‘Study was a fraud’ - Doctor defends research tying vaccine to autism

This is a troubling story for a lot of reasons. How many children, and adults, got sick, or died, because they weren’t vaccinated after reading that report?

I admit when I read the study I stopped getting vaccinations. Millions of parents nationwide did the same thing because of this one man. Now it’s almost impossible to calculate the damage he’s done. 

Excerpt:

“New report shows Dr. Andrew Wakefield, colleagues altered facts about patients

The first study to link a childhood vaccine to autism was based on doctored information about the children involved, according to a new report on the widely discredited research.

The conclusions of the 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues were renounced by 10 of its 13 authors and later retracted by the medical journal Lancet, where it was published.

In an accompanying editorial, BMJ editor Fiona Godlee and colleagues called Wakefield's study "an elaborate fraud." They said Wakefield's work in other journals should be examined to see if it should be retracted.

Last May, Wakefield was stripped of his right to practice medicine in Britain. Many other published studies have shown no connection between the MMR vaccination and autism.”

PHOTO - British doctor Andrew Wakefield, right, and his wife Carmel arriving at the General Medical Council (GMC) in central London, Jan. 28, 2010 Shaun Curry  /  AFP - Getty Images file

Weird Festivals: Empire Asparagus Festival is Artsy Fun

The Empire Asparagus Festival in Empire, Mich., is dedicated entirely to this perennial vegetable. Michigan is one of the top asparagus producers in the U.S., but since Empire is known more for its artsy side than its agricultural one, the festival includes many touches of whimsy. Each May, revelers gather to celebrate with a parade, a 5K fun run, asparagus hat-making and even an "ode to asparagus" poetry contest. The food at the festival is hardly your typical fair fare: You can dine on everything from deep-fried asparagus to asparagus bratwurst, and wash it all down with asparagus beer. To see more weird festivals go here.

‘Golden-voiced’ homeless man lands dream job, house

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YouTube video sensation draws attention of Cleveland Cavaliers

Here’s a feel-good story to perk up your day: 

“An Internet video of a homeless man showing off his self-described “God-given gift of a great voice” has landed him a spot on a local radio show, a dream job with the Cleveland Cavaliers and a house. “The Cleveland Cavaliers just offered me a full-time job and a house! A house! A house!” Ted Williams said while appearing on a morning radio show in Columbus called “ Dave and Jimmy.”

The plot thickens? More dead birds found in Sweden

I’m starting to think these mass bird, and fish deaths, are Twilight Zone material. See posts below.

Veterinarian refuses to speculate on cause of death but is investigating

“First, New Year's Eve fireworks were blamed in central Arkansas for making thousands of blackbirds confused, crashing into homes, cars and each other. Then 300 miles to the south in Louisiana, power lines likely killed about 450 birds, littering a highway near Baton Rouge.”

AND…

“To add to the mystery, 50-100 jackdaws, a bird species in the crow family, fell dead in central Sweden late Tuesday night, English-language Swedish news website The Local reported Wednesday.”

Okay…this is weird – more dead birds drop out of sky!

The birds are dropping out of the skies in Arkansas and now Louisiana, and officials are playing it off like it’s no big deal.

I don’t think Americans are as dumb as these officials would like to think. Someone knows something about what’s going on. If I had to guess, I’s say it’s some biological agent in the upper atmosphere. It kills what passes through it. Perhaps whatever deadly agent is there comes down to the ground for whatever reasons and that would account for the 100,000 dead fish that are littering the banks of the Arkansas River not far from the first dead bird occurrence. There’s more than meets the eye here…

Excerpt:  

“Some 500 dead and dying birds fell onto a Louisiana highway on Monday, just three days after a similar incident in Arkansas.

The events have led to speculation running from poisonings to "End of Days" scenarios, but a key federal agency emphasized that mass bird die-offs are not that rare.”

Most of the birds found on Louisiana Highway 1 near Point Coupee were red-winged blackbirds, as was the case in Beebe, Ark., some 360 miles away. The species is one of the most common in the United States, with a population estimated at up to 200 million.

United Nations Human Rights Council Exposes US Secret Detention Facilities

image source

New study claims Depression gene really exists

Analysis of research finds link between gene variant and susceptibility to stress

“The 2003 discovery of a gene variant that seems to predispose people to depression when stressed out created great excitement — and a flood of research — in the field of psychiatry. In 2009, however, an analysis of research on the gene threw cold water on that enthusiasm by finding no consistent link between the gene variant and depression.”

Thoughts on two random images found in cyberspace…

Two random Images

One with a baby,

 the very personification of innocence;

compare that with

Madison Avenue 

advertising claims

 Then

Look at this paint

portrait that looks like it was randomly

splashed on the wall

with a miraculous

result: perfection and serenity! 

Up to 100,000 fish found dead along Arkansas River

Okay…what the hell is going on in Arkansas? First it’s birds dropping out of the sky (SEE POST BELOW) and now it’s fish dying for unknown reasons!

Notice how in both cases authorities are quick to deny the problem is because of pollutants.

 Officials suspect disease, not pollutants, as cause of death

“State officials on Monday were investigating why 80,000 to 100,000 fish washed up dead on the shores of the Arkansas River last week.

"The fish deaths will take about a month" to determine a cause, Keith Stephens, a spokesman for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, told msnbc.com.”

Mystery in Arkansas: Why did 2,000 dead birds fall from sky?

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'I've been to Iraq and back and not seen nothing like this,' resident of Ark. town says

This is a troubling story. I can’t imagine what is killing those birds.

Did some biological agent escape from a lab? Is that why the birds are falling out of the sky?

I wonder if we’ll ever know the reason?

What Me Worry? Hail to the age of the spell/grammar checker

Editor’s Note: Someone at the Times-Standard dropped the ball on New Year’s and didn’t run my column (below). Not the greatest way to start the New Year. I can only hope it’ll get better. 

                       By Dave Stancliff
Who needs to worry about spelling and grammar any more?
In the age of Twitter and cell-phone texting neither matters. Fractured spelling is necessary to save space. Besides, who judges your grammar when using them? There’s a good chance your English teacher does the same thing.

We live in the Age of the Spell-Checker and the Grammar-Checker. They’re available to us when we use our computers and our smart, internet connected, cell phones.

When was the last time you picked up a dictionary or thesaurus? Did you know the world in which printed encyclopedias were produced and consulted has vanished? How many of these books are in your house? So why spend needless hours in school learning how to spell or to recognize a dangling modifier? 
Did you know that a dangling modifier is a phrase or clause, which says something different from what is meant because words are left out? The meaning of the sentence, therefore, is left "dangling."

If you’re a novice at translating Twitter tweets and text talk then you’re may be left dangling and wondering what has been written. Perhaps we ought to see if there’s a way to codify the fractured ramblings of millions of cyber communicators?
Upon second thought, any attempt to put structure to the tortured sentences that keep evolving among the tweeters and texters would probably be a failure. It would be rejected as quickly as our traditional methods of spelling and grammar. And why not?

Everyone is in a hurry. There’s just not enough time to learn all the rules of the English language. It’s rapidly becoming an unnecessary burden. There are new ways of thinking in the 21st Century that encourage shortcuts and speed.
Nowhere is poor spelling more evident than in protest rallies by the political Left and  Right. You know the ones I’m talking about. It’s common to see people proudly holding up misspelled signs and waving flags while trying to deliver scrambled messages of dissatisfaction.
  I seldom see news about Scripps National Spelling Bee contests anymore. Maybe I’m not paying attention. Spelling Bee competitions are reportedly making a comeback (see http://educationnext.org/competition-makes-a-comeback/). Be that as it may, I wonder how many of these phenomenal spellers bother to use their talents while texting or tweeting?

I’ve talked with students of all ages who tell me they have to bring “clickers” to class. A multiple choice exam is projected via computer and students click their answers. There’s less emphasis on written tests in all levels of education, from what I see.
  Computer technology in the class room has been hailed as a great teaching aid. Kids from kindergarten level up are comfortably pounding away at key boards and effortlessly navigating web sites. I wonder what would happen if parents sat their children down and asked them to hand write a short essay about their day? Could they write complete sentences with no spelling errors? How would their grammar level compare to yours when you where a kid? Are they able to write in legible cursive?

Should we blame all the funding cutbacks in our schools for our children’s inability to correctly use our written language? Perhaps we ought to take a look at the SAT Reasoning Test (formerly Scholastic Aptitude Test and Scholastic Assessment Test)? 

 This standardized test for college admissions in the United States has a Writing section that includes multiple choice questions and a brief essay. The essay contributes about 28% towards the total writing score, while the multiple choice questions contribute 72%. You see my point. 
  Plenty of statistics show the national decline in writing and spelling skills. It’s a trend. Like all trends, it’ll play itself out one day, but the aftermath spells illiteracy for another generation.

  
 As It Stands, thnk U 4 redng this n lol!