Rally

If there's one thing that's amusing about the antivaccine movement, it's the disconnect between its members' perception of their own importance and the reality of it, which is that they tend to be a pretty pathetic, risible band. They post their blogs, full of the rage of Dunning-Kruger, thinking that they are putting forth the most sophisticated scientific arguments that real scientists, who have spent their entire professional life studying vaccines and autism, somehow missed and finding evidence of a link that no other scientist can. Of course, pesky things like rigorous study design tend…
My heart sank as I stood on the Metro platform at the Zoo stop and watched the second completely full train pull away. All those stories of people in Japan pushing people into trains started to make sense. It seemed there was no other way to get on the train and getting the rally looked impossible. I didn't know what to do so I got on a different train and rode in the opposite direction. Two stops later, the crowd didn't quite as bad and now, I didn't have any other way to get back to the hotel anyway. I moved with the crowd, slipped into the still-packed train and tried not to take up…
The Massive Stock Market Rally of 2009 Ends Today: In what the Wall Street Journal calls "a comeback of historic proportions," the U.S. stock market's banner year closes later on today. The paper says, "With one trading day remaining in 2009, the Dow is on track for its biggest annual gain since 2003, when it rose 25%. It finished Wednesday up 3.1 points, at 10548.51, a fresh peak for the year and the highest since October 2008." Leading its business section, New York Times also takes note of this year's rallying stock markets, which "will ring out one of their most volatile periods in…