Quiet stories of the day

TCS notes the politics behind the DDT ban that has led to the deaths of thousands to protect a few bird...Link

And the BBC4 will be talking to bloggers including Lileks and Instapundit, in a series starting in Sept...LINK

While catching up on my podcast listening, I ran across this gem Garrison Keiller reciting a poem by John Cianti about...doggiepoop...(scroll down to Wed)....

And above all the politicization of Katrina, an essay here about the difference between the media and reality:

as I traveled New Orleans neighborhoods that had stood in the path of Katrina's monumental levee breaks. What struck me about the area was its eerie silence, a natural consequence of communities completely emptied by the flood waters - and still desolate months after the storm.

It's the kind of quiet not easily conveyed on cable news channels...And although journalism is frequently derided for its embrace of mindless repetition, the industry's understandable desire for what is new and interesting has not inclined it to capture the frequent monotony of existence in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Ironically, this is the same thing that I am hearing on a lecture about post disaster recovery on my Family Practice Audiodigest...that much of the anguish is the loss of the ordinary things around one, and much of the early euphoria that one is still alive is followed much later by depression, blaming, and inaction of a person who lacks the landmarks and human relationships of the predisaster life...