In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

In a compelling essay which is part of terrific new collection, Brothers: 26 Stories of Love And Rivalry (Jossey-Bass), David Kaczynski writes about his relationship with his brother, Ted, the so-called “Unabomber.” In his piece, “Missing Parts”, Kaczynski discusses the “terrible dilemma” he faced when he realized his brother might be a terrorist: “do nothing [...]

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On Memorial Day and with thousands of U.S. Navy personnel here in New York City for Fleet Week, I wanted to highlight again one of the best television shows I’ve seen in a long time,  “Carrier,” PBS’ 10-part documentary, which follows a six-month deployment of the USS Nimitz to the Persian Gulf. (At present, the Nimitz is [...]

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U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today that the Department of Health & Human Services is joining the Ad Council and Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, to launch a national public service advertising campaign designed to encourage American families and children to take steps to protect themselves from [...]

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John Bussey of the Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting piece in Friday’s edition (n.b. it is behind a pay wall) about what the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak might teach us about dealing with the H1N1 flu. Bussey, who is currently the Journal’s Washington bureau chief and covered Asia for the paper during 2003, [...]

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 In the January issue of Science, there is a nice feature on the use of social media in responding to disasters. (Thanks to my friend Jimmy Jazz for bringing it to my attention.) The article, “Crisis Communications” by Lea Winerman, covers some recent examples — the Virginia Tech shooting, Southern California fires, and Chinese earthquake — where [...]

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Monica Schoch-Spana of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Biosecurity, one of the (if not ‘the’) leading authorities on citizen preparedness and engagement, did an interesting interview on the radio show, Homeland Security Inside & Out. In it, she makes some recommendations to the new Administration on bolstering public preparedness and engagement. This week’s show [...]

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HBO’s new movie, Taking Chance, tells the true story of U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl who volunteers to accompany the remains of 19-year-old Lance Corporal Chance Phelps killed in Iraq back to his family in Dubois, Wyoming. Witnessing the spontaneous outpouring of support and respect for the fallen Marine — from the groundskeepers he passed along [...]

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Previously, I’ve written about the weekly “Homeland Security Inside & Out” radio show hosted by Dave McIntyre and Randy Larsen. I subscribe to its podcast through iTunes and find that I learn at least one thing from the show each week that is helpful to my work on public preparedness.
Over the past two weeks, the [...]

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“Homeland Security USA”,  a new reality show on ABC-TV, aired its fourth episode this week. Television reviewers have had two primary criticisms of the program: first, that the show offers too positive a gloss on the work of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) because it was produced with the cooperation of the Department; second, that “Homeland [...]

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I am happy to report that a helpful weekly email resource is going daily beginning this Monday. The Biosecurity Briefing, published by the Baltimore-based Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, is being expanded. I have found the weekly edition useful in following developments on biosecurity and other threats so I look forward [...]

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