Check it out:

National Vaccine Information Center’s ad running on the ABC Full Circle Screen in Times Square spreads needless fear about childhood vaccinations.

An ad by the NVIC earlier this year on a different screen in Times Square and an NVIC PSA that was playing on Delta Airline flights was condemned by the American Academy of Pediatrics as being harmful, unfounded, unscientific and misleading.

The NVIC is a notorious anti-vaccine organization, whose name and website are designed to give the impression that they are a legitimate government agency. However their “vaccine information” is designed to frighten the public and encourage individuals to opt out of protecting themselves and their children through immunization.

This is an especially dangerous time to be spreading fear about vaccines in New York City, where the NYC Department of Health has confirmed 126 cases of whooping cough since August 2011. Whooping cough is a serious disease and infants are especially at risk of serious illness or even death. Vaccines are our most powerful tool in defense against diseases like whooping cough. However, if NVIC’s ad is successful, we may see more people refusing vaccinations for themselves and their children, and a rise in illness and death within the US.

NVIC’s Times Square ad is misleading and downright dangerous. ABC and Disney, you need to take responsibility for protecting public health by pulling NVIC’s harmful ad before it can do more damage.

This petition was created by the Women Thinking Free Foundation. For more information, please visit the http://www.hugmeimvaccinated.org

Hat Tip: Bob

Wow.

Wow again. Good show, octopus!

… by various things. See

Me too. But in the old days, they made them to last, even if they were stuck in your stomach for 25 years!

SpaceX CEO & CTO Elon Musk discusses the difficulty of making a reusable rocket. Filmed at The National Press Club.

A strange 1.1 meter circumfrence hollow metallic ball appears to have fallen from space, or somewhere, onto Namibia. The pertinent facts:

Continue reading Namibian Mystery →

The farther away you look, the farther back in time you see. So, GN-108036, a galaxy spotted by NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble scopes, is 12.9 billion light-years away, and thus, about 12.9 billion years ago (not counting adjustments for cosmic expansion). It turns out that GN-108036 is producing stars at the rate of about 100 per year. In contract, the Mikly Way (our galaxy), even though it is 100 times bigger in mass than GN-108036, produces about 30 new stars per year.

GN-108036 is an unexpected find because we previously thought that a that early stage in the universe’s history, about 750 million years after the Big Bang, galaxies this massive and bright did not exist yet.
Continue reading Galaxy from distant past is very fertile →

Below the fold because the video is too wide:
Continue reading Rachel Maddow on How They Do Cable News Better (vs. Fox) →

I’m thinking there’s another explanation. But it does point out something people need to know about penguins … wherever they hang out, it tends to smell bad.

Photographer Scott Rowed has penned an excellent essay on his experience making the switch to Linux, and he’s agreed to place it here as a guest post. Please read it and pass it on to people, school districts, small island nations, and others who may benefit. This is a repost from about two years ago:
Continue reading Switching to Linux: One man’s personal experience →

… the Skeptically Speaking Podcast with Scicurious and David Kroll, is now out and ready for you to download.

Speaking of science and drugs, did you know that Canadian researchers are to to start clinical trials of HIV vaccine in January?

March is the snowiest month. We get lots of snow in December. Sometimes it is too cold to snow. When I was a kid (whenever that was) there were more snow storms, the total snow cover was much, much deeper, and when it snowed…it snowed, by golly!

Such are a few of the things people say about the weather. Of special interest to me is the idea that “these days” have less snow than “those days”…according to every one of every age of every region that gets snow.

Have you ever thought this? Have you ever heard this said? If you live in a region that gets snow in a regular basis, and this does not remind you of several conversations you’ve had, then you must be really focused on something because you have not been paying attention.

But is it true? Were winters “those days” more snowy than winters “these days”?
Continue reading Back When I Was a Kid, We Had Real Winters! →

The eternal question … answered. [a repost]
Continue reading Who has a higher IQ, cats or dogs? →

Sometimes, I can solve the brown cube. Other times, I cannot.

Often times, when I show the brown cube to others, they say “Ooh, I know who can solve that…. cuz he can solve a Rubik’s cube like whoa”.

And so they give it to the dude(s) who can solve a Rubik’s cube, and the dude’s (along with me) know that these two cubes are totally different in color/strategy/maneuverability. So they fuck with em for a minute, set them down, and go back to their Rubik’s cube….

This is not new, but you should still visit.

Turn the blanket 45 degrees and fold down the farthest corner. Place baby with neck over the fold. Bring one side of the blanket across baby and tuck firmly in behind. Bring lower extension of blanket up over the baby, and tuck one side into the same side you tucked the other side into, firmly. Bring the opposite, remaining side of the blanket across the baby and tuck that in behind.

The result should look like this:

It helps to have water running in the background.