How We Live

I do not support this Idea and it is here just as a reminder to myself so as not to forget.

QUOTE:

Boas was trained as a physicist. His student work was in psychophysics, the science that measures things like sensory thresholds, and his dissertation was an effort to determine the degree to which light must increase in intensity for people to perceive a change in the color of water. This might seem an utterly sterile topic for research, but Boas reached an unorthodox conclusion: it depends. Our perception of color is a function of circumstances. Different observers have different perceptions depending on their expectations and experiences, and those differences are not innate. They are, consciously or unconsciously, learned. It made no sense, Boas decided, to talk about a general law of sensory thresholds.

It’s an academic adage that a scholar’s career consists of footnotes to the dissertation, and, in a way, this was true for Boas. He was an empiricist: he collected facts, and he was not inclined to theoretical speculation. But he thought that the basic fact about human beings is that the facts about them change, because circumstances change. Our lives may be determined, by some combination of genes, environment, and culture, but they are not predetermined.

Boas’s revolutionary work was a study, undertaken for a congressional committee and published in 1911, on the bodily form—head size, height, hair color, age at pubescence—of the children of recent European immigrants. The impetus was public anxiety that immigrants from southern and eastern Europe would, through intermarriage, dilute the racial stock (sometimes identified as “Nordic”). Boas’s finding, which was that the cranial index of children born in America differed from that of children of the same background born in Europe, rocked the field. It upset long-believed claims that racial differences, including what we would now call ethnic differences, are immutable. The evidence proved, Boas said, “the plasticity of human types.” It also showed that variations within groups are greater than variations between groups.

In 1911, this was not what most white scientists and politicians wanted to hear. Boas’s career spanned an exceptionally active period of Aryan supremacy. Boas witnessed the legalization of Jim Crow; the widespread acceptance of social Darwinism and eugenics; imperial expansion, including the American occupation of the Philippines; drastic restrictions on immigration; the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan; and the coming to power of Adolf Hitler. (Boas was Jewish.) Often, science was invoked as a justification for colonization, segregation, discrimination, exclusion, sterilization, or extermination. Boas devoted his life to showing people that the science they were relying on was bad science. “He believed the world must be made safe for differences,” Ruth Benedict wrote when Boas died. END QUOTE.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/26/how-cultural-anthropologists-redefined-humanity?utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_082019&utm_medium=email&bxid=5c439ffccff06b42ec7f1c84&cndid=55982516&esrc=&utm_term=TNY_Daily

A Sea Story

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AARP Immunization knowledge test

Score: 100%

You answered 8 out of 8 questions correctly.

1. How often do adults 65 and older need the Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis) or Td (tetanus, diphtheria) booster vaccine?

Your Answer: Once for Tdap, then a Td booster every 10 years

Correct Answer: Once for Tdap, then a Td booster every 10 yearsThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that every adult receive a Tdap vaccination, then a Td booster every 10 years. Also, women should get the Tdap vaccine each time they are pregnant.

2. What is pertussis?

Your Answer: Whooping cough

Correct Answer: Whooping coughThe highly contagious respiratory disease, for which there is a vaccination, can affect people of all ages but can be fatal in babies under a year old, according to the CDC.

3. The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices now recommends this vaccine for shingles.

Your Answer: Shingrix

Correct Answer: ShingrixThe two-dose vaccine protects against the painful rash of shingles, which is caused by the varicella-zoster virus.

4. Who is at increased risk for meningitis?

Your Answer: Someone with a damaged spleen

Correct Answer: Someone with a damaged spleenVaccinations are available for meningitis, which is a bacterial infection that causes swelling around the brain and spinal cord. The spleen plays an important role in killing bacteria in the bloodstream, and people with damaged spleens are more vulnerable to many infections, including meningitis.

5. How often should most adults over 65 get the pneumococcal vaccine (pneumonia)?

Your Answer: There are two vaccines, and each should be given one time, a year apart

Correct Answer: There are two vaccines, and each should be given one time, a year apartThe CDC currently recommends a vaccine called PVC13 first, then a dose of the PPSV23 vaccine a year later. The vaccines protect against different strains of pneumococcal bacteria.

6. Who should be sure to talk to a doctor about their heightened risk of a reaction before getting the influenza vaccine?

Your Answer: Those who are allergic to eggs

Correct Answer: Those who are allergic to eggsThe flu vaccine has egg protein in it, but the CDC now considers the risk of a severe reaction in people allergic to eggs to be low. It still, however, recommends that people with a history of severe egg allergies be given the vaccine under the supervision of a medical professional who can recognize and manage severe allergic conditions.

7. The risk of this side effect from a flu vaccine varies from season to season, but the CDC estimates it is very low in the population as a whole.

Your Answer: Guillian-Barré syndrome

Correct Answer: Guillian-Barré syndromeThe immune systems in patients with Guillian-Barré syndrome attack and damage their nerve cells. Most patients recover fully within a few weeks, although death has been reported in rare cases.

8. Why are people born before 1957 usually immune to measles and mumps?

Your Answer: Nobody was vaccinated before 1957, so those born before are likely to have had the disease and already have immunity.

Correct Answer: Nobody was vaccinated before 1957, so those born before are likely to have had the disease and already have immunity.Note, however, that if you were born before 1957 and don’t know your immunization status, you should ask your doctor if you need to get the vaccine.

Do you belive?

“To believe something is to act as if it’s true”- Dallas Willard

“It’s not a lie if you truly believe it”- George Castanza.

I guess I would believe Dallas Willard before old George but then again, they are saying the same thing.

Rats and the Elephant

This is the article about the above video: Here is the url.

TED Event: Water, Waste Water, Effluents

A Teds talk subject: The summer of 2019 has seen heat records tumble like dominoes across the Northern Hemisphere. On May 26, the thermometer climbed to 102 in Savannah, Georgia, an all-time high for that month; the same day, it hit an unprecedented 103.1 in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island. Then, in June, a three-week heat wave tore through Pakistan and India, where it reached 123.4 in the central city of Churu. In July, it was Western Europe’s turn when the temperature soared to 108.7 in Paris and 102.2 in Brussels.