Author Archives: Jonathan Soroko

About Jonathan Soroko

Revived from the dead, 18-July-2013

What's happening at The Pump Handle

Liz Borkowski : Occupational Health News Roundup at, of course, The Pump Handle

NB: The name is a reference to John Snow and the Broad Street pump handle, not as some have surmised, “the pump [which] don’t work ’cause the vandals stole the handle,” in the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues.

Nanotube SNURs: Nano step forward, nano step back

“Yes Sir, she got her safety training” Mark Catlin (SEIU and APHA OHS Section) finds another amazing collection of historical films with worker safety themes.

FDA to Finally Reconsider Safety of BPA (Liz Borkowski) 

Celeste Monforton on Learning OHS from Sir Thomas Legge, a review of

the collection assembled by John W. Ward and Christian Warren entitled “Silent Victories : The History and Practice of Public Health in 20th Century America”  (Oxford, 2007.)  Our colleagues Tony Robbins and Phil Landrigan wrote a chapter on occupational disease and injury prevention, and in it, introduce me to Sir Thomas Legge.

He was the UK’s first medical Inspector of Factories (appointed in 1897) and he capitalized on his title and training to expose occupational hazards, propose interventions and demonstrate their effectiveness at reducing harm.  Robbins and Landrigan offer one little gem from Legge that is too good to keep to myself.  Legge proposed several axioms to reduce workers’ risk of lead poisoning, but with just a little tweaking, they seem quite appropriate for other workplace hazards:

Read Monforton’s complete piece at Learning OHS from Sir Thomas Legge.

Paul Bedard/U.S. News: Ridge book makes additional assertions

Former DHS head Tom Ridge’s new book has made headlines with the assertion that h was pressured to raise the national threat level prior to the 2004 elections.

His credibility on this point can be questioned since the matter has come up before, to which he’s responded “We don’t do politics” at the Department of Homeland Security. The standard question on cross-examination, as any third-year law student should be able to tell you, would be: Were you lyingthen, or are you lyingnow?

Either way, not a favorable impression of Secretary Ridge’s credibility. Let’s then put aside the question of the 2004 pre-election threat levels.

Paul Bedard at U.S. New & World Report reports that the book also contains the following assertions:

  1. Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings;
  2. was “blindsided” by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him
  3. found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored

Mr. Bedard is the author/editor of a feature at USN&WR called Washington Whispers, which we’ll be adding to our RSS feeds.

Assume what one wants about the 2004 elections and the threat levels. Bedard has spotted more troubling issues – (1) and (2) supra suggest that creating the Departmen of Homeland Security may have been a meaningless gesture, and that protestations of interagency cooperation were disingenuous; (3) suggests that someone may actually have spotted the problems with employing someone as FEMA head without any qualifications other than English fluency.

makes assertions

DataSF – DataSF – Liberating City Data

Once again, San Francisco innovates, by making municipal data available online in what appears to be a more comprehensive effort than done elsewhere.The project is called DataSF

.

DataSF is a clearinghouse of datasets available from the City & County of San Francisco. While there is plenty of room for improvement, our goal in releasing this site is:

(1) improve access to data

(2) help our community create innovative apps

(3) understand what datasets you’d like to see

(4) get feedback on the quality of our datasets

DataSF: Liberating City Data.

Via Matt Mullenweg

.

Tadataka Yamada, M.D. “Poverty, Wealth, and Access to Pandemic Influenza Vaccines” in N.E.J.M.

From Dr.  Tadataka Yamada’s  “Poverty, Wealth, and Access to Pandemic Influenza Vaccines”

in N.E.J.M (link is to free full-text article):

On June 11, 2009, Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), declared that the status of the influenza A (H1N1) pandemic had reached phase 6 — active transmission on a global scale. Until now, the case fatality rate of this influenza has been quite low, but history teaches us that the situation could take a turn for the worse during the next wave of the pandemic. If a 1918-like pandemic were to occur today, tens of millions of people could die, the vast majority of them in the world’s poorest countries.

Fortunately, the prospects for developing an effective vaccine to prevent infection with the current H1N1 virus are excellent, and the world’s pharmaceutical companies are working diligently at this task. In contemplating equal access to such a vaccine, it is important to consider three key issues: manufacturing capacity, cost, and delivery.

Only a few countries in the world have plants for manufacturing influenza vaccine, and three companies — GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, and Novartis — account for most of the world’s manufacturing capacity. The number of doses of vaccine against H1N1 influenza that could be produced with the existing capacity is very large, but the sobering truth is that even if production were switched over completely from seasonal influenza vaccine to pandemic influenza vaccine, there would not be nearly enough for everyone in the world. The size of the gap in potential supply depends greatly on the dose that is required, and it may be possible to reduce the necessary dose by as much as 75% with the use of an adjuvant. The challenging problem is that much, if not most, of the manufacturing capacity is already spoken for through purchasing contracts held by many of the world’s wealthy countries. Continue reading →

Open Fire Academy fall classes

CERTIFICATION COURSES
We will begin opening registration for the October 2009 Classes. However, to help our sponsor maintain appropriate documentation, we must require all students to complete the Haywood Community college application. Before we can accept payment or send out enrollment keys, we must have this form. It can be sent by email to admin@openfireacademy.org or fax it to 715.479.2852. fire at night

Understand that registration is on a first come- first served basis. So act quickly.

The courses we are offering in October:
Fire Officer I10/26/200912/20/2009$60.00
Fire Officer II10/5/200911/29/2009$60.00
Fire Officer III 10/12/200912/6/2009$60.00
Fire Officer IV10/19/200912/13/2009$60.00

Fire Instructor I 10/5/200911/29/2009$60.00
Fire Instructor II 9/7/200911/1/2009$60.00
Fire Instructor III 10/5/200911/29/2009$60.00

Incident Safety Officer10/5/2009 11/29/2009$60.00

Fire and Life Safety Educator I 10/12/2009 21/6/2009 $60.00

Fire and Life Safety Educator I 10/19/2009 12/13/2009$60.00

Introduction to Visual Mind 11/2/2009 11/27/2009$50.00

Introduction to Wildland Behavior 11/2/2009 11/27/2009 $60.00

The link to download the proper registration form is:
http://openfireacademy.com/course/modedit.php?update=1723&return=0

REMEMBER: These are set up on first come/first serve, so you want to get into the class, get us the registration for ASAP as the class will fill up quickly.

TRAINING SESSIONS
We have seen many of you sign up for the openfireacademy.org email service. We hope you have found it to be helpful. But wouldn’t you like to take it further? In addition to an email and chat system, there is a calendar, word processor, spreadsheets, presentations (similar to your PowerPoint,) and much much more! The key with these is that everything is run from the web… no need to store on your computer and they are accessible from any computer with an internet connection or a smart phone with web access. We will be delivering an orientation training on how to use the apps package to get you going on using it to the fullest.

The course is free and registration is simple. There is a link on the main page called “OFA Apps Orientation”. Sign up there and you are ready to go. There are no tuition costs to take the course.

If your department would like to utilize OFA Apps in your department, you are welcome to use the OFA Apps for free. However, some have said they would like a departmental version for more security. If this is something you would like, contact admin@openfireacademy.org and we will get you started.

Violence against ER nurses

Liz Borkowski

at The  Pump Handle posts on evidence of violence against ER nurses:

n a national survey by the Emergency Nurses Association, more than half of emergency-department nurses reported that they’ve been physically assaulted on the job. For many nurses, being assaulted is a recurring problem: Approximately one-fourth of the 3,465 respondents reported experiencing physical violence more than 20 times in the past three years. While all hospital staff are at risk of both physical assault and verbal abuse, the problem is particularly severe in EDs, and against ED nurses in particular.

Violence Against ER Nurses

Michael Allen and Julie VanDusky of Quantitative Peace on Blackwater

Michael A. Allen and Julie VanDusky – both founders of the blog Quantitative Peace –  have published  Employing Force: The Decision to Use Private Actors in Inter-State Wars

. An excerpt:

The contemporary rise to infamy of Blackwater Worldwide and the private corporation’s misdeeds in the Iraq War has historical precedents. That is, it is not unheard of for a state to employ non-state actors to carry out traditional state activities such as the use of force – something the modern

state is supposed to have a monopoly over. In this paper, we build a game theoretic model that determines the prospects for using non-state actors in combat on behalf of the state. From this model, we hypothesize that despite the risk of agency loss by these private combatants, certain

conditions increases the likelihood of their use. Specifically, autocratic polities are predicted to have a positive influence on the employment of non-state combatants while their democratic peers will prefer to abstain from such activities. We test these hypotheses using a censored probit model for all bilateral wars from 1816-2002.

Separating signal from noise, or re-reading a message with the expectation of different words

Writing in the context of the discovery process in civil litigation, Anne Kershaw and Joseph Howie write in Law Technology News of the fallacy of reviewing identical copies

of electronic messages as if each were, in effect, a separate paper document.

In civil litigation, this increases delay and cost.

In the context of intelligence analysis – particularly open-source – it’s a point ignored at the risk of missing important data – or reviewing it too late. A single item duplicated in volume is still a single item – the first is signal, the others merely noise.

Robert Baer on Brian Lehrer/WNYC

A conversation worth listening to: Robert Baer, former CIA officer, interviewed by Brian Lehrer. Link to WNYC archive here .

Baer – we’ll try to update later with links to his books – I’ve read all but the most recent – is also a columnist for Time . Here’s a link to his latest piece, The CIA Is Keeping Secrets. Hello?

I’ve found Baer to be thoughtful, incisive and unpretentious. Agree with him or not (I confess that I do, for the most part), his contribution to the public discussion about terrorism/counter-terrorism is invaluable.

Human-Powered Monorail

This has many of the advantages of bicycles – and several more:

  • resistant to weather –
  • because they’re on a predefined, car-free path, bicycle/vehicle accidents seem highly unlikely (assuming the routes are planned reasonably);
  • the bicycle theft problem which plagues bicycle-friendly cities like Amsterdam seems unlikely to be a problem.

– Via Inhabitat

– and in turn via TreeHugger.

schweeb-ed02

From Jorge Chapa’s post on Inhabitat

What could be more fun than gliding along on an eco-chic bicycle

? How about shooting through the skies in a pedal-powered monorail capsule! A bunch of entrepreneuring New Zealanders has created just such a human-powered monorail system, known as the Shweeb. Their creation does double duty, acting not just as an innovative transportation system, but also an amusement ride. Are our cities the next step?

The technology behind the Shweeb is remarkably simple – the only infrastructure required is a network of interconnected single rails. A number of pods are hung from this these lines, which are powered by the people sitting inside them. In principle, these pods are no different than recumbent bicycles – they can achieve close to 25 mph, are comfortable to use, and can be used by nearly anyone.

Although we don’t expect to see cities connected by pedal-powered monorail systems anytime soon, there are a number of applications where they could be useful. Think of guided tours through natural parks, scenic routes, adventure camps, and developments that require large pieces of land and a reasonable amount of population.

For now the system is in use on Schweeb’s grounds in New Zealand. If you are feeling adventurous, feel free to visit them at Ngongotha, New Zealand.

+ The Schweeb

As noted above, Via Inhabitat – and in turn via TreeHugger.

How China Polices the Internet: Kathrin Hille of the Financial Times

Kathrin Hille of the Financial Times (London) with a detailed, nuanced – and very disturbing contemporary account of how China suppresses and deters dissent in How China Polices the Internet Excerpts follow:

On the night of January 29 this year, five peasants were delivered into Jinning detention centre, a dark little facility in the province of Yunnan in south­western China. They were accused of illegal logging, a lucrative sideline for many farmers in this impoverished region.

It was a routine arrest. But 10 days later one of the men, a 24-year-old named Li Qiaoming, was dead. Presenting his bruised and swollen corpse to shocked parents on February 12, the police said Li had died accidentally during a game of blind man’s buff, or “elude the cat” as it’s called in China. Officers explained to the elderly couple that their son had been chosen as the “cat”, was blindfolded by cellmates, and while chasing the “mice” banged his head into a wall with such force that he died of his injuries four days later. The case was closed and Li’s parents sent back to their village.

But the next night, a Friday, officers on duty in a different department of the Yunnan police – the internet security management division – detected some unusual online activity. The story of Li’s death was being discussed with fervour. Two prominent local bloggers asked how stumbling into a wall could possibly kill someone. Internet bulletin-board users ridiculed the official explanation, suggesting instead that Li had been beaten to death by jail wardens. A cartoon appeared, showing three men in striped prison outfits with their heads stuck in the walls and the floor of a cell.

Continue reading →