It also seems odd to me that it was only scheduled for one night and that the cops immediately swooped in and "shut it down". Wouldn't someone have to complain first? I'm having trouble seeing someone showing up at a fairly obscure 'art happening', having a sudden moral revulsion at what looks like fairly mild parodies of corporate logos, and managing to track down in the middle of the evening a cop who does not laugh at them and instead rounds up an enforcement squad. This really isn't passing the smell test.
And while I'm no fan of the LA police, I don't recall them having a history of moral crackdown type enforcements in recent years. I'm half wondering if it was a noise complaint that is being dramatized.
Oooh, this is perfect. I have papers on Seamus Heaney and Tim O'Brien I'm writing, and it's very hard to find any useful academic info on them in the noise of regular Google. Thanks, Patrick!
They've got a corrupt entry in one of the nameservers; I'm not sure where, but you only hit it sometimes.
Perhaps I shouldn't have used 'boneheaded' as it's a more heat than light word. But ignorant seems accurate -- it's hard to categorize "I have not found ONE study that was not biased towards drug companies that proved that vaccinations are actually effective." as anything but that, or possibly delusional. It's rather like saying "I haven't seen a single study that's not biased that proves that the world is round!"
Honestly, I think I could cope with the sort of person who blatantly admits to being a free rider, allowing everyone else to protect his or her children by taking the risks on themselves, than the sort of ignorant propaganda being put out by Randall P.
Vaccines are not much in the way of profit centers for drug companies; drug companies make their best profits from high priced drugs that have to be taken on a maintainance basis. Vaccine prices are kept relatively low, and more importantly, they are usually once in a lifetime events. The idea that idea that a 'stream of disinformation' is driving vaccination is just... delusional. What drives vaccinations is that it saves the life of millions every year.
Yes, there's a cost to a vaccine. For many years nearly every case of polio in the country was caused by vaccination. There are in fact polio vaccines that have no live virus and can't cause it, but it's less effective, and it doesn't spread immunity the way the attenuated live virus (oral) vaccine does. There's a debate going on right now about going all IPV (dead virus), and in fact if I had a kid I'd do IPV because polio is so close to eradication.
That sort of debate is useful, with clearheaded discussion of the costs and benefits, individually and collectively, of various vaccines. Similiarly, research to discover better vaccines, and any flaws in existing vaccines, is good. Is thimersol bad? Are there ways of generating vaccines that will trigger fewer allergic reactions? In fact, one of the downsides of the fact that drug companies make so little money from vaccines is that they don't have much motivation to research and improve them.
But the sort of bone headed ignorance being displayed by Randall P doesn't help *anyone*.
The Republicans do not want media focus on their platform; it costs them a net loss of votes. A totally dull convention where the only things to report are 'gosh, what a lot of New Yorkers are wearing anti-Bush slogans' and 'yep, same old repressive platform' is of net benefit to the folks who do not want Bush to be elected.
I think anyone who thinks a quiet convention would have resulted in the popular press, especially TV, paying any attention to the platform is delusional. I'm sure there will be long serious thinkpieces in the Serious Dailies that no one will read. The coverage that people will see will be adoring coverage of Bush the Great Leader and his Steely Glory. The Republicans are quite good at setpiece political theater, and the media, as we all know from the last bitter decade, whore to those they are owned by.
I'm not sure I'd go quite so far as Erik, but there's a certain point to putting down a marker for history. I know I was certainly cheered when I saw the inauguration protests in 911 -- I had no idea they were so extensive. If Bush gets reelected and things get as bad as they look like they might, it's nice to at least have recorded that not everyone rolled over for it.
Yes, normally, I'd let the election votes put down the marker, but it's no longer clear that they in fact will be an accurate record. A depressing and terrifying thought, but one anyone who has looked into the mechanisms and lack of audit trails in electronic voting has had. It's not just paranoia.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 2 |
| 2004 | 5 |
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