Not for foodies, not this...

The Uwajimaya in Seattle is now selling Baconnaise.

Omaha very clearly said "No." They only had the "lite" stuff for sale anyway, so I heeded her warning.

Hit and run.

Hit and Run

On the way home, I passed by a terrible scene: A man had been just struck off his bicycle while riding up Pine street, near 8th Ave, by an SUV. I was more than a block away when it happened and didn't see it, and unfortunately none of the people I spoke to were able to say if someone had gotten the license plate. Even as I fished out my camera a cop arrived on the scene and took control of the situation. I never did learn what happened; I was unable to provide any details and went on my way.

I hope they nail whoever did this. I've been thinking about riding again in downtown, and things like this happen to talk me out of it.

Naked Booth!

So cute! So Not Safe For Work, but still, so cute!

Oh, if only I were still young and cute enough...

*Sigh* "Pictures or it didn't happen"

I'm not the sort of person to go on and on about a mere girl sighting, but every once in a while I pass by someone so drop-dead gorgeous I just have to do somethnig with the idea.

She was probably in her mid-20's, walking down University Ave, wearing a brown velvet jacket and a matching purple skirt that didn't quite make it to her knees. She was tall, and had a well-developed build, but nothing to prominent up top. On her feet she had the cutest little brown shoes, again velvet to match the rest of her outfit, tiny things for tiny feet, and they barely reached her ankles.

Of what was exposed, I can say only that she had an adorable face: button nose, small pursed lips, eyes done spectacularly well. But it was her legs that were the greatest attractant, perfectly formed gams that reached from hem to shoes.

If it's true that pretty girls make people happy, she was spreading good cheer everywhere.

There are days when I could absolutely kick myself for forgetting my camera. One of the rules of the modern Internet, when everyone has a camera, is "Pictures or it didn't happen."

I guess she didn't happen.

NPR does hit piece on HPV Vaccine

NPR's article yesterday on the risks of the HPV vaccine has to be one of the most irresponsible piece of journamalism I've heard on NPR in a long while.

It starts off with this quote:

There's a new report on health problems associated with the vaccine against HPV - that's the human papillomavirus, which can lead to cervical cancer.

And then it goes on, paragraph after paragraph, sound bite after sound bite, to show how there is no discernable pattern of risk evident in the data, and overwhelmingly, the lives saved by the HPV vaccine far outweigh the risk of vaccination. Cervical cancer kills 4000 women every year, and the CDC says that two deaths from the vaccine are "suspect." Cutting deaths down by a factor of 2000 is a huge, huge benefit to the population.

These are the gold standards of vaccination deployment. They're the kind of results vaccine researchers look for: a lowering of risk factors by at least one order of magnitue (and in this case, three orders of magnitude), and no discernable causal pattern of risks related to vaccination. Gardisil's risk profile is exactly the same as other childhood vaccinations-- a point Wilson never raised.

Brenda Wilson, the reporter, chose to end her piece with this comment:

To put things into perspective, Dr. Halsey reminds us that people of all ages have health problems and all people die, even young people the age of those who got the vaccine.

That's the sort of, "Well, kids die sometime. Yours might. It might be the vaccine's fault, but researchers are just gonna shrug their shoulders anyway."

The Christian Right hates Gardisil. They hate it with a passion because it's the first vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease. For them, sex ought to be risky. It ought to be frightening. Focus on the Family's "position of the HPV vaccine" is that Gardisil will convince young women that sexual intercourse is socially acceptable and will encourage promiscuity, whereas if young women know they're at risk for cervical cancer they'll be more likely to abstain. It's all about controlling women with fear; technological alleviations of fearful sex are an abomination before their god.

Nothing in Wilson' piece supported the opening sentence. The presentation, the opening fnord and the overweening de-emphasis on the nature of science, the lack of comparison of these results to those of the polio vaccine, the rubella vaccine, or the meningitis vaccine-- all vaccinations that save lives-- all lead up to an enraging piece of journamalism that feeds into the Christian Right's agenda.

And yes, I've complained to NPR about this crap.