Atlanta

I hadn't planned on writing about this again today. (How many times have I started a post with that phrase? I forget, but a lot. Sadly, developments frequently make me change my plans about blogging.) Here's what made me change my plans It was a pair of Facebook posts on hip-hop and fashion mogul Russell Simmons' Facebook page. Here's post #1: And here's post #2: This, of course, is the news report regurgitating antivaccine talking points broadcast in Atlanta late last week by Ben Swann, an all-purpose conspiracy theorist and, apparently, now antivaccinationist, who is anchor for the…
Mark Pendergrast writes: To kick off this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks, I thought I would explain briefly how I came to write the book and then suggest some possible topics for discussion. The origin of the book goes back to an email I got in 2004 from my old high school and college friend, Andy Vernon, who wrote that I should consider writing the history of the EIS. I emailed back to say that I was honored, but what was the EIS? I had never heard of it. I knew Andy worked on tuberculosis at the CDC, but I didn't know that he had been a state-based EIS officer from 1978…
SciCurious has written a review of an interesting paper suggesting a correlation between obesity and city vs. non-city life. As usual, the review by Sci is excellent, but I have a comment or two to add. Having read the review and then the paper, I had to ask if it might be possible to conclude based on the data presentation that "race" (and thus "genetics") underlies the observed effect. This is because of this graph: The results as depicted here divides the population into black vs white, making it appear that skin color is a major factor. The paper does not make that specific argument…