The Wonderful Effects of the New Innoculation (thanks Wikipedia!)

At the risk of not sounding terribly polite, I’ve been researching (i.e., Googling) some of the stupidest questions being asked in our society: those of the antivax movement. Its not that it is stupid to question vaccinations, or for parents to ask sincere questions before having their children repeatedly jab. That’s common sense. No, the stupid comes in where we see antivaccine talking points repeated endlessly, unthinkingly by the antivaccine faithful. (And before you say it, “open minds” should go both ways.) You can’t help but find the same rhetoric being repeated endlessly on discussion boards, partisan websites and in interviews.

Anyway, I’m collecting some of my favorite Snappy Answers to Stupid Vaccine Questions here. While I am no expert, I’ll try to link to answers with good references. I’m also trying to avoid the vanilla PR answers you’ll get from health system websites.

Al Jaffee, by the way, is still alive, possibly in Guantanamo through either a tragic misunderstanding or an accurate Snappy Answer.

From A Photon in the Darkness comes Three Popular Anti-vaccine Myths Deconstructed. Spoilers: The myths are
1) “You claim that vaccines are 100% safe and effective!” Which technically is actually kind of a straw man of a straw man. A meta scarecrow, if you will. But only technically. As Photon explains, nobody of any real knowledge of the matter would claim that vaccines are either 100% safe or effective.
2) ”Vaccine-preventable diseases were in decline before the vaccines were introduced”
3) “The chickenpox vaccine causes shingles!”

From Losing in the Lucky Country comes a discussion on the mysterious phenomena of Vaccine Shedding, which follows in great part with myth #3 above. I’ve seen this sort of thing pop up in a number of discussion boards, where the real phenomena of viral shedding, a part of viral reproduction, has somehow been conflated with vaccines to create the myth of Vaccine Shedding.

The colloquial use of this nonsensical term seeks to convey that an individual who has been vaccinated can readily shed part of the vaccine and cause infection in the unvaccinated. Which by definition demands them to have shed not a vaccine but an infectious agent. Indeed a virus. Which by extension demands the vaccine to be a live virus vaccine. This then opens the door to viral shedding the vast complexities of vaccine induced immunity and viable modes of excretion – aka shedding. That won’t stop your garden variety anti-vaxxer claiming any vaccine can lead to infection of the unvaccinated via this ghastly “vaccine shedding”.

Its complex, and worth a read. To oversimplify, yes, live attenuated vaccines can pose a risk to immunocompromised people (and often infants and pregnant women) and a healthy child or adult cannot get sick from being near a vaccinated person.

I’ll try to keep updating this as whim takes me.

UPDATE 1: How Antivaxxers Debate

Here’s a nice primer on common antivaccine “Tropes and Tactics”, which is summarized and added-upon by Orac here for those who can’t access the article.

UPDATE 2: Brain Studies Demonstrate Autism at 6 Months

Interesting news for the antivaccine proponents who still cling to the myth that the MMR vaccine causes autism: you can detect patterns of autism in children as young as six months. Of course, MMR isn’t given to children younger than one year old, which leftbrainrightbrain blog suggests time travel may be the last refuge for the vaccine denialists. They also take a nifty look at the causation/correlation fallacy commonly necessarily employed by people who still insist vaccines cause autism.

Panda poses with poise

With the full moon, it was tough to point out Orion’s belt and Betelgeuse (“hey honey, its going to blow up some day”"No“”Yes”"Really?”"Uh-huh”"Cool“), but we managed. The laser also gave off a cool green disco effect on her shoes.

On a whim, I carried with me Julia’s digital camera, which was left on the hutch for some infraction and forgotten about months ago.

Then we decided to do something we haven’t done in nearly two years, when nightly walks were far more common, continue cataloging the puppies of Jenkintown. We meandered up to the town square, looked through the toy shop windows and talked about how the new owner of the bakery next door is much nicer (the old one wouldn’t let her use the bathroom once). I forgot how much I missed this stuff. We got out of the habit when Benny became of walking age. He’s less of a stroller than Julia.

When we found our only victim of the night, Julia and I both felt out of practice. She got nervous in asking the owner for permission, and then forgot how to use the flash setting. For my part, I forgot where the review button was as well as my notebook for recording the deets on the dog, Panda. In any case, I felt bad about holding the dog’s owner in the cold to indulge my kid, so I wasn’t going to quiz him.

Merry and bright

Panda, like most dogs around here, it seems, is a mixed breed adopted from a rescue. She had a beagle meets bull terrier vibe and was very sweet. Julia, of course, reminded me that we need a dog. I, of course, reminded her that we can’t rely on her to pick up her toys, how would she manage with a puppy? She just would, is all.

On the way back we stopped off to take some shots of the neighborhood lights. They came out blurry, but Julia liked the effect.

One of those solar-powered LED ornaments. Maybe a hummingbird, which would explain the blur.

She’s thinking of taking pictures of all the stuff in people’s yards. Pink flamingos and decorations and the like.

We’ll call it the Gnomenclature of Jenkintown, I thought, but I didn’t dare tell her. We had done enough for the evening, and I didn’t like the idea of poorly explaining one more thing that night.

We shall name him Toby.

I rescued young Toby from its hellish spinning prison at Giggleberry Farms because it interested me so. Yes, I am the master of the dino-teeth claw game…and apparently the master of spending 50 cents to win 4 cents of prehistorical-themed plastic. I have a general familiarity with dinosaurs, but this guy was new to me. Turns out, that might be because he’s not a dinosaur.

Cartographer extraordinaire and apparent dino afficionado Jim Miller, suggested he is a dicynodont, a type of tusked herbivore that nibbled its way across the Earth back in the mid-Permian era some 280 million years ago. It is, for all purposes, part of proton-mammallian line of reptiles as the more camera-friendly dimetrodon. I look forward to reading more about them. According to the Telegraph, they were very successful and can be found most anywhere on the planet. Good on them.

Also glad to know that whatever factory in Asia churns out plastic dino toys has been looking to represent therapsids. Good on them.

Today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, Pete Diamandis announced an X-Prize for a tricorder-like device. The X-Prize Foundation is one of those organizations that make me proud of humanity.

Emily Willingham deftly dissects an awful attempt by a writer for The Atlantic at turning a cool scientific discovery into a “Frankenfoods” fear fest. Emily sums up the science in question — findings on how little bits of rice RNA can have an affect on our genes — in these passages :

A study from a Chinese group led by Chen-Yu Zhang of Nanking University and published in Cell Research, has uncovered the fascinating result that when people eat rice, they can absorb microRNAs (miRNAs)–tiny sequences of RNA–from the rice into the blood. These rice-originating miRNAs turn up in blood and tissues of people who eat rice and…here’s the kicker…one type of rice miRNA interacts with human proteins that are responsible for removing LDL (“bad” cholesterol) from the blood (!). It’s the first report of plant miRNAs ending up in people by way of diet and the finding that at least one of them alters an important process in the body.

{A bunch of cool stuff you should read cut out.}

Researchers have discovered myriad ways that miRNA influences human development and disease, and these discoveries open the way to using that information to cure disease. But all of the miRNAs investigated thus far in people have come from people themselves, either present for normal functions or overabundant and linked to disease. The flashy take-home from this latest rice study is, We can pick up these tiny regulators from what we eat…and they can interfere with the functions of proteins we make.

She then goes into The Atlantic author’s illogical leap attempt to turn into a cautionary tale of genetically-modified food. I understand (via her Twitter handle) that she’s updating the piece. I look forward to following the tale.

Oh, where were we? History, yes! NEJM is 200 years old and they’re celebrating with a cool site and timeline.

Science Fiction magazines (like all genre literary magazines) are suffering what are probably unsustainable drops in readership, which makes it curious to see that MIT’s consumer-friendly Technology Review has just announced its own Skiffypub: TRSF. I know you can find Analog and Asimov’s in “e” versions, but I’m shocked neither has an Android or IOS app. Its not like they cater to savvy geeks or anything.

I don’t know if you’ll get my subject line but, man, I loved that joke back in grade school. It was go-to gold for pre-pubescents who had a nominal grip on the process (no pun intended).

The Good Bits

The children grew in leaps and bounds. Julia learned to ride a bike this Fall and Ben showed great interest in Batman, LEGOs and jigsaw puzzles. They are healthy and beautiful.

We had a tremendous time visiting Disney World, despite Benny having to have his chin glued after a pool mishap and Julia developing walking pneumonia (which didn’t manifest, thankfully, until a few days after arriving home). The success of the trip was in large part to my wife’s efforts in frugal planning, including a superb bit of customer service negotiation (which saw that we got an amazing rate at the Port Orleans Riverside) and genius notion to carry 90% of our meals down with us in giant, zippable $2 IKEA bags that we able to check on SouthWest (we only lost the milk and veggie dogs when the hotel room fridge crapped out on us on the second day, but we were merrily compensated). While I’d never go down there in June again (my God, the heat), the trip was worth it. My plan is to do it again in five years and then, maybe, a third time when I have grandkids of my own.

I’ve kept my job in a horrible economy and, while I didn’t get nearly as much done outside of the worksphere, it wasn’t a BAD year in total.

Be It Ever So Crumble…

It hasn’t been a great year for Stinkbug Manor. Last winter, the garage roof blew off and we couldn’t properly repair it until November. There is still a gaping hole in the backyard fence where the tree fell through in the Spring of 2010 (!). Admittedly, we kept that open to ease access to Deadman’s Ditch (the traditional name for the wooded lot behind our home as per Jenkintown’s underage drinking community) and, hence, the garage roof. That proved a good thing, however, since it allowed the owners of the lot better access to clean it out after the Great Flood of ’11.

Hurricane Irene merely wet the basement floor. Tropical Storm Lee, however, opened the floodgates, as it were. We had about 18 inches in the basement, but thanks to the valiant efforts of yours truly (and the Jenkintown Fire Company, whom I owe gratitude and a donation) we were able to pump most of it out, using four quarter-horsepower utility pumps (and Pioneer company’s full-horsepower pump) within the first day or so. Similar events happened up and down the street, which led my darling wife to figure out something was amiss. She’s a civil engineer you see, and quite a good one to my admittedly-biased eye. We spent a good deal of time this fall searching for old maps that could shed some light onto our (and our neighbor’s) problems.

Now, we’ve known that Greenwood Avenue used to feature a small stream that ran down to the Tookany Creek, by the Jenkintown train station. We also knew that the football field next door used to hold a small lake. What was new to me, at least, was the notion that in the field about 40 feet above (and 100 yards behind) our home there was a natural spring an pumping station. Fun.

The rains of Tropical Storm Lee resurrected the Greenwood Underground River to dramatic effect, flooding basements and washing out the railway near where the stream traditionally met the mighty Tookany. I didn’t see it myself, having been busy pumping the basement, but I’ve been told that five feet of dirt and stone had been washed out beneath the track, which remained hanging in mid-air over a 5 to 10-foot gap. Impressive.

Through my wife’s efforts to rally the neighborhood and our Borough Council, Deadman’s Ditch (a natural drainage route) and the school’s much neglected drainage system (which it would seem runs parallel to our property line) have been cleaned out. The drainage system, which collects water from the upper fields, had been impressively backed-up, with weeds growing out of the three five-foot deep drains and dirt compacted far back into the pipes. The basement has been dry since, but let’s see if all parties involved can hold up to their parts in this. I may add a sump to the basement for added protection.

The garage roof finally did get repaired, after I finally got on the ball and re-framed the garage wall. Originally, we had just planned to re-side the garage, as the stucco was coming undone. Turns out that the only thing holding up the garage wall was either the stucco or the stucco in combination with the inside paneling. We knew that the garage had been treated for termites. What we didn’t know is that they created some considerable damage that the previous owners either didn’t know about or neglected to fix. Not a single stud was intact…or even touch the ground. They all sort of hovered there–neither touching the roof sill nor the concrete floor–supported entirely by nails from the interior paneling. Our garage was held up by magic.

After a few weekends, I managed to fix it (with considerable help–and tools–from my brother and father). I sprained an elbow, blackened a fingernail and, ultimately, contracted pneumonia…perhaps from inhaling all the mouse poop, as my better half believes.

That brings me to…

The Great Sick of 2011

In 1980 or so I contracted osteomyelitis following a bought of chicken pox (boo opportunistic infections). I spent a month in the hospital and temporarily lost the use of my legs for a time. I remember not walking, receiving a landspeeder for my birthday, and nightly needles. Its one of the reasons my kids get the chicken pox vaccine. It was the sickest I can ever recall getting and it probably set me on a somewhat sedentary life-path that I wasn’t able to correct until college.

This was a close, close second. I wasn’t hospitalized, thankfully, but I’m still trying to shake the after-effects nearly two months later. It was a nifty reminder of mortality. Pneumonia still tends to kill a lot of people.

The night I finished work on the garage wall, I developed a fever, which lingered for a few days. Since Thanksgiving was coming, I figured I ought to get checked out before possibly infecting elder relatives with some sort of bug. It was pneumonia, which my doctor confirmed with an X-ray. Strangely, I hadn’t so much as a cough…that would come later with a terrible ferocity. I have never coughed so hard as to gag on the actual cough. The muscles responsible for coughing were so worn out that I could barely hack out a bark.

Then came the vomiting. Whether it was from the pneumonia itself, the postnasal drip (which had the effect of draining down my through and inducing nausea, much like when you start swallowing your own spit precedes vomiting when you’re drinking too much), the antibiotics, or some bonus infection, I just don’t know. I barfed so hard, I blew out the blood vessels in each eye to ghastly effect.

Even after the pneumonia cleared up (as proven in a second x-ray), the coughing continued (continues!) likely due to lingering inflammation. The human immune system isn’t a genie that can be easily put back in its bottle. An inhaler helps with that and I’m finally able to sleep through the night and without the help of a bed-full of pillows to keep me upright.

Still, I took the non-shaving recovery time to regrow my goatee (properly a van dyke, I’m told), so…you know, bonus.

Plans for 2012

Housewise
Finish the damn garage. As I mentioned, I finished re-framing the garage wall just before my illness (and the arrival of the contractor). Now I need to put up the siding, which I’ve already bought. (I want someone else to do it, but I’m well enough and the weather is nice enough that I might take a crack at it this weekend. Crom help me.)

Replace the damn fence. And hopefully add to it all those birdhouses currently sitting atop my bookcase. I bought a bunch of cheep birdhouses as a craft project, but we have yet to install them outdoors.

Add a damn pergola. This Spring, I dream of topping my homemade slate patio with a nice pergola. It’ll add some definition to the backyard and hopefully make it more inviting.

Give the boy his own damn room. The house isn’t getting any bigger, and nothing of decent size or location has come onto the market in Jenkintown. So the missus must give up her spacious office for the good of the family. Ben will get a big boy bed and, if luck holds, most of the toys will leave the general living area.

Grg-wise

We are all works in progress, aren’t we? Well, let’s just leave it at that for now.

The new Nano in Action. Also, new facial hair. Old watch.

That’s one of my complaints about the new Nano (not that I don’t like it, I do). It doesn’t work as a watch, despite the umpteen stylish watch faces that come pre-loaded. Why? Because you are required to push the damn button and wait two tenths of a second before being able to see the time (and then only if you have remembered to set the clock to appear). Sorry, I need only glance at the Casio.

Second, they removed the admittedly infrequently-used video capability of the Nano seen in the previous two generations. It can’t be a lack of processing power or memory. It must because they decided they want a square form factor and that, if folks wanted video, they’d buy an iPod Touch. Fui.

Third, I for some reason, I can’t sync my calendar to the Nano, which is a pity considering how they’re pushing all this iCloud nonsense stuff.

I am grateful for the lack of gaming options, as I’ve learned that I get easily addicted to games like solitaire, which offer no conceivable end. (Must…get…to…$50,000…must…win…three…hands…in…a…row)

The radio is also a nice feature and works really well.

Since I’m one of the few people on the planet who do not have an iPhone or an Android, I do wonder if the Nano would make for a good mini-iPhone. I know Apple has dismissed such rumors in the past, but I’d totally dig a wristphone. I already like to keep it on my wrist all the time, and I wouldn’t mind a phone that didn’t do EVERYTHING. My current phone, while it gleefully NOT capable of doing everything, is just awful. Its theoretically capable of going online, through some arcane plan my wife pretends to enjoy, but it takes tens of minutes for it to get data. It theoretically has a camera, but can’t take pictures worth a damn (and even then, you can’t share them). Its theoretically a touch screen device, but it only responds when you don’t want it to, such as when it is in your pocket.The screen is locked, but I’m constantly draining my batteries by making the thing light up. Worse, if I have it set on vibrate, it will buzz a bit with every jostle, trying to fool me into thinking that someone is calling me. My Nano, however, needs to be purposefully woken, which is very nice. So, Apple, do it. I want a cool iPod wristphone that simply lets me take/make calls and listen to my iPod without a huge and unnecessary data plan.

Here’s a great reason why I won’t be sleeping well tonight: Yeti crabs. They look like giant, slightly fuzzy, ticks.

The little octopus is just adorable, though, in an entirely Cthulhuesque way.

Also, why I read EarthSky.org: they’re good about linking to published sources. Handy! Considerate!

Aly’s the one who had to drive two hours (more, with bad directions and bad traffic) to spend the holiday with my family (whom I love, but really, its all Lstr, all the time up there).

I miss them all.

I believe that’s us, as turkeys.