This is refreshing. These individuals have recognized an important problem of global significance and are taking creative approaches to solve it. I am no fan of Bill Gates, but this is a plus for him. The refreshing part is that I heard no wild-eyed worship of ‘the environment’, just attempts at novel solutions which can be of great help for many.
Until recently, at least, the disease which caused the most deaths worldwide was schistosomiasis, a flatworm parasite (the sheep or snail liver fluke), spread by fecal-oral route - by contamination of fresh water by untreated sewage. I remember in medical school, when we touched on the economics of health policy, I was surprised to learn that sewage treatment was far and away the most economically effective means of improving life expectancy.
What?.. no AI/ML?
The history of the London sewer system is interesting, with the Great Stink and cholera epidemics, and Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s sewer system.
To tie in with the Rat Czar, in Baltimore the early sewer cleaning involved dropping a rat down a manhole, and a rat terrier with a rope attached down another. The rope was used to pull through a sewer cleaner, and the dog got the rat as a reward.
An interesting look at rats and New York City is Robert Sullivan’s 2004 book, Rats.
The message I took away is in this passage from my review.
The number of rats in an area depends almost entirely upon the food supply available to them. A single breeding pair of rats, with an unlimited food supply and no predation or other causes of mortality, can produce on the order of fifteen thousand descendants in a single year. That makes it pretty clear that a rat population will grow until all available food is being consumed by rats (and that natural selection will favour the most aggressive individuals in a food-constrained environment). Poison or trapping can knock down the rat population in the case of a severe infestation, but without limiting the availability of food, will produce only a temporary reduction in their numbers (while driving evolution to select for rats which are immune to the poison and/or more wary of the bait stations and traps).
As long as New York residents and businesses discard food (and what rats consider food is a broader category than picky humans) in thin plastic garbage bags that are instantly penetrated by rats, the number of rats in the city will determined by the available food.
old school rules were steel garbage cans – with steel covers.
From the 1950 to 2010s my Pop in the Bronx had above, with spring tie downs on lid to be sure to keep roadents from removing.
Allowing plastic garbage bags to pile-up on sidewalks is idiotic.
Guess anyone will sue anyone else over anything. What a society we have.
Ct you should represent Brees.
?Just what in heck is a Venezuelan environmentalist. They barely have running water and now they have “environmentalists”. Seems an awful lot like the cart before the horse.
There’s the old joke, “How did communists light their homes before candles?”
With electricity.
Works just as well with “environmentalists”.
MLB may have aided Aaron Judge’s 62 home runs:
I am not breaking my 305 day crossword puzzle streak for a bunch of whiners.
If only their writers would go on strike.
It’s even worse in Krakow, Poland’s second-biggest city.
On the night of Nov. 20, as temperatures slipped below zero for the first time this year, the only city in the world with a higher concentration of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) in the air was New Delhi, according to Airly, an organisation based in California that monitors pollution.
Cape Cod Girls don’t use no bras,
Haul away, haul away!
They was all blown off in the Nor’east sqaulls
And we’re bound away for Australia!