More Blog Highlights

No topical blogging tonight because I got home from work too late and my brain hurts. In the meantime, please check in to some highlights from Blogtopia that I have encountered in my travels.

Pathogen Alert says “[w]e monitor 14,516 news sources worldwide, read 37 medical print publications and communicate with dozens of scientists so you get the whole truth.” True to the name, they publish short news items on microbiological hazards. This blog is supported by a internet publisher, Urgent eBooks (“publishers of eBooks that matter to your future”). They offer one book on the avian influenza H5N1 virus strain that could pose a pandemic risk, and are looking for topics for other books. I also encourage you to check in to Effect Measure, which monitors this issue regularly. Pathogen Alert appears to be a private-sector version of Environmental Health News.

W. David Stephenson’s blog on homeland security emphasizes “empowering the public, creative use of technology, win-win private/public collaborations yielding security and economic benefits and protecting civil liberties.” A tall order, but you can’t fault a writer who posts on the topic of teen sex and homeland security, as a way of introducing the concept of networking behavior and smart mobs. Scrolling down a little further, I found a post on “Company Commander”, a blog started up by junior officers in the army where they can swap advice and information about how to do their jobs – for circumstances where “the book” doesn’t provide adequate guidance, such as dealing with the day-to-day realities in Iraq. By the way, if you want to read a great blog on Iraq, I suggest “My War” by Colby Buzzell, an enlisted man with a Stryker brigade in Mosul. Anyway, Company Commander represents an approach to learning that is decentralized, collaborative, non-hierarchical and iterative, run by the people responsible for getting the job done. Stephenson feels the same approach is needed for homeland security. It could also benefit environmental health as well.

David Pollard also advocates the bottom-up, grass-roots approach to problem solving, for addressing the ecological/economic morass that threatens us with collapse. His “Values Statement” presents a values-based definition of well-being, a vision for community and a call to help develop a plan of action – which as yet is not formed, but left as encouragement for us to collaborate and add to it. Always a worthwhile read, if at times, intellectually overwhelming.

That will have to hold you for now. Regular posting should resume tomorrow.