Tag Archives: nathan

The Viral Storm – Nathan Wolfe

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The Viral Storm

The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age

Nathan Wolfe

Genre: Biology

Price: $9.99

Publish Date: October 11, 2011

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Seller: Macmillan


“One of the world’s foremost virus hunters” ( Financial Times ), Stanford University biologist Nathan Wolfe reveals the origins of the world’s most deadly diseases and how we can combat and stop contagions. A “mix of biology, history, medicine, and first-hand experience [that] is potent and irresistible,”* The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age shares information Wolfe uncovered on his groundbreaking and dangerous research missions in the jungles of Africa and the rain forests of Borneo to provide an in-depth exploration of how lethal viruses evolved alongside human beings; how illnesses like HIV, swine flu, and bird flu almost wiped us out in the past; and why modern life has made our species vulnerable to the threat of a global pandemic. In a world where each new outbreak seems worse than the one before, Wolfe points the way forward, as new technologies are brought to bear in the most remote areas of the world to neutralize these viruses and even harness their power for the good of humanity. His provocative vision of the future will change the way we think about viruses, and perhaps remove a potential threat to humanity’s survival. “An astonishingly lucid book on an important topic. Deeply researched, yet effortlessly recounted.”—*Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies

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The Viral Storm – Nathan Wolfe

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Human Errors – Nathan H. Lents

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Human Errors
A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes
Nathan H. Lents

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $14.99

Publish Date: May 1, 2018

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Seller: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company


An illuminating, entertaining tour of the physical imperfections that make us human We humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are supposedly evolution’s greatest creation, why do we have such bad knees? Why do we catch head colds so often—two hundred times more often than a dog does? How come our wrists have so many useless bones? Why is the vast majority of our genetic code pointless? And are we really supposed to swallow and breathe through the same narrow tube? Surely there’s been some kind of mistake. As professor of biology Nathan H. Lents explains in  Human Errors, our evolutionary history is nothing if not a litany of mistakes, each more entertaining and enlightening than the last. The human body is one big pile of compromises. But that is also a testament to our greatness: as Lents shows, humans have so many design flaws precisely because we are very, very good at getting around them.   A rollicking, deeply informative tour of humans’ four billion year long evolutionary saga,  Human Errors  both celebrates our imperfections and offers an unconventional accounting of the cost of our success.

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Human Errors – Nathan H. Lents

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Here’s the Truth Behind Obamacare’s Horror Story Deductibles

Mother Jones

Recently, the go-to argument from the anti-Obamacare forces has been about deductibles. Sure, 20 million people have insurance. Sure, most of them can afford the premiums. But what’s the point if all it buys you is crappy insurance with a $6,000 deductible? As Nathan Nascimento put in National Review a few months ago, “what good is health-insurance coverage for middle- and low-income families if they can’t afford to use it?”

These crocodile tears would be amusing if they weren’t so infuriating. Nobody on the right has ever been willing to support higher funding so that deductibles can come down. In fact, folks on the right love high deductibles. It puts “skin in the game.” A combination of HSAs and high-deductible health policies is one of the standard bits of smoke-and-mirrors offered up by conservatives when you ask them what kind of national health care plan they’d like to see replace Obamacare.

But let’s put that aside for a moment and ask another question: what are the deductibles under Obamacare really like, anyway?1Here’s the answer:

The average deductible decreased from $900 to $850 in 2016. And as you can see if we extrapolate from the figures in the table, it looks like nearly two-thirds of all enrollees had deductibles under $1,000. Only about a fifth had the horror-story $6,000+ deductibles that we hear so much about.

But that’s not all. We don’t have figures for how this breaks down, but my guess is that the majority of the people with high deductibles are the famous “young invincibles” who are single, don’t qualify for subsidies because they’re fairly well off, and don’t think they’re going to get sick. So they buy the cheapest plan they can, take advantage of the preventive care stuff they’re allowed before the deductible kicks in, and go about their lives. No one in their right mind who had any kind of real health issues would ever buy a plan like this.

There are undoubtedly exceptions to this. There always are in a country the size of ours. I’m all for helping these folks out, but one way or another, that calls for more money, not less. Anybody who says otherwise is just playing with you.

1Hat tip to Andrew Sprung, who drew my attention to this table today.

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Here’s the Truth Behind Obamacare’s Horror Story Deductibles

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It’s Time to Separate the South From the Confederacy

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, the Memphis City Council cast its final vote to remove a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest from a downtown park. Despite the considerable pushback against the decision, I can’t help but feel a little hope that progress is being made in my home state.

Not to be mistaken for the garish Forrest statue in Nashville, this one is a tarnished bronze likeness of the Confederate general, slave trader, and first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. The statue tops a concrete burial vault that houses the remains of Forrest and his wife. The memorial has stood in Health Sciences Park (formerly Forrest Park) since 1905, when, 28 years after Forrest’s death, a group of wealthy, white Memphians dug up the general and his wife and entombed them in a vault beneath this statue in downtown Memphis. Astride his horse, Forrest faces north, positioned so he doesn’t seem to be retreating.

In the aftermath of the Charleston massacre and a renewed push to take down Confederate flags and other symbols of the Confederacy, the Memphis City Council voted to remove the statue and return the remains to Elmwood Cemetery, where Forrest was originally buried in accordance with his will. Surprisingly, much of the indignant outcry has surrounded the idea of moving the remains rather than removing the statue. In some of my recent personal conversations, people have expressed their outrage at such an “extreme” move.

A Confederate flag is draped over the base of the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest at a celebration of his 194th birthday in July. Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal via AP

Indeed, they do. At the ceremony unveiling the statue in May, 1905, nothing was said of Forrest’s order to massacre more than 300 African-American Union soldiers who had already surrendered at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, in 1864. His role as a leader in the KKK was never mentioned. Instead, the Forrest Monument Association spoke of his chivalry, and of heritage and honor. As Nate DiMeo notes in a recent episode of his podcast, The Memory Palace, the statue was unveiled “at a specific moment in time”: The city’s African-American population was increasing, and racial tensions were building. The memorial was a tip of the hat to an idealized past, and those who supported it hoped the symbol would inspire a similar future. “Memorials are not memories,” DiMeo says. “They have motives.”

The emphasis on tradition, heritage, and honor sounds familiar to me. I grew up in a tiny farming community about an hour and a half east of Memphis, in a place where those values tended to come before equality and the respect for anyone who isn’t white. My history classes were full of winding excuses about how the Civil War wasn’t really about slavery. It was a struggle over state’s rights, and economic power. Obviously. Dixie was a place of hospitality and heart—if you were white. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s name was everywhere. It was attached to a nearby state park, a handful of statues, and even the ROTC building on my college campus. DiMeo sees the current controversy as a collision between the present and history, but I’ve been staring at that collision since I was too young to know what it was.

DiMeo says that despite Forrest’s alleged regret at the end of his life for his actions, he’s no American role model. He imagines adding a plaque to the Forrest statue and others like it. “Maybe the plaque should just say, maybe they should all say, that the men who fought and died for the CSA, whatever their personal reasons, whatever was in their hearts, did so on behalf of a government, formed for the express purpose that men and women and children could be bought and sold and destroyed at will,” DiMeo says. I tend to agree.

There are people I’ve known my whole life who are fiercely protective of the Confederacy and its symbols. They mean well when they speak of heritage and honor, but their pride comes at the expense of those who have suffered far worse than we ever have. Their refusal to recognize that perpetuates a racism that is so insidious that it is confused with cultural values.

I love where I came from. I love the mile-wide stubborn streak I inherited from my deeply Southern grandmother, a woman who is strong and outspoken, because as the daughter of poor sharecroppers, she had to be. I love the syrupy sound of our accents, and I love dark, heady summer nights filled with fireflies. I love being part of a community that is armed with casseroles whenever tragedy catches someone unaware. I do not love the Confederacy, and I do not stand for its murderous agenda or its skewed racial hierarchy. We cannot change the past, but as Memphis removes the statue and tries to move forward, so should the South. It’s time to separate the South from the Confederacy.

Listen to The Memory Palace episode on the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue, “Notes on an Imaginary Plaque…”

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It’s Time to Separate the South From the Confederacy

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13 of the South’s Most Racist Monuments

Mother Jones

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In his “Most American of Monuments” project, Nathan Millis documents statues, plaques, and other monuments to the confederacy that dot parks and government grounds throughout the American South. Millis completed this body of work in 2014, but the photos have gained new significance in the wake of last week’s mass shooting at a historically-back church in Charleston, South Carolina, and the nationwide furor that has ensued since, encouraging the removal of the confederate flag from statehouses and online retailers alike.

As Millis’ project shows, even with the flag being removed from government buildings, these monuments to secessionist dreams are deeply ingrained within public spaces throughout the South.

All photos by Nathan Millis.

Caldwell County Courthouse, Lockhart, Texas

Confederate Square, Gonzales, Texas

Lee Park, Charlottesville, Virginia

Corsicana, TX

Colquitt, Georgia

Walton County Court House, DeFuniak Springs, Florida

Court Square, Ozark, Alabama

Ocala, Florida

Daviess County Courthouse, Owensboro, Kentucky

Linn Park, Birmingham, Alabama

Greensboro, North Carolina

Former Jackson County Courthouse and current Jackson County Public Library, Sylva, North Carolina

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13 of the South’s Most Racist Monuments

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This Republican’s Campaign Promise Is: Elect Me and I’ll Kill That Guy

Mother Jones

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When he first ran for statewide office in 2010, John Hickenlooper, the Democratic governor of Colorado, told voters he supported the death penalty. But last year, as the state prepared to kill Nathan Dunlap, a convicted quadruple-murderer whom doctors had diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Hickenlooper said that new information—about the cost of execution, Dunlap’s mental illness, and members of the jury who had changed their minds about killing Dunlap—had caused him to change his opinion. Hickenlooper stayed the execution but stopped short of granting full clemency—thus leaving his successors with the option of ordering Dunlap’s execution at some future date. “Colorado’s system of capital punishment is imperfect and inherently inequitable,” Hickenlooper said at the time. “Such a level of punishment really does demand perfection.”

Now Bob Beauprez, Hickenlooper’s Republican opponent, is running a campaign centered on a simple promise: Elect me and I’ll kill that guy.

“When I’m governor, Nathan Dunlap will be executed,” Beauprez, a former congressman who represented Colorado’s 7th District from 2003 to 2007, promised during a GOP primary debate in May. “This is not a flippant issue,” Beauprez’s communications director said in an email, “but Bob does believe capital punishment should be an option for our most heinous crimes.”

Hickenlooper, a once-popular mayor of Denver, is now running about even in the polls with Beauprez. And although it’s unclear exactly how much Hickenlooper’s death penalty stance plays into his struggles, a poll last year found that 67 percent of Coloradans disapproved of his decision in the Dunlap case.

“It was handled very clumsily,” says Kyle Saunders, a political scientist at Colorado State University. “It was a very nuanced decision in his head, but it came off being very wishy-washy and weak.”

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This Republican’s Campaign Promise Is: Elect Me and I’ll Kill That Guy

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Compost Council Launches Site That Connects Buyers and Sellers

Locally sourced compost is at the center of buy-compost.com’s model. Photo: Flickr

In the last few years, composting has become a profitable business. You can buy compost from big box stores, but one organization thinks the best compost for your backyard comes from your neighbor’s.

That’s why the U.S. Composting Council has launched buy-compost.com, a site that connects compost buyers with sellers in their own neighborhood via an interactive map, which highlights sellers in your zip code within a 125 mile radius.

Both small scale consumers and “prosumers,” like landscapers, nursery workers and other industry professional can use the site to locate healthy, local compost.

Sellers have also committed to donating compost to community gardens all around the country. This month, the council will launch the Million Tomato Compost Campaign – an effort combined with chefs and community gardens throughout the U.S. to grow one million tomatoes using donated compost.

“The Million Tomato Compost Campaign spreads the word that compost is a key component to building the healthy soil needed to grow sustainable, local food that helps build healthy communities,” the council says on its website.

Many chefs have agreed to help educate their communities, including schools and nonprofits, on how to grow their own sustainable food. Chef Nathan Lyon, host of Discovery Health’s local food-focused A Lyon in the Kitchen, will act as the face of the Million Tomato campaign.

Christina Caldwell

Contributing Writer

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Compost Council Launches Site That Connects Buyers and Sellers

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