Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- That’s Not Traumatizing Or Anything – Gah!
- If You Are Reading This… – NERDS RULE!
- Topless Robot – The 10 Hottest Ladies of Dungeons & Dragons – Yup — three of my faves are in here (and Margie’s one of ’em!).
- GOP State Rep Metcalfe Calls Vets Traitors For Believing In Climate Change – What an asshole.
- Public Option Politics: publius
- Dems Have Been Begging White House For Leadership On Public Option For Weeks Now – One might ask why, then, such leadership is needed. Desirable? Quite possibly. But surely the Senate Democrats can lead themselves as effectively as the President can.
- Let He Who Is Without Sin Cut The Entire Passage – And, yet again, conservatives gleefully and diligently do just what they accuse others of doing: in this case, editing the Bible with an explicit ideological stance.
- Latest Lies on Hate Crimes Legislation: Peter
- Husband joins Army so cancer-stricken wife can get health care. – See! Everyone can get health coverage in the United States!
- Republican officials: DeMint is ‘watching our nation’s pennies’ — like a Jew would. – Makes one wonder what’s in the water down in South Carolina.
- Buchanan: White Americans Are Losing Their Country! – Dammit, I’m always losing things. I wonder if Margie’s seen it?
- Unfortunate Cookie: Random Vintage Weird Generator for All Your Procrastination Needs: Maggie Koerth-Baker
- Surprise Vatican plan makes it easier for disaffected Anglicans to convert — chicagotribune.com – It’s actually (for the laity) less of a way of conversion than creating sort of Anglican half-way houses, where they could call themselves Catholic, be under the direction of Rome, but still use their Prayer Books (for the moment). It creates a second-class priesthood for Anglican priests — you can join up, bring your wife, but never be a bishop. The biggest hits I see happening here are for the break-away conservative Anglicans who were trying to build their own church structure.
- knife throwing mother 1950s – She’s close enough that the angle to avoid hitting is pretty easy. Still, I suspect she’d be arrested these days.
- Donohue rants some more – Using pure birthrate as the standard of victory is grasping at straws. Despite Dononhue’s demographic evaluation, overall beliefs on many of his key items (e.g., acceptance of gays, civil unions, marriage equality) keep trending away from him.
- High-stakes test looms for space shuttle successor – space – 20 October 2009 – New Scientist – I’m not sure why “budget problems and technical glitches” are such news when we’re talking about a major technology and construction project.
- Vatican creates new structure for Anglicans :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: World – And I hope those who take advantage of it are very happy there.
- Northwestern University’s Medill Innocence Project is in a standoff with Cook County prosecutors — chicagotribune.com – It’s hard not to see this as prosecutorial payback for making the DA’s office look bad. For shame.
- Marshall, Will and Holly Sell Some Routine Tobacco Products « Easily Distracted – Of course! Why didn’t I notice all those teens on the corner smoking pipes and wearing journalist vests?
- The anti-vaccine war on science: An epidemic of fear : Respectful Insolence – Yes, this will only change when “enough” children die — and even then, the anti-vax people will find someone and something else to blame.
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With regards to the anti-vaccine folks, there are getting to be fewer among us who got to adulthood by surviving diptheria, whooping cough, mumps, measles, rubella, smallpox, polio, chickenpox, and tetanus, just to name the biggies. My father suffered through all but smallpox and rubella (he did get a tetanus shot in the 40’s when he fell on an lawn edger, so he may have avoided that through a vaccine as well). He did have childhood friends who died of these illnesses, though, and I was vaccinated for all that were available at the time.
I was not young enough to get the chickenpox vaccine and got the disease instead at 24. Not fun at all, and I have a greater chance of getting shingles because of that (and I’m going to be there to get the vaccine for shingles as well. That’s even worse that the chickenpox.)
Yes, it’s possible to get the H1N1 virus and survive, but the disease appear to kill small children and pregnant women in much high number than would normally be expected. We had an otherwise healthy 5 year old girl die after being sick for only three days – the virus attached her heart (which can happen with any virus) and she couldn’t be saved.
I think our society has become used to babies regularly surviving their childhood without realizing what we have accomplished through science. Look at the number of children in third world countries who die of the illness we mostly prevent through vaccination, and you can see how science has prevented so much suffering.
Thus endeth the rant….sorry.
Oops, that’s “attacked her heart.”
Yes. Too many people say, “Hey, almost nobody gets infected with whooping cough, measles, mumps, etc., so why run the risks of having my kid injected with POISON AND GERMS?” Without realizing that “almost nobody gets infected” both because so many have been vaccinated (and thus are protected) and those who haven’t have been protected by vaccination are protected by being around those who are (and so who don’t spread the disease).
If the number of vaccinated people drops low enough, that latter protection goes away. Then folks die, get very ill, get crippled, etc.