Interesting and frightening news from the world of viruses and bacteria.
Straight out of Gattaca comes news that you can be tracked by the germs you leave behind on surfaces. More on this here.
In a more dangerous to your health than you privacy story, some information on MRSA that both cleared up some myths but also put a real sense of the dangers of the virus into my awareness.
Well kids, we’re coming full circle back to our parent’s time. Polio is back, at least in the poorest and most overcrowded of nations.
My father has a mark on his neck from where my grandfather gave him an emergency tracheotomy in the back seat of the family car using a pocket knife on their way to the hospital because my dad couldn’t breathe. And that’s what a mild-ish form of polio can do to you, cause you to suffocate. I don’t know if I’ve got it in me to cut into my child. I suppose I could if I have to but I really don’t want to find out.
No word from the Jenny McCarthyites on whether they look forward to polio outbreaks within our borders due to their stupidity.
Here we go.
Well-meaning, but misinformed parents are helping to create a measles outbreak in western Canada because they won’t vaccinate their kids.
I envision a future much like the one in “12 Monkeys” where Jenny McCarthy is Shiva, the Destroyer of Worlds.
If I ever get a chance to have a garden again, I’m going to follow this scientist’s advice and grow some stuff for home remedies.
Running the gamut from cough and cold remedies to hangover cures, here’s a helpful article of useful home remedies.
Pretty interesting stuff that might keep you safe this winter.
Now this is good to know. Apparently scalding your hands like a lobster doesn’t make that much of a difference versus washing them in a temperature near the boiling point of lava.
There’s a lot of hysteria going on about the flu shots, both the season and the swine flu one. GeekDad points out that you’d better get your kids vaccinated as they are a primary audience for the swine flu.
Follow the links in that story for some good information.
Not that this surprises me much but sales of hand sanitizer are way up. That, in theory, is a good thing but I hope we don’t overdo it. That said, I still see guys who take a leak and don’t wash their hands. Yes ladies, it probably happens more than you think.
One of the things that stops me for calling myself a progressive rather than just a plain vanilla liberal are the kinds of folks who call themselves progressive. Bill Maher is one of those folks. I mean, he’s funny, and sometimes he absolutely right.
And then there are times he thinks reality revolves around him, rather that being something he has to endure along with the rest of us. Things like, he keeps calling out the President for not pushing policies that he – Bill Maher – would like passed. As if somehow Barack Obama had mischaracterized what his agenda was at some point.
The relevant part to this discussion is that Maher is using his media soapbox to scare folks – particularly pregnant women – to not get the H1N1 shot. This is reckless, and it is going to get some woman – and probably her baby – killed. And Maher? He’s not going to give a shit. He’ll just shrug and light up a joint until he burns out the brain cell that reminds him he told her to risk her life for an anti-government talking point.
Just in case you think I’m being hard on the guy, his stance is in line with both Beckkk and Rimjob. The company ya keep, ya know?
Daily Kos has some good info, and then there’s this from The Daily Show.
More on the Bill Maher wants pregnant women to die story. Look, if Bill Frist is making more sense than you and telling folks to trust the government as his party is arming for a race war, then you are absolutely in the wrong.
The MythBusters gang jumps in and helps to spread useful info on the H1N1 virus.
We need folks like this who have some credibility with certain parts of our society to help weed out the fearmongering out there.