How mosquito bites spell devastation for the poor

This is a disgusting image. So is the disease carried by the mosquito pictured above.

I came across this National Geographic article last week while editing some materials at work for World Malaria Day on April 25. It's really long, and it's about five years old, but it's still relevant and definitely worth a read if you want to know more about this devastating disease.

And devastating it truly is. Malaria was wiped out in the United States back in the early 1950s, so Americans of my generation tend to know very little about it. After all, they grew up never having to fear it. And our children won't, either.

But in other parts of the world, malaria is a vicious parasite that holds entire regions under the heavy weight of poverty. The article describes it as the "plague of the poor." That's a brutally apt description. There's no way that impoverished areas of sub-Saharan Africa can be lifted out of economic depression when up to 20 percent of infants don't live to be 5 years old because of malaria.

The sustainable city: An introduction

Too many American cities look like this all the time.
Actually, this picture was taken near Toronto. See? Our
bad habits are rubbing off on the Canadians.

Here's a blunt headline that grabbed my attention. It talks about how "politically conservative" cities across the United States tend to be the worst for pedestrians. For example, American urban centers like San Francisco and New York are ideal for walking; meanwhile, cities like Oklahoma City and Jacksonville are terrible for it.

This observation tapped into one of my biggest passions. If I ever decided to go back to school (and certainly I haven't yet), I might study urban planning and development. The world's population is shifting decidedly toward cities. This graph on urbanization suggests that 60 percent of people will live in one by the year 2030 (over half do now). With those numbers in mind, the idea of a sustainable city — which includes ones where it isn't necessary to drive everywhere — is certainly an important conversation to have.

That's why I'm starting a new series on this blog about that very topic. There's way too much to cover in just one post, so this will simply be an introduction. Subsequent posts will touch on the specifics.

So, what constitutes a sustainable urban center?

When will the Big One strike?

This New York Times article was written about two years ago, shortly after the deadly 2010 earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, and almost exactly one year before the catastrophic 2011 tremor and tsunami in northeastern Japan. I read it again recently when a friend posted it on Facebook. Its tone is every bit as ominous now as it was when first published, when the aforementioned disasters were fresh in everyone's minds.

Seattle is an easy place to live. It has cool, comfortable summers and temperate winters. It's arguably blessed with one of the most majestic natural settings of any major U.S. city, surrounded by mountains, forests, and water. There's a lot of culture here. The people are laid-back and progressive. They flock outdoors anytime there's a ray of sunshine, and, when there's not, they simply console themselves with a book or movie and a coffee or beer (sometimes all at once).

The problem is, because of all those factors, most of them don't think of their city as a place where a large-scale disaster could strike. Those types of things happen in other places, like Japan. Or Chile. Or Haiti. The low-key, life-is-good vibe here in the Northwest — coupled with our geographical isolation — leads people to adapt that mentality. Even if they acknowledge the risk, it's not at the forefront of anyone's thinking. No one (perhaps with the exception of me) is sitting around waiting for the ground to start shaking.

Death, resurrection, and the case for the physical realm

All of the physical life seen in this image is born from
the death of something else.

Earlier posts on this blog have discussed the physical and spiritual phenomena of light overcoming darkness and new life arising from death. In a (belated) observance of Easter, I'm revisiting those concepts — this time, from a slightly different angle. Get ready for some deep material; and, if you're feeling ambitious, read my original musings first for some background.

In the latter of the two posts, I mentioned my experiences of finding young, healthy trees growing out of dead, rotting ones in the forest. At the time, I didn't have a picture to accompany my description. Fortunately, I came across the same thing yet again just a few weeks ago while taking a walk over on Bainbridge Island. This time, I had a camera to capture it. (Yep, these are the sorts of things I get excited about.)

You can see from the image that there are not one but two young trees growing tall from an old, hollow stump, and in the foreground, there's a fallen trunk from which lush green moss is now growing. All around are ferns and other plants that undoubtedly fed off of the nutrients of the decaying trees. This scene perfectly illustrates the idea of new, vibrant life emerging from decline and death. Here, we're talking not about spiritual life, but physical life.

This is what Easter is all about.

My dad periodically gives sermons at his church. His most recent one focused on chapter 24 of the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus appears to the disciples in bodily form following his resurrection. The disciples are terrified, thinking they're seeing a ghost, so Jesus eats a piece of fish in their presence to show conclusively that he is there, physically restored. His previously bloodied, dead body is once again whole.

The sermon makes a profound point that Jesus Christ did not need to reappear as a living, physical person for the purpose of his death and resurrection to be fulfilled. Instead, he simply could have appeared as an apparition — as, in fact, the disciples thought he had — to assure them that he had triumphed over death.

But Jesus makes a point of proving to them that he was again alive in the flesh. Why is that?

A five-tiered critique of public opinion polls

If you're a news junkie like I am, you're used to seeing poll results publicized in headlines all the time. And if you're a cynical bastard like I am, you don't trust any of them as far as you can throw them. Why? Let me explain.

First, though, a disclaimer: You probably won't care at all about the subject matter of this post unless you follow politics as closely as I do (and maybe not even then). I tried to make this thing a reasonable length, but alas, I see it's become a short novel. To mitigate that problem, I've actually added anchor links (I think this is the first time I've done such a thing in a blog):

• A single poll is just a snapshot in time.
• Polls are used to sell headlines, and headlines set the tone.
• No poll tells the whole story.
• The wording of poll questions can alter the results entirely.
• Robots versus human beings: It's not just fodder for a sci-fi movie.

Or, if you want to read my thoughts from the very beginning, you can do that, too. (Sorry, email subscribers, but you may have no choice. My apologies.) So why are polls problematic? Here goes.