WE GOT HIM!!

WE GOT HIM!!!!!

We tried some tuna bait outside and attracted another cat but I went out to look one more time and saw him creeping into the crawlspace of the house nextdoor. He didn't come home but we found him.

Here we come 2008!

2007 (good riddens)

This year (as Matt will attest) has been one littered with misfortune for my household. Perhaps this was the valley to compliment the 2006 peak that not only saw us get married but also purchase and move into our first house. It all began with us trying to get out our apartment (lease) and struggling to secure a commitment from one Ms. Broward, failing, and then wrestling have the rental company for the last of our dignity, which for anyone keeping track is apparently worth a couple thousand dollars to us. Some of that money we tried to make back by participating in Yellow Fever vaccine studies but that also turned to misadventure.

On a brighter note, we did make some progress on the house and had a lot of visitors. All of our parents and siblings stopped by at one point or another during the year and some college buddies came out in September. Chad arrives tomorrow to cap off the year and to start 2008 off on the right foot. Also, I have to say that I did not fall terribly ill at any point in the year, though it was riddled with injury. I think the passing-out mentioned above was the first incident, but June was really where I kicked it up a notch. Who could forget my bloody-attic-insulation mess that resulted in an afternoon visit from an ambulance. While I did start wearing my helmet I still managed to hurt myself just a week later in a spill that took me over the handle bars of my bike. I went to the doctor the next day to hear that I had fractured my radius. They sent me to a sports doctor who said it was not broken (enough) for a cast and it would heal on its own. Finally, we had a car accident but luckily no one was hurt, save the Civic.

We both managed to take fruitful trips to Central and South America for our work and even managed to take part of a trip together. Everything went very well except that Lauren had her purse stolen while we were in the airport waiting to come home. Passport and ID were luckily on her person.

With a year that seems to have thrown so much at us it is nice to still be standing and until today we were doing better than that (practically dancing). Today, though, was one of those days that seems to avalanche on you; a series of failures like eraser strokes working on the optimism you've worked so ward to sketch out for yourself. I won't get into the steps in the progression, but a certain shortcoming is proving detrimental to the recovery of our spirits. This morning Lauren noticed that our cat had not been around all night (a rarity, especially following our 9 day absence). We are still looking but are fairly certain he slipped out last night and we left him out there. It rained all day (Gov. Purdue's prayers are being answered, I guess) and we haven't seen him, or any trace of him, yet. If he shows up soon, it'll save 2007 for me, if he's gone, then I can surely say that I am glad 2007 will be as well.

On My Block

Sometimes I think there could be an entire blog about my neighborhood, if only seen through the right lens. It's at those same times I hope I am carrying a camera. It might be there and gone or something static and I'll have a chance to go back and snap a shot. Last week presented one such opportunity and I took full advantage.

This shot was taken at the church on the corner two blocks from my house. It's about that time of year when everyone goes through the chore of cleaning up the leaves in the yard (it took em awhile but they finally fell off). Most people use the heavy-duty brown paper bags which you can buy at the hardware store. The city comes around once every other week and picks up the yard waste. The church decided to take a different approach. Maybe they didn't want to spend money on the bags from the hardware store but the bags they ultimately chose seem like they would be even harder to get your hands on. What's more, they chose bags that no one would pick up without thinking twice.
I'm happy to report that the bags were picked up, though I am not by whom or when.

Walk it Out

School is now over but I thought I would give you a taste of one last assignment. It was about measuring walkability on street segments. All of the segments were around homes of students in the class and two students rated each segment. The segments were initially rated using Walkscore.com but it is mostly based on crow-fly proximity to businesses so it doesn't say anything about walkability (for example how pleasurable it is to walk on the segment). The only real outcome we could obtain from the assessment tool that we used was a rating of the other pedestrians on the segment. We turned it into a presence/absence indicator and found that the number of land uses on a segment as well as a higher rating of the segment's sidewalk quality and interesting sights all increased the odds of observing pedestrians on a segment. It was a first look at some rough data but the results are not too unbelievable. We even controlled for median income, auto ownership, age of the neighborhood and density.

But why look at that? Is walking to the store or a bus stop really physical activity? I have a hard time convincing myself of that sometimes. Regardless educating people about what IS physical activity and how they can fit it in their lives is something that is talked about a lot in the field. I found this graphic (originally published in the New York times Magazine with an article about France's jogging President) to be very interesting. I think it is getting at the point that information about a behavior like physical activity can affect an individuals' behaviors. There was not much more than this graphic and it didn't fit with the article exactly but judging by the metrics and the jogging part of the piece I think that's what they're talking about. If I find more I will let you know but take a look it's really interesting. One thing I wonder about is why is the 'informed' group skinnier than the control at time 1?

Tox II

In an effort to increase public health awareness around anthrax as well as show off some of my classmates' work, I've offered this space to Micah (a classmate). Here she is with a guest post.

So as Jason said, we had an assignment for our Toxicology class to make a video about a toxic exposure of some kind. My group (me and my main peep, Kim) chose to do the 2001 USPS Anthrax attacks. While the assignment was more synapse-stimulating than a paper or an exam, we spent significantly more time on the creation of this video. Coming up with the idea for the creative genius you see before you took a good day or so, and the "hours" of footage (aka, 2 minutes of good film and about 80 of us laughing) took another good chunk of time. iMovie is a horrible creation unless you have vargo there for inspirational words and to show you how to do anything cool, and the walk to the video lab at school seemed farther and farther away every time we went. All in all, it was fun to complain about during the ordeal, but we didn't kill each other and who knows who might see this thing on this widely-read public domain. Anybody hiring?

Straight Diesel

In this string of updates about the projects I am working on I would like to present the latest; the Railyard Risk Assessment. This project focuses on a hazard, quantification of possible exposures, use of dose-response information to determine risk, and a summary that expands on uncertainties and tries to give an idea of what it all means. This, apparently, is risk assessment.

Thanks to Ben's extracurricular work, we landed a nice project right here in Atlanta. We decided to look at residences being built right next to two large rail yards on Atlanta's west side.
We modeled the emissions coming from the yard's activities (using a Cali yard as a proxy) and then used a model from EPA to obtain the resultant concentrations of diesel particulate matter at the new homes. The actual risk is still being determined but the results could prove to be very interesting. Below is a movie shot from one of the lots.
The most perfect irony of this is that these new homes are Earth Craft, a green building certification that puts the word "healthy" in the first sentence of its self-description. This is one example of how marketing and narrowly focused, under-developed certifications are capitalizing on 'green' (also read healthy) trends without necessarily furthering the whole objective.

GA Clean Diesel
interested in buying one these homes?
More photos of the yard here

Grad School

Sometimes my own understanding of where I am in life and who I am can seem really off. I think I'm in one place and acting a certain way and then I catch a glimpse of myself from another angle and I see of myself in a completely different light.

Grad school can be like that. Everyone is idealistic and determined and at the same time sick of it and fed up. And even though we're in our 20s sometimes we act really childish but we still feel like we're qualified to handle really big problems. If you're in the middle of it you may not even notice what you're doing. Plus we hardly have time to reflect on our work (if we get it back). Sometimes you get to put your work in front of people and then it becomes a good lens or perhaps a mirror in which to see yourself.

In my efforts to work on the really big problems that grad school presents (assignments) this is the latest creation of which I was a part. It's a mock newscast about a toxic exposure, in this case tetrodotoxin. Enjoy.

Road Trip

This Thanksgiving, in an effort to save some cash on expensive plane tickets and dog boarding, we decided to rent a car and drive to New England. My love for a good road trip has never dimmed and so of course I was up for it. We even convinced Susan, Lauren's sister, to fly down here from New York and drive back up there with us. It was all Susan's idea, and honestly with the exception of me and few other people, no one could understand why she would want to do this. My philosophy was, the more the merrier, and I was glad that she had suggested it. Plus we never get to see her and so even if our time together was crammed in a Dodge Caliber with dog in tow it was time well spent. I'm not sure if she felt that way at the end of the trip but it's the thought that counts.

We left Atlanta early Tuesday morning and set off for Lambetville, NJ to stay with Lauren's dad in his apartment there. We made decent time and the back seat (with the dog) of the Dodge turned out to be a real hit, everyone fell asleep when seated there. We arrived in Lamberville around 8:30, 14.5 short hours after we left Atlanta.

Lambertville is a hip little town situated right on the Delaware across from New Hope, Pennsylvania. Lauren and I made it out for a walk along the river in the morning before leaving. From there we headed to Hampton, CT to stay on the farm with Lauren's mom and Mack. Here we spent our Thanksgiving before heading out on Friday to Newport to spend time with family there. By Saturday our short trip had come to end and it was time to pack up the car and hit the road once again. We were not sure where we were going to stop or stay on Saturday night but we set off just the same. We pondered going to DC to stay with friends and head down 95 but changed our minds somewhere in Virginia. Then we started thinking about finding a dog-friendly hotel in Charlotte but again changed our minds.

Ultimately we trudged through and beat the Sunday traffic by arriving at our house in the middle of the night on Saturday. By the end of it we had added 2,318 miles to the Caliber and see three generations of two sides of Lauren's family. We'd also eaten more than our fair share and paid our first visit to Lauren's dad's new house. In the process we managed to save over $1000 compared to flying and boarding the dog. Now we're trying to decide whether or not to do it again (to Michigan) in December.

Seeing Like a (noun)

The end of my semester is here and I am semi-swamped with little pieces of things to get done. I also find myself running constantly to another meeting. I was telling someone earlier today (while looking for a bright spot) that I like this time of the year as I get to cross so many things off my to do list. Of course getting them done and handing in quality work are not equivalent. Regardless I haven't found too many of my peers eager to share in my optimism.

As I have been away for the blog for a bit I thought I could at least share with you some of my work. For a Anthropological Perspectives on Global Health assignment I read a book and wrote a reaction paper. Here is a summary of the book, I'll spare you the reaction so as you can have your own. If it sparks your interest, follow the link at the bottom to buy it, or find me and you can borrow.

The cover of Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott features a z-shaped double bend in an empty road with little else around it except for meticulously manicured fields. The jog in the road is a systematic blip in an otherwise uniform grid of roads that have been laid out to define six-square-mile townships in North Dakota. The roads follow lines of longitude and are forced to dogleg every twenty-four miles in order to keep with the decreasing distance between longitudinal lines as they continue north. Initially, the photo seems an unimportant adornment on an otherwise detailed work of analysis, however once you have read the text this choice of photo becomes much clearer.

In the text, Scott points out the methods which states have used to simplify, control, standardize, manage, and manipulate complex and diverse systems; first in nature and eventually in social environments. Scott begins with the example of a managed forest in which specific characteristics of the forest (perhaps specific to a type of tree), for example growth rate/yield, are recorded, monitored, and managed so that over time the forest is changed to take on those characteristics that its managers have favored. He views this as an oversimplification of the complex system that is the forest and points out some of the flaws and vulnerabilities it exposes.

Having exhibited control of the ‘wild’ natural forest the management of inhabited land followed. Scott argues that similar simplifications and standardizations, most influentially with the cadastral maps, were a necessary part of modern statehood and important in colonization. Maps were developed so that the state could quickly survey lands for the enumeration and location of population, wealth, and resources allowing those in charge to act strategically to influence ownership and to ultimately impose their own values. The influence was increased though the use of standardized systems of measurement, languages and surnames. More importantly, Scott shows that as officials of these modern states assessed life as a series of categorizations they were removed, to some degree, from the society they governed.

Scott carries his analysis from the formation of modern states to larger social and philosophical movement of High Modernism. Here he explains some of the more extreme authoritarian views on using the new science of the day to manage people as well as place. In High Modernism, an understanding of administrative ordering of nature and society is assumed to be an entitlement to such duties. Proponents of such radicalism proposed a comprehensive rational engineering of all aspects of social life in order to improve the human condition. It is typified by a top-down structure, the rejection of the past as a model upon which to build and is influenced by the military mobilization of World War I. The technocratic nature of High Modernism brings with it an incredible hubris. This is amplified in the circumstance of colonization where visionaries of the day were less constrained to carry out grand schemes and the chasm of cultural knowledge was even greater. Here Scott points out the failures of High Modernist agriculture and ‘villagization’ in Africa.

Seeing Like a State

For the Birds

In this age of the internet, most of us are constantly turning to the internet for answers. In that search you are likely to come across multiple sites that provide access to the same type of information, and so the question becomes which one gives me the most accurate information and which are the easiest to use. The latter is a question of particular interest to me. New tools are always being developed to help the user work with the interface to find what their looking for and do so with efficiency.

This is most obvious in looking at the banners and sidebars that act like tables of contents for websites. One of the most useless tools that websites employ must be the sitemap. An example of web design navigation success are breadcrumbs that help you see where you've come from or the departments under which the information you are viewing fall.
Alternatively some webpages are designed specifically for getting people to the information they want when they have relatively little to go on. Our recent car search (which ended at a 2003 Jetta) had us trying out a few such web tools that allow you to customize your search by style, number of doors, power accessories, etc. All of these options are fairly familiar to all of us. Not many people have trouble telling you how many doors are on a car. However, in other situations these defining characteristics are not so clear.

We found ourselves in one such situation recently when while playing bocce ball in the back yard we saw an odd bird hopping around back there. Now, imagine going to a site like the used car site and entering wing style. That's when we came across whatbird.com. This site had a very helpful multistage selection search feature that helped us to finally identify our newest wildlife as the American Woodcock. You can choose from a number of options including call type and there are examples and pictures to help you make your selections. When Matt and I came in from the game I could only describe the bird as a chipmunk with wings. As you could imagine my description was not too helpful in identifying the bird, but thanks to the ingenuity of the tool we succeeded. It turned what felt like ignorance into knowledge.

If you have a web tool that you love please share it.

American Woodcock