Actually, that last is debatable.

If you look at fundamentalist Christian mothers, the trend is overwhelmingly to homeschool, to shelter their children from the evils of the public schools’ secular curriculum. Many have gone off the grid entirely regarding education, immersing their children in A Beka Books until it’s time — if it’s ever time — to go to college, at which point these parents choose religious colleges.

How do they expect their children to join the world at large? Girls aren’t expected to do so; generally, the goal is early marriage and the birth of a boatload of children a la Michelle Duggar. Speaking of the Duggars, they provide an example of what happens to boys: they grow up to be used car salesmen. All right, it’s not always that dire, but these families tend to favor small, homegrown business efforts. Women, married or not, are encouraged to learn crafting and cooking skills, on the grounds that they can help support their families in a feminine way, one that doesn’t take them from those families.

Of course, I don’t know how common these bloggers are; for all I know, they’re the royalty of fundamentalist Christianity. Still, for this particular subset of potential Tea Partiers, I’d say they really wouldn’t miss what the government has to offer. Maybe they should stop using it if they hate it all so much, huh?

♥ Pass Notes @ the Guardian is just hilarious. If you need a pick-me-up, go read a few; there are over 2,000 available for your perusal.

♥ In a similar vein, via madamruppy @ LJ: Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass (or, according to Kelly, why you should choose your major very carefully).

♥ Obama’s Facebook @ Slate. Barack Obama invited Republicans to the event Health Care Summit. This event has 0 confirmed guests. Maybe attending: 219 people.

And on that note, my mother is home before nightfall, so I should go spend some time with her.

The CDC cares so much about public health that it makes one of its greatest print resources, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) available online for free. You don’t need to be a health care professional to subscribe; all you have to do is click the button and give them an email address.

This is transparency of government. This is an agency not hiding the truth from the people, but giving us the same resources it gives our doctors, so we can try to inform ourselves. How cool is that?

If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an article open in another tab about invasive pneumococcal disease pre-vaccination, and it’s calling my name.

♥ Life in Perfect @ Semper Eadem. Where the girls serve their fathers./And can always recite the words of the Botkin sisters.

♥ Sex and the Off-Label Use of Our Bodies @ The Blowfish Blog. As Dan Savage once pointed out: Our noses weren’t “designed” for us to rest our glasses on — and nobody gets their knickers in a twist over that.

♥ How to Discuss Race and Racism Without Acting Like a Complete Jerk @ fight_derailing @ Livejournal. a. “I don’t want to sound racist, but.” If you find yourself wanting to say this, the odds approach certainty that what you are going to say is racist. Don’t.

♥ Red Family, Blue Family @ gurus.org. Lack-of-understanding is only about two aisles away from paranoia. If such unfathomable folks really were the majority now, what might they support next? Another war? Patriot Act II? Concentration camps?

♥ And because it’s both funny and relevant, Thessaly’s Butthurt Report Form (Internet Version).

This concept is only novel if you are unfamiliar with Islam. By “unfamiliar”, I mean “too frightened to learn”, and by “Islam”, I mean “the religion founded by Muhammad, laid out in the Qur’an, among other places”.

Look, if I wanted a reason to rail against vaccines, I could always pull out the story about my polio vaccination. I was five; my mother took me to get the jab and the stuff on the sugar cube; my right arm went stiff for a week. I probably had a mild reaction. Nine years later, they stopped using the sugar cubes — that would be the oral polio vaccine, the live virus version, in case you want to look it up — because polio was down so far that the risks outweighed the benefits. Kids were shedding virus after they got the OPV, and I’m sure mine wasn’t the only funny reaction. However, instead of ditching polio vaccination altogether, they switched to the inactivated polio vaccine, which was safer if a little less effective. The public health Powers That Be chose to maintain herd immunity despite the eradication of wild polio virus.

And I could tell you about my MMR — measles, mumps, and rubella — which might’ve come a smidge too late, seeing as my glands swelled right up about a week after I had the shot. It’s a live, attenuated vaccine, which means they gave me weakened versions of each pathogen, so I could well have come down with a tiny little mump. Really, what I had was so mild that it doesn’t deserve the plural. Once I got over feeling crummy, I was out in the hof swatting at tennis balls with my Opa.** I just couldn’t go anywhere while I looked like a chipmunk. Again, no big deal. Mom found Doogie Howser reruns on TV, and I developed my first huge crush on a gay man.

Since then, I’ve had plenty of other vaccinations, and none of them have made me sick. If I’m ever responsible for a child, I’ll get her the varicella shot (chicken pox in layman’s terms), because I saw what the disease did to a healthy playmate of mine. The only reason I’m not getting it myself is because I had chicken pox when I was four, and if you had it once, you’re either completely immune or immune enough not to suffer too badly. Please note that I don’t recommend infecting your kids instead of the vaccine. The vaccine is designed to react roughly the same way in everyone’s bodies. Viruses themselves cannot be controlled in this way, unless you are a microbiologist with access to serotyping equipment, and even then it’s a pretty long shot. Viruses mutate in vectors. That mild rash your neighbor’s kid had might turn into a nightmare for you.

My friend with complications wound up in the hospital. She almost didn’t make it. She ended up with massive tissue damage and will likely be scarred for some time to come, perhaps forever. She drew the short straw. I don’t want your kid drawing the short straw like she did. I don’t want anyone’s kid drawing the short straw. What I want is for everyone everywhere to get the same exposure to the same clinically-brewed and -tested virus instead of hoping that virus won’t turn mean.

As for claims that certain vaccines cause autism: the study was direly misinterpreted, and one loud-mouthed idiot took it upon herself to spread results she didn’t fully understand. The end result of all this, and the incident which provoked this post, was the revelation of Ms. McCarthy’s son’s possible misdiagnosis. Guess what, folks? The kid might not have had autism in the first place! All this Sturm und Drang over nothing.

By sheer dumb luck, we have managed to avert widespread outbreaks of preventable early childhood illness. — No, that’s not true. A lot of health care personnel stayed on their guard, listened to public health experts, and called in the proper authorities when smaller outbreaks occurred. They are the soldiers on the front. They kept your unvaccinated kids safe. So did a lot of other parents, who did vaccinate their kids, for the sake of those who truly can’t receive vaccines for medical reasons.*** These are the people maintaining the vaccinated population at a level which confers herd immunity.

So far.

If you want to find out what a world without herd immunity is like, please don’t stop vaccinating your kids. Go to the library and find a book on historical epidemics. Read about diseases like smallpox, which has since been eradicated. Read about those childhood illnesses, the ones you’re trying to prevent. Read what they used to do to us, before we found ways to prevent them.

Then get down on your knees and give thanks that we don’t live in that world anymore, and for the sake of generations to come, quit trying to bring that world back!

* I subscribe to that one, so I might be a little biased here.
** God, I miss him.
*** Allergies to components, actual and suspected; previous severe adverse reactions; compromised immune systems. In other words, if your kid has AIDS, herd immunity means she’ll still be protected, because we can’t give her whooping cough.

I’ll be sure to keep you apprised of my mounting health care costs. Would you prefer a newsletter or merely a note on perfumed stationery?

…

Dear prudish pundits: for fuck’s sake, leave the women of the new Sports Illustrated spread ALONE. I don’t see them as selling sex so much as showing off well-toned, beautiful figures. Given how quickly the fashion world would rush to condemn them if they set foot on a catwalk, perhaps we should all be applauding Sports Illustrated for its appreciation of truly healthy women.

…

And to a certain P.A.D.: if you do not believe ableism exists, I will be happy to share why I am unemployed.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

– Wilfred Owen