Author Archives: floegel

Thousand-Pound Missile

9/12/2013 – 7:42 pm

I attended a middle-age rite of passage last night as my daughter took me to her high school cafeteria for the mandatory meeting of parents of students taking driver’s education this semester. Seventy-five students (in various states of eye-rolling exasperation at having to be seen with a parent in front of their peers) and parents […]

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You Can Be Too Rich or Too Thin

9/5/2013 – 10:03 pm

The New York Times posted a story this evening reporting a series of experiments at St. Louis’s Washington University in which bacteria from the guts of thin humans were injected into the guts of fat mice and the mice grew thin. Forget cancer, let’s research something with market potential With antibiotics, the indication is outside. […]

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Damned (Vermont) Yankee

8/29/2013 – 2:56 pm

In yet another blow to the mythical “nuclear renaissance,” (unicorns, anyone?) Entergy Corporation announced Tuesday that Vermont Yankee, its troubled Fukushima-like nuclear plant on the bank of the Connecticut River in Vernon, Vermont will close in late 2014. This is a victory for activists who mounted a four-decade campaign of resistance to the plant, since […]

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Scene of the Crime

8/15/2013 – 10:18 pm

I didn’t post anything last week, my apologies.  I was visiting family in Florida, didn’t bring my laptop, thinking I’d try to post from my smart phone.  Fail.   Specifically, I was in Seminole County, which was still recovering from the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin trial. I wanted to get a feel for the place before I […]

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Bearing Witness

8/1/2013 – 8:42 pm

The world spins faster.  This is not necessarily a good thing.  Some days I attend a video conference while my phone(s) ring, texts come in (teletype sound effect), calendar beeps, multiple Skype messages make moist Skype noises.  I think, this is how the world will end: everything moving faster, overwhelming the individual until society throttles […]

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Off-Label Police State

7/25/2013 – 7:35 pm

You’re familiar with the concept of “off-label” use (and abuse) of pharmaceutical drugs, right?  A drug is developed and approved by the Food and Drug Administration for one use, but soon after either doctors or the patients themselves use it for other purposes. Perhaps the most famous – and perhaps frequent – current example of […]

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Summer Heat

7/18/2013 – 1:25 pm

All through May and June it rained.  Biblical rains last 40 days and 40 nights; ours lasted 60.  The roof leaked, the basement flooded, the dry side of the basement flooded.  By the end, it wasn’t just me with seasonal affective disorder. May and June 2013 was the wettest 60-day period in Vermont in 100-plus […]

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