recent flooding

Some recent flooding scenes in Concord.

Can I make it?

When Calves Have Gills

Fording Lowell Road

Thats Too Bad!

local flooding

So, three days of very hard rain have led to a fair amount of flooding in our local towns.  Here is the road we take to leave our little cul-de-sac.  Daunting, but navigable so far.

road flooded

Walden Pond and Climate Change

Harvard researchers have published a paper on the effect of climate change on the Walden Pond area.  Important to understand is how climate change can enable and strengthen the hand of invasive species. Interestingly, data from Thoreau's own journals were useful in this research.  Relevant snippet from the summary:

"Climate change may exacerbate species invasions across communities if non-native species are better able to respond to climate changes than native species."

Here is the link thread to the paper.

http://news.discovery.com/earth/how-climate-is-changing-walden-pond.html

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/02/when-success-spells-defeat/

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0008878

We often walk in these woods so its fun to find information that helps us understand and appreciate our local area in more detail.

supplements

Here is a great post and graphic from Information is Beautiful - http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements/  that describes the posible value of various supplements.  The cool thing is that the graphic is driven real-time off their updated data, so when new information comes in - the graphic is automagically updated.

I believe, to a certain extent, in the benefit of supplements.  These days I take, from time to time, a multi-vitamin, fish oil, folic acid, SAM-E, l-lysine, and vitamin D. 

winter wonderland

After the storm.

And, from last month.

climate science accuracy, advocacy

This article in the Washington Post captures some of my feelings about the issues raised by (in my opinion) carelessness in how climate science results have been communicated, or not.

See: "Series of missteps.... "

One of the fantastic qualities of the scientific method is focus on reproducibility of results; share your data, analysis, and conclusions, and others can verify or not your results.   Opinion and advocacy is welcome; both are separate from the scientific process.  Rely on science for scientific results; engage the political sphere to determine policy.

ICA in Boston

Yesterday we visited the ICA in Boston.  I was particularly interested in the Damian Ortega exhibit and found his work compelling.

Here is a photo of the ICA building as we approached from the back.

personal responsibility for health - patriotism 2.0

  
Great blog post at Jen’s Posterous

 http://hmrx.posterous.com/personal-responsibility-for-health-patriotism

This makes perfect sense to me.  One problem with health care is exactly as Jen describes.  Its easy for us to make poor health-related choices and then expect the heath care industry to solve our problem for us.  It certainly doesn't help that our free-market economy spends billions marketing poor choices to us. And also marketing diets and exercise schemes to help us counteract our bad habits.

Not to ignore the fact that real health care issues certainly arise, but our system could probably work better if we could spend more resources on providing health care remedies (and researching medical solutions) for unavoidable or otherwise tragic diseases and injuries.   Ironically, in a time of economic distress for many, it can turn out that eating better and exercising simply but with consistency, not only saves money in the short-term but can save larger heath care costs in the longer term.

dueling black holes?!

Thanks to Chandra and the Chandra Photo Album, via Harvard: http://www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/ngc6240/   Wouldn't want to live in this neighborhood:

more on healthy life extension

See: Living to 100 will be common in developed nations, study says from the Boston Globe, referring to recent research, to be published in The Lancet..

Snippet:

Danish specialists say that since the 20th century, people in developed countries are living about three decades longer than in the past. Surprisingly, the trend shows little sign of slowing down.

Profound changes ahead in how we think about life, its stages, and and our own personal and long-term planning. We'll need to manage new risks associated with longevity.