2011-03-23

[FTL_Ian]

Entry fee
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/03/21/canada-blasting-new-budget-proposal-entry-fees/

NYT Paywall
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110318/15363413552/who-actually-felt-guilty-that-they-read-nytimes-online-free.shtml

Google Books
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9M4HNQO0&show_article=1

[anarchir]

You guys were talking about the schools being built more like prisons. Mine was rather like that. There was a newer building (Mid-HS) and an older one (Elementry) across the street from each other.  The older one had hallways that looked out into courtyards, rooms with large windows, etc. The new one had rooms lining the outside of the building & no courtyard. All the windows were thin, horizontal, with shutters and very high up so that viewing the outside from literally every room was impossible.  Even the doors leading outside at the end of every hallway had two sets of doors so that you couldnt look out. The colors in the place were pale grays & dark blues from what I remember.

[Graey]

I'd like to comment regarding vaccines. First of all, I am definitely not in favor of mandatory vaccination, just to avoid any confusion.

A lot of people misunderstand the purpose of vaccines. Of course it is partly to avoid getting sick, but primarily it is to stop the spread of a disease throughout a population. There is a thing called herd immunity. When enough of a population is immunized against a disease, it can't spread itself enough to become a problem, often dying off entirely, for example smallpox. When enough people decide for whatever reason they don't want to or can't immunized, the disease can raise its ugly head and infect more people, such as semi-recent outbreaks of whooping cough in Australia and California. So it's not just about the person getting the vaccine, it's about everyone. That may or may not play a role in one's decision to get vaccinated, or to have their children vaccinated, but it's important to have that information either way.

In recent years hysteria over autism has driven the vaccination rate down in a lot of places. It's important to understand that this for the most part is a misinformation campaign. The whole anti-vaccination movement was based on a paper by Andrew Wakefield in which he came to the conclusion that, basically, the Measles Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine caused autism, and that a vaccine for just measles would not. It has been since shown that he faked most of his data, used questionable methods to obtain what little data wasn't faked, and lied about the conclusions. In addition he was trying to obtain, or did obtain, a patent on a vaccine for measles (not all three combined), so there's a nice conflict of interest.  Most importantly is that there has been shown to be absolutely zero relation between autism and vaccines in study after study. So basically there's no reason to think vaccines should cause autism (fake paper) and no reason to think they do (zero evidence).

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind here, nor am I questioning anyone's motives. I just feel it's important to have enough and correct information when dealing with this sort of topic. For a nice overview of the vaccine/autism controversy, see the URL below.

http://skepticblog.org/2008/12/22/skeptical-battlegrounds-part-iv-anti-vaccine-hysteria/

- Bill

[maulotaur]

You guys were talking about the schools being built more like prisons. Mine was rather like that. There was a newer building (Mid-HS) and an older one (Elementry) across the street from each other

A very large school that combines three previous facilities for special/problem students was just opened down my street, and I can definitely agree that it looks like a prison.  Even the way it is laid out with one-way entrances, fencing and cameras on the corners of the building give that impression.