college ($8,000) and retirement ($33,000), as well as healthcare (~$13,0000--in a nation where the median household income in $50,000.…

Esterline Industries to Massachusetts Workers: Drop Dead

Or, at least, don't obey Massachusetts law and receive the healthcare they are entitled to. Esterline Technologies demonstrates that much of what passes for 'rational business decision making' is actually ideology combined with petty personal vendetta. From Yves Smith: This story illustrates how far some companies are willing to go to preserve their bottom lines and assert their right to operate in an unfettered manner, even when that includes breaking the law and violating contracts... Esterline is in the process of shuttering its Tauton manufacturing operation, Haskon Aerospace, which…

Elsevier boycott: Time for librarians to rise up!

A little while back the Cost of Knowledge site started up a boycott pledge list in response to mathematician Timothy Gowers' pledge to stop contributing to Elsevier's operations by ceasing writing, reviewing and editing for them. Here is the call to action: Academics have protested against Elsevier's business practices for years with little effect. These are some of their objections: They charge exorbitantly high prices for subscriptions to individual journals. In the light of these high prices, the only realistic option for many libraries is to agree to buy very large "bundles", which will…

Friday Fun: How to argue with a scientist

OK, the blog post in question isn't actually that funny. But the title is. And, it's really worth reading for the seriously intentioned message it contains. How to argue with a scientist: A guide. I notice it all the time- on Facebook, in the comments of a science blog, over family gatherings, or listening to a radio talk show. Someone, maybe you, is patiently trying to explain how vaccines cause autism, perhaps, or why so-called "anthropogenic" global warming is really just due to sunspots or some other natural cycle. Perhaps you are doing pretty well at first, making use of passionate,…

Melamine: tastes like chicken

Lots of us knew melamine as a heat resistant plastic polymer found in kitchen items, like plastic plates. Despite its reputation for heat resistance it would melt in an oven, although it doesn't catch fire. It is used in a lot of other places: floor tiles, white boards, fabrics, filters, even the cleaning product called Magic Eraser. Now we know it is also used by crooked Chinese food manufacturers to make it appear their products have more protein than they really do. This works because melamine is loaded with nitrogen, also a key atom in the building blocks of proteins, amino acids. Here…

What To Eat Week

it has been quiet around here because late last Tuesday we got a placement of two boys, C., 7 and K., 8. In the chaos of getting everyone settled, dealing with all the legal requirements, paperwork and appointments that a foster placement entails and getting them back to school, the blog has taken a backseat, but I'm more or less back. The boys are doing great, and are truly sweet, wonderful kids. They've had a really rough time, but everyone is really getting used to each other and having a blast. They'll be with us until at least mid-June, so we are in for some spring fun with six boys…

"bite me"

is, loosely translated, what the leader of the opposition "red-green alliance" said to a government member of Alþing in Iceland, who claimed the opposition had been procedurally delaying the setup and start of investigation into the Icelandic banking crisis. This came during a vote of no confidence in the government. The vote failed by a huge margin. Surviving Iceland is a new and interesting blog - anecdotal and free associating news "as it happens" from Reykjavík. I was somewhat flabbergasted to also hear that just now has someone put a motion to use emergency powers to freeze the assets…

Review of: Makers by Cory Doctorow

I actually read the freely downloadable version of Cory Doctorow's novel Makers on my Kobo ereader, even though I did buy the hardcover when it came out last year. Mostly, I wanted to check out the experience of reading a long text on my reader. Overall, the Kobo reading experience was terrific, not much different from reading a paper book. I tried it on both long inter-city bus rides and my regular commute as well as just sitting around the house. The Kobo is pretty bare bones, as these readers go, but it was good enough to consume fairly simple text. The Makers text was in epub format…

The face of uninsurance: One blogger's story

Everyone should read the personal story by Kevin Zelnio, a marine biologist and blogger at EvoEcoLab, about his son's recent medical emergency. Having a six-year-old child whose flulike symptoms turn into a struggle to breathe must be scary enough -- but this family's troubles are compounded by not having health insurance. Zelnio is self-employed, and he and has wife have been unable to find affordable insurance for themselves and their two children. He cites uninsurance as one reason why they didn't bring their son to an urgent care facility as soon as his fever reached 103. They did get…

London Weekend With Both The Young Dudes

Spent Friday though Sunday in London with Junior and his buddy, both 14. My original plan had been to find a gaming convention with both a video game track and a boardgame track. But failing that, I got tickets for the Eurogamer Expo at the Earls Court Convention Centre in London, which is all video games. My once substantial interest in such has long evaporated, but I kept the Saturday free for other activities. In order to be sure to get the boys into the fair I had to buy a ticket for myself as well, and I checked out the place without finding anything that caught my interest. It was all…