dwnomad

**Wesley’s been on vacation and lost track of time, now I’m on vacation so you get to put up with him today. – DW**


A Couple of the Year’s Best (And Worst)
It seems customary during the last couple days of the year to look back on what has transpired.  Walk down the lane with me a stretch.

Jobs Death Due to Bad Apples
Edzard Ernst said Steve Jobs delayed his pancreatic cancer treatment for about a year in favor of homeopathic treatment.  This bothers me greatly.  A man of obvious intelligence and wicked business sense getting suckered in by snake oil.

Apocalypse Nigh… Not
Harold Camping.  Need I say more?  Well I am going to anyway.  This has been a banner year for Harold.  Two failed apocalypse predictions in 2011 and the two previous hellfire predictions back in 1988 and 1994.  A civil engineer long gone to the dark side by trying to support his family, I still wonder if he believed his own crap when he started.  Based on Camping’s numerology, his “Family Radio” business spent 100 million in advertising the end times in 2011.  I do not wish him ill even after many people ruined their lives and spent their retirement funds on advertising the the end time.  Scratch that.  I can’t wait for him to shed his mortal coil.

Science at It’s Best
When Dario Auterio made the announcement that the Italian OPERA team had found neutrinos traveling faster than light, the team requested trials to be done by others in the physics community.  That’s part of the Scientific Method in action and it’s beautiful.  Putting their information out to the public to be corroborated or demolished with further testing.  In the end, the evidence was against the original findings.  Know the neatest part?  No fights, no harsh words, no schisms, and no one died.

This Shoe Was Made For Suing
Reebok was fined 25 million dollars by the FTC because the Easytone and RunTone shoes claimed to tighten that tush and firm the legs.  If someone you know purchased a pair (I won’t tell anyone that you bought a pair for yourself), send them to this link since they may be eligible for a refund.

Michele Bachmann Causes HPV
Back in September, Bachmann told of talking to a mother in Florida that said the HPV vaccine caused her daughter’s mental retardation.  Even though the American Academey of Pediatrics quickly released a statement correcting the completely false claim, the damage was done.  This woman commands such an audience that I put this right up there with the MMR “scare” a while back.  Anyway, I know it’s poisoning the well, but here is one of my favorite quotes Michele graced us with back in June: “Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too”.  To bad the actor was born in Winterset, Iowa.  It was John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer, that was born in Waterloo, Iowa.  I guess Gacy will have good company.

The Passing of Hitch
No deathbed conversion.  A truth seeker’s hero.  Faced death on his own terms.  Lucid and quick witted to the end.

Lastly…
This most awesome of quotes has been dancing in my head in the likely scenario that I irked some one: “And if, perchance, I have offended, think but this, and all is mended: it as well be ten minutes back in time, for all the chance you’ll change your mind.” ~Tim Minchin

I hope to see each and every one of you at the Northwest Free-thought Convention in Seattle, Washington next year!

~Wesley

Feel free to email me or add me on Google+

There was a good piece a while ago on some of the legal issues around mandating vaccines for school children on Science Based Medicine. Basically it lays out that for religious exemptions to be valid they must be broad enough to include any philosophical exemption so as to not be in violation of the establishment clause by giving a religious group an unfair privilege. It is legal for states to mandate that everybody has to get vaccinated because its a serious public safety concern.

Even if you remove concerns about the health and welfare of the child who’s parents are irresponsible enough to refuse their children vaccines for some horrible religious or philosophical reason, the issue is herd immunity. Friendly Atheist has a post with an excerpt from an article in the New York Times written by a man named Steven Weinreb who suffers from chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He just went through a allogenetic stem-cell transplant which has left him with the immune function of a newborn. That’s right, his immune system has to start from ground one. If he gets sick, it quiet literally could kill him.

One reason that a lot of people skip the flu shot is that they are healthy individuals who would easily fight of an influenza infection in a few days with relatively minor symptoms and would have antibodies that would protect them from similar more deadly strains later. However, the problem here is that they are putting people at risk who can’t get the vaccine either because they are too young, not healthy enough, or have an allergy or some other contraindication when it comes to the vaccine. If you’re health and eligible for the vaccine you had a choice, but you might get it and spread it to somebody who didn’t have that choice.

Then there’s people like Steven Weinreb; cancer patients who’s immune systems have been all but wipped out by radiation and/or chemo therapy; people suffering from chronic immunodeficiency syndromes like Common variable Immunodeficiency (CvID, a genetic condition that is only treatable with intravenous immunoglobulins [IVIG] derived from source plasma donation) or AIDS; and those on immunosuppressants to treat conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, lupus, or allergic reactions. These are people who even with the vaccines are virtually helpless to fight off infections. They need your immunity to keep their exposure risk as low as possible because without a well functioning immune system even the most mild strain of influenza can be fatal.

Out of concern for those who can’t get vaccinated and those with a compromised immune system everybody has a very serious ethical obligation to get vaccinated. Schools have a serious enough obligation to ensure that their weakest students (quite literally) don’t get seriously ill, that I think that those who are not current on all of their vaccines (including the flu shot) for any reason other than a medical contraindication shouldn’t be allowed within 200 yards of a school, whether it’s a irresponsible adult or their unfortunate children, that’s right, treat them like the dangerous menace they are.

If you don’t care if you get sick, I have to break it to you that it’s not all about you, you might be able to fight it off with no complications, but you could also spread it to someone it can kill. So go get your goddamn shots.

Ed Brayton of the Dispatches from the Culture Wars has a great post on why Ron Paul needs opposed. Paul has a lot of good ideas for trimming some of the government waste, but then of course he’s a sponsor of the “We the People Act,” a bill designed to reign in “activist” judges.

The core of the bill is:

The Supreme Court of the United States and each Federal court– (1) shall not adjudicate– (A) any claim involving the laws, regulations, or policies of any State or unit of local government relating to the free exercise or establishment of religion; (B) any claim based upon the right of privacy, including any such claim related to any issue of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or (C) any claim based upon equal protection of the laws to the extent such claim is based upon the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation; and (2) shall not rely on any judicial decision involving any issue referred to in paragraph (1).

Let’s be clear here, by sponsoring this bill Paul has shown that the only liberty is concerned with is financial. He wants to strip citizens of their constitutional rights and let the states go wild. If this were to pass there would be nothing to prevent states from banning contraceptives, abortion, gay rights, the rights for anybody to have sex with someone they aren’t married to, people engaging in their kinks or fetishes, or anything else that raises the moral ire of repressed church ladies.

This would also free up a state like Idaho to make religious education a mandatory part of the curriculum where you would get to choose whether to go to Catholic catechism, Mormon seminary, or Pentecostal Bible study classes. There would be nothing stopping Utah from declaring the state to be a Mormon state and making a temple recommend card a requirement for public office, banning the sale of alcohol, tobacco, and coffee, or allowing 50 year old men to marry as many 16 year old girls as they want.

Stripping people of equal protection under the law would allow the states to take civil liberties right back to where they were in the 1950s when sodomy and abortion were illegal and states could say that you were married after a one night stand. That would be a disaster on so many levels. Of course if this bill were to pass, I’m sure the Supreme Court would strike it down.

Checks and balances are important and the Constitution does have a provision for giving the federal government the responsibility to keep the states in line. But, when it comes down to it, the only check to protect the people from the tyranny of the majority is the court system. We need that.

(Via RD.net)

Zero2Infinity is a new “space tourism” company that’s taking an interesting and more environmentally friendly approach to getting people high above the earth: balloons! People generally consider space to start 100 km above the Earth’s surface and the balloons need more atmosphere than that to provide the lift so they’re only planning on going 34 km into what they’re calling “near-space.” What’s interesting is all of these space tourism plans do not take people into orbit as you have to go a quite a bit higher than 34 or even 100 km to accomplish that. The ISS is sitting at about 400 km, which for some prospective that’s only about the distance from Boston to Philadelphia, Boise to Salt Lake City, or Seattle to Eugene. (New Scientist)

Hunting Elephants is illegal, however in some South African wildlife preserves their populations are getting far too large. Kruger National Park alone has 15,000 elephants with an estimated sustainable population size of only about 7500. Since they feed the elephants in these parks and they are protected from predators females have no motivation to limit the number of offspring they have. Even though it’s politically unpopular, they will more than likely have to start culling the herds soon. One other option they are looking at is contraceptives. (Scientific American)

Hubble has found a galaxy that’s nearly 12.9 billion light-years away, placing it at only about 750 million years after the Big Bang. This is a small galaxy only about one-fifth the size of the Milky Way and only 1% as massive yet it produces about 100 stars per year where the Milky Way only produces about 70. (Forbes)

A story quite reminiscent of the movie “The Gods Must be Crazy” involves a 6 kg hollow ball that’s just over a meter in diameter falling from the heavens in Namibia. Local authorities are working with NASA and the European space agency to try to identify it. Authorities also apparently googled the phenomena and found several similar objects to have fallen in the last 20 years in Africa, Australia, and Latin American. (AFP)

A German architect has designed a house that follows the sun for effecient use of solar energy. One side of the house would be heavily insulated while the other side would be mostly glass and the roof would also be covered in solar panels. In the winter time the glass front and solar panels would follow the sun to get the greatest heat and electrical benefit from the weak solar rays, but in the summer time the opposite would be true with the insulated side of the house being turned towards the sun so as to block it’s rays. Personally I’m not too sure about the idea of a house that sits on a giant turn-table, but it’s an interesting idea. (Scientific American)

In case you’ve missed it, the Secular Coalition for American did a recent scorecard on the current slate of presidential contenders.

On the SCA site you can find a link to the PDF with the full report.

It’s really too bad Huntsman isn’t a more serious contender…

Today is the day that celebrates the birthday of the real historical great named Isaac Newton as well as the the mythical characters of Mythra, Horus, Hercules, Zeus, Sol Invictus, and yes even Jesus Christ. Whether your with friends and family or alone make a point of celebrating. Watch a movie, drink some white wine in the sun (if you have either), eat some good food, and enjoy yourself!

Have a very Merry Christmyth day, I mean Mythra Day, no….oh that’s right I mean have a Merry Christmas!

I’ll leave you today with Tim Minchin’s newest holiday song, it’s no White Wine in the Sun, but it’s funny and went too far for British TV:

Oh, you thought it was Jesus? Nope, it’s just the fact that it’s really dark. More on this tomorrow.

The name of the band is “Tranny Mormons” and yes, I am aware that “tranny” is not the proper term for transexuals, but their sacrilegious costumes make this video worth posting anyway.

It’s the holiday season so I’m guessing that most of you will be spending this weekend with family members. That wouldn’t be a problem for me since my family is awesome, both immediate and extended. My parents are Adventists, my step-siblings and my sister are nominal Christians, and my brothers and I are atheists. My aunts and uncles are all still Adventists, but most of my cousins aren’t, they ranging from backsliders and members of other denominations to non-believers. As a result of the religious diversity in my generation and the fact that I am second youngest of that generation, my family is loving and accepting of those of us who don’t share the faith of our ancestors.

So what if you’re the only one in your family who’s an atheist? Odds are pretty good that you can expect a lot of flack for it, but have some backbone and stand up for yourself and any other relatives who may be atheists themselves now or in the future. My oldest brother did much of that groundwork in my family and for that I am grateful, however my family was open and accepting enough to not shut him out or restrict his access to his little brother (me). By the time I lost my faith everyone in the family already had 15 years to figure out how to relate to godless heathens like us.

If the topic of religion comes up at a family event, as it very well may do in the spirit of the Christianized pagan holiday we have two days away, then speak up. If it’s just a family tradition of something like reading the nativity story, then you can feel free to be quiet and try to enjoy the myth or try to tune it out while you read your favorite atheist blog on your phone, but if it’s something more blatant, something like “Why do those damn atheists have to keep waging a war on Christmas?” Then answer the question. Explain some of the history (like how it wasn’t a federal holiday until the 1870s) and remind them of the establishment clause of the Constitution and the Treaty of Tripoli that clearly states that the US was not founded as a Christian nation and that the government shouldn’t be involved in pushing the dogma of one religion on the rest of us. Nobody as an issue with what private citizens do on private property, but when it’s the actions or approval of government officials and using their public office or public land, then that’s a different story.

If there’s a statement like, “Let’s not forget the reason of the season,” respond with something along the lines of, “Oh, you mean the winter solstice?” Don’t be a dick about it, but don’t let historically or legally inaccurate statements that denigrate you and all the rest of atheists slide.

Sure it’ll be awkward and you’ll get dirty looks and passionate arguments. Just keep to the facts, keep your cool, and stand your ground. By doing that your family will be less likely to try to cram religion down your throat next time. If they completely over react, just remember that losing an asshole from your life is a win and keep being a loving awesome person that would make it worth while for them to come back to accepting.

Of course if you are financially dependent on your family and fear that they might cut you off, then keep your goddamn mouth shut. You’ll have plenty of time to make a principled ass of yourself when you are independent of them.