New Yorker magazine alert thread

i think the subtext is really more that we'll come around to these measures once we do.

That's why I brought up the earlier article. We had cleared so many regions of mosquitos by the 70s, thus saving countless lives from malaria, but western fears of ddt trumped eradicating malaria.

i'm sorry but is this - Balls, difference is that mosquitos are a notorious deadly vector for the spread of disease, highly resistant to eradication. Unlike wolves or cats or whatever. - supposed to be an argument in YOUR favor???

I actually thought the TED piece was more interesting than it could have been! Some interesting asides about the place of education/intellectualism in the U.S. and the kinds of people who gravitate toward TED.

Just meant that i'm not concerned with genetically modified stuff in general,.just the idea of mutant mosquitos.

well as long as this country weighs concerns based on ignorance and superstition has heavily as concerns based on science and public health i'm sure we'll be ok. meanwhile jenny mccarthy is in playboy again this month apparently.

Vaccines cause dengue fever.

Husband just assured me he had been vaccinated for dengue, which is a lie.

Topic came up because we are figuring out what we do/do not need to do as far as travel medicine for an upcoming trip to Sri Lanka.

Does anyone really take antimalarials? Everyone I know who has traveled/lived in a malaria-endemic place has "not bothered."

Anyway mosquitos are part of the food chain so, y'know, beware unintended consequences and whatnot. What will the bats eat?

ive taken anti antimalarials and not taken antimalarials, its really much better to just take them, people sometime die and more often get sick and have their trip ruined, its not that much of a hassle, just dont get the ones that give you nightmares

"Page gives a restrained but brilliantly satirical performance as an intellectual and emotional faker. She's one of the greatest of Allen's female creations."

because if anyone knows about being an intellectual faker...

they make a lengthy point in that article about how egyptian mosquitos are not a keystone in the ecological food chain
they're sort of at the top of their chain and are feeding off of one of the few other megafauna species that function as ultrapredators, i.e. us

aedes mosquitos are a nonnative species in north america, are not 'part of the food chain'. also curious how bombing aedes w/ insecticide (which does affect native species along w/ o yeah humans)(but then again that's only if you believe biochemists and ecologists whose 'opinions' clearly aren't as valid as average joe) would somehow be less disruptive on this nonexistent place in the food chain that effectively breeding them out. maybe the bats can feed on the blood of christ.

balls and i just want what's best for you why can't you see that
*sets frankensquito to "kill"*

http://www.fairfaxunderground.com/forum/file.php?40,file=36695,filename=MansquitoPromo.jpg

^ chemtrails pic?

i too want what's best for balls

That was a still from Mansquito, and it was funny.

Does anyone really take antimalarials? Everyone I know who has traveled/lived in a malaria-endemic place has "not bothered."

I had a friend in college who forgot to take them before going to Central America and then got malaria. But I think he "forgot" rather than forgot, and now I can't remember if he was lying about the malaria.

Huh, this friend has a Wikipedia entry, and I have now learned he was interviewed for a New Yorker article.

The Gladwell/DDT article exaggerates the effectiveness of DDT and has lead to a lot of right wing cranks writing nonsense. Mosquitos were becoming resistant to it around the time it got stopped being sprayed, and the replacement chemicals that were just as good if not better. Right now bug nets really are the best way to fight it.

some posts about it here, mostly going on about it not being "banned" which can be skipped: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/category/ddt/

Gladwell wrong? =0

W/E Malcolm Gladwell just gets off on flipping you over on your back like "You think it's one way, but it's another! BLAOW!"

But all the bad stuff about DDT, its effectiveness and/or dangers, were discovered after the US more or less stopped using it, no?

I just read the Christian Marclay profile from a few months ago. Good stuff.

But all the bad stuff about DDT, its effectiveness and/or dangers, were discovered after the US more or less stopped using it, no?

the version i'd heard was that it was the anti-DDT stuff in Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" that brought about the US ban (eventually).

Many of the younger female staff writers are kind of rowr, is this some kind of NYC thing.

uh

JUST SAYING.

No but I mean it's not hard to figure out why that might happen

Who are we talking about? Lauren Collins? Ariel Levy?

Larissa Macfqurharar?

the version i'd heard was that it was the anti-DDT stuff in Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" that brought about the US ban (eventually).

Isn't that in the piece I noted? Where DDT was well on its way to ending malaria, then along comes "Silent Spring" to put the end to that, even though the scientific verdict was out?

oh, i get you now-- but the "bad stuff" about DDT was already (in the process of being) discovered, no? else she wouldn't have had anything to write about.

I thought she was warning about what might happen, which she weighed heavier than the menace of malaria, which killed millions and made me massively alliterative. I could totally be wrong, but I could have sworn at the time of "Silent Spring" there was no definitive, or close to definitive, verdict on DDT, but the book was so effective that (rich, western) people didn't want to wait to find out what could happen.

silent spring also spawned a mainstream middlebrow ecomovement, the value of which is up for grabs but is kinda important nonetheless

rachel carson went to my high school

/max

xposts

the impression that i got - and this is based almost entirely on listening to the guardian science podcast a month ago - was that she, while she was a biologist working for the US govt, heard from various scientific contacts that the mass use of pesticides on fields in the US was having a terrible effect, and that effect was travelling up the food chain, and that was what she wrote about. but, yes, i didn't get the impression that she was particularly thinking about the use of DDT to specifically combat mosquitos who spread malaria.

Lauren Collins, Wendell Steavenson, and Julia Ioffe.

here is another link about DDT and malaria control: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3186

That was a good piece, despite too much Hitler bait. However, it misses the point, at least rhetorically. Carson turned out to be right about resistance to DDT as well as its dangers ... but those weren't determined for several more years, if not decades. At the time of "Silent Spring," as I understand it, her warning was just that, a mostly unfounded warning.

Now, to argue for renewed DDT use, yeah, that would totally go against reason and science. But back then she effectively marshaled support with worst case scenario predictions. To our benefit! But if that New Yorker article was at all accurate, it sounds like the ban went into place right when that guy was making real progress on the anti-mosquito front. fwiw.

sounding the batuman klaxon: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/07/african-drumming-in-istanbul.html

lazy ass magazine on vacation all summer

just read the mosquito article - pretty exciting and promising stuff, and agree with balls's assessment itt

Anyway mosquitos are part of the food chain so, y'know, beware unintended consequences and whatnot. What will the bats eat?

― quincie, Sunday, July 8, 2012 3:36 PM (5 days ago)

the article goes out of its way a couple times to mention and cite that mosquitos, especially this particular species which is non-native to north america, aren't really essential parts of any food chain. i'll be interested to read further about this but it seems like the potential benefits pretty far outweigh the risks

a follow-up of sorts (free): http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/07/mosquitoes-and-nimbyism.html

mosquitos are worthless horrible people and should be banished from the earth if at all possible

2 good pieces in this week: forensic linguistics article (which is kinda pro forma but has an interesting subject) and the strongman competition article (which is great all around)

cool, hello cottage reading.

strongman 1 is not paywalled btw & yes, v good - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/07/23/120723fa_fact_bilger?currentPage=all