So take your medications and your preparations

So thanks to celebrated research biologist Jenny McCarthy* the 'MMR vaccine causes autism' meme is out in the public once again. I read a few summaries and figured her appearance was the normal anti-science nonsense that Oprah is so fond of but having read the transcript I have to say McCarthy is completely unbelievable. Some of her statements are just flat out lies. She claims that vaccines contain "aborted fetal tissue". That's possibly the most insane thing I've ever heard from the reliably illogical and unbalanced anti-vaccine viewpoint. She further claims that when she brought her child in for the shot she told the doctor she had a bad feeling about it, and that the doctor laughed, insulted her, swore at her, and had his nurse forcibly vaccinate her son against her protests. This is clearly a lie, otherwise he would be in jail. Most of the doctors that I've read comments from on this are much more charitable and use phrases like "memory becomes unreliable over time as emotional significance of an perceived event colors the accuracy of the reflection" or "a fantasy prone personality describing the scene as though it were part of a movie". Let's call it what it is: a lie. If I were her doctor I'd be suing for slander.

The world of conspiracy theorists is a fairly dense and diverse one. The particular subset of the autism related theorists comprise two overlapping groups: the generalized anti-vaccine crowd and the new age woo practicioners. McCarthy seems to fall into the latter judging by all of the 'therapies' she's chosen and her statements on things like "Indigo Children" and other such superstition. Both groups buy wholeheartedly into the theory that big drug companies are intentionally causing children to become autistic by using Thimerosal in vaccines. The inital study that triggered this entire industry, the Wakefield** one, has been so thoroughly debunked that even many of the anti-vaccine crowd try to sweep it under the rug. I find it interesting that these people are so obsessed with their precious idea of a medical industry conspiracy that they don't stop for a moment to question the facts being sold to them by a couple of lawyers looking to drum up a big settlement from vaccine manufacturers. Instead they cling to the idea that the entirety of the worldwide medical, scientific, and insurance industries in collusion with every single government in the world are conspiring to hide the link between vaccines and autism.

Let's consider that the link between Thimerosal was non-existent to begin with but the manufacturer's completely removed it from the vaccine anyway to calm the fears of parents. And autism continued to rise. And the theorists simply throw away their "it's 100% absolutely definitely caused by the Thimerosal" argument as though they'd never made it and say it's something else in the vaccine. In the UK, where vaccination as a whole dropped in the late 90's as a result of the P.R. ...

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I don't tend to worry 'bout the things other people say

The internet in a nutshell

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You can pour it over ice cream or a nice parfait

So it appears that the big candy companies are trying to legally change the definition of 'chocolate' so they can make chocolate candy that doesn't contain any actual cocoa. I'll be keeping an eye on this, and if it does go through I will not patronize any company that does this. Not only will I not buy their chocolate products, I won't buy any of their products. And I have three kids who are going to start their junk food consuming years in the near future :)

This is capitalism in a nutshell.

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I'm so happy cause today I found my friend

Tool manufacturers are releasing new versions of their tools all the time. "It has a laser on it!" was the selling point for a while, these days the emphasis is on Lithium Ion batteries. More power, less weight, I think that's great. But now you have to replace all your cordless tools. If, like me, you've committed to one tool line for all your cordless tools in order to save space, headache, and frustration, then all the new Li lines merely mock your lock-in.

Ryobi, on the other hand, has managed to earn my business yet again. You can use the new Li batteries in all their existing One Plus line of tools. And the new tools you buy can use either the old style battery or the new ones. This is not only smart business (makes it less painful to stay with them than to move on), but it conveniently enough is great for the consumer as well.

I know that in my case I've delayed getting any Li tools because I didn't want to have one or two tools using one battery system and all the rest on another, and I certainly can't afford to wholesale replace all of them. So this makes a painless path to better (and lighter! because an 18V drill starts to wear on you when building large projects) power.

Nice timing that I could smell the brushes on my drill dying when I was drilling out some galvanized steel caps yesterday...

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Hope I don't run out of luck

This has been parked near my work twice this week. I can't imagine the circumstances under which this would be a necessary size. My coworker who is over 6 feet tall cannot see over the bed if he stands next to the truck. It's an International MXT.

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Tell me who are you this time

When I dropped Boo off at school this morning the teacher wanted to show me that 'predictable response' chart they had. Each day they ask several children a question and write their responses on the chart. By the end of the week they've gone through everyone in the class and start with a new question the following week.

This week the question was "Who do you look like?" The answers are mostly predictable (hence the name of the activity): mom, dad, grandparent. There were two standout responses. One boy answered "me". Boo answered "Mulan".

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In the palm of my hand

Just a thought: the iPod touch certainly makes the Zune even more embarrassing than normal, but what it really presents is a direct challenge to the handheld computing market. Palm is going to suffer more than Zune as a result of this.

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Searching, gonna find it

Wow. So I used Outlook advanced search to find all emails received on or after 1/20/2007 AND on or before 1/25/2007. So it returned all email received on 9/4/2007. And that's it.

It gets better. I figured maybe it had cached previous results or something, so I cleared everything and started it over, same criteria. It returned all my email. From 1/2004 to present.

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It's gonna be a better day

My day, after one of my miserable nights in some (an accomplishment in and of itself), has once again been brightened by those 5 little words...

On FedEx vehicle for delivery

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Nothing is being done (II)

"Repair in progress". So it went from "Pending shipment to repair center" to "Shipped" to "Received at repair center" to "Repair in progress" in the time it took me to walk to 7-11 and back. So the process isn't necessarily broken, but the "Check my repair status" feature of the Apple Support website is totally useless. I was opining to my coworkers this morning that they really only need two statuses: "You don't have it back yet" and "You have it back".

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No such number

Amazing. My laptop is still pending shipment to repair center. Two days of pending, plus it's been six days since I dropped it off at the store. Avoid using the Apple Store at the Galleria for any service issues. I don't know that West County is much better (that's the location Mike B went to). Are all their stores this bad at service?

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Are you receiving me?

Wow. Is this typical of Apple Store service?



I brought in my iBook on the 30th of August. Today is the 4th of September and they're only just today thinking about shipping it off for repair. I've checked every morning and evening since the 30th for an update, and last night after 8pm it the status was changed. It's an easy repair, swap out the logic board. It's about a 1 hour job. If the service center is anything like the store I would expect to get the laptop back in about 8 weeks.

Based on this I would not consider recommending the Apple Store in the Galleria for any service on your Mac.

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