Comments on: Don’t Ask Me What This Means

By: Alan

Alan — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:09:03 +0000

There goes the myth of healthy rural.life.

By: Donald A. Coffin

Donald A. Coffin — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:47:22 +0000

College students, depleted by, um, college activities?

By: Peter Klein

Peter Klein — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 02:14:41 +0000

It seems that too few Missourians are taking advantage of local culinary opportunities, like this event.

By: Warren Miller

Warren Miller — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 01:45:26 +0000

Maybe the participants had been on the lamb for too long.

By: Unit

Unit — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:30:32 +0000

Pesticides?

By: Per Bylund

Per Bylund — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 21:41:46 +0000

As economists we already knew that, in general, urban areas are more productive than rural (non-urban) areas, didn’t we?

By: Rafe Champion

Rafe Champion — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 21:33:13 +0000

On the topic of sperm counts, there is a story on the side of the that rural health survey. The Health Dept people up country wanted to find a project officer to run the survey and they asked us in the central Health Services Research and Planning unit if we could help. We had a lady (Dr X), a Canadian medical anthropologist, doing a short contract job and I offered to drive Dr X up for a talk when her term was winding up. Just before the trip she took three weeks leave and the day she was due back in the office our manager said, “By the way, Dr X has had a sex change”. We had a doctor in the office just back from Johns Hokpins, she said they are doing that all the time over there. At the district office the meetings went ok but about six people approached me at different times to ask how come I said I was bringing a lady up for the day. Interesting observation, the drive took about thee hours and a lot of the way Dr X talked about her three amazing brothers, one could do anything with wood, one was an electronics whiz and the third – can’t recall but you get the picture.

By: Rafe Champion

Rafe Champion — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 21:15:04 +0000

Maybe they should have sampled three rural locations.
How rural is Columbia?
A similar suprise turned up from a health survey focussed on chronic problems of illness and disability in one small country town and the surrounding district in New South Wales, don’t recall details (it was 1976) but the explanations advanced included hay fever from pollen in the air, farm accidents, distance from quality health care.