Readings of the Day: 9 March 2010 Edition

When Gov. Charlie Crist announced Florida’s $1.75 billion plan to save the Everglades by buying out a major landowner, United States Sugar, he declared that the deal would be remembered as a public acquisition “as monumental as the creation of the nation’s first national park, Yellowstone.”
Standing amid the marshes at the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge in June 2008, Mr. Crist said, “I can envision no better gift to the Everglades, the people of Florida and the people of America — as well as our planet — than to place in public ownership this missing link that represents the key to true restoration.”

Nearly two years later, the governor’s ambitious plan to reclaim the river of grass, as the famed wetlands are known, is instead on track to rescue the fortunes of United States Sugar.
The proposal was downsized only five months after it was announced. By April 2009, amid the deepening recession, the state said it could afford to purchase only 72,800 acres of United States Sugar’s land, for $536 million. The company would stay in business and the state would retain the option of buying the remaining 107,000 acres at a future date.
United States Sugar dictated many of the terms of the deal as state officials repeatedly made decisions against the immediate needs of the Everglades and the interests of taxpayers, an examination of thousands of state e-mail messages and records and more than 60 interviews showed.

But, I am sure that even mid-career and senior scholars whose interests migrate have some frustrations with getting into conferences and publishing in journals outside of their original fields of expertise.  I’ve been hearing about some of these lately from friends whose interests have either moved around in time or through space, or both.  One friend has found that journals in his new field have resisted seeing his new work as “counting” in their field, and another friend is undertaking serious retraining in other historical fields, and has been schooled in public at conferences by scholars in the fields ze’s trying to move into.  (That’s a kind of resistance–and even rejection–that most Associate Profs think they have left behind!)  I admire their determination and ambition–and it makes me wonder how much more fun and interesting history would be if more of us were equipped with more than one or two analytical lenses or Big Questions motivating our research.

Tompa said the boathouse, at the south end of Arch Street, has a geothermal heating and cooling system and rain water capturing system to recycle water. It uses a lot of natural day light and is constructed with natural building materials.
It has community rooms, meeting space, workout rooms, office space, and boat storage.
“We work with about 500 individuals throughout the year,” Tompa said. “The goal is, once the boathouse is open, to expand to 1,000 or more.”

A new discovery demonstrates how the vitamin plays a major role in keeping the body healthy in the first place, by allowing the immune system’s T cells to start doing their jobs.

The findings suggest that sunlight exposure may affect kidney cancer risk, although the authors have no explanation for the apparent differences in risk between men and women. They offer several hypotheses for the observed differences. Biological or behavioral differences between men and women may play a role. For example, hormonal differences may influence the body’s response to sunlight exposure, females may have a higher tendency to use sunscreen on a regular basis, and men may be prone to working outdoors while shirtless. It is also possible that the observed gender differences in risk were due to confounding by other unmeasured kidney cancer risk factors, such as recreational sunlight exposure and physical activity levels.

But when it came to actual teaching, the daily task of getting students to learn, the school floundered. Students disobeyed teachers’ instructions, and class discussions veered away from the lesson plans. In one class Lemov observed, the teacher spent several minutes debating a student about why he didn’t have a pencil. Another divided her students into two groups to practice multiplication together, only to watch them turn to the more interesting work of chatting. A single quiet student soldiered on with the problems. As Lemov drove from Syracuse back to his home in Albany, he tried to figure out what he could do to help. He knew how to advise schools to adopt a better curriculum or raise standards or develop better communication channels between teachers and principals. But he realized that he had no clue how to advise schools about their main event: how to teach.

For almost 50 years, pizza lovers flocked to Vincent’s Pizza Park in Forest Hills to indulge in the famous “Vinny Pie.”
…
People, not just from Forest Hills or Fox Chapel, but from all over loved his work, so he started overnighting pies around the country.”When the Steelers were in the Super Bowl, I sent out 150 pizzas for the super Bowl.Texas, California, Arizona, Minnesota, South Dakota. There’s a guy from Flowermound, Texas who always orders our pizza. I know him by name now.”