infrastructure
revere | April 26, 2009The White House briefing today had Obama written all over it. It's themes were Obama, it's tone of quiet, serious confidence were Obama. The sense of total command of the situation was Obama. There was the Obama-ese call for "personal responsibility." Government can't do everything. There are things we each have to take personal responsibility for.
Fine. I don't disagree. But I think there are some things missing from this frame. One is that it isn't a binary choice, government or the individual. We all live in a set of overlapping communities: work, home, neighborhood, civic organizations,…
revere | April 25, 2009CDC has just concluded a press briefing and the big news is there is no big news. In fact there was hardly any small news. The major questions have been identified -- how transmissible, what is the epidemic curve, are there more cases in the US, are there subtle genetic differences in the US and Mexican versions to account for the apparent difference in clinical and epidemiological features, etc. -- but answering them will take longer.
Meanwhile, no new cases have been identified in the US, but CDC in collaboration with state and local health departments and the academic and medical sectors…
revere | March 26, 2009The American Scientist is the magazine of the scientific society, Sigma Xi. You can get it on the news stand, and that's where I bought the latest issue (March-April, 2009). One of the articles is by historian of engineering, Henry Petroski, and it's about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The bridge was a product of Depression infrastructure funding but instead of being an investment in the future it only lasted four months. It is famous because its spectacular collapse was caught on film (below the jump) and for many years was shown in thousands of undergraduate calculus and elementary physics…