Monday, April 07, 2014
Sunday, April 06, 2014
Worth a Shot | The Texas Observer
As for Mindy Syler Hale and her husband Brandon, they've started urging all their friends and family to receive the Tdap vaccination. What happened to Brooks, she says, put everything in perspective. "Think how you'd feel sitting there and looking at your child go through what we went through. Think about having to put your child on that helicopter and not knowing whether when you got to the hospital, he'd be alive. Even our pediatrician didn't know if he'd survive the flight."
Mindy now wonders if Brooks would have had more antibodies in his system, more immunity, if she'd been vaccinated during her pregnancy. "He might still have caught whooping cough," she says, "but it would have given him more of a fighting chance."
If that were the case—or if Brooks' father, Brandon, had been vaccinated against the disease—maybe Brooks would have avoided the Life-Flight to Lubbock. Maybe Mindy and Brandon wouldn't have had that heartbreaking two-hour drive. Maybe they wouldn't have had to look at him lying on a gurney, wearing an oxygen mask.
"It makes you wonder," Mindy says. "Whether we'd have gone through everything we went through." And yet Brooks survived. Despite everything that happened, he was one of the lucky ones.
---SteveSaturday, April 05, 2014
Smart Meters Are Not a Health Risk. The End. — Tech News and Analysis
So basically, if consumers are worried about RF, they should give up cell phones and microwaves before blocking smart meter installations.
Friday, April 04, 2014
Thursday, April 03, 2014
Skepticblog » Oso tragic, Oso foolish
At least for some, the Washington mudslide was just evolution in action...
---Steve
Wednesday, April 02, 2014
Low Vitamin D Levels Linked to Disease in Two Big Studies - NYTimes.com
---Steve
Tweet from Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor)
![]() | Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor) |
Basically, the Supreme Court is saying that the penniless have as much right to buy elections as billionaires do. It's all about fairness. | |
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/high-court-voids-overall-contribution-limits
---Steve
Two evil people
---Steve
Tuesday, April 01, 2014
Monday, March 31, 2014
Atheists Are .07% of the Federal Prison Population, a Threatening Fact for Christian Fundamentalists | Alternet
It's worth reminding them that if every atheist left, America would lose 85 percent of its scientists -- not that the fundamentalists love science exactly -- and a fraction of one percent of its federal prison population
---Steve
Pastor says he tried to save man swept out to sea during baptism - latimes.com
'via Blog this'
Have You Signed Away Your Right to Sue? | Mother Jones
'via Blog this'
Theory and Observation in Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
'via Blog this'
Slate: “There Is No Question That We Live in a World Already Altered by Climate Change.”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/03/31/new_ipcc_report_the_planet_is_warming_and_it_s_going_to_get_worse.html
---Steve
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Track Track (3/29/14, 7:48:56AM) from GaiaGPS
Sent from my iPhone
Alan Sokal highlights the incompatibility of science and religion « Why Evolution Is True
And here, it seems to me, is the crux of the conflict between religion and science. Not the religious rejection of specific scientific theories (be it heliocentrism in the 17th century or evolutionary biology today); over time most religions do find some way to make peace with well-established science. Rather, the scientific worldview and the religious worldview come into conflict over a far more fundamental question: namely, what constitutes evidence.
---Steve
Friday, March 28, 2014
Thursday, March 27, 2014
The American Scholar: Treachery - Anne Matthews
Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. … Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.
—Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965
---Steve
The American Scholar: Ten Best Sentences - Our Editors
There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.
—Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
---Steve
Corporations and religious liberty
"These companies are not religious organizations, nor are they affiliated with religious organizations. But the owners say they are victims of an assault on religious liberty because they personally disapprove of certain contraceptives. They are wrong, and the Supreme Court's task is to issue a decisive ruling saying so. The real threat to religious liberty comes from the owners trying to impose their religious beliefs on thousands of employees."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/opinion/sunday/crying-wolf-on-religious-liberty.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=1
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/03/26/wall-street-journal-discovers-a-love-for-an-evo/198633
---Steve
FXR is a molecular target for the effects of vertical sleeve gastrectomy : Nature : Nature Publishing Group
Here we demonstrate that the therapeutic value of VSG does not result from mechanical restriction imposed by a smaller stomach. Rather, VSG is associated with increased circulating bile acids, and associated changes to gut microbial communities.
---Steve
Creationist Wisdom #411: Education Professor | The Sensuous Curmudgeon
---Steve
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Slate: Is the Contraception Mandate Doomed?
---Steve
Moral judgments
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/26/health/brain-moral-judgments/index.html
---Steve
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Slate: Getting the History Right
---Steve
Monday, March 24, 2014
meta analysis all-cause mortality veg diet
that, in comparison with regular meat eaters, mortality from
ischemic heart disease was 20% lower in occasional meat
eaters, 34% lower in people who ate fish but not meat, 34%
lower in lactoovovegetarians, and 26% lower in vegans.
There were no significant differences between vegetarians and
nonvegetarians in mortality from cerebrovascular disease,
stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer,
prostate cancer, or all other causes combined.
http://www.direct-ms.org/sites/default/files/Veg%20vs%20non%20veg%20mortality.pdf
PLOS ONE: Nutrition and Health – The Association between Eating Behavior and Various Health Parameters: A Matched Sample Study
'via Blog this'
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Saturday, March 22, 2014
The real goal of all those anti-Obamacare ads
the hyping of all these alleged Obamacare victims is about furthering an anti-government, anti-tax, anti-regulatory agenda designed to protect the bottom line of the very wealthy
---Steve
Lawrence E. Walsh, Iran-contra special prosecutor, dies at 102 - The Washington Post
In his book "Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up" (1997), Mr. Walsh maintained that the architect of the coverup was Meese, abetted by Bush, White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, CIA Director William J. Casey, Weinberger and other top administration officials.
"What set Iran-contra apart from previous political scandals," Mr. Walsh wrote, "was the fact that a cover-up engineered in the White House of one president and completed by his successor prevented the rule of law from being applied to the perpetrators of criminal activity of constitutional dimension."
---Steve
Friday, March 21, 2014
Anne Graham Lotz: Missing Airplane Just A 'Small Snapshot' Of What The World Will Experience Following The Rapture | Right Wing Watch
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anne-graham-lotz-missing-airplane-just-small-snapshot-what-world-will-experience-following-r#sthash.XHVcsvLU.dpuf
We hope the looney tunes like Lotz go quickly and leave the rest of us in peace.
---Steve
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Monday, March 17, 2014
Slate: Jenny McCarthy Asks, the Internet Slam Dunks.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/03/17/jenny_mccarthy_antivaxxer_gets_remedied_on_twitter.html
---Steve
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Friday, March 14, 2014
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Rake Lyrics — Townes Van Zandt | Album: Delta Momma Blues
---Steve
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
An atheist can be pro-life only by lying about the science » Pharyngula
we already implicitly recognize that there is a pattern of change over time; children do not have all the same privileges as adults. Third trimester fetuses have fewer still. First trimester embryos? Even less. We all understand without even thinking about it that there is a progressive pattern to human development.
---Steve
Monday, March 10, 2014
Spicy Palomitas » Fit, Fun & Delish!
- ½ tablespoon kosher salt
- ½ tablespoon sugar
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon ground chipotle chile
- 1 tablespoon ground ancho chile
Sunday, March 09, 2014
The Nakamoto chase is a sideshow: Here's the real story on bitcoins - latimes.com
in the words of the indispensable Izabella Kaminska of the Financial Times: "Who'd have thought that there might be an incentive for operators in a totally unregulated market to take people's assets and run?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-the-satoshi-chase-20140307,0,7591905.story#ixzz2vUZXaifA
---Steve
Saturday, March 08, 2014
Why Isn’t Anyone Talking About Matthew McConaughey’s Bizarre Oscars Acceptance Speech? – Flavorwire
While McConaughey started off in the normal acceptance speech fashion of thanking his director Jean-Marc Vallée and his costars Jared Leto and Jennifer Garner, his speech slowly (and I mean slowly, because the whole thing was about three minutes long) devolved into a convoluted mess. He profusely thanked God. He went on a tangent about how his father was probably watching him from heaven with a pot of gumbo, a lemon meringue pie, and a can of Miller Lite by his side. He said he sees himself as his hero — a future version of himself, that is. Throughout his speech, he fiddled with the buttons of his coat, shifting from one foot to the other, unable to focus on anything. He was jittery and twitchy and jumped from thought to thought, rambling on and on, with a few passing moments of clarity. And let's not forget that he didn't even bring up the real-life people who were actually affected by the pharmaceutical mess that was the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. (He must have been too busy thanking himself.)
---Steve
Friday, March 07, 2014
Thursday, March 06, 2014
Quote by Steven Pinker: Challenge a person's beliefs, and you challenge...
"Challenge a person's beliefs, and you challenge his dignity, standing, and power. And when those beliefs are based on nothing but faith, they are chronically fragile. No one gets upset about the belief that rocks fall down as opposed to up, because all sane people can see it with their own eyes. Not so for the belief that babies are born with original sin or that God exists in three persons or that Ali is the second-most divinely inspired man after Muhammad. When people organize their lives around these beliefs, and then learn of other people who seem to be doing just fine without them--or worse, who credibly rebut them--they are in danger of looking like fools. Since one cannot defend a belief based on faith by persuading skeptics it is true, the faithful are apt to react to unbelief with rage, and may try to eliminate that affront to everything that makes their lives meaningful."
― Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
---Steve
Wednesday, March 05, 2014
An excerpt from Kostya Kenndy's new book on Pete Rose - MLB - Kostya Kennedy - SI.com
Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/mlb/news/20140305/pete-rose-book-excerpt/#ixzz2v8vVvrIR
---Steve
Tuesday, March 04, 2014
Food
'via Blog this'
Monday, March 03, 2014
The Secret Auden by Edward Mendelson | The New York Review of Books
He observed to friends how common it was to find a dedicated anti-fascist who conducted his erotic life as if he were invading Poland.
---Steve
Saturday, March 01, 2014
This Is the Most Shocking Thing About HBO's 'True Detective' - Speakeasy - WSJ
I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self aware; nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, a secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody's nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.
---Steve
Arguments Against God - NYTimes.com
Why do theists care so much about belief in God? Disagreement over that question is really no more than a difference in philosophical opinion. Specifically, it's just a disagreement about ontology — about what kinds of things exist. Why should a disagreement like that bear any moral significance? Why shouldn't theists just look for allies among us atheists in the battles that matter — the ones concerned with justice, civil rights, peace, etc. — and forget about our differences with respect to such arcane matters as the origins of the universe?
---Steve


