Joseph F. Clark, Ph.D.

I write and submit about eight grant applications per year to get the funding in need to keep the lab running. Ten years ago I could get two grants per year or about 25% of my grant applications would be funded. Now however, I am lucky to get one grant every two years. So my [...]

I have been looking for a good, portable food for camping and disaster kits recently. I’m well aware of the US military’s famous MRE’s. I’ve tried them and they are marginally palatable, last for years and are easy to carry while camping or storing for an emergency. My problem with them is that they are [...]

I fully believe that the science suggesting that humans are killing the earth’s environment is right on. Even if all humanity suddenly started behaving in ways to protect the environment it would be many generations before real benefits would be seen. Some things, however, are changing. The water purity of many of the US’s lakes [...]

Everybody knows that the airline industry is an abomination of American enterprise. It is laughable when the airline representatives say that safety is their concern because they treat people like cattle. Evidence of cattle herding by the industry can be seen anytime you look into the coach section of a jumbo jet. The philosophy is [...]

My Ambulance Education continues to sell at a brisk pace. In the past year I’ve been privileged to make connections with people in the trenches, reconnect with comrades from those days and work every day to do research that may benefit patients in the ambulance. I have said many times; working on the ambulance has [...]

It has been one year since I started my blog. During that year My Ambulance Education has been released. The book and blog have facilitated my reconnection with numerous friends from my past. I’ve also continued my research into diagnosis and treatment of neurologic disorders has made tremendous strides towards success. I have been invited [...]

being prepared for a disaster is a full time job

A student came to my office to enquire about becoming a graduate student in my lab. She was extremely bright, energetic and had done some homework about my work as evidenced by the insightful questions she was asking. I put a lot of weight on the questions and dialogue that occurs when I interview, and [...]

For anyone who wants to know what it is like to write a memoir it is easy to give a brief philosophy that partially addresses that question. That is if you do not get yourself emotionally involved and in tears, you are not honest enough with what you are writing. What brings people to read [...]

Peaks and Valleys. The whole lifestyle of college professors and most academics is a series of peaks and valleys. We are exuberant with successes like funded grants and exciting research data. Conversely we live with constant rejection from failed experiments, rejected papers and grant applications. So the peaks really need to outweigh the depths reached [...]