¿Success UnExpected in Common?

Peeled

I’m itching for some of that fresh POW!!! Where’s it at east coast??!!

I for one hate social media and dream of a day where complete technological annihilation forces us back to the days when cell phones, facebook, twitter, etc…were just a figment. Nonetheless, until then, this is actually a beneficial example of what social media can provide.  This was too eye-opening not to reblog, so….read on

jtotheizzoe:

Twitter Tracks Cholera Outbreaks Faster Than Health Authorities

Shortly after the 2010 earthquake and hurricane that struck the country, Haiti was (and is) deeply immersed in an outbreak of cholera. Amazingly, social networks accurately tracked the spread of the disease, faster and more accurately than traditional tracking methods. As Rumi Chunara of Harvard Medical School details in CHE:

The social media matched the official reports very closely right at the start of the outbreak, in October 2010, and right after another surge when the hurricane hit, in early November. But the reports were ahead of the official records by two weeks. And with Twitter in particular, they identified the geographic locations of the cases “because a lot of people were Tweeting from their phones, right where they saw patients” in villages, Ms. Chunara said. Not all cholera patients go to hospitals to be counted officially, she noted.

It’s safe to assume that tracking a disease by social media alone wouldn’t be perfect, and further studies will be required to prove that this is a reliable method by which to base the distribution of medicine and supplies. Even a few days advantage can make a huge difference in an outbreak like this, though. By tracking real-time data, patients could be located and catalogued before they even saw a doctor.

I’m fascinated by the blossoming uses of geographic information coming out of Twitter’s API. Just this week, these infographics by Eric Fischer showed up on FastCo.Design:

You can practically re-draw traditional maps based on the density and geography of geotagged tweets. The possibilities for real-time information tracking seem endless (for good and evil). Any ideas?

(via The Chronicle of Higher Education, photo by AP)

Cephalocaudal Development Defined

Mooney Falls - Supai Indian Reservation - Supai, AZ

A 3:00am wakeup call began our quest from Sin City to the Havasupai Indian Reservation on August 21, 2011. Drew and I hit Hualapai Hilltop at 7:30 and descended into the Grand Canyon’s western end. 12 miles and approximately 3 hours later our hike culminated at the picture you see before you.  190 feet of cascading blue-green water.  Unlike any river you’ll cast your retinas upon, the spectacular color of the water is created by the large amount of calcium carbonate(lime) and travertine that it passes through on its meanderance through the canyon.  This is the 3rd waterfall in the Havasupai reservation, followed by Navajo and Havasu falls before it. Drew and I spent a good two hours at this site snappin pics, laying out and just basking in the beauty of Supai.  We began the long hike back around 3pm.  Here are some highlights of that trek…

Drew’s shoes stayed overloaded with Supai red sand that created a thick red mustard paste betwixt his toes that hindered our ascent greatly…we gradually expended our stockhold of water, gatorade, and clif bars as we burned through our glycogen stores trudging toward the rent-a-car to our hopeful survival…walked past emaciated beasts of burden weakened to the ribs and standing in unshaded pastures of Arizona sun waiting to die…the amount of discarded gatorade bottles and plastic footprints left by previous hikers was redonkulous, if one was so inclined they could make a pretty penny collecting and turning the mass of plastic for recycle (lightbulb), a drunken 300lb waste of an american native stopped us on his ride back home. He told tales of flash floods, murder, and drunken college hikers and how the governement is holding them down - THE MAN strikes again!, finally we reached the sign pointing us up switchbacks towards Hualapai Hilltop. As we ascended we became acutely aware that we were not climbing the route we descended some 12 hours earlier.  The very real possibility of spending a night in the Canyon became apparent.  I was whining like a bitch, drew stood reticent to my whimperings and powered forward.  Sitting Bull, Mother Earth or General Custer must have been watching over us that day…because at just the moment before we descended back to the canyon floor to reroute our track, a family of 3 came upon us and told us we were only 20 minutes from the plateau. Safety was only a mile and half full of switchbacks beyond us.  Quad splitting, gastroc tearing, battery acid through our veins pumping, no sweat left in our bodies salt skin having switchbacks….we crested the parking lot just as the sun set on the Western Rim of the Canyon. Fully alive yet barely able to move. 

Accomplishment beyond the realm of what one assumed possible creates immense pride and robust confidence in their abilities and physical and mental limits. The bar has been reset….Whats next??