Song of the day:
Fiona Apple, “Sleep to Dream” (Live at SXSW)
I can't see the future, but I know it's watching me
“We were able to go back five years later with funding provided by the Thrasher Foundation and determine through interviews that between 60% and 70% were still filtering. Most were using the technique we had introduced but we also found that control villages where we hadn’t instructed them to filter had actually begun to do so.
By analyzing the data, we discovered there was herd immunity. If you were a family that did not filter but you were surrounded by families who did, you were protected. This was because the transmission, person-to-person, was significantly reduced in that situation. We could say with great confidence that filtration played a major role in the reduction of cholera. The paper showing the herd effect and the sustainability of this initiative was published in the online Journal of the American Academy of Microbiology.”
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By analyzing the data, we discovered there was herd immunity. If you were a family that did not filter but you were surrounded by families who did, you were protected. This was because the transmission, person-to-person, was significantly reduced in that situation. We could say with great confidence that filtration played a major role in the reduction of cholera. The paper showing the herd effect and the sustainability of this initiative was published in the online Journal of the American Academy of Microbiology.”
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Rita Colwell on folding saris and saving lives
Saris are meant to be worn. But did you know that the garment can also be used to radically reduce the spread of cholera?
In 2003, environment microbiologist, scientific educator, and distinguished professor at the University of Maryland Rita Colwell conducted a study in which 7,000 women in Bangladesh were trained to filter the water they gathered every day through a cotton sari folded four times, which reduced the spread of cholera by almost 48%.
(via poptech)Song of the day:
Trentemøller, “Shades of Marble”
(From the soundtrack to “The Skin I Live In”)
Song of the day: Bullion, “You Still Believe In Dee” (Beach Boys vs J Dilla)
When I pick up the book, it is well past my bedtime, but I am wide awake, and a little voice in the back of my head convinces me that I can get away with reading a few chapters, just a few dozen pages before bed. Only thirty minutes or so. Won’t hurt a thing. After all, I have a stack of library books on the coffee table, and they won’t wait forever. When else will I find the time? I never lie better than when I lie to myself.
I settle back on the couch and start paging through the slim volume. It fits neatly in my hands, cradled as a hedge against the night, against sleep, against tomorrow. The house is quiet but for the hum of the air conditioner and the oddly comforting sound of a snoring cat nestled deep in the battered arm chair across the room.
This time of night feels like it belongs to me, but only because I’m stealing it from myself. I stay up far too late and then regret it. I drag myself out of bed in the morning and stumble through work, only keeping it together long enough to punch the minimum amount of buttons in a row for eight hours before driving home, eyes watering in the evening sun. I lay down on the couch and come to a few hours later, stiff-necked and dehydrated, wondering why I did it again.
But the book, this book, it’s something else, and I remember why. I remember why I treasure that stolen time. The pages turn in a steady rhythm and before I know it I’m halfway done, and it’s obvious that I might as well just finish, never mind sleeping. My fate is sealed. Right now I am awake, more awake than I’ve been in I don’t know how long, and I remember. This feeling.
It feels like coming up for air. Like I’ve been drowning all this time and didn’t even know it. All that cold weight pressing down on me until I convinced myself it must be air. Then I surface and the sun is shining on my face like it’s the first time.
There is nothing I love more than reading a book so good that it overtakes me. When I am overcome with emotion, or sit up on the couch in surprise, or close the last page and just stare as feelings of awe wash over me, that is when I understand my purpose.
In these moments I feel truly present in my life, and my only desire is that I might someday inspire the same feelings in another person. That I might tell a story so well that it takes their breath away, or causes them to smile in recognition.
This certainty is difficult to hold on to, however. More often than not it slips away in the light of morning, like a dream forgotten, and I sink back under the surface of those endless unremarkable days.
However, on days when I’m having a hard time believing in anything at all, that little voice in the back of my head tells me to find something good to read and damn the consequences.
On lucky days, something good to read finds me.
She catches my eye as she walks past, mostly because her outfit seems out of place in a Freebird’s. Her top is artfully slitted down the spine in horizontal rows, her skirt is short and black, and her heels are perilously high. She stands in front of the trash can, legs crossed at the ankles in a way that seems calculated to draw attention, and burps demurely.
As soon as she walks back to her table, I start trying to picture who she came in with. It’s hard to guess her age; her face is young, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I imagine her sitting with the sort of guy who usually ends up managing a Freebird’s: in his twenties, with elaborate arm tattoos peeking out from under a thrift store t-shirt.
When I get up to leave, I turn and scan the room to satisfy my curiosity. At first I think she’s already left until I see her sitting at a table surrounded by her family. They can’t be anything else; mother, father, two young kids and her, the oldest daughter. The rest of her family is dressed down, t-shirts and baseball caps, tired expression on her mother’s face. In context, the girl’s outfit (for she is a girl, maybe seventeen) tells a different story. It makes her look older than she is, but younger than she wants.
