where would one expect to see it? What sorts of people would be at sites where they would see it? I think this will have far less effect than if it ran on TV.

runs something like "What's your opinion of _your_ congressional rep?" and that's where you typically see a dissonance. People will hate congress in general, but their own rep is a swell guy (and usually is a guy).

what, for want of a better word, could be called superstition. In many parts of the world men hold the belief that very young prostitutes will not have, or at least be less likely to have, HIV. The thought that this might be part of what's going on in Atlanta alarms me.

While the arguments about legalization, and such are interesting, as a public health practitioner I come down very firmly on the side of full legalization. Any illegal activity - drugs, prostitution, or in older and worse times, abortion, alcohol, being gay - won't go away because it's illegal, but will go underground, resulting in hidden places where some scary diseases and injuries may occur endemically. The illegality makes it hard-to-impossible for us in public health to track or do much of anything about it. A fascinating example over the past few years has been the free injection center in Vancouver, BC, where addicts may come to receive a clean needle kit, and have a spot to inject their drug of choice (obtained elsewhere, presumably illegally, of course) under medical supervision. The drug OD deaths and the dirty needle disease spread which has been prevented by this one clinic is incredible.

society which encourages it. I have rarely heard what it says about how men are viewed. To me, the need for covering says men are viewed as sexually out of control beasts who will rape a woman if they see even a pretty face, let alone the Victorian "well-turned ankle". Does this not strike other people as demeaning to men, just as much as the covering is of women?

Rapa Nui was not the only ecodisaster Diamond described in his book - have the naysayers addressed the others? There were three or four more, IIRC. The US Southwest people often called Anasazi are one that comes to mind immediately. Second, and this is really nitpicky, Diamond wasn't the first to opine that the Rapa Nui population. I saw Jacques Costeau say the same thing in one of his TV shows.

who makes Lieberman look like a liberal. On the situation improving front, the Tennessee repubs have run a very nasty, obviously racist campaign TV ad that has a lot of republicans embarrased.

The father was a PhD researcher in the ob/gyn department of a large medical center and the mother a physician researcher in the same department. They both had not been married, met at work, married in their, ummmm, early to mid 40s, then for whatever reason - never was too clear on this - decided to have a baby when both were nearly 50. No technology involved, the mother was still pre-menopausal, and this was her first pregnancy. But the fuss! This was the late 90s, and their department was completely freaked. They were having prenatal checkups like every two hours! It got so it drove them nuts fairly quickly. End of the story, beautiful baby was born at term, usual vaginal delivery, no problems, and last I heard doting parents were proud of very intelligent, high-achieving, sweet child. Anecdotal, doesn't mean much, but the fuss was amusing since I wasn't affected that much. Other than sympathizing with my friend.

The flip side is, though, that not only are the parents who have children so late much older than usual, but the kids often miss out on grandparents. And the parents themselves may well not live long enough to be grandparents. Grandparents are important, and it seems a shame to miss out, from both ends.

as someone pointed out earlier, the last couple of years may be the most and worst scandals in anyone living's memory. Our collective memory holds things like Teapot Dome - how does that compare with the present collection? - but generally doesn't retain things like Iran-Contra.

I suppose there are people around who try to argue that Iran-Contra was not a scandal; that it was an activity justifiable by the ends it tried to address. Teapot Dome or Watergate, conversely, would be hard to argue for as having a worthy goal.

go to karate lesson 2-3 times a week and on off days walk up a nearby mountain spur - half hour up, half hour down. I bike to work, and a buddy and I are planning to enter a triathlon next fall. He thinks I can't get my 400 meter swim time under 15 minutes using just breast stroke, and I intend to show him otherwise! In short, in response to an article about the beginnings of epidemiology, you should be careful about generalizing from your own anecdotal experience.

On to the review - something Johnson might find of interest if he doesn't know already, was that horse manure, accumulation & disposal thereof, was a huge problem for growing cities at the time of Snow. One of the solutions to the cleanup, before we all would be buried in reeking piles, was to replace horses with the gas buggy. So cars were seen as a major component of making cities cleaner and more sanitary.