On Iran, fads, and dying for a cause.

I've been saying for a while that turning your icon green on Twitter is a stupid thing. It really is, in my mind- it's like putting a ribbon on your car, or wearing a lapel pin. It only means something to the other people with green icons. When do you change it back to your regular colors? What are you doing, besides turning your icon green, that would actually make a difference to the people dying in Iran right now? They're dying for a cause, and you're sitting there thinking that your green icon (which they don't see because they're NOT following you, buddy) makes some kind of impact.

The only impact a green icon has made for me is that it's harder to tell who's posting what. I mean, I could see that (as my brother pointed out) seeing a greenified icon might make an Iranian American feel nice if he happens to be following you, but that guy's worried right now about his friends and relatives and probably couldn't give a damn about your show of solidarity. It's nice, but it's not enough.

This weekend, I was talking with my brothers about the revolution. The problem I saw, inherently, was that the revolution was to protest the loss / theft of an election for someone who ideologically is not ANY different from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at all. Mir-Hossein Mousavi was selected by the Iranian "Supreme Leader" along with 4 other candidates (including Ahmadinejad) to run for president of the country. The country itself is actually run by the "Supreme Leader", one Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The president is more of a figurehead, and wields SOME power but only at the pleasure of the big guy. It honestly doesn't matter who the guy is at all - and honestly, there are revolutions in Iran every 15-20 years anyway, always with the same result. Of course, now Mr. Mousavi is changing his stance on some things and fitting himself into the revolutionary mold, but who knows how genuine that really is?

SO I was doing some thinking last night about the situation. There IS a difference here, in this revolution, versus the revolutions for power that we've seen cyclically all over the Middle East. The difference here is that the knowledge held by the electorate is much higher than it used to be. I've talked before about the internet being the great equalizer- that once countries had populations who realized that they had complete access to all the information they might want, then the populations would force a true democratization of their government. Honestly, at this point it doesn't actually matter WHO the president is or will be.

I'm realizing that it's NOT about who got the election stolen or even if it WAS stolen. I think, from what I can see, that the current revolutionary aspect is entirely about the government's reaction to the questions about the election. You can't just stifle information when a populace is used to having that access. It's a very destabilizing notion.

What will the outcome be? Pfft. No one knows. Probably there will be no difference in 2 years, regardless of the course of events... but MAYBE.. just maybe, there will be enough of an event to make a permanent change toward a more secular and intelligent middle east, whether in Iran or another country where the young men and women are inspired by the sequence of events unfolding on every media outlet from Twitter to Fox News to Al-Jazeera. MAYBE we'll see a moderate Middle East emerge, where countries look to Jordan as examples of co-existence, and MAYBE we'll see a ratcheting-down of religious and dogmatic persecutions which result in the killings of innocent men, women, and children in the name of an imaginary deity.

Will I be greenifying my icon? Nah. But am I sitting here hoping to see that the people who CAN make a difference actually do? Yes. Absolutely.

You're kidding.

REALLY. A measles outbreak. In 2009.

Awesome.

Vaccines save lives. Antivaxxers kill children.

So this guy at the Huffington Post wrote a killer column about why vaccines are awesome and great and get the kids vaccinated and blah blah blah and I was really happy about it while reading it, because YAY! Someone gets it at the HuffPost! It's about time! After reading JFK Jr's psuedo-science crap and hearing all about The Secret and all sorts of other metaphysical crap from what I otherwise think is an intelligent site, it's nice to see that there's some actual reality in there somewhere.

Then I read the comments.
And my heart sank.

Typical comments included:

"NO ONE has the right to decide for another parent whether or not to vaccinate a child. Forcing a medical procedure on anyone is abhorrent and can not be tolerated in a nation that touts freedom like the United States."

Dear sir: Go fuck yourself. Take your non-immune child, and go fuck yourself. Preferably with something sharp. Stop hurting the ability of our populace to control the spread of diseases like mumps. Hell, maybe if your kid gets the measles you'll get it... but I doubt it.

"Save these vaccinations for those who really need them.
You are supposed to get sick from time to time.
This is how your body learns how to defend itself later in life."

Dude.
Seriously? Are you KIDDING me?? So... injecting a dead version of rubella to prevent me from contracting it down the road is bad? I'm supposed to hopefully survive rubella unscathed in order to receive immunity? Seriously? You really, really really want me to put my kids through that, too? Go fuck yourself, you short sighted twit.

"Now, you probably can't tell that I'm actually on the fence about this issue. Certainly vaccines are beneficial to the population as a whole, and I continue to vaccinate my children except when the vaccines still contain thimerasol."

Pay close attention please: GO FUCK YOURSELF. Jesus christ, you goddamned mouthbreather, PAY ATTENTION TO THE EVIDENCE. Study after study has shown CONCLUSIVELY that thimerasol had NOTHING to do with ANY effect on a child. NOTHING. ZERO. ZIP. NADA. We're talking MULTINATIONAL FUCKING SURVEYS of huge bodies of evidence here versus a discredited single study of less than 20 kids which was shown CONCLUSIVELY to have been completely made up out of whole cloth.
Let's repeat this, just in case google's paying attention: THIMERASOL IS NOT A DANGER TO YOUR KIDS. Heck, it's also NOT included in any current vaccines - with the exception of some flu vaccines, from my understanding, and even THEN it's such a trace amount as to be literally harmless even if you were to be injected with a vat of the goddamned vaccines.

"and don't forget that the rate of autism may not be rising at all. in the past it has been misdiagnosed. people thought autistic kids were "just slow" or "weird" at the high-functioning end of the spectrum, and those with more severe cases were diagnosed with other disorders. The increasing profile of autism has caused an increase in diagnoses. also as the rate of children going without vaccinations has more than doubled, the rate of autism hasn't slowed a bit. jacob dickerman is right on, parents of autistic children (which whom i sympathize) point fingers at vaccines to aid in their coping with tragedy and offset their (misplaced, yet understandable) sense of guilt."

GO FU... oh. never mind, you seem to get it.

I had to stop reading after a while. The stupid... it burns....

Frickin' TEXAS.

Son of a bitch.

Raids on LEGAL pot dispensaries will end!

From MSNBC comes the news that the raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in states where they're legal are coming to an end.
It's about frickin' time. I wonder if the next step will be for California to allow taxation of the dispensaries - if that happens, and other states start seeing the revenues... could be a domino effect.

/fingers crossed.

I KNEW I lost a blog around here somewhere....

Hey look, a blog post! :)
To tell the truth, I was more than a bit burned out after the election was finally over. Huge relief and all that jazz. I just never really bothered thinking about blogging much after that... sent a few links to friends, popped some stuff on Facebook, whatever. Still... I missed it a bunch, in a way... so here I am.

A couple of quick things to post -
Holy crap I'm glad Obama won - exactly for this reason right here. She's pretty much toast. I hate to say it so crassly, but I also hate my backspace key. Pancreatic cancer really, really sucks. It's a very deadly cancer that has a very low 5-year survival rate. For an incredible reading experience about it, check out the blog and health reports of Randy Pausch, a the author of "the Last Lecture". Here's hoping Obama picks someone interesting... and preferably without so many tax issues.

Speaking of which, what the hell is going on there?? I thought he knew how to vet his candidates. Well whatever... at least we got to hear Obama admit he was wrong about something. I actually can't remember another president doing that in my lifetime about something happening as a current event. Sure, GW admitted in his last press conference that he MIGHT have made a FEW mistakes... but that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm also pretty happy about the initial symbolic gestures - the torture reforms, the changes to the FOIFA request processes, etc. I'm a lot less happy about the stimulus packages though... I think they're a huge waste of money and time. I think that if you want to do anything, you should slow the hell down and take a really hard look at things. Stop bailing out companies and processes that don't work. Take a significant portion of the "bailout" and instead of using it for refurbishments of pre-existing structures and roads, use it toward the energy policies of this country.

Help to string a better power grid. Throw tax incentives that MEAN something to people that generate a portion of their own power. Fix the more fragile points of the grid that could potentially cause huge blackouts (remember the one what, 5 years ago, that took out most of the midwest and NY? That can still happen). Take another portion and help to run fiber around the country and provide very cheap broadband access to everyone who wants it. Throwing money in that direction keeps it IN this country and also is a true investment in the future of our communities. The stimulus packages being rammed through congress right now are just a frighteningly disorganized mass of "hey let's spend here!! OH and HERE!!! and... OH THERE TOO!!!!" It's almost like a frantic shopping spree, and the speed at which it's moving reminds me a LOT of the Patriot Act's progress through congress.

Oh, and there's this: The republicans suck at what they're doing. Period. You'd think they'd wake up and smell the absolute smack in the face they were just dealt and perhaps come up with some innovative ideas - instead, they just bitch and moan and say "NOT ENOUGH TAX CUTS" and don't bring up any real ideas. Talk about disappointing, guys. You can do better than this...

This is gonna be an interesting time to be alive, I think. :)

New Skeptic Circle up at Ferret's Cage

There's a new Skeptic's Circle up at Ferret's Cage. Go check it out.


I love the tagline on his site - "The blog of an exceptionally intelligent 15 year old atheist with far too much time on his hands."

Didn't we ALL think we were exceptionally intelligent at 15? And now, looking back at it, don't we all realize what stunningly stupid things we did (and somehow survived) despite that intelligence?

(I am NOT saying that he isn't stunningly intelligent, but.... you know, 15.... :)