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Polar Bears In A Snowstorm



Polar Bear

Polar Bear
by Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1920)
(via Wikicommons, Public Domain).




Southerners' Impositions




Hungry Polar Bears


Polar Bear Sign

Polar Bear Warning, Longyearbyen, Norway, via Wikicommons.





Polar Bear Economics





Do The Inuit Know Something That North Carolinians Don't?

Part I: Our Way of Life




Inuit Regions Map

The Inuit Way Of Life









The Royal We...Who Suck It Up



Mother with Baby Carriage
Cape Dorset (2002) by Ansgar Walk (WikiMedia Commons)






(To Be Continued...)

World AIDS Day, 2012

Today is 25th World AIDS Day, so more people than usual spent time last week reading about the world's progress conquering AIDS. In good news, deaths from AIDS have declined. In Sub-Saharan Africa they have declined by 32% in the last 5 years, continuing an excellent trend. But how do we perceive the progress? We wrote on World AIDS Day, 2009 about how Google tried to correct our search "HIV infections decrease", to "HIV infections increase".

The first search phrase, ending with "decrease", yielded only 1,940,000 results in .22 seconds, whereas the second, ending with "increase", gave 3,550,000 results in .18 seconds.

If Google was tracking a trend, they were wrong, because by 2009 HIV infections had decreased by 15% in 10 years. But we in the world were very accustomed to bad news about HIV infections and AIDS, as Google documented. Today, three years later, there's even better news for HIV/AIDS - on the drug development front, as well as on detection, treatment, and prevention fronts. That was an example in 2009 of how false bad news overwhelmed positive news (via a Google algorithm)

Today, the bad news is that people still die of AIDS all over the world - in Russia, China, Asia, Africa, and the US, where public health officials recently recommended that people ages 15-64 be tested for HIV. African countries, especially in Sub-Saharan countries, still have the most cases of HIV infected people, and many of people aren't being treated for what is basically affordably treatable. But how should we talk about this bad news? That is the subject of this post.

But the Bad News, How Shall We Put It? Shalll We Ignore It?

In the past few years an interesting conflict has arisen about news in Africa. Critics complain that Western media can't take its eyes off the cliched, ailing, and violent aspects of the African continent, thus giving an inaccurate, un-nuanced and harmful view of its many countries. Nicholas Kristof is a popular target.

The group Radi-Aid released a parody video urging Africans to give money to send radiators to Norway ("frostbite kills too"). Produced by Norwegian students, it mocks this so-called "poverty porn" in the style of the 1984 Band-Aid fund raiser. It's a charming video and relays a potent message. But realize that the Radi-Aid video mocks something that's 25 years old - as in, what can't you mock from 1984?

But beside that minor quibble, of course, I see their point, I think anyone can. If you've ever traveled, you've probably run into inaccurate media portrayals of your country that are just crazy. I remember reading an English paper in Asia that had only bizarre stories about the US, things like - Woman in Tennessee Found Herself In Closet Stomping Beetles. What? You had no idea where they found it -- could they have just made it up? Based on American TV shows, little kids would ask me if I ever got shot in a gunfight - NOO?

Cultural misconceptions are legion and universally perpetuated. I'm sure small towns in the Mid-West that occasionally get besieged by floods and tornadoes feel betrayed by the mainstream media too - Hey wait! we have great potlucks here and there's the most amazing other stuff too! New Orleans must have felt that way during and after Katrina. C'mon! Shot after shot of all those people in the stadium? It's not only Africa that's the subject of inaccurate, negative media portrayals, it's every other country, town and borough, and all subjects too - science, math, economics, election polling, women...they all have their bad day via the media and press.

Aid Solicitations, In the Eyes of The Beholder?

For African countries, a lot of so-called poverty-porn starts with international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). INGOs do use sympathy for fund-raising -- large-eyed children dragging teddy bears, or gathered around looking up at the camera pathetically, or forlorn in barren, monochromatic surroundings. To me it gets a little gross, but they use what works, what gets people to reach into their pockets and give money. These images get picked up or pushed upon the media and used as news. Here's a clear example of how deceptive this imagery can be. But these stories don't comprise all the news of any country.

Some commentators have pointed to what they say are "better" portrayals of Africa that could be used to fundraise. In one, a cute kid in a video acts out an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, interspersed with the movie's gunfight where "2000" people get killed. The video describes him as smart and articulate, without mentioning or questioning as far as I could tell the especially violent part of American culture that the ~5 year old is copying so very, very accurately. So clearly, different people find different solicitations using kids appealing. Some people take offense to a small child holding a bowl up, but have no problem with a small child acting out extreme violence with a pretend gun followed by a plea for donations. Personally, I have as much problem with the second as the first, and would also ask while we're at it -- shouldn't we question the ethics of using a child for fund-raising at all? Or is it ok as long as the child is wearing a shirt and not holding a bowl? (Then there are whole factions of international development that abhor aid altogether and they also have some good points that I'm not going to talk about here.)

Maybe News About Malaria Shouldn't Focus on Africa, Where 90% of All Cases Occur?

To their point, many other countries, India, the US, China, have crushing poverty, but aren't necessarily defined by it, as critics claim Africa is by Western media. That may be true, but when it comes to preventable infectious disease, 99% of people who die from AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis (TB) live in the developing world, and the center of the HIV/AIDS epidemic is still in sub-Saharan Africa, where 70% of all new infections among adults and 91% of new infections among children occur. Malaria kills about 780,000 people each year, and 90% of malaria cases are in Africa.

Such illness and death devastate families, workers, and economies. When mining companies in South Africa started treating workers for AIDS and malaria, they had a business goal, stop lost productivity. Similarly, in our global economy, Asia's and Africa's problems and successes affect the world. That means that how African nations attend to public health influences our own public health and impacts our companies that invest in Africa.

Reporting on Africa is not just about Africa, it's about us in the West too. Reporting is not a selfless endeavor. We absolutely should be reporting on Africa's "bad" news (not exclusively of course). Our public health problems (e.g. infectious disease, antibiotic resistance) derive from and are dependent on not only our own public health systems, but also those of developing nations. Our health depends on the policies, laws and regulations all nations produce and uphold for preventing and treating disease, and for drugs and pharmaceutical companies.

We understand that Africa knows investors want stable countries to invest in. African nations naturally want to discourage negative foreign media. But is it the job of responsible media to protect the image of nations? Or is it the job of responsible media, say American or European media, to report on issues that might impact (or interest) its citizens - like public health environments in countries like Africa or Asia or wherever that might promote pharmaceutical regimes that foster antibiotic resistance for instance, or public health environments that allow pandemics to spread for example?

Progress of International Development

For close to a century, international development has sought to raise basic standard of living the world over, not just Africa, but South America, Asia, Central America and parts of North America. Driven by various agendas and business interests and research, we've compiled a long history of what has worked and not worked. For many reasons, what seemed to work in Asia, South America, Central America, etc. didn't work well in Africa. In addition, various national tragedies bogged down progress there. No sooner was apartheid defeated in South Africa, for instance, then AIDS struck. Journalists weren't wrong to cover these events.

Journalists reporting these stories have also sometimes brought needed attention that often benefits the subjects. For instance media outlets reported on the 39 pharmaceutical countries that sued South Africa when it tried to import affordable AIDS drugs at the height of the AIDS epidemic. The companies eventually dropped the suit. When President Mbeki refused to acknowledge that HIV caused AIDS, the media was there. The media now has more opportunity to report positive AIDS news.

Prosperity To Spare

Recent prosperity in the west gave people the means to donate money and ideas for aid organizations. Take the Gates Foundation, founded in 1994. This 2001 Seattle Post Intelligencer article writes about how Bill Gates started slowly learning about international development and health needs in 1998:

"I had no idea," the Microsoft co-founder said. "I learned a lot about the whole vaccine miracle, about how effective they are and yet millions were still dying from these diseases.

"So we decided, jeez, the impact we could have by getting vaccines to these children and getting more funding for research into new vaccines could be just incredible."

That was only about fifteen years ago. A world business leader "had no idea" about preventable diseases in Africa. It's easy not to realize how many advances have been made in the past few decades, in part because what was unheard of in 2000 has now became common knowledge to everyone. Globalization of business has brought increasing attention to development issues that are no longer "a world away". But make not mistake, most of these ideas have been around for decades, like the fact that women's education is key to development. Vaccines have long been (albeit controversially) considered the ideal solution to diseases.

What's new is that foundations like the Gates Foundation are increasingly media savvy, and the media is increasingly in tune with the goals of development. This environment made it possible for Kristof to start writing what he did, and in many ways his articles were in synch with US development goals and rhetoric. (Part of the rational for invading Afghanistan, for instance was women's education.) But many of the most popular articles, for instance Kristof's, also opened readers' eyes to both positive as well as alarming stories outside of their mostly elite, privileged self-indulgent New York Times world view. Not a bad thing. Increasingly, global connections have eased people's ability to travel to different countries, increased curiosity about different cultures, and along with that, encouraged inclinations to want to help (I'm not going to argue whether the burgeoning aid industry is good or bad, but some of the 'wanting to help' inclinations, are selfless).

So Does Media Portray Africa Too Negatively?

A recent BBC program asked the question at a conference in Kampala, Uganda: Is media propagating negative stereotypes of Africa? The opinions were very interesting, ranging from a couple of people who that said African leaders themselves inflate problems in order to get foreign aid, to those who said that Africa was seen not as a problem but as an investment opportunity for many countries.

Of course there should be positive stories about African countries. But don't ignore the good that comes publicizing problems. While South Africa struggled with its AIDS crisis with the world advocating for its citizens, countries like China for years suppressed news of its AIDS epidemic. Other alternatives exist also, reporters and columnists who ignore and glaze over tragedy, and focus only on business that privileges the elite, and ignore those who are not in the elite. You can find those stories anywhere, if you would prefer them.

"Black Tuesday" and South Africa's Secrecy Bill




Black Tuesday


When Governments Aim to "Own" The Media




Hypocrisies of the Powerful









Rebukes From Those Who Know





It also gives anyone the right to:







Earthquake Prediction in Oklahoma and L'Aquila


Sparks, Oklahoma - Redefining Red State





Nothing's Too Different in Oklahoma





And in L'Aquila?





Hurricane Irene Disaster Management

Just Like 1908?

After Hurricane Irene, some people joked that the media sees hurricanes as a grand opportunity to dress up in the newest outdoor gear and brace against the howling wind, downed trees, and rain driving sideways (although sometimes pranksters steal the show.) Hurricanes have all the right elements for media profiteering too - drama, death, destruction and lots of "human interest". But to build drama, you need to build up the storm. On Friday night, August 25th, we linked to these four news stories in successive Tweets:

  • Hurricane Irene could be the most destructive hurricane to strike New York City since: 1903 (Published August 26, 2011) 25 Aug tweet acronymrequired
  • Hurricane Irene could be the most destructive hurricane to strike New York City since: 1908 (Published August 24, 2011) 25 Aug tweet acronymrequired
  • Hurricane Irene could be the most destructive hurricane to strike New York City since: 1938 (Published August 26, 2011 10:28 p.m. EDT) 25 Aug tweet acronymrequired
  • Hurricane Irene could be the most destructive hurricane to strike New York City since: 1985 (Published August 26, 2011 1:23AM) 25 Aug tweet acronymrequired

Not only can't forecasters predict with 100% accuracy the power or path of a storm, but certainly, as we showed, newspaper reporters can't. The media can't necessarily be faulted though, after all a hurricane is a moving target. In fact, as long as everyone tunes in, the media actually plays an helpful role public safety role, that is by creating more drama on television then any one person can witness outside, over-the-top media coverage can actually aid public safety officials.

The list of East Coast storms throughout history is extensive, but reporters plucked somewhat random mix of historical events out of the hundreds available: The so called Vagabond Hurricane of 1903, produced 65mph winds in Central Park; the deadly New England Hurricane of 1938, was a Category 3 at landfall; and Hurricane Gloria in 1985 struck as a Category 2 hurricane. It's unclear what storm in 1908 the Lehigh Valley Morning Call reporter was talking about, since none of the storms that year amounted to much, and on August 24th 2011, when the Morning Call published, most reporters were comparing Irene to Hurricane Katrina, not some random storm that blew out to sea in the Caribbean. Maybe the reporter hadn't had their morning coffee.

But there you have it, taken together, it's clear that storms can go many different ways and we don't have the technical or intuitive abilities to predict them exactly accurately, or at least to the degree that audiences seem to be demanding after the event.

That Healthy Cry, The Complainer - Alive and Well

When Irene actually hit, the hurricane created lots of flooding and destruction not to be trifled with. But as the New York Times reported after the storm, some New Yorkers were peeved at the pre-storm hype. New Yorkers expressed anger at the cops on bullhorns telling people to go inside, anger at the storm itself for not living up to its potential, and of course anger with Mayor Bloomberg. One person complained Bloomberg made people spend too much money: "The tuna fish and the other food, O.K., we're going to eat it. I don't need all this water and batteries, though."

But lets compare this outcome with the great bungling of Katrina in 2005, to see how things can easily go the other way. At least 1,836 people died in Katrina and property damage was estimated to be $81 billion 2005 USD.

FEMA took most of the fall for the Hurricane Katrina management disaster, along with FEMA administrator Michael Brown ,who appeared utterly useless despite fervent support from George W. Bush. As we wrote at the time in "FEMA- Turkey Farm Redux?", FEMA had failed US citizens in multiple hurricanes during the administration of George H.W. Bush in the 1980's, and had been expertly revived and made useful during the Bill Clinton administration under the leadership of James E. Witt. Then George W. Bush decimated the revived FEMA, using it as his father had. As the House Appropriations Committee reported in 1992, FEMA had been used as a "political dumping ground, 'a turkey farm', if you will, where large numbers of positions exist that can be conveniently and quietly filled by political appointment". (Washington Post July 31)

So given the recent history of Katrina, and the debacles of several state and city governments in last winter's multiple blizzards, it seems inane that so many people who lived through those disasters now fault Bloomberg as "the boy who cried wolf". But then people might complain no matter what, and given the somewhat unpredictable path of storms, I think everyone would agree that it's better to be alive complaining, than dead and swept out to sea because of lack of government warning.

Assuring Future Disasters are Worse

Of course we don't know how the government would have fared in a worse disaster. And while people complain about the lack of a bigger hurricane, FEMA is currently hindered from helping with Irene. Why? Apparently, a FEMA funding bill is being held up in the Senate while politicians with idiosyncratic proclivities indulge their hypocritical "family values" by meticulously delineating all the organizations that can't be paid with FEMA money.

To our detriment, we ignore larger issues while we complain. FEMA's role takes a role not only during and after a hurricane, but in adequately preparing people ahead of time, as we wrote in "FEMA and Disaster Preparedness". Neither FEMA nor state or local governments adequately helped prepare for Katrina, as we detailed in: "Disaster Preparedness - Can We?". Although states and cities didn't play as large a role in the the federal government failings as G.W. Bush would later say, rewriting of history, their role is important.

Of course, disaster preparedness means not only motivating citizens to buy supplies and stay inside, not only mobilizing a deft response, but shoring up infrastructure ahead of time. In the wake of Katrina, we all heard about the failure of governments to build adequate New Orlean's levees, an issue Acronym Required wrote about in "Levees - Our Blunder". However before Katrina, few people realized just how flagrantly officials ignored warnings about the weak levees. When the hurricane breached the walls, politicians acted surprised, that surprise masking the blunt unwillingness of politicians and US citizens to support and fund infrastructure.

We wrote about more widespread infrastructure failings in 2007, in "Guano Takes the Bridge, Pigeons Take the Fall". But infrastructure is easy to ignore. Just as vociferously as citizens complain about the hype preceding Hurricane Irene1, they remain stunningly silent on the lack of infrastructure preparedness. In fact there's loud clamoring to dismantle the very agencies that assure our safety. Obama has tried in some ways to address the infrastructure problem, not without criticism.

In the case of the New Orleans levees, the New Orlean's Times-Picayune reports that although $10 billion has been spent upgrading the levees, the Army Corps of Engineers is giving them a failing grade. The report says that the refurbished levees might stand a 100 year event, but a larger event will result in thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in property damage. This was exactly the criticism of the levees after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.


1 Here's an interesting analysis of the hype-factor of news relating to Hurricane Irene. The author uses a quantity of publications analysis to argue is that the storm was not hyped.


New Scientists Who Don't Do Science







  • "I hear it gives you cancer as well""


















































Science Blogging: The Better Journalism?

Science Journalism Debauchery






Digital Science Journalism - Publishing Freedom











Page Views



To Join Or Not To Join




Proving Your Worth








Getting The Details Right






"Blogging" is Worthy

















On what Obama needs to do:


On policy, he says:







On Communicating Climate Change: "Communicating Climate Change"

On Climate Change denial: Sea Change or Littoral Disaster

Business and Climate Change: "Carbon Emissions Disclosure Project"






Bisphenol A Bill Killed with a Pow-Wow and a Bottle of Chardonnay

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A Republican state senator in Oregon cleverly killed a state bill to ban bisphenol A when he reneged on a deal he made with Democrat senator. The bill to ban bisphenol-A in baby bottles (SB 695) had received bipartisan support in a 20-9 vote in April. With such support, people predicted it would continue to committee, but the GOP had other plans.

Oregon Senator Jackie Dingfelder, D-Portland, recounted an agreement she had made with Oregon House environment committee co-chair, Representative Vic Gilliam, R-Silverton. Apparently the two worked out that he would initiate a work session on SB 695 in exchange for committee action on some other bills. According to Dingfelder, Gilliam ditched his end of the bargain and effectively squashed the bill. Gilliam then sent Dingfelder a bottle of Chardonnay and a scrawled note that read: "After all I put you thru yesterday - it is a tribute to your character that you would keep the 1st and 2 parts of our pow-wow inspite of it all."[sic]

Dingfelder told reporters that Gilliam's reasons for dropping the bill were unclear - he indicated the GOP pressured him. One Republican lawmaker offered: "it's not because I want to kill children".

Plastics industry lobbyists had also campaigned against the bill. For instance the American Chemistry Council wrote a letter in early May to Ben Cannon and Vic Gilliam, co-chairs of the state House Energy, Environment and Water Committee. In the letter, ACC used isolated quotes from government agencies about research on canned and packaged food to argue incongruously that polycarbonate baby bottles shouldn't be banned. The letter also misrepresented the US FDA position. The FDA is especially concerned about the endocrine disrupting effects of BPA on babies, and advises parents to avoid using bottles with BPA. It advocates alternatives to BPA lined food containers. Yet the ACC letter stated "optimistically" that the FDA said BPA is "not unsafe" (safe).

Representative Gilliam also voted against a plastic bag ban, noting he thought they should be recycled instead. He said he was disappointed Dingfelder had released their personal correspondence to reporters.


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