(Using http://antiantivax.flurf.net/ as my source for all of the following.)
1. Thimerisol is only really present in the flu vaccines nowadays (though there are non-thimerisol versions). Most other vaccines remove any mercury used before the vaccine gets shipped. At most, there are trace amounts of mercury in the dose of vaccine you get. Even that mercury won't build up to toxic levels as some anti-vax folks claim, though. It's ethylmercury, not methylmercury and has a half life of a few days to a week. Even if you get three injections at once of vaccines with trace amounts of mercury, it'll be flushed from your system by the time you get your next shots.
There are side effects to vaccines. In most cases (something like 99.999%), any side effects that manifest will be limited to a sore arm (or leg if the child gets the injection there), minor injection-site swelling and possibly a short-lived fever. I don't know of any cases of someone suddenly dying from vaccinations. Even if there were, though, they would be so rare that the risk of sudden death by vaccine would be much less than the risk of death by measles, whooping cough or the other vaccinated diseases.
2. There are valid reasons to not get a vaccine. For example, allergies or an immune system problem. In this case, I don't think anybody is claiming you should get the vaccine anyway. If you worry that you or your child would have an allergic reaction, a doctor can perform an allergy test. If your doctor is ignoring valid reasons to not give your child a vaccine, then the solution isn't skipping all vaccines and declaring them evil, but to find a better doctor. (NOTE: This doesn't mean doctor-shopping because your doctor insists that the MMR doesn't cause autism and you were convinced by a website that it does.)
3. Many of the vaccine-prevented diseases are airborne. These wouldn't be helped by greater hygiene. In addition, in regions where vaccine rates plummet, the diseases have seen a resurgence. If the drop was hygiene-related then shouldn't vaccination rates rising or lowering have no effect on disease rates? In addition, from the flurf site linked to above: "Before the approval of the vaccine, paralytic polio struck 13,000-20,000 individuals every year in the U.S. The number of cases peaked at 21,000 in 1952, only three years before approval of the vaccine. By 1960, there were only 2,525 cases, and only 61 cases in 1965." When the vaccine was introduced, disease rates plummeted. I know that correlation doesn't equal causation, but in times like this is strongly points to a link. If you turn a variable up and down (introduce polio vaccines vs. dropping vaccine rates) and the observed phenomenon has a repeatable, consistent reaction, then the rational conclusion is that they are linked.
4. Part of the reason is herd immunity. Even if you don't come down with the disease, you could still carry it from one person to another. If you are vaccinated, though, you aren't a conduit. Also, isn't it better for a child to get a shot in the arm and be protected against a disease like Chicken Pox then be out of school for a week, itching at sores all over their body, and possibly suffering complications? As far as getting Hep C from the vaccine, I'd ask for some sources for that. Getting a disease from the vaccine would require the use of a live vaccine without any modifications to keep it from multiplying. I don't think those are used anymore (for obvious reasons).
You were lucky then. There are complications from measles that are a lot worse than fever, rash and sensitivity to light. About 1 in 1,000 people with measles develop encephalitis "an inflammation of the brain that may cause vomiting, convulsions and, rarely, coma or even death. Encephalitis can closely follow measles, or it can occur months late." (Source: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/measles/DS00331/DSECTION=complications )
Personally, I'd rather give my kids a measles shot than take a 1 in 1,000 risk of encephalitis.
If only it were limited to the kids of people who refused vaccines, then this wouldn't be such a big deal. The big deal is that there are people who can't get the vaccines who are being affected (and infected). For example, Dana McCaffery, a four week old baby who died from Whooping Cough. She was too young to be immunized and had to rely on herd immunity. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people refusing the whooping cough shots because "nobody dies from measles or whooping cough* ".
If a baby dies because some other idiots didn't get vaccinated, that's not natural selection at work. That's reckless endangerment on the part of the anti-vaccine folks.
* Meryl Dorey said that. (See: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/04/26/the-australian-antivax-movement-takes-its-toll/ ) To this day, she claims that Dana didn't die of whooping cough and it's some kind of pro-vaccination conspiracy. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Vaccination_Network#Campaign_against_the_Pertussis_.28Whooping_Cough.29_vaccine )
And that's what amazes me, the quacks of the world who promote anti-vaccination messages have yet to prove any causal link between MMR and/or thimerosal with autism, yet they stick to this piece of faith, not unlike the folk who will follow cult religions.
It's worse than that. They change their story each time they are proven wrong. Each time they move the goalposts, their followers nod their heads and agree, never questioning why the story has changed for the 10th time. Wakefield and McCarthy said it, so it must be true. Furthermore, they claim it is up to everyone else to prove them wrong, otherwise they're right. (And keep proving them wrong each time they come up with another story.)
Of the top of my head, the "reasons" given (feel free to add to the list):
- Number of shots given at once. - Mercury in the shots. - Too many vaccinations in total. - "Toxins" in the vaccines.
I think one of the problems is that vaccinations are *too* successful. Parents today (and that includes me and my wife) have never seen the ravages of Measles, Whooping Cough, Polio and the like. We have it easy because we were vaccinated when we were young. Then someone claims vaccines cause bad, scary things which plants doubt in their minds so they do a risk evaluation in their head. They know autism is bad. They probably have seen someone with autism. They have probably never seen someone with measles or whooping cough, though. Their brain tries to come up with a "bad disease" and they think of the flu. So would a lifetime of autism be worse than a week of fever and coughing? Sure. So skip the vaccines.
Problem is that their risk assessment is highly flawed. If they knew the real risks of the diseases, they'd know that this isn't "fever and coughing for a week" but coughing until you get broken ribs, hospitalization, paralysis, blindness, and death (to name a few things the diseases can cause). And these are far more common than any hypothetical vaccine-autism link. I'd much rather have my child turn out to be autistic than turn out to be dead. (As my younger son goes in for 2 vaccines today.)
In this case, the "Black Knight" (aka SCO) has had his arms, legs, torso, eyes, ears, chin and nose hacked off.
SCO: "Come on, then. Have at thee!" Novell: "Can't you see you're beaten? You're nothing but a disembodied mouth." SCO: "I'll bite ya." Novell: "You haven't any teeth. I knocked those out already." SCO: "Well, then I'll give you a good gummin'." Novell: "It's over. You're beaten. There isn't even any of you left. I think we're done here." SCO: "What are you? Chicken? I win by forfeit. Nobody beats the great SC...." (Out of nowhere a large bare foot comes down and crushes SCO.)
Perhaps, but calling people "idiots" if they don't help by submitting code isn't going to get many people to donate money or enthusiastically promote your software. ("These people think I'm an idiot because I don't code, but everyone should use their software!")
April 2007 - Apple and EMI announce DRM-free music via iTunes Plus. May 2007 - An iTunes upgrade allows for DRM-free tracks. September 2007 - Amazon MP3 goes public beta. January 2008 - Amazon MP3 goes live & is the first online music store to sell DRM-free files from the 4 major music labels. January 2009 - Apple announces that they're going DRM-free with the other 3 major record labels.
So yes, Apple was first with EMI, but Amazon was first with the entire big 4.
Of course, then there's also eMusic which was founded in 1998 and a bunch of other smaller, indie, completely legit services which sold DRM-free MP3 files before Apple or Amazon.
I was looking into programming apps for iPods/iPads and found out that the process works something like this:
1. Code your app 2. Submit it to Apple 3. Wait 4. If rejected, go back to step 1 and recode/resubmit. 5. If approved, yay!
Now, however, say you want to release a new version. Either you found bugs in the previous version or you want to add cool new features.
1. Code new version 2. Submit to Apple 3. Wait - NOTE: If there are bugs in your current version, you'll have to fend off complaints about how slow you are to fix the bugs when your fixed version is already done and just waiting on Apple's approval. 4. If rejected, your old version will remain the "current version." You now need to find out why your new version was rejected and recode/resubmit. (While the angry bug reports pile up more.) 5. If approved, congratulations. You'll have to go through this each and every time.
I'd love to see a tablet where apps 1) can be downloaded from any site you trust, 2) are controlled on a hardware/OS level by restricting what they can and can't do without user approval.
Right now, I'm not going to commit to programming apps for Apple products. Instead, I'm going to work on making my websites more mobile friendly so that they can be better used by tablets, smartphones, etc.
He did say he could read it 3 times as fast as just watching it. So that would shorten the 84 second video into a 28 second reading. How to spend the saved 56 seconds? Looking for the transcript to read, of course!
What I thought was funny was that the minute the "male" Cleverbot said yes, the "female" Cleverbot said goodbye, ending the conversation. Battle of the Robot Sexes?
It would be so easy for them to make it both. I've said it before: Public Nicknames, Private Real Names.
Let people choose nicknames and assign them to circles. Require Real Names if you must, but let people limit who gets to see you. So I could set my Real Name as "Jason Levine" and my Friends and Family circles could see that as my name, but people in my "Know From Online" circle would see me as CleverNickName12345. (That's a made up nickname for this post, BTW. If that happens to also be a Slashdot user, we're not the same person.)
The coding would likely be minimal and the benefits would be immense. They could still sell ads knowing that CleverNickName12345 is really "Jason Levine" while not forcing me to reveal my real name to people when I'd rather not do that.
That's the first thing I thought of. I'm in the Eastern time zone. I typically wake up at 7am and go to sleep at 12am. Suppose we switched to GMT. (Eastern is GMT -5.) I'd have to go to wake up at 12 noon (hey, not so bad) and go to sleep at 5am (wait... what?!!!) Unless the post submitter meant that everyone should go to sleep/wake up at the same time regardless of sunrise-sunset. In that case, everyone would need room darkening shades to keep their rooms dark during the day when they slept and would need to consume more power lighting up their houses during the night when they were awake. It would be like being in a permanent state of jet lag.
Luckily, my wife gets upset with me if I buy her expensive jewelry. She thinks I'm wasting money that could be better spent elsewhere. So if I bought her a "cheap" imitation diamond, I'd be showing how frugal I am. Win-win!
People die in these things, sometimes because they do something stupid like going out to surf the swells,
Sure enough, the first life taken by Irene was a surfer in Florida. People, when they say that the waves the hurricane is producing are "killer", it's not an invitation, it's a warning!
Honestly, I don't think they could evacuate the whole city even if they really needed to. There are so many people who live in NYC and so few (relatively speaking) ways in and out. You'd need a week to evacuate at least. (If you did it in an orderly fashion. If you screamed "EVERYONE RUN NOW!!!!", people would be stuck trying to get out for weeks.)
It's not so much the speed as it is the duration. Long Island might "only" get 50-75mph winds, but they'll be getting them for about 15-20 hours. And they'll be getting soaking rains. With the rain loosening the soil and the wind pushing long enough, trees will come down and objects will fly. Also, the storm's winds will push water along as it goes over the ocean and then push it up and onto the (formally dry) land. Irene might not be a Cat 2, but it's a HUGE Cat 1. A third of the eastern seaboard!
Never underestimate a hurricane.
Yes, I'm in Irene's path (though not the direct eye-line-of-fire) and yes I've taken precautions. Stay safe everyone!
Not only this, but they've aggressively targeted companies that produce man-made diamonds, trying to claim that they are somehow inferior. When they realized they couldn't claim this, they started claiming that the perfect diamonds that other companies made were inferior because DeBeers "natural diamonds" had flaws in them. (This isn't even getting into allegations of mobster-esque death threats.)
Well, I feel threatened, but that's mainly because Irene is due to hit exactly where and when I planned on driving for vacation. It's altering my vacation plans and that's majorly annoying. We're taking a 10th anniversary trip without the kids. Do you know how RARE trips like that are? (No kids, not 10th anniversary.)
The problem with labeling all religion harmful because some people twist it to say "We must kill these people because they believe in a different god" is that you can use that for nearly anything. "We must kill those Russians because they don't believe in Democracy!" "We must kill those people because they think they should have that piece of land!" "We must kill those people because they believe they should reduce their oil output!" We don't abandon democracy, land ownership or the use of oil because some people use them to start wars. (Though, reducing oil usage wouldn't be a bad thing.)
Religion is not intrinsically good or bad. It's the people who use it for good or bad purposes. To quote Noranti from Farscape about whether religions hate each other: "Oh, good heavens, no. Religions are grand, lofty ideals, but religious followers are another story."
I've got to say I sympathize with the "got to do something" feeling. Years ago, my son had a febrile seizure, turned grey and stopped breathing. As my mother-in-law gave him rescue breaths and the ambulance was on the way, I was left with nothing to do. I couldn't just stand there, helpless, and watch my baby on our bed as my mother-in-law tried to get him breathing again. So I gave myself a job: Run back and forth between my son on the bed and the front door looking for the ambulance. At one point, my father-in-law offered to look for the ambulance. I told him that I had to do something. I had to feel like I was somehow contributing to his recovery even if I knew that my "job" wasn't really helping at all. (He made a complete recovery, though scared us with a bunch of other febrile seizures and head bonks over the last few years.)
The worst feeling in the world is seeing a loved one sick and/or suffering and knowing there's nothing you can do to help.
My wife taught in an all girl's Catholic school a few years ago and they brought a woman in to teach the Sex Ed portion of the class. My wife had to walk out and complaint to the principal when the woman started saying that all condoms had tiny holes in them that let the AIDS virus and sperm through. My wife resigned soon afterwards (for unrelated reasons - we were expecting our second baby) so we don't know if the school kept bringing that woman back to tell girls to not use condoms. Telling kids "God wants you to abstain from sex" is par for the course in a religious school. Telling kids "condoms have holes and don't work at all" is a complete lie and is inexcusable. Lying to kids like this won't make them abstain, it'll make them have sex without condoms.
Slashdot Mirror
(Using http://antiantivax.flurf.net/ as my source for all of the following.)
1. Thimerisol is only really present in the flu vaccines nowadays (though there are non-thimerisol versions). Most other vaccines remove any mercury used before the vaccine gets shipped. At most, there are trace amounts of mercury in the dose of vaccine you get. Even that mercury won't build up to toxic levels as some anti-vax folks claim, though. It's ethylmercury, not methylmercury and has a half life of a few days to a week. Even if you get three injections at once of vaccines with trace amounts of mercury, it'll be flushed from your system by the time you get your next shots.
There are side effects to vaccines. In most cases (something like 99.999%), any side effects that manifest will be limited to a sore arm (or leg if the child gets the injection there), minor injection-site swelling and possibly a short-lived fever. I don't know of any cases of someone suddenly dying from vaccinations. Even if there were, though, they would be so rare that the risk of sudden death by vaccine would be much less than the risk of death by measles, whooping cough or the other vaccinated diseases.
2. There are valid reasons to not get a vaccine. For example, allergies or an immune system problem. In this case, I don't think anybody is claiming you should get the vaccine anyway. If you worry that you or your child would have an allergic reaction, a doctor can perform an allergy test. If your doctor is ignoring valid reasons to not give your child a vaccine, then the solution isn't skipping all vaccines and declaring them evil, but to find a better doctor. (NOTE: This doesn't mean doctor-shopping because your doctor insists that the MMR doesn't cause autism and you were convinced by a website that it does.)
3. Many of the vaccine-prevented diseases are airborne. These wouldn't be helped by greater hygiene. In addition, in regions where vaccine rates plummet, the diseases have seen a resurgence. If the drop was hygiene-related then shouldn't vaccination rates rising or lowering have no effect on disease rates? In addition, from the flurf site linked to above: "Before the approval of the vaccine, paralytic polio struck 13,000-20,000 individuals every year in the U.S. The number of cases peaked at 21,000 in 1952, only three years before approval of the vaccine. By 1960, there were only 2,525 cases, and only 61 cases in 1965." When the vaccine was introduced, disease rates plummeted. I know that correlation doesn't equal causation, but in times like this is strongly points to a link. If you turn a variable up and down (introduce polio vaccines vs. dropping vaccine rates) and the observed phenomenon has a repeatable, consistent reaction, then the rational conclusion is that they are linked.
4. Part of the reason is herd immunity. Even if you don't come down with the disease, you could still carry it from one person to another. If you are vaccinated, though, you aren't a conduit. Also, isn't it better for a child to get a shot in the arm and be protected against a disease like Chicken Pox then be out of school for a week, itching at sores all over their body, and possibly suffering complications? As far as getting Hep C from the vaccine, I'd ask for some sources for that. Getting a disease from the vaccine would require the use of a live vaccine without any modifications to keep it from multiplying. I don't think those are used anymore (for obvious reasons).
You were lucky then. There are complications from measles that are a lot worse than fever, rash and sensitivity to light. About 1 in 1,000 people with measles develop encephalitis "an inflammation of the brain that may cause vomiting, convulsions and, rarely, coma or even death. Encephalitis can closely follow measles, or it can occur months late." (Source: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/measles/DS00331/DSECTION=complications )
Personally, I'd rather give my kids a measles shot than take a 1 in 1,000 risk of encephalitis.
If only it were limited to the kids of people who refused vaccines, then this wouldn't be such a big deal. The big deal is that there are people who can't get the vaccines who are being affected (and infected). For example, Dana McCaffery, a four week old baby who died from Whooping Cough. She was too young to be immunized and had to rely on herd immunity. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people refusing the whooping cough shots because "nobody dies from measles or whooping cough* ".
If a baby dies because some other idiots didn't get vaccinated, that's not natural selection at work. That's reckless endangerment on the part of the anti-vaccine folks.
* Meryl Dorey said that. (See: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/04/26/the-australian-antivax-movement-takes-its-toll/ ) To this day, she claims that Dana didn't die of whooping cough and it's some kind of pro-vaccination conspiracy. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Vaccination_Network#Campaign_against_the_Pertussis_.28Whooping_Cough.29_vaccine )
It's worse than that. They change their story each time they are proven wrong. Each time they move the goalposts, their followers nod their heads and agree, never questioning why the story has changed for the 10th time. Wakefield and McCarthy said it, so it must be true. Furthermore, they claim it is up to everyone else to prove them wrong, otherwise they're right. (And keep proving them wrong each time they come up with another story.)
Of the top of my head, the "reasons" given (feel free to add to the list):
- Number of shots given at once.
- Mercury in the shots.
- Too many vaccinations in total.
- "Toxins" in the vaccines.
I think one of the problems is that vaccinations are *too* successful. Parents today (and that includes me and my wife) have never seen the ravages of Measles, Whooping Cough, Polio and the like. We have it easy because we were vaccinated when we were young. Then someone claims vaccines cause bad, scary things which plants doubt in their minds so they do a risk evaluation in their head. They know autism is bad. They probably have seen someone with autism. They have probably never seen someone with measles or whooping cough, though. Their brain tries to come up with a "bad disease" and they think of the flu. So would a lifetime of autism be worse than a week of fever and coughing? Sure. So skip the vaccines.
Problem is that their risk assessment is highly flawed. If they knew the real risks of the diseases, they'd know that this isn't "fever and coughing for a week" but coughing until you get broken ribs, hospitalization, paralysis, blindness, and death (to name a few things the diseases can cause). And these are far more common than any hypothetical vaccine-autism link. I'd much rather have my child turn out to be autistic than turn out to be dead. (As my younger son goes in for 2 vaccines today.)
In this case, the "Black Knight" (aka SCO) has had his arms, legs, torso, eyes, ears, chin and nose hacked off.
SCO: "Come on, then. Have at thee!"
Novell: "Can't you see you're beaten? You're nothing but a disembodied mouth."
SCO: "I'll bite ya."
Novell: "You haven't any teeth. I knocked those out already."
SCO: "Well, then I'll give you a good gummin'."
Novell: "It's over. You're beaten. There isn't even any of you left. I think we're done here."
SCO: "What are you? Chicken? I win by forfeit. Nobody beats the great SC...."
(Out of nowhere a large bare foot comes down and crushes SCO.)
Perhaps, but calling people "idiots" if they don't help by submitting code isn't going to get many people to donate money or enthusiastically promote your software. ("These people think I'm an idiot because I don't code, but everyone should use their software!")
Using Wikipedia as my source:
April 2007 - Apple and EMI announce DRM-free music via iTunes Plus.
May 2007 - An iTunes upgrade allows for DRM-free tracks.
September 2007 - Amazon MP3 goes public beta.
January 2008 - Amazon MP3 goes live & is the first online music store to sell DRM-free files from the 4 major music labels.
January 2009 - Apple announces that they're going DRM-free with the other 3 major record labels.
So yes, Apple was first with EMI, but Amazon was first with the entire big 4.
Of course, then there's also eMusic which was founded in 1998 and a bunch of other smaller, indie, completely legit services which sold DRM-free MP3 files before Apple or Amazon.
Sources:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store#Movement_against_DRM
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_MP3
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMusic
I was looking into programming apps for iPods/iPads and found out that the process works something like this:
1. Code your app
2. Submit it to Apple
3. Wait
4. If rejected, go back to step 1 and recode/resubmit.
5. If approved, yay!
Now, however, say you want to release a new version. Either you found bugs in the previous version or you want to add cool new features.
1. Code new version
2. Submit to Apple
3. Wait - NOTE: If there are bugs in your current version, you'll have to fend off complaints about how slow you are to fix the bugs when your fixed version is already done and just waiting on Apple's approval.
4. If rejected, your old version will remain the "current version." You now need to find out why your new version was rejected and recode/resubmit. (While the angry bug reports pile up more.)
5. If approved, congratulations. You'll have to go through this each and every time.
I'd love to see a tablet where apps 1) can be downloaded from any site you trust, 2) are controlled on a hardware/OS level by restricting what they can and can't do without user approval.
Right now, I'm not going to commit to programming apps for Apple products. Instead, I'm going to work on making my websites more mobile friendly so that they can be better used by tablets, smartphones, etc.
He did say he could read it 3 times as fast as just watching it. So that would shorten the 84 second video into a 28 second reading. How to spend the saved 56 seconds? Looking for the transcript to read, of course!
What I thought was funny was that the minute the "male" Cleverbot said yes, the "female" Cleverbot said goodbye, ending the conversation. Battle of the Robot Sexes?
Yes, the speech is not on YouTube. Not here, here, or even here. It's definitely not here.
It would be so easy for them to make it both. I've said it before: Public Nicknames, Private Real Names.
Let people choose nicknames and assign them to circles. Require Real Names if you must, but let people limit who gets to see you. So I could set my Real Name as "Jason Levine" and my Friends and Family circles could see that as my name, but people in my "Know From Online" circle would see me as CleverNickName12345. (That's a made up nickname for this post, BTW. If that happens to also be a Slashdot user, we're not the same person.)
The coding would likely be minimal and the benefits would be immense. They could still sell ads knowing that CleverNickName12345 is really "Jason Levine" while not forcing me to reveal my real name to people when I'd rather not do that.
That's the first thing I thought of. I'm in the Eastern time zone. I typically wake up at 7am and go to sleep at 12am. Suppose we switched to GMT. (Eastern is GMT -5.) I'd have to go to wake up at 12 noon (hey, not so bad) and go to sleep at 5am (wait... what?!!!) Unless the post submitter meant that everyone should go to sleep/wake up at the same time regardless of sunrise-sunset. In that case, everyone would need room darkening shades to keep their rooms dark during the day when they slept and would need to consume more power lighting up their houses during the night when they were awake. It would be like being in a permanent state of jet lag.
Luckily, my wife gets upset with me if I buy her expensive jewelry. She thinks I'm wasting money that could be better spent elsewhere. So if I bought her a "cheap" imitation diamond, I'd be showing how frugal I am. Win-win!
Sure enough, the first life taken by Irene was a surfer in Florida. People, when they say that the waves the hurricane is producing are "killer", it's not an invitation, it's a warning!
Honestly, I don't think they could evacuate the whole city even if they really needed to. There are so many people who live in NYC and so few (relatively speaking) ways in and out. You'd need a week to evacuate at least. (If you did it in an orderly fashion. If you screamed "EVERYONE RUN NOW!!!!", people would be stuck trying to get out for weeks.)
It's not so much the speed as it is the duration. Long Island might "only" get 50-75mph winds, but they'll be getting them for about 15-20 hours. And they'll be getting soaking rains. With the rain loosening the soil and the wind pushing long enough, trees will come down and objects will fly. Also, the storm's winds will push water along as it goes over the ocean and then push it up and onto the (formally dry) land. Irene might not be a Cat 2, but it's a HUGE Cat 1. A third of the eastern seaboard!
Never underestimate a hurricane.
Yes, I'm in Irene's path (though not the direct eye-line-of-fire) and yes I've taken precautions. Stay safe everyone!
Not only this, but they've aggressively targeted companies that produce man-made diamonds, trying to claim that they are somehow inferior. When they realized they couldn't claim this, they started claiming that the perfect diamonds that other companies made were inferior because DeBeers "natural diamonds" had flaws in them. (This isn't even getting into allegations of mobster-esque death threats.)
Well, I feel threatened, but that's mainly because Irene is due to hit exactly where and when I planned on driving for vacation. It's altering my vacation plans and that's majorly annoying. We're taking a 10th anniversary trip without the kids. Do you know how RARE trips like that are? (No kids, not 10th anniversary.)
It means that Sheldon Cooper will need to change the song he sings when he goes down the stairs and you *know* just how much he hates change!
The problem with labeling all religion harmful because some people twist it to say "We must kill these people because they believe in a different god" is that you can use that for nearly anything. "We must kill those Russians because they don't believe in Democracy!" "We must kill those people because they think they should have that piece of land!" "We must kill those people because they believe they should reduce their oil output!" We don't abandon democracy, land ownership or the use of oil because some people use them to start wars. (Though, reducing oil usage wouldn't be a bad thing.)
Religion is not intrinsically good or bad. It's the people who use it for good or bad purposes. To quote Noranti from Farscape about whether religions hate each other: "Oh, good heavens, no. Religions are grand, lofty ideals, but religious followers are another story."
Are you saying that religions evolve? ;-)
(Somewhere a creationist just gasped in horror without knowing why.)
I've got to say I sympathize with the "got to do something" feeling. Years ago, my son had a febrile seizure, turned grey and stopped breathing. As my mother-in-law gave him rescue breaths and the ambulance was on the way, I was left with nothing to do. I couldn't just stand there, helpless, and watch my baby on our bed as my mother-in-law tried to get him breathing again. So I gave myself a job: Run back and forth between my son on the bed and the front door looking for the ambulance. At one point, my father-in-law offered to look for the ambulance. I told him that I had to do something. I had to feel like I was somehow contributing to his recovery even if I knew that my "job" wasn't really helping at all. (He made a complete recovery, though scared us with a bunch of other febrile seizures and head bonks over the last few years.)
The worst feeling in the world is seeing a loved one sick and/or suffering and knowing there's nothing you can do to help.
My wife taught in an all girl's Catholic school a few years ago and they brought a woman in to teach the Sex Ed portion of the class. My wife had to walk out and complaint to the principal when the woman started saying that all condoms had tiny holes in them that let the AIDS virus and sperm through. My wife resigned soon afterwards (for unrelated reasons - we were expecting our second baby) so we don't know if the school kept bringing that woman back to tell girls to not use condoms. Telling kids "God wants you to abstain from sex" is par for the course in a religious school. Telling kids "condoms have holes and don't work at all" is a complete lie and is inexcusable. Lying to kids like this won't make them abstain, it'll make them have sex without condoms.