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kightp's comments:
on Tsunami
jer16mia : The "Tsunami Evacuation Zone" signs you see on 101 the coast mark areas low enough to be at risk from tsunami waves - places you want to avoid or get away from in the event of a tsunami. Some communities are also starting to install "evacuation route" signs pointing to higher ground.
If a tsunami is caused by a distant earthquake. you may hear sirens (if you're close to a town) and should have plenty of time - up to several hours - to get to high ground. If you're on the coast and you feel the earth shaking, that's a near-shore quake and could be followed - as it was in Japan today - by tsunami waves within minutes. Move higher as fast as you can, even if it means abandoning your vehicle and climbing the nearest hill.
In either case, the stupid thing to do is to head for the beach to watch the waves come in. Yet people continue to do that every time there's a warning.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Tsunami
Looks like the hard work local communities have been doing to educate folks about tsunami preparedness and evacuation is paying off. This one may well wind up being a drill, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Oregon Sea Grant at OSU has some great short videos from coastal hazards expert Patrick Corcoran explaining simple steps coastal residents and visitors can take to be safe when a tsunami strikes:
http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/breakingwaves/2011/03/11/pacific-tsunami-reminds-oregon-to-be-prepared/
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Reducing Harm
As someone who is struggling to overcome a 47-year addiction to one of the truly harmful drugs - tobacco - I find it both ironic and disturbing that the US has a long history of picking and choosing which drugs - and drug users - it demonizes and which ones it supports through public subsidy.
Comments like those I'm hearing on this program from Professor Madras and others remind me that what this country is waging is a War On Some Drugs, and it has a lousy record of success. Given that, I applaud services like the supervised "harm reduction" facility in Vancouver BC.
posted 3 years, 3 months ago
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on Food Safety
The current state of US food safety is a direct outcome of federal deregulation policies in the late 1980s-early 1990s, when direct inspection of most food processors was abandoned or sharply reduced in favor of the HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) system, which relies on the processors themselves to institute procedures to identify, analyze and control sources of food contanimation and other hazards. Their written plans undergo government review, but in the absence of government inspectors, their actual practices do not, until there's a problem such as an outbreak of food-borne illness.
In theory, a rigorous HACCP program is a good way to reduce food-borne risks. In practice, even the best risk-reduction plan is worthless unless it's actually implemented every single day. And without inspections, it can be difficult to know which processors are doing the job.
Given the competing demands for federal dollars, the general state of the economy, the pressures from anti-tax activisits and the lobbying power of big agribusiness, I don't see much hope for a return to an inspection-based food safety program in the US.
So what's a consumer to do? Like others posting here, I try to buy as much of my food from local producers as I can, but I also recognize that I'm both economically and geographically privileged. Many - perhaps most - Americans simply do not have those options.
posted 3 years, 6 months ago
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on Judge A Book By Its Pixels
The only time you actually need to be connected to the Kindle wireless network is when you want to purchase and download a new book (or use the rudimentary Web browser). Leaving it turned off the rest of the time extends the battery life to around two weeks, even with frequent use, and it takes less than an hour to recharge.
posted 3 years, 11 months ago
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on Judge A Book By Its Pixels
When you first broadcast this topic, I commented about how the Kindle has given me the ability to read for pleasure again after aging eyesight had left me unable to read print books for nearly six years.
A month and a half later, I'm still in love with the device, gobbling up e-books at the pace of one or two a week. And considering selling or donating the thousands of print books that sit unread on shelves in my home. I admit that feels a little weird; I have always considered my library part of who I am and how I live. But I don't like to think of them gathering dust when someone else might be able to read them.
It's not an either-or world. Print books will survive as long as there are people who want to read them - and are able to. But e-book technology is a blessing to those of us who can't make out print type, who love to read when we travel, and - if the textbook publishers get on board - for students who are killing their backs toting around all those heavy backpacks.
posted 3 years, 11 months ago
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on World-Class Arts?
As a theater artist directing and performing on an amateur level in Albany and Corvallis, far outside the Portland Metro area, I value the PDX arts organizations - large and small - for both philosophical and practical reasons. Philosophically, they provide inspiration and role models for other artists all over the state. Practically, their success keeps art in the public eye, and that has a direct impact on local arts revenues. When people in the mid-Valley hear about - or travel to see - theater in the Portland area, their interest in theater in general goes, and they tend to patronize small theaters closer to home. I can't count how many local theater patrons who've told me, "Oh, I saw [that play] in Portland; I couldn't wait to see how you do it!"
posted 3 years, 11 months ago
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on Judge a Book by Its Pixels
It is, perhaps, worth noting that the Kindle and the Sony e-books do not use backlit "computer screens." They're built on e-paper technology, which works rather like an electronic Etch-a-Sketh: Particles of digital "ink" are literally rearranged on the screen with every turn of the page. No light shines in the reader's eye, and you can't read them in the dark any more than you could a printed book. Eyestrain is no more an issue than it is with paper.
posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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on Judge a Book by Its Pixels
One thing that often gets missed in these either-or discussions is the aging of the reading public - and our eyes. Even with bifocals, I've been unable to read for pleasure for five or six years, and experienced that as a huge loss. Yes, there are large-print books, but most of what I enjoy reading is not available in that format; yes, there are audiobooks, but the same holds true - and the experience of listening is qualitatively different from reading.
After researching all the options and trying out other people's e-readers, I bought the Kindle 2 this spring, and it's been like getting my life back. I carry it with me everywhere, and love everything about it. I'm back to reading an average of a book a week again, and that is an absolute joy.
If you follow the Kindle user forums on Amazon, you'll find that the average age of buyers is considerably older than for most new-tech gadgets. Younger readers may say "meh, why get a new ap when I can read on my PC/cell phone/PDA," but book-hungry older readers want something that "feels" like reading a book, and the Kindle absolutely does.
I think print publishers would be wise to release their titles in e-book formats as a matter of routine; production is so much cheaper than print that it almost amounts to free money. Given what the economy is doing to the publishing business, what's not to love?
posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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on Not At School
You have every right to vote with your pocketbook, and to decline to view material you find objectionable. You have the right to express your opinions on the subject. What you do not have the right to do is decide for others what they should find objectionable.
posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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on Not At School
I've been directing plays at the community theater level for 30 years, in a relatively conservative town, and I sympathize with Kevin Cahill and his students; the periodic demand that theater be sanitized is one of the real challenges artists face at any level.
One point needs to be made in response to the pastor who called for editing out the "bad" content in Picasso at the Lapine Argile: To do so would very likely violate the contract under which the play is being performed. Most performance licenses prohibit changing the text of the play, and depending on the contract, to do so might well get the school blacklisted from performing other works managed by that particular licensing house.
I question whether we should be teaching students that it's OK to violate copyright in order to render a play "safe" for local consumption.
posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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on Weighty Issue
Ironically, some new studies suggest that among some urban children, at least, obesity is not a matter of over-eating, but of eating the wrong things.
Quoting an article published today in the Fort Worth, TX Times-Leader:
"A 9-year-old should consume 1,400 to 2,200 calories daily to sustain growth, said Dr. Roberto Trevino, director of the nonprofit Social and Health Research Center. But in the study of 1,400 inner-city children, 44 percent were consuming less than 1,400 calories, and 33 percent were obese."
It turns out that those children are deficient in key elements - calcium, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus - necessary for normal growth and metabolic activity.
(http://www.timesleader.com/news/Obesity_among_poor_children_tied_to_diet_11-19-2008.html)
No child should be on a weight-loss diet. Rather, children should be encouraged to enjoyable physical activity - not "exercise," but play - that will keep them active and strong all their lives. And in encouraging their children to live more health lives, parents should be very careful about the messages they send. Even pudgy children need to know that they are beautiful, and loved.
There are studies suggesting that among older people, the risk of being too thin outweighs the risk of being too fat, in terms of premature death. Very thin women, for instance, are at higher risk for bone loss and breakage than their more padded sisters.
However, our culture is so obsessed with fat that these studies are regularly ignored by the media, and weight-obsessed Americans wind up in a spiral of diet-regain-diet-regain which is actually more dangerous than being fat.
I recommend the excellent blog, Junkfood Science (http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/) for a more careful analysis of the science behind weight and other health issues.
posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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