The Occasional Solipsist

I haven't ranted in awhile, so bear with me. I might be out of practice.

I wanted to weigh in on the whole Jenny McCarthy/Anti-Vaccination nonsense that has been rounding the internets lately, mostly confined to the US, but because of a function of proximal geography and a mostly unhealthy fascination with our southern friends, also here in Canada.

I honestly wasn't paying any attention to this debateless debate at all. I just thought that it was some idiot pseudoscience sympathizer using her celebrity to try to convince the world of the evil of vaccinating children. And that is precisely what it was.

I won't profess to being a medical expert, but I am a big fan of both intellectual honesty and critical thinking, neither of which the aforementioned vacuous new-ager holds in any capacity. See, Jenny McCarthy thinks a vaccine gave her kid autism. And then she thinks that she cured his autism with a diet change. And now she believes that her kid is some kind of metahuman, and she is currently running around talking about the power of crystals. Seriously.

I'm not sure which is worse, the fact that this nitwit was ever given any kind of public forum to air her nonsense, or the fact that anyone ever listened to her at all. And certainly enough has been written by people far better than me at debating the medical inconsistencies of this woman's statements, so I will forego the history of this mess. If one didn't already know all about this thing, one could (and should) check out these links:

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=390

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/10/jenny_mccarthy_on_cnn_the_stupid_burns_o.php

But the ridiculousness of this was brought home not that long ago when I came home to my wife, anxiously asking me if it turned out that vaccinations had been found to be harmful. She had caught an episode of Oprah that day. And on that episode, Jenny McCarthy was espousing her opinions on the dangers of getting children vaccinated, and basically telling parents that they should ignore the advice of thousands of experts in the medical community and instead listen to her. But I gather that as crazy as her brand of bullshit is, she believes it enough to make it sound convincing.

So I had to explain to Superwife about this woman's crusade and how because of the completely undeserved media attention it has been getting, parents are scared to get their kids vaccinated against things that they may eventually get, and may eventually die from. Now that is something to be scared of.

Why is it that we live in a world where idiots like this get all the attention and basically the entire medical and scientific community gets shut out? I think its just further proof that as enlightened as I like to think hope wish that we are, we really, really aren't.

EDIT - 12/20/2008 - Edited not for content, but for really poor grammar. Although this chick is still an idiot that should be given the same kind of non-attention one would give to any typical urban doomsayer with a homemade sandwich board. Quit telling people that vaccinations cause autism. They just don't. In fact, how be you do the world a favour and bow out of the public's eye for good?

Labels: family, rants, trinity

I just got back last night from a couple night's stay in Canada's answer to the Metropolis and now that I am safely shielded in my familiar rural darkness, I find myself much more comfortable again. I lived in Southern Ontario for years and when I go to visit, be it for work or to visit those in my family that I still talk to, I can't wait to get back home.

Yes, there's a shitload of things to do, but I think that is just distraction, otherwise everyone would go nuts when they realized that they are living on top of each other in tiny spaces, and paying through the ass to do it. So the place is filled with shows, and 5 million places to eat, and 2 hours of traffic to go 3 kms.

That being said, when you do visit, its nice for the tourist to have access to those distractions too. I attended a few shows at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival while fitting in some work, and they were awesome. 'Mutant Chronicles' was probably way better with a bunch of genre fans than it has any right to be. But it was a good time. And 'Home Movie' was just plain fucking creepy. Really disturbing. So it was a lot of fun.

But 2 days of something to do to keep me from remembering how much I hate city life still didn't really do its job. Because coming back I remember why I moved, and that I am never living down there again.

Labels: everything else, rants