“Poyekhali!” (”Let’s Go!”) - Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin
On this day in 1934, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was born. Gagarin was the first man in space. He shouted this expression on April 12th, 1961, as the engines fired on the launch-pad to propel him on this historic mission.
On this day in 1618, Johannes Kepler formulated his Third Law of Planetary Motion. This third law states that “the square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.”
Important stuff, this.
We skeptics are often called cynics by true believers. If only it were that easy. Still, I love when skepticism actually DOES take the form of cynicism…
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.
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.)
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.
