Reducibly Complex

I got cut-off in traffic today on my way to classes. Twice. Both times, I was cut off by somebody that did not respect the right-away rule at 4-way stops. Both times, I honked at them. Both times, I was given the finger.

This made me realize something. When something happens in traffic, some controversy of some kind, if I am in the right and I want to tell the person how I feel, I never give them the finger. I usually give them a thumbs up, as if to say “Nice going, ass-clown.” Or I will point to my temple to say “THINK!” But never the finger. The only time I give the finger is when I’m too flustered to think of something else, which is when I have done something wrong (and know it).

I’m a good driver (and, I admit, an aggressive one). But I occasionally make a mistake in traffic. Everyone does. But to give somebody the finger, at this point, just doesn’t do anything. It’s a way of saying “I don’t care what you think.” If you care about making the other person know they were wrong, you don’t give them the finger, you make them feel stupid (because they are).

With that in mind, I realized today that I am never going to be offended or apologize about a traffic incident if the other person gives me the finger. Instead, I’ll take it as an admission from the other person that they are wrong, stupid, shouldn’t be allowed to drive a car, or all three.

Don’t give the finger. It’s dumb, and you admit you’re wrong.

I love things like this…

Here’s a video that has been floating around for the interwebs for a couple weeks. It’s freaky-cool.

It will be interesting to see what response, if any, the anti-vaccination crowd will have for this report that the National Health Service (UK) Information Centre has found that the rates of autism in adults directly correlates to the rates of autism in children.

The anti-vax movement, spearheaded by Jenny McCarthy, has been pushing the idea that vaccinations cause serious illnesses as side-effects to preventing others. In particular, the MMR vaccine (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) is blamed by anti-vaxers to cause Autism.

The MMR vaccine has been available only since the early 1990s. Thus, it would be expected that, if this vaccine were causing autism, that rates of autism in children would be higher than rates of adults, since children with the MMR vaccine have not had time to become a part of the adult population.

The NHS study, however, shows that this is not the case:

“The NHS Information Centre found one in every hundred adults living in England has autism, which is identical to the rate in children.”

Case closed. If the MMR vaccine was causing autism, then rates of autism rates in children should be higher than adults. They are not, so the MMR vaccine is not causing autism.

This study goes beyond the simple rates, though. Autism in girls as compared to women were completely equal and the same is true of boys compared to men. The rates are constant, whether the person has received the MMR vaccine or not.

Why is this an issue? What’s the harm in not getting your child vaccinated? To find out, check out www.whatstheharm.net/vaccinedenial.html.

(as usual, Dr. Steve Novella has a much more thorough analysis of this study on his blog, neurologica.)

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Ryan Gregory of the Genomicron blog has put together a quick, but excellent, list of predictions made by the theory of evolution that have later been confirmed. The list can be found at:

http://genomicron.blogspot.com/2009/09/does-evolutionary-biology-make.html

Even though I’m sure this is old and that most evolutionists in America have probably seen it already, it is new to me and I think its great!

“If anybody had that cure out there, like so many people swear they do, you’d be two things. You’d be very rich, and you’d be very famous. Otherwise, shut up.” — Patrick Swayze (1952-2009) to the cancer cure quacks.

Thanks to wastrel on the SGU Forums for this quote.

Wow, it’s been a long time. No promises of more posts to come (I’d like to start writing in here again, but who knows if I’ll have time), but here’s a funny atheist video that my colleague Tim sent to me.

The clincher was the reverend claiming some kind of “mutation” explaining everything. Brilliant.

On this day in 1796, English physician Edward Jenner administered the first vaccination against smallpox to an eight-year-old boy. Jenner innoculated an 8-year-old boy, James Phipps, with material from the sores of dairymaid Sarah Nelmes who had a mild case of cowpox. A few weeks later, on 1 Jul, he subsequently tested the boy’s resistance to smallpox, by inoculating Phipps with smallpox virus. Fortunately, the immunization had been successful. This tested a conventional wisdom he had heard that those who had survived cowpox seemed to be immune to the deadly smallpox disease. By 1798 he had 23 cases, which he recorded in An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae. Jenner’s work was rapidly taken up in Europe and America.

Stealing a line from Penn and Teller, “And then there’s this asshole:”

To read about WHY she is an asshole, and why I put her in this post, read this!

Those of you who don’t know her, the above is our pal Jenny McCarthy. McCarthy began her career as a Playboy Playmate, and moved on to an acting career which landed her in amazing acting roles like a spot in the “Lingerie Bowl.” So naturally, this makes her an authority on the toxicity of vaccines.

McCarthy, whose son is autistic, believes that “her son was developing normally until he received his measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (at 15 months of age) and claimed that they were the cause. McCarthy has stated at many talk shows and rallies that chelation therapy [pronounced kee-lay-shun] helped her son recover from autism; the underlying rationale for chelation, which is that mercury in vaccines causes autism, has been roundly rejected by scientific studies, with the National Institute of Mental Health concluding that autistic children are unlikely to receive any benefit to balance the risks of cognitive and emotional problems posed by the chelating agents used in the treatment.” (Wikipedia page on Jenny McCarthy, May 14th, 2009).

McCarthy has since become a major spokesperson for the anti-vaccination movement in America. The key point to be taken out of the above context from the Wikipedia page on McCarthy is that “the underlying rationale for chelatioin…has been roundly rejected by scientific studies.” The National Institute of Mental Health, who would know a thing or two about a mental illness like autism, reject chelation as a valid treatment for autism. Of course, facts do not stop McCarthy. Nor do they stop Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who simply states that the above is simply a large pharma-industrial complex and government conspiracy. As was pointed out on a recent episode of “The Skeptics Guide to the Universe”, it’s interesting to see a Kennedy proposing a conspiracy theory. Those of you who don’t know why, just go here. (You may want to go there anyways; conspiracies are always good for a laugh.)

I would go on about this, but the absurdity of it brings me to simply say that, once again, Dr. Novella has written extensively on the topic and is a much better source for the nitty gritty details. To read more, I suggest using this link to do a search of the good doctor’s Neurologica blog for “McCarthy.” There is a wealth of information there too vast to summarize in my one short post.

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(the views expressed by our sponsors are property of the individual sponsor alone, and do not reflect the opinion of ReduciblyComplex.com)