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Showing posts from April, 2010

Power outage

The power's out again. This time it was a conductor on one of the lines that was fried by lightning last night. The power goes out all the time but this time the fault is in the village. Half of us are without power now. There was a guy from Eskom here today, but it could be a long time before it's restored, as they have to send someone from Vryburg to fix it. Hopefully I'll be back up and running before too long, but if not you know why.

Sunset

 From this evening.

Why is HIV/AIDS so bad in Southern Africa?

AIDS is bad throughout sub-Saharan Africa, but it's much worse in Southern Africa, particularly in Botswana, South Africa, and Swaziland. I've been trying to figure out why this is. It's a challenging question. I've been doing a bit of research and it seems there isn't a single reason (or set of reasons) that everyone agrees upon. Dr. Kevin De Cock (no, really) says there's a variety of reasons , but there's no conclusive evidence: "It is the question we are asked most often – why is the situation so bad in sub-Saharan Africa? It is a combination of factors – more commercial sex workers, more ulcerative sexually transmitted diseases, a young population and concurrent sexual partnerships." "Sexual behaviour is obviously important but it doesn't seem to explain [all] the differences between populations. Even if the total number of sexual partners [in sub-Saharan Africa] is no greater than in the UK, there seems to be a higher frequency o

Harry Potter y el Peace Corps Voluntario

Recientemente he terminado los tres primeros libros en la serie de Harry Potter en Español. Por eso me gustaría decir unas pocas palabras sobre estos libros. Primero lo siento mucho que mi español es tan malo. Estoy tratando. De todos modos, pensé que era muy interestante leer un libro en Español que ue yo conocía muy bien en Inglés. (No es que yo sé, pero pensé que la traducción era buena.) En particular, me di cuenta de que Rowling utiliza adverbios demasiados--tal vez yo no lo sé, pero suenan peor adverbios en español. Sin embargo, los tres primeros libros son bastante buenos, mucho mas mejor que los últimos tres. Es interesante para ver qué tan bien me acuerdo de los libros. Es muy bueno para practicar la idioma. El proyecto que viene: leer los primeros quatros libros en Afrikaans! (Done with the help of some online dictionaries. Feel free to point out mistakes, by the way.)

South Africa takes the offensive against AIDS

Here's some welcome news on the public health front. South Africa has started a new program to combat the AIDS epidemic: South Africa, trying to overcome years of denial and delay in confronting its monumental AIDS crisis, is now in the midst of a feverish buildup of testing, treatment and prevention that United Nations officials say is the largest and fastest expansion of AIDS services ever attempted by any nation. The undertaking will be expensive and difficult to pull off, but in the past month alone the government has enabled 519 hospitals and clinics to dispense AIDS medicines, more than it had in all the years combined since South Africa began providing antiretroviral drugs to its people in 2004, South African health officials said. [...] For now, though, there is optimism among the scientists and advocates who had despaired as the nation dithered on AIDS under its former president, Thabo Mbeki. “I’ve never known such a gathering of momentum around H.I.V. as in the last mon

The last of summer

If you remember my picture of the riverbed from my favorite vantage point here last summer, it was significantly drier and browner. Here's a vision of the change from the summer rains before we fade back into winter.

Article of the week

The Ashcroft Justice Department destroys the life of an innocent man. "The FBI raided Hatfill’s rented storage locker in Ocala, Florida, where his father owned a thoroughbred horse farm; the agency also searched a townhouse in Washington, D.C., owned by his longtime girlfriend, a slim, elegant accountant whom Hatfill calls “Boo.” (To guard her privacy, he asked that her real name not be used.) Agents rifled through Boo’s closets and drawers, breaking cherished keepsakes. “They told me, ‘Your boyfriend murdered five people,’” she said to me recently, unable to talk about it without tears. Hatfill was fired from SAIC. The official explanation given was that he had failed to maintain a necessary security clearance; the real reason, he believes, was that the government wanted him fired. He immediately landed the associate directorship of a fledgling Louisiana State University program designed to train firefighters and other emergency personnel to respond to terrorist acts and natura

Sunset

 This from yesterday. The clouds looked oddly substantial for cirrus, or whatever you call them (altostratus?). They reminded me of a windshield after the year's first hard freeze, or perhaps bright patches of lichen on a flat stone. Purty!

Fahrenheit 451: why I will never be fluent in Setswana

 I swear I didn't mean to do this. Luckily I found a spare copy. UPDATE: Argh! Spelling mistakes are haunting my life. Just today a fellow volunteer threatened grievous bodily injury for spelling her name wrong. Keeping these two variations straight is a challenge for someone with my shortcomings. Blame my wild youth.

Geology in action

 The riverbed has been substantially excavated with all the rain over the past few months. I estimate it has cut into its channel by 6-12 inches in most places. Maybe in 15 million years there will be a sweet canyon down here. I'll keep everyone posted.

Warm fuzzies

 The latest storm might have beat hell out of my broken-down shack, but it did make a pretty nice flash flood. Not all bad.

Why is Africa poor?

Nicholas Kristof poses a question in the NYT: Why is Africa poor? Is it a legacy of colonial exploitation? Tropical diseases and parasites? Or is it that local mammals, like the zebra and the African elephant, were difficult to domesticate and harness in agriculture? There’s truth in each of these explanations. But a visit to Zimbabwe highlights perhaps the main reason: bad governance. The tyrannical, incompetent and corrupt rule of Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, has turned one of Africa’s most advanced countries into a shambles. Later he details the trials of a parentless family doing the best they can, it's really quite moving. Click through and see here for a slideshow. It's a reminder of how nice I have it here in South Africa. But I'd like to address his main point, which he goes into in more detail at his blog : Clearly colonialism — and the disastrous colonial borders left behind — have been a problem. Some people think colonialism is the central problem, a

I get smote by Thor

I'm on Skype when the call comes from outside: "Thabo! Pula e tla!" (The rain is coming--Thabo is my Setswana name.) I take a quick break and get my clothes down off the line. Two hours previously the sky had been completely clear, but now there are some moderately threatening clouds rolling in. I go back inside, close my screen door, and unplug my electronics. At this point I feel sand blowing on my skin, and I realize the wind has come up. It's blowing so hard I can barely get the door closed, and I hear heavy things smashing around outside. During the five seconds the door was open about a half-inch of dirt has collected in my bucket bath. I worry my roof is about to blow off, but then the rain comes, as hard as I have ever felt it. The rain is pouring in unbroken streams to the floor in about six places. I distribute some buckets and pans around to catch some of the mess. Then: the hail. It is utterly deafening under the tin roof. The hail is boun

Vampire fiction

It's hard to believe I'm recommending this multi-book review , given that I haven't read any of the books mentioned. But as a wave of Twilight ("2000+ pages of treacly teenage melodrama") obsession swept through the female ranks of our Peace Corps group recently, I'm going to link it anyway. The books by Harris look worth checking out, though, and I reckon someone here's got "True Blood" on their hard drive.

Wake! to a rusty pot full of blood

I was having my morning serving of Morvite (my new favorite South African food--it's a decent blend of nutrients, not horribly disgusting, requires no preparation whatsover, plus it staves off all kinds of vitamin deficiencies) when I heard a strangled choking death rattle coming from outside my door. Turns out it was my family slaughtering a goat for Sunday brunch. If it's Sunday and the sun is up, the beer is out at my house. My host brother is back (the one I thought was dying ), and the family wanted to make him some good food to help him get stronger. He looks like death warmed over--rail skinny with a giant potbelly. He's got AIDS and tuberculosis, and the belly is apparently from the tuberculosis meds. They tear hell out of your liver, which makes you retain fluids. But according to my host sister, he's much better than he was a couple weeks ago, when he couldn't walk or talk and they had to use diapers on him.

Color opinion bleg

What color is this eye? I can never get a straight answer out of people. I'd go with gray myself.

Iceland eruption

I totally missed the first round, but it seems a rather random volcano under the Eyjafjalla glacier in Iceland has erupted for the second time in a month . People throughout Europe are stuck as the ash plume is made of tiny silicate particles that would shred a plane's engines: By Friday morning, most of Europe’s major airports — crucial hubs for international travelers — were closed. Thousands of flights had been canceled since the disruption began on Thursday, stranding or delaying millions of passengers from North America to Asia. Stuff like this reminds us how tenuous our existence is here, and how rather common events (on the geologic scale) are staggeringly violent by our standards. This is a relatively minor inconvenience compared to the devastation that would ensue from an asteroid impact--events that are not as uncommon as once thought . I'm reminded of Carl Sagan : Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, ever

Quote of the week

"The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the worth of that which is put at hazard. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up the game, player and all. Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no

Guest post: What's It Like To Be a Peace Corps Sibling (PCS)? and Cultural Belonging

[Front matter: My sister also gave me this piece about being the sibling of a volunteer. (Or PCS, as she hilariously puts it.) Some great thoughts from the other side of the ocean. We PCVs tend to be pretty self-absorbed (me worst of all), and it's nice to get some fresh perspective.] Allow me to preface this by saying that my brother and I have always been very close. When you grow up in an extremely small town (<200 people), you have to play with any kids there are, even if it's your little sister. Also, I am no where near the writer that my brother is. [Baloney.] I was going to make this two essays about PCS and culture but the deeper I got into the subject, I realized much of my experience as a PCS was due to specific cultures. I am sure that many siblings of people in the peace corps have very different experiences for many reasons, but there are are some common factor. Since it is impossible to know what other PCS experience, I will stick to what I know, but I&#

A decent day teaching

 Today I didn't do terribly in school, which is almost a first. Of course, it wasn't with the intermediate phase, which is always a trial. Today I taught Grade 8 English, using some copied textbooks the Kalahari Experience folks had left here during their stay (good on them for doing that, it's huge help). The story was a pretty simple one about whale-watching--how a whale is different from a fish, how whales have been protected by international treaty, etc. Most of the kids didn't quite get it at first, but as we went through some of the vocabulary and concepts, they got curious. Of course, none of them had seen a whale before, so I had to do a quick improvised lesson on the difference between whales and fish, how gills work, and how a whale can breathe when its mouth is underwater. They got downright incredulous when I told them about how big a whale is: ME: See, in paragraph seven, it says this whale is fifty tonnes. Do you know what a tonne is? STUDENTS: No. M

TNC on Confederacy worship

"What undergirds all of this alleged honoring of the Confederacy, is a kind of ancestor-worship that isn't. The Lost Cause is necromancy--it summons the dead and enslaves them to the need of their vainglorious, self-styled descendants. Its greatest crime is how it denies, even in death, the humanity of the very people it claims to venerate. This isn't about "honoring" the past--it's about an inability to cope with the present." Check it out . He was giving me goosebumps.

Absurdism > Hate

I can't believe I missed this . It might be the sweetest thing I've ever seen. First, a little background. The Westboro Baptist Church is a truly creepy cult (really, just a couple families) that goes around protesting things like dead soldiers' funerals with signs that say things like "God hates Obama," (and much worse). Real lunatics. However, a protest at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco was totally deflated by a bunch of wacky creative types that stole their thunder. I'm reminded strongly of Reed College. Awesome. Made my day. Check the link for some more photos, including a unicorn! UPDATE: Bonus prank by a police officer on her own sergeant here .

Guest post: Why Not To Loan Your Car to Geologists

[Front matter: my sister gave me this awesome story about a recent company trip for your reading enjoyment. I think you'll like it. I sure did!] There are many professionals to whom I would not lend my car. Lawyers, doctors...but most of all, geologists. My chosen profession is geology and while most of my accomplices are wonderful, brilliant people, I wouldn't trust them with a pen. Recently, I endured a particularly harsh field work trip that cemented my beliefs. While much of science has turned to computer modeling, geology still relies heavily on basic field work. I spent a week in March mapping areas in and around Death Valley with nineteen other geologists in four brand-new rental Suburbans. One had six miles on the odometer. As you might have expected, we were rather hard on the cars and bodies. We spent the first few days on paved roads, hiking to field areas, mapping, drinking, and being generally good rental car customers. One of the interesting things about re

Ze Germans were here

The folks from the Kalahari Experience were here the last couple weeks. I just missed them as I got back the evening of they day they left. Apparently they spent their time doing intensive English and maths work with the Grade Rs and 7-9s. It's a shame as I was looking forward to meeting them and seeing how they worked with the kids. Who knows if they or I are doing any good down here. Sometimes I think that South Africa is at a place in its development where it needs to start taking care of its own problems. But I'm sure that these KE guys at least helped a little bit at the margin. What more can you ask for, really? Perhaps I'll catch them next year.

Hungry?

Check out this graph courtesy of Ezra Klei n: Obviously the big surprise is that the US doesn't really consume much more food than other developed countries, even though our obesity rate is much, much higher. But check out South Africa! No wonder I've been losing weight.

Interesting

"As a retired clinical psychologist, Clark Martin was well acquainted with traditional treatments for depression, but his own case seemed untreatable as he struggled through chemotherapy and other grueling regimens for kidney cancer. Counseling seemed futile to him. So did the antidepressant pills he tried. Nothing had any lasting effect until, at the age of 65, he had his first psychedelic experience. He left his home in Vancouver, Wash., to take part in an experiment at Johns Hopkins medical school involving psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient found in certain mushrooms. Scientists are taking a new look at hallucinogens, which became taboo among regulators after enthusiasts like Timothy Leary promoted them in the 1960s with the slogan “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Now, using rigorous protocols and safeguards, scientists have won permission to study once again the drugs’ potential for treating mental problems and illuminating the nature of consciousness. After taking the hall

Fiction: Dirt

It’s Sunday and he has invited me on a drive out to the coast and I go with him. I meet him in the parking lot near his place and he looks at me hard. We get in his nice car and at first it is uncomfortable but I fill up the silence easily. Outside of town we get a flat tire. I stay in the car because it’s drizzling but soon I get anxious and follow him out. He pries the hubcap off with his pocketknife and works the jack. I chatter away because silence makes me uncomfortable though sometimes my talking just makes it worse but I can’t stop. I ask him questions about the tire, which brings out some conversation from him because he knows about cars, which never hurt someone on purpose. He is done and points to a dirt road off the main road. “Let’s go exploring.” “Why?” I can’t remember the last time I set foot on a dirt road. “I’ll be right back then.” He slouches off. “Wait.” I follow him down the road. I hate being alone. The dirt road is short. There is a fence and past that, some

Chameleon blogging

 This was one of the more interesting discoveries on the trail. They really do change color, and their eyes really do point in different directions! This one had an unfortunate accident soon after this picture, though.

The banksters

If you read that Matt Taibbi article I linked the other day, you won't be surprised that Goldman Sachs and their cronies also do that kind of thing to whole countries : In early February, Der Spiegel (a German magazine) broke the story that Greece has been hiding the extent of its debt for years with the aid of U.S. investment banks. In 2001, Goldman was paid $300 million to structure a complex derivative deal that allowed Greece to borrow billions while hiding the true extent of its debt. Without this creative assist, Greece may not have been accepted into the common currency “Eurozone.” Because the deal was structured as a currency swap (a type of derivative) and not as a loan, it was secret, bilateral and off-book. Goldman may have been the only party that knew about it, leading many to speculate how it may have profited from the knowledge. Last week, the other shoe dropped. The New York Times reported that a company backed by Goldman, JP Morgan Chase and other big banks had se

Longtom marathon reax and Easter vacation

I'm not religious myself, but I appreciate school breaks. In the spirit of zombies and holidays obviously swiped from previous pagan celebrations, I present here my Easter tale. Mmm, fertility rites. The first order of business was the marathon, which I've already mentioned, but I'd like to go into it a little more thoroughly as it was my first time and I quite enjoyed the experience. First, a little background. The last competitive running I did was in 8th grade, when I ran track and did the 200m and 800m events. I forget my 800 time (it wasn't great), but my 200 was a respectable ~26 seconds (respectable for middle school, heh). In short, I've never been a distance runner and always had antipathy for the whole business. That changed in the last few months, as I've spent hours training for this marathon and grew to like being out there on the road by myself. It seems that by pushing myself past the brutal misery stage I actually grew to like running. Th

Picture of the week

The Orion Nebula. View the nebulosity .

Link dump

Don't miss Paul Krugman on the economics of climate change . New hominid discovered right here in South Africa. South Africa is also fighting with Obama about the huge new coal-fired power plant planned here. Nicholas Kristof has a depressing take on a recent trip to Zimbabwe. HP says they have developed some nanoscale technology that could replace both transistors and flash memory.

Article of the week

The latest from Matt Taibbi : As public services in and around Birmingham were stripped to the bone, Pack struggled to support her family on a weekly unemployment check of $260. Nearly a fourth of that went to pay for her health insurance, which the county no longer covered. She also fielded calls from laid-off co-workers who had it even tougher. "I'd be on the phone sometimes until two in the morning," she says. "I had to talk more than one person out of suicide. For some of the men supporting families, it was so hard — foreclosure, bankruptcy. I'd go to bed at night, and I'd be in tears." Homes stood empty, businesses were boarded up, and parts of already-blighted Birmingham began to take on the feel of a ghost town. There were also a few bills that were unique to the area — like the $64 sewer bill that Pack and her family paid each month. "Yeah, it went up about 400 percent just over the past few years," she says. The sewer bill, in fact, is

A glimmer of good news

Well, well. By some demonic incantations and a seven-year lease on my soul from Nokia, I managed to massage my internet phone back to life. I'll be up with some more updates tomorrow, but right now I'm going to kick back, tie off, and shoot some news. Stay tuned. PS: It was a bit unsettling how happy I was when I coaxed this dadgum thing back to life. I'm sure I could quit anytime, though.

Quote of the week

"Some observers, including both liberals and conservatives, have sometimes referred to Rubio as the “Republican Obama,” but Lewis goes beyond this and essentially argues that Rubio should run for President fresh off of a Senate election victory he has not yet won because this is what Obama did after he was elected to the Senate. By promoting Rubio as a desirable presidential candidate this early, Lewis would evidently like to see an even less experienced state legislator seek his party’s presidential nomination. Obama causes a very strange reaction in Republicans. On the one hand, they want to regard him as a joke and an incompetent, but they also desperately want to find someone who can imitate his appeal and success, and so it is almost as if they go out of their way to anoint whatever young politician they come across as their new hero and then disregard all of the person’s liabilities by saying, “Well, he’s no more inexperienced than Obama was” or “She’s still better than Obam

Eugene TerreBlanche murdered

Last Saturday, Eugene TerreBlanche , one of the pivotal figures of the end of apartheid, was murdered at his home outside of Ventersdorp in Northwest province, apparently over a wage dispute. This comes in the midst of a racial controversy over a song sung by the ANC youth leader Julius Malema which included the lyrics "kill the Boer." (Boer is Afrikaans for farmer, and has become a rather offensive phrase for whites in South Africa.) ANC president Jacob Zuma and other ANC leaders are distancing themselves from Malema, but he has yet to be formally punished. Terreblanche was a sinister yet somewhat goofy figure during the end of apartheid. His organization, the AWB (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging--Afrikaner Resistance Movement), used faintly disguised Nazi paraphernalia (like a three-pointed swastika) and brandished all kinds of weapons. They stormed the World Trade Centre during the CODESA negotiations. Later they showed the last gasp of white supremacist resistance

Computers

Well my internet phone is still hosed, but I'm working with my mugging companion to get his computers fixed up so I've got some access today. This is a new foray for me; I've never done any computer networking at all, and the goal here is to make a tightly controlled computer lab with a central server and all the fixings. At the moment it's just a bunch of unconnected computers, and anyone that has worked with kids and computers knows their natural curiosity can cause some serious problems. So hopefully we can all the computers properly cloned with good programs and antivirus, and perhaps even get Deep Freeze installed for maximum protection. It's difficult stuff, but a bit easier than I thought it would be. There's a guy here helping us that figured out all this stuff himself for his own school's computer lab, so that's a big help. I figure this kind of thing will be valuable in the states when I return.