puerto rico

Puerto Rico can become the first significant size polity to rebuild itself from the ground up to be totally Carbon free. Or at least, that seems like a good idea. If only the US Government wasn't so anti-Puerto Rico, owing to the president being, well, Trump. Anyway, there is now a pile of money and effort pouring int Puerto Rico and this can be used in part to give Puerto Rico sigificantly more economic and energy security in its future, if only energy-smart decisions are made now. So let's see what Get Energy Smart Now blog has to say about this! Puerto Rico’s electricity system, prior to…
Visiting Arkansas, hanging around briefly with some people in the Real Estate business, I found a lot of hatred of Mexicans, whom they unimaginatively referred to as "spics" but making it clear they were talking about Mexicans, not some other spics. Sitting with a group of people talking about racism in an urban neighborhood in near Minneapolis, I found zero mention of dislike between whites per se and blacks per se. But Poles and Tibetans, they were very much disliked by people who were mostly but not all white. Years ago I remember being shocked by a fellow anthropologist who expressed a…
The White House calls the disaster in Puerto Rico a "good news story," implying that the federal government is doing a great job there. Meanwhile, Donald Trump put out a tweet today that seems to imply that the US needs to consider whether or not it wants to help Puerto Rico, which, by the way, is actually part of the United States. Here is the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, responding to some of this: Hat tip: Media Matters for America
Two or three thoughts about the current crisis. When there is a major climate disaster in the US, people move. Since the US is big and has large gaps in population, it looks different than when a disaster happens in some other places. Five million (or more) Syrians leaving the Levant left a major mark across the globe. A half million leaving the Katrina hit zone was barely noticed on a global, or even national, scale, not just because it was one tenth the amount, but because of our size and space as well. Something close to half the 400K or so displaced by Katrina (over half of them from…
It’s been 15 years since worker safety advocates in Puerto Rico first began fighting against a proposal to dilute the qualifications associated with being a professional industrial hygienist. As part of their efforts, such advocates developed their own proposal to protect the livelihoods of those with the knowledge and experience to properly protect workers. And after years of work, they may finally cross the finish line victorious. “We’re really hopeful it works out and we’ll see the light of day,” said Lida Orta-Anés, professor in the Industrial Hygiene Program at the University of Puerto…
I am very excited to report that the Puerto Rico Physiological Society will be hosting their 4th annual meeting, "Exercise Physiology: From Molecules to Systems" on February 8th. PRPS 2014 Save the Date Last year's meeting was focused on mitochondria and was a big success. This year's meeting is shaping up to be similarly successful.