Well…with the huge outbreak of whooping cough in Traverse City over the past couple of weeks, we are seeing the results of the misguided efforts on the right to cater to the anti-vax crowd and their wrongheaded idea that vaccines cause autism. A few years back, the repubs here in Michigan effectively gutted the herd protections that vaccines bring by allowing parents to opt out by just filing a paper with the state saying they object to vaccinating their kids for any reason whatever…and this is what we got from that law…hundreds of cases of whooping cough, measles, mumps, and other preventable diseases that were on the verge of eradication before people started to believe that vaccines were a plot or a danger to their kids…driven mostly by fox news and fear mongers there. I just want every parent that wants to not vaccinate their kids to be shown the pictures of the polio epidemic before the Salk vaccine was invented and see the death and destruction that occurred before this breakthrough. I have vaccinated all of my kids with no reservations whatsoever…I still remember how sick I was with mumps and measles when I was a kid before the advent of vaccines for those diseases and surely didn’t want my kids to go through it…for the sickness or even the deaths that came from these diseases…I hope people come to their senses and vaccinate their kids…if they don’t, they put everyone at risk and I don’t think it’s their decision to make…geez….
Category Archives: Science
Just borrowing…
Well…just had this thought come into my head and wanted to pass it on…kind of an epiphany of a sort…as you know, all of the elements that make up you, me, Earth, and everything else was forged in stars that exploded long ago…and that led me to the thought that the stuff that makes up my body is just borrowed and has been used by others over time and, since I will be cremated when I die, it will be used again by others that come after me…I find that kind of cool, that connection to the universe and what has come before and what will come after I’m gone…just some thoughts….
Still having problems…
Well…even after two weeks, I am still having problems writing about politics and the wilderness we progressives are going to be in for the next two years…maybe it will get better tomorrow…at least I’ll try harder tomorrow to talk about something…but, it’s not as if I’m not trying now, I am, I just can’t get there from here and not much else interests me, either…it is a shame that the Philae lander bounced and ended up in an area of shade next to a cliff that will cause it to run out of batteries in a couple of days…I hope they can get the science done before that happens…the bounce was so high that it took the lander 2 hours to fall back to the surface of the comet and it had moved so much in that time that it missed the chosen landing area….the latest photos show it off kilter but they are trying to figure out if they can use the leg drills to bounce it again back to a better place since the 440 lb lander only weighs about an ounce on the comet…oh, well…good luck people….
Philae is down….
Well…10 years…10 frickin years to get to this point…in case you haven’t been following…the Philae lander has landed on the comet and is sending back data…I am in awe of the accomplishment and of the comments that I have just heard…that this is to advance the human race’s knowledge..to advance science and help us to understand the universe we live in…and, I got to watch it live just like the moon landings in 1969. Of course, this landing had no danger for the humans involved…but, it does not minimize the accomplishment at all…it was just so cool to see the reactions of the geeks live when the data started to come in…it made me smile that there are still people in the world who care so much about science and what it can do for the human race…just wish some of that would rub off on the people of the US…can’t wait to see the photos!
Comets, eclipses, and wind….
Well…let’s start with the last one and go from there…I am always amazed with how the wind acts when I am out on the bike…and today was no exception…it seemed like…no it was…the wind was coming from every direction today…usually, when you head out to the East and you have a brisk wind in your face, you can look forward to having it end when you go north, or south, or west…but today, it was a struggle every direction…still can’t figure out how that works but it sure takes a lot out of you…as you probably know…a comet passed pretty close to Mars on Sunday and I really expected to see some cool photos since the Hubble ones from a week ago were quite neat….but, following it live Sunday, the pictures were grainy at best…still kind of cool to see the ones from the surface taken by one of the rovers but I’d hoped for more….not sure if you saw the lunar eclipse a couple of weeks ago but it was pretty neat…had to get up early to see it but seeing the moon with a huge bite out of it always makes me smile…and now, we have a half solar eclipse for thurs aft around 5:30 here that could be fun….that’s tomorrow for the date challenged…I am looking forward to that one, too, heck…I look forward to anything like that…still a science and space geek after all these years and I look forward to the gloom that comes with the eclipse…kind of near sunset but I’ll be looking anyway….oh, and I added a new category that I will put all the science stuff in as I write about sciency stuff…