Vaccinate the kids

Apparently the anti-vaccination celebrity crowd has a celebrity opponent: Amanda Peet.

And it's high damn time. This nonsense about vaccines causing autism is getting out of hand. Studies find that the link all these anti-vaccination celebrities and fear-mongering parents on television claim exists between vaccines and autism is bogus.

More importantly, who the hell are you kidding? Are you going to believe a bunch of Hollywood celebrities -- the same Hollywood that produced Tom Cruise jumping up and down on Oprah's couch and all the other Scientologists who claim several psychiatric treatments for severe psychological problems don't work -- and a few parents on the TV claiming that a vaccine causes autism or doctors and researchers who study autism?

Autism, if I remember, is also something of a spectrum disorder, so you probably know some very mildly autistic people (I do not stand by this as absolute fact -- this is from conversations with a friend with an autistic brother, who [my friend] is very involved in the North Carolina autism foundation).

And here's the bottom line: would you rather have an autistic child or a dead child?


Posted by pdmccaul [Random News] ( July 17, 2008 05:16 PM ) Permalink | Comments[2]

I call BS!

The following passage from this NYTimes article reeks of BS:

Why do I call BS? Perhaps this little gem I read at Obsidian Wings will explain. If you don't feel like reading, the main link in that Obsidian Wings post is to a NYTimes story entitled:

Reporters Say Networks Put Wars on Back Burner

Yes, I know, the article mostly talks about the Big Three TV networks. But that's a fairly big news outlet, particularly considering that print media seems to be on the decline.

So if anything, the media has put the war on the back burner and will bring it out only when their candidate (who loves donuts with the sprinkles on top) needs a boost.

Posted by pdmccaul [Random News] ( July 07, 2008 08:42 AM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

Climate Change Wonkishness (minor tweak)

Climate change on other planets and moons?

Could it be?

I love how all the conservatives are holding this up as proof that global climate change really isn't an issue. Has it occurred to these people that we may have exacerbated an existing temperature cycle with our behaviors?

More importantly, we've seen more and more in the way of powerful weather disasters, many of which could be predicted from an unusual increase in global temperature. And the ice caps are melting rather quickly on Earth.

So to save lives in the future and hopefully create jobs, thus stimulating the economy, can we please stop arguing about whether global warming exists? It feels like we're arguing whether we should do something about a small fire in our yard -- sitting around and arguing isn't going to help if something changes and the fire grows and burns the house down.

One last note: I can't seem to find anything except the usual skeptic sites and editorials about this warming on Jupiter and melting ice on Mars stuff. Not even with a decent search on Google News (not exactly scientific nor thorough). I'll try LexisNexis later and try to find something, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this is overblown nonsense by flat-earth people.


Posted by pdmccaul [Random News] ( June 28, 2008 06:38 PM ) Permalink | Comments[1]

A good idea

Posting will be infrequent (for anyone who reads) for a while, as I have stuff to take care of with the newspaper. Hopefully, I'll switch over to a blog there and all will be well.

But I had to post this link to a New York Times piece from 25 June:

An Honor That Bush Is Unlikely to Embrace.

The CliffNotes? A group of citizens in San Francisco want to name a sewage plant after George W. Bush.

That's right: no highway for you, King George.


Posted by pdmccaul [Random News] ( June 26, 2008 01:19 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]