Brains Nuggets, Six To A Box

[elfs]

ONN: The Large Hadron Collider won't help evolutionists.

A creation scientist acknowledges the recent test of the so-called "big bang machine" could uncover information about the tiniest particles known to man, but says it will not provide evidence of evolution. But Dr. Faulkner says evolutionists are hoping to eventually get an idea of how the universe began, which he points out can be found in the first 11 chapters of the Bible.

Brilliant. That's it. We're done. Time to close up shop, right? (via Dispatches from the Science Wars)

AFA: France to call for decriminalization of homosexuality.

The AFA echoes the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute's call to allow states to maintain the criminality of homosexuality and to stop France from introducing a non-binding resolution in the UN. Because, if there's one thing the Catholic conception of Human Rights includes, it's the continued brutalization of gays and lesbians in states like Iran, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

The Candidates react to Wall Street's disaster

Steve Benet calls Obama's reposnes "clearer and goes further," but both of them essentially said the same thing. Obama's was stronger in denouncing the policies that got us here, the policies McCain says he'd keep in place, but other than that, both are just campaigning against misery.

As Wall Street melts down, McCain stands up and says everything's okay.

McCain says that he'll "never let this happen again." Let's face it: right now, America is completely stunned. We can't move credit, we have trouble moving cash. The American financial system is halted and may not restart again for months. Who does McCain think he's fooling?

Remember, the idea of the McCain economy is that the Big Players will get bigger and "lift all boats." But the Big Players will not be able to move for months, and what are the rest of us supposed to do?

"You're supposed to sit down, shut up, and do as your told, citizen. That's what National Greatness is all about."

Bush's overseas policies begin to resemble Obama's

The Washington Post documents the number of ways in which Bush has done things that Obama said we should do months ago, back when McCain called Obama's foreign policy "naive" and "dangerously misinformed." But it seems that the McCain campaign is dangerously misleading these days, detached from reality.

Value Voters buy "Obama Waffles."

At the "Value Voters Summit" in Washington this weekend, one booth sold "Obama Waffles," which included nasty, racially-motivated stereotypes of Obama and his family and included a recipe in Spanish on the back "So you can learn a foreign language while you wait for them to cook." And yet, Obama's immigration policy is almost exactly like McCains. Funny that.

Organizers for the Value Voters Conference said they had not realized the boxes were "offensive," after four days of being there.

Mumps outbreak begins with unimmunized religious community

A British Columbia outbreak of mumps, so far hitting 200 people, began with a religious group that doesn't immunize its kids.

This is what happens when you let herd immunity fail. Enough kids in the group got mumps and the viral load they transmitted to their immunized peers was sufficient to overcome individual immunizations. It's not enough to immunize your kid; the community must be immunized or isolated or attacks like this happen.

Palin's coterie vs. the blogosphere

The New York Times ran a long account of Sarah Palin's record in Alaska. She apparently appointed everyone who came to High School graduation party to various Alaskan sinecures, but one of the more telling is that she either orchestrated or turned a blind eye as her assistant called opposition bloggers and told them to "Stop blogging right now."

Why is McCain running a dishonest campaign?

McCain has concluded that a fact-based case about Obama isn't enough to prevail in November. So he has chosen to smear his opponent with ridiculous claims that he thinks the American people are gullible enough to believe. He has charged repeatedly that his opponent is willing to lose a war to win an election. What's McCain willing to lose to become president? Nothing so consequential as a war. Just his soul.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I would argue that McCain's soul is either already gone or if not definitely has a lien on it... maybe several. IMHO there's no dishonor in abandoning a war if you stand up and admit you never should have started it in the first place...

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

The problem with some people not immunizing is that immunizations don't "take" for everyone, so some children who are immunized are still vulnerable, and when they get exposed to kids who aren't immunized, they get sick. I think it is reasonable to require immunizations for potentially fatal contagious diseases before attending public school.

potentially fatal contagious diseases

[urox.livejournal.com]

Side comments about immunizations (because despite my reservations about some "required" immunizations, I think everyone should get the MMR):

Chickenpox and hep b are both "potentially" fatal. But the numbers for fatality or childhood infection for the respective diseases are incredibly low (compared to measles, mumps, and rubella from what I understand). And now they're saying, "oh, the LIVE chickenpox vaccine isn't working completely to immunize. Let's give them a second round."

Who gets to define the level of risk of fatality? Because those two don't make sense to me.

Re: potentially fatal contagious diseases

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

Those don't for me either. Chicken pox hardly ever kills anyone. Measles, mumps, & rubella used to regularly.

Re: potentially fatal contagious diseases

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I guess the question then becomes: okay, your unvaccinated child has an 1 in 25,000 chance of dying from chickenpox (that's without the assumption that she actually catches it). So far, despite 40,000,000 doses of varicella vaccine, there have been no reported deaths and only 13 or so reported injuries, most of them treatable. The odds of injury in an unvaccinated child are (whips out calculator) 120 times greater than a vaccinated child.

You decide, but those numbers indicate to me that I should vaccinate my kids.

Re: potentially fatal contagious diseases

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

As an added bonus, people who've been vaccinated have much milder cases of shingles later on in life. There's also a second-run booster specifically for shingles now, that helps reduce it further.

Re: potentially fatal contagious diseases

[resonant.livejournal.com]

I had chicken pox as a kid, and didn't suffer much, but the effects are much worse in adults. It can cause really nasty birth defects if a woman gets it during pregnancy. My uncle got it as an adult, and nearly died from the fever; it probably caused his sterility, too.

Re: potentially fatal contagious diseases

[resonant.livejournal.com]

"... childhood infection ..."

If you get it as an adult, the severity is much worse.

Re: potentially fatal contagious diseases

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that immunizing children for it is making it less likely that people will get it as adults, unfortunately.

Okay, since I'm pretty much guessing, I just went and did a little research (links below). It looks as though chicken pox vaccination is a good idea overall, more so the more kids are immunized, because if we have enough coverage we could wipe the disease out entirely. And *that* would prevent the kind of misery caused by pregnant women and other adults getting it.

http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAbstracts/ma?f=102274643.html

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/271/5/375

Re: potentially fatal contagious diseases

[edichka2.livejournal.com]

Has that been established yet? I'd think it would be decades too early to tell, given the demographics of shingles.

- Eddie

Re: potentially fatal contagious diseases

[urox.livejournal.com]

So why don't they give the vaccine in childhood, but much further along than the 1 year or even the 4-6 year 2nd booster they now recommend (because they're realizing that the one at 1 year isn't really working and kids are still getting re-infected.. in fact, 1 out of 10 who get both doses aren't completely protected according to the CDC)?

When chickenpox went around the school, all the kids in my family made sure to catch it. We all caught it when we were elementary school age. So why the extra-early vaccination time schedule?

Why isn't there a campaign for adults to get the vaccine since it is recommended for them to do so?

Re: potentially fatal contagious diseases

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Eliminating contagion reservoirs, and creating herd immunity. My provincial government gives free flu shots to everyone, especially targeting little kids, even though it's mostly the elderly that die from influenza. There were complaints when the program started that the government was wasting money with universal immunization, but nursing home influenza mortality really dropped when those snotty-nosed little disease vectors started getting free jabs.

Now they're dying of listeria, but that's a different issue ...