Thursday, February 4, 2010

News: The Stupid Report

Yes, that's right, time for another skewed overview of goings-on on the web.

When Stupid Science Gives Stupid People An Excuse To Be Even More Stupid:
  • Respected British medical journal The Lancet finally retracted the much and oft discounted 1998 paper which claimed that the thimerosal preservative in vaccines was causing autism. Note that now, two days later, there's no mention of the retraction at all on their home page. They should be embarrassed; the study's statistical methodology has been shown to be bad, and while the editors couldn't have known that studies now show that the discontinuation of adding the preservative to the vaccines has not slowed autism rates, they have done the world's children a disservice by giving high-strung people who think they know better than doctors a reason to leave their kids unvaccinated for potentially life-threatening diseases and spread them to people who are either too young or medically unable to be vaccinated themselves. Mumps and measles may be confined mainly to third world nations now, but guess what? The third world is right next door. (e.g. Haiti)

Intermission: funny pictures of cats with captions
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
Wow, I can't believe those cats are just sitting there...

When Stupid People Have No Excuse To Be Acting Stupid:
  • Several Puerto Rican doctors in Haiti to help with earthquake relief are in seriously hot water when pictures came out of them drinking and posing with guns. I realize they're seeing some awful things and everyone needs a way to cope, but if you're going to be a dumbass, don't pose for pictures while doing it. Morons.
Just Plain Stupid:

3 comments:

Brad said...

Yeah, getting pulled over is, what, $76 and 0 points? I don't think the law gets enforced much, as it is.

Karen said...

It's not worth the police's time to pull someone over for that. I'd bet when that citation does get issued, it's because the driver was already pulled over for something more serious and they added it on.

Karen said...

Hrm, according to this article from last November, the CHP claims it has written over 100,000 tickets for hand-held cell phone use since the law went into effect. It doesn't say how many of those drivers were pulled over for other infractions, although committing another infraction while using a cell phone apparently also doubles the fine for the former.

Seriously, the insurance companies should really step in. It's obviously in their best interests to raise the rates of people committing that kind of high-risk behavior.

And I love the bit in that article about the woman who claimed the device she was holding to her ear was a GPS. It seems to me it would be rather dumb to fight the ticket anyway, as all the police need to do is get the cell phone records, but hey. Two stupids must make a smart, right?

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