Rainy run
I just got back from doing this crazy running but stopping every 500 yards or so to squat or jump workout thing from my now very soon to be finished book I've been working on.  The rain and cold were oddly invigorating.  I like how it's really hard to run well and jump well when you alternate them.  (Next week I get to start a different workout routine of running to the gym, but at least I don't have to stop until I get to the gym.)   
posted May 28, 2014 7:32 pm

Syngenta, loser company
I just finished reading in the New Yorker (Rachel Aviv's "A Valuable Reputation," in their February 10, 2014 issue, page 53, here) on how Syngeta, "one of the largest agribusinesses in the world," plotted to trash the reputation of a researcher Tyrone Hayes who discovered that their herbicide atrazine, "which is applied to more than half the corn in the United States" caused mutations in frogs.  Frogs exposed to atrazine, Hayes found, "could not be clearly identified as male or female: they had both testes and ovaries.  Others had multiple testes that were deformed."  Atrazine, the article went on to note, "is one of the most common contaminants of drinking water; an estimated 30 million Americans are exposed to trace amounts of the chemical."  Instead of doing something helpful, like investigating further or finding out if there is a way to grow corn with less atrazine or without atrazine at all, Syngenta has gone to outrageous lengths to discredit Hayes.  According to documents, Syngenta lavishly paid other scientists in order to "make Tyrone look as foolish as possible," gave "tens of thousands of dollars" to Fox News (of course) freelance science columnist Steven Milloy to write an article disparaging Hayes as a "junk scientist" with "lame" conclusions, sent their vice president of "global risk assessment," Gary Dickson, to intimidate Duke University, where Syngenta "had a year earlier established a $50,000 endowment," into rescinding a job offer to Hayes, and petitioned the EPA to ignore Hayes' findings.  Elizabeth Whelen, the president of the American Council on Science and Health, "which asked Syngenta for $100,000 that year," went on MSNBC to declare as "bogus" and "not based on science" a New York Times article here about an investigation "suggesting that atrazine levels frequently surpass the maximum threshold allowed in drinking water" and that mothers living close to water sources containing atrazine "were more likely to have babies who were underweight or had a defect in which intestines and other organs protrude from the body."  Syngenta held weekly meetings discussing how "it could invalidate Hayes's research, including hiring "communications manager" Sherry Ford, who made lists with action items like "ask journals to retract, set trap to entice him to sue," and "investigate wife."  Syngenta sent hostile letters to the dean of the university where Hayes worked, and hired people to travel to his public speaking appearances and ask questions they designed to embarrass him.   How does a publicly traded company get away with behavior like this?  Meanwhile, even as the European Commission decided to remove atrazine from the market, the EPA approved its continued use.  Other articles on Syngenta and atrazine: Mieuxprevenir's "How Syngenta Poisons People and the Environment" here, Inspiration Green's article here, and Wikipedia's article on atrazine here.  Read more about Syngenta's apparently ongoing efforts to deceive the public about atrazine  here and here.
posted February 21, 2014, 7:43 pm

Those now-elusive headphones
I've been running around with Sony headphones, Sony MDR-W08L headphones, to be exact, since the eighties.  They're great, except that they always fail after about three months of ordinary use (as I have said before, obliquely, on Amazon here).  While the housewives of Amazon were hotly debating over my comment, Sony quietly phased out manufacturing the headphones, as the defect, apparently relating to a strain point developing in the wire as it exited the body of the headphones, became more widely known.  I decided to check out different headphones, as the price for MDR-W08Ls began to climb from its former $7.99 to beyond $100 and more.  I tried different headphones, too, but none had the good sound of the Sonys.  So I tried earbuds, four different kinds of earbuds, but I have to categorically dismiss earbuds out of hand because #1, they are too weak, with a tinny sound that isn't as beefy and large as the headphones, #2, the wires perpetually entangle themselves into Gordian knots, #3, no matter what size earbuds I try (they're always three different-sized buds that come with each pair), the buds do not stay in my ears, and #4, I can't just take the earbuds off and put them around my neck like I can with the headphones.  A Greek guy named Diomidis has posted a page on how to use a microwelder to repair the headphones here, I actually bought a microwelder and tried it on three pairs of headphones, but in all three cases, microwelding did not restore the lost channel.  Apparently the rest of the world is moving onto earbuds; guess I will too. 
posted January 3, 2014, 7:17 pm

For entries posted prior to 2013, I invite you to my archive.