Im writing a couple papers right now.
Which means when I get home, Im like 'YAY BLOGGIE TIME!... ugh, writing... ugh... gonna watch TV...'
It doesnt help Ive gotten all excited about a few papers I wanted to blog about, only to subsequently realize they werent as cool as I thought they were, so I get all annoyed and not wanting to bloggie.
So heres a few random things:
1. I saw 'Bad Universe'. Every time Sydney blew up/was going to blow up my brain screamed 'OH MY GOD! They killed SYDNEY! Those BASTARDS!' So now when Sydney does get demolished by an asteroid in real life, Im going to be laughing hysterically, lookin like an asshole. Thanks, Phil.
2. Lo et al uploaded 8 of their 'virus we found in people' sequences. :-/ Its fucking endogenous MLV. You BLAST it, its endogenous MLV. With, literally, 2 nucleotide differences. What the fuck? Am I being punked?
3. September 3rd, OKC Atheists have a billboard going up on the highway that goes right past the OK State Fair. It says "Don't believe in God? Join the club." with the OKC Atheists website. heh.
4. Stealing our thunder, the fucking Satanists are holding a public ceremony at the Cox Convention Center. I swear to god if I have to drive to Tulsa or Dallas to get aborted babies for dinner now, cause the damn Satanists have hoarded them all for their fucking 'Cox Convention ceremony' I will be SO PISSED OFF. Theres a poll at that link. 1032 people think religious discrimination is fine and dandy. Nice.
5. I didnt know this-- 'Organic' farmers? All concerned about their free-range, cage-free, at harmony with the Mother Goddess animals? They let their fucking animals die from treatable diseases, because if they treat them with even one dose of antibiotics, the animals are no longer 'organic'. That cow/pig/whatever is a waste of money, alive and non-organic.
Allowing one-time therapeutic antibiotics is "a slippery slope," says Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association, and would "undermine consumer confidence in organics. It's the same position [I have] as on human vaccines. They are dangerous, and that's why I didn't vaccinate my kid."
*blink* (H/T Anastasia)
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The "organic farming" bit is depressing, but it does point up an important truth: the best way to be "in harmony with Nature" is to be dead.
I do hope organic farmer Ronnie takes that slippery slope out of business soon. Anyone that ignorant about vaccines should not be trusted with sharp objects. Poor kid though. Parents put kid at risk as well as neighborhood. Stupid, stupid.
Wonder if these parents at least provide the tetanus vaccine.
That's one wound infection that is still as probable as it ever was.
It would be interesting for atheists to get out to protest something the Satanists have going on, but in the absence of hateful preaching, bad legislation, a rude protest to counter-protest or some other social justice issue, it's hard to get worked up.
Such a protest would surely confuse the crap out of evangelists... and anyone else with the same crappy thesaurus entry for "Satanists".
However, "Stop Hogging The Aborted Babies" would be too tempting a sign to bring out, and that might confuse the message a little :)
I live down the street from an abortion clinic, you can have some of ours. Bit tangy, they are.
That's one of those impossible-to-answer poll questions:
"Do you think the Oklahoma City Civic Center should deny access to a group planning to perform a Satanic ritual there?"
Yes, I think they should deny access, just as any government facility should deny access to anyone who plans to perform a religious ritual there. On the other hand, answering "yes" implies (or at least many would infer) that I oppose it because they're satanists rather than because they're religious, period.
On the other hand, answering "no" implies/infers that I believe public facilities should be open to religious groups for religious activities. Can't win.
It would be interesting to see how the results changed if they altered the poll question very slightly:
"Do you think the Oklahoma City Civic Center should deny access to a group planning to perform a religious ritual there?"
All the Christians would doubtlessly change their votes in favor of allowing a religious ritual, assuming the question meant a Christian religious ritual.
Re: point #2. I BLASTed it as well, and have no idea what's going on. Looks like endogenous MLV to me too...but where do those 2 or 3 SNPs come from? Crappy sequencing (though the location seems too consistent to be a sequencing issue)? Lab contamination would likely be either Bl6, BALB, or 129; of those, I think only Bl6 has complete genomic sequence (from my admittedly fading memory). I am puzzled as well...
"What the fuck? Am I being punked?"
Ah well, we knew eventually you'd figure it out. But boy, we really had you going with that CFS and virus thingie (yes, the waitress *was* in on it!).
I must admit I had money on the line that PZ would discover the truth that squid are really just rubber toys made in Japan long before you would catch on. (My only hope left is that PZ catches on before it finally dawns on Brayton that the Bush Administration was pure fiction.)
rnb - I really doubt it. It seems vaccines denialist groups are all or nothing when it comes to vaccines. So, out goes the tetanus vax too. I recently followed a fb thread on 'natural' ways to clean a cut. Funny, they all listed actual medications. Am I right in saying that Tetanus is estimated to kill 1/2 million people a year world wide?
Why am I not surprised that an organic food guru is anti-vax? He probably suspects chemical agents in contrails too.
BTW, my cousin has been nursing her 6yo through a case of Salmonella the past few days. It is not a pretty sight.
The culprit? Organic eggs.
Meanwhile, Australia's organic farmers face a bigger problem : Organic farmers miss out on Locust spray
PNAS's commentary to Lo et al suggests that recombination and exchange of envelope proteins between different MLVs might explain... something? Seems a bit vague though.
It's the same position [I have] as on human vaccines. They are dangerous, and that's why I didn't vaccinate my kid.
Therapeutic antibiotics are dangerous? More dangerous to the animal than letting it die?
From context, it sounds as if this nimrod does not believe in treating a childhood disease with antibiotics either, though perhaps I am assuming too much mental coherence.