July 8 Link Log

These Links came in on July 8; they weren't posted due to scheduling confusion. Categories: Fun, Green, Job.

Fun 

Dan Lewis shares fun facts about Norfolk Island, a non-North-American place that celebrates Thanksgiving more or less as we do:

http://nowiknow.com/calling-dar-bizziebee/

Green 

What could be wrong with funding efforts to fight the Zika virus? This is what. Yes, poisoning mosquitoes looks like a quick fix for mosquito-borne plagues. The problem is that by poisoning mosquitoes, you poison their predators, which means more mosquitoes next month. Eventually the mosquitoes have evolved resistance to the poison, and humans (and other species valuable to humans) may be dying from overdoses of poison, which may be more painful and more deadly than the disease was. Dr. Tom Dooley was a great man who acted in good faith, but what he ultimately taught the world was that cancer is worse than lice.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/07/05/zika-virus-bill.aspx

And by poisoning other pests, you poison their predators. We all need to help people understand why we need to make sure we don't start any more Vicious Poison Cycles.

https://www.change.org/p/united-states-stop-neonics-save-bees?

Job 

Y'know, it's not that I'm not deeply grateful to anyone who sends me referrals to legitimate writing jobs. I get a lot of bizarrely mismatched ads, e.g. by applying for a "teleworking" job based in a city I've never even visited and thus getting what appears to be a cyberdump of the entire job ads listing from that city's newspaper, but I do appreciate e-friends' efforts. (By "legitimate," of course, I mean not only that they really pay, but that all the identity/contact information they demand online is the information that pertains to "Priscilla King," the cyberspace entity, not to humans in the real world. And no spyware. And no chat.)

This job came in via two respondents in one day's e-mail, so somebody out there thinks I might be qualified for it; I'm flattered. However, although I can claim some expertise in the area of Web writing, I'm not an expert on videos and webcasts; so far as I know I've never used a computer on which those could have been created, and rarely even had access to a computer on which they would play. If any readers are multimedia Web experts, as I think--not know-- +Gayle Crabtree and/or +Lyn Lomasi may be, this could be your dream job. DOT is about as legitimate as it gets, and on this salary you can live well in a leafy Metro-accessible suburb within a thirty-minute train ride from Washington.

"WEB CONTENT EDITOR
https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/443781200/
Location Washington DC. Department of the Treasury. Pays $108,459.00 to $152,687.00 / per year. Deadline July 21, 2016. The incumbent will serve as an expert in the area of Web content; writing for the Web; Web formats, including videos, webcasts, and other multimedia; Web publishing tools, including content management systems; Web metrics; section 508 compliance for accessibility of Web content to people with disabilities; social media and the use of social media in reinforcing the messaging of an organization; and generally, using the Internet as an effective communications tool for internal and external audiences. "