The Journal Gazette published a good story on prescription drug overdoses: ‘ODs from Rx drugs soar: Legal opiates now tied to more deaths than heroin, cocaine combined.’ The story highlights some interesting statistics, and makes an important point:
… the problem is increasing even while most people’s concerns are elsewhere: Billions are spent to stop street-drug trafficking nationwide, and newspapers are filled with reports of drug busts and seizures. But in 2007, according to the National Vital Statistics System, prescription narcotics were involved in more overdose deaths than heroin and cocaine combined.
Today I saw an interesting chart:
This is a useful illustration because it clearly shows the main energy sources and users in the US, as well as separating the total energy used and wasted.
The original is from LLNL, I saw the link at Ars Technica.
I ran across the paper ‘Public perceptions of energy consumption and savings’. The authors conducted a survey to study how perceptions of energy use compares to the actual use of various appliances and transportation methods. For the appliances, they had people compare energy used to the power a 100 W lightbulb consumes in one hour. This is a convenient ranking method. It is almost the same as the way I usually think of energy used by electronics: I typically compare electrical power consumption to a 60 W incandescent bulb. For example, my computer setup (MacBook, Samsung monitor, external hard drive) is roughly equivalent to one 60 W bulb. I compare to 60 W bulbs instead of 100 W because they are more common. When I got to the point in the paper when they mention the 100 W lightbulb comparison, I stopped and did a rough estimate to compare electricity and gasoline.
A gallon of gas contains an average of 36.6 kWh. So, if a car gets 25 miles a gallon, it uses 1.46 kWh per mile. So, driving a car one mile is equivalent to keeping a 60 W light bulb on for 24.4 hours. Over one lightbulb-day per mile!
Next, I plotted this equivalency for a wide range of fuel economies, highlighting three locally common cars:
Of course, we (mostly) switched to compact fluorescent bulbs years ago. CFLs use less than a quarter of the energy of an incandescent bulb, and my car does better than 25 mpg; so, for me, driving a car a mile is more like keeping a bulb lit for over five days. Woah.
Anyway, it is an interesting paper showing that many people underestimate the energy consumption of power hungry devices, and overestimate the power consumption of small devices. It’s open access, so you should read it.
Suggested reading: ‘Public perceptions of energy consumption and savings’ (doi:10.1073/pnas.1001509107)
According to statistics cited by Sarah Meyer (of the Indiana BMV) in testimony before an Indiana General Assembly Committee, teens who have taken driver’s education classes are involved in more accidents that those who haven’t. Meyer did mention that the results could be skewed by the fact that teens who complete a formal driver’s education course can be licensed earlier than those who haven’t. This was my first thought when I saw this article. I couldn’t find the study online, so I can’t see if they looked into this possibility. I’d like to examine a study that takes this into account. The committee was also to hear testimony that the standards for teen drivers need to be tightened, and that teens tend to imitate the dangerous driving of the adults they see.
Recommended reading:
Which half of the US trade deficit is easier to shrink?
Probably petroleum. I don’t see much of a chance of major changes in the deficit in goods, but it is easy to significantly reduce the amount of oil consumed.
It looks like the Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis) has reached our neighborhood. The Ash trees in the area have been looking sick, but last night we finally realized that it was probably caused by Emerald Ash Borer. Oh well. The homogenization of the earth continues.
Recommended reading:
- Information about Emerald Ash Borer:
- Local news:
The image was found on Wikipedia, and is originally from the UDSA.
Calopogon tuberosus (grass-pink orchid) in a fen along the Pigeon River on a perfect summer day.
I just read Reading the Landscape of America by May Theilgaard Watts. It is an excellent popular introduction to understanding what you see as you walk and drive around the USA.
Reading the Landscape of America contains good descriptions of succession and development in various communities, extending back to the last ice age. This helps in understanding what grows where, why places with similar geography and climate can be so different, and why some ecosystems are fragile (or endangered) and others are more robust. Being able to figure out why what you see is where it is, and understand the implications, makes visiting new places—or revisiting familiar places—more enjoyable and enriching. It’s too bad I didn’t read this book a few years ago.
I read the second (1975) edition, which adds to the first (1957) edition. Many chapters in the second edition add a ‘Revisited’ section, where Watts went to the same places years later. It’d be great if a current ecologist would write additional ‘Revisited’ sections to cover the changes of the landscape and science in the past thirty-five years. I’d buy a copy. Either way, I’ll probably read this book again.
This book is now published by Nature Study Guild Publishers and is on Google Books. The cover image is from the publisher.
BibTeX citation:
@book{watts1975,
Author = {May Theilgaard Watts},
Publisher = {Macmillan Publishing},
Title = {Reading the Landscape of America},
Year = {1975}
}
This is a response to a misinformed editorial, ‘Government says unpaid internships may have to go: Why does it want to end a practice that benefits students?’ in the News-Sentinel. I submitted a version as a letter to the editor.
I strongly disagree with the June 14 editorial arguing that companies shouldn’t have to pay interns minimum wage. It is incorrect that “No one forces [students] to accept internships.” The reason “many companies are besieged by students who want them” is that many degree programs require an internship or practicum to graduate. Not only are the students spending a summer working for free—when most need to be making money to pay for school—they may have to pay the university for credit hours earned by working an internship. I’ll say that again: Interns are often paying to do productive work that benefits the company they were working for, as well as paying the cost of living for the time they are doing the internship. When I did my practicum several years ago, most students found one that paid somewhere between minimum wage and ten dollars an hour. When my brother did his two years ago, only a few students in his class were able to find paying internships. This is completely unreasonable. Since the employer is directly benefiting from the work of the interns, they should be required to at least pay enough to cover the student’s basic living expenses during the time they are interning. It is one thing for a non-profit or volunteer organization to have unpaid internships, but it exploitation when a for-profit company does not pay its interns.
