Technical Difficulties

If you follow this blog and have been expecting updates, my apologies.  I had a busy month lined up for November as far as my personal life, so I queued up a bunch of posts and then let them go on autopilot.  Sadly, instead of setting them up to publish automatically, they saved as drafts and never made it to published status.  I am about to rectify that situation, so bear with me as a bunch of posts pop up rather suddenly.

Sorry About the Silence

Dear reader,

My apologies for the sudden silence and lack of posts.  Due to numerous unforseen circumstances, I have neglected to pass along news and updates.  I am just writing this entry to let you know that I shall endeavour to update this page with a few more entries and updates in the near future.  There has been quite a bit of news that needs to be covered, as well as some upcoming web page updates that I need to accomplish.  Please bear with me as I get these incorporated and taken care of.

Also, while Avicenna and I are the primary bloggers here, I am always looking for more people to help out.  There are many team members listed on this blog, however I have not heard much from them.  I am leaving them on the blog since I owe a certian amount of allegiance to them, but I am always looking for more people.  Please feel free to drop me a line at Larian@LarianLeQuella.com if you are interested in contributing.  Thank you.

Intermittent Posting

Just got a little bit of advertising from some friends on facebook.  Thank you.  I do want to make sure that people click on the link that takes you to http://factsnotfantasy.com which is the main page.  That is where you will find some relevant, although more static, information about both vaccines and evolution.

Vaccines:  As I have often said, the anti-vax pro-disease nutters will tell any lie they can make up in order to promote their dangerous agenda.  The main menu tab has a pretty well laid out page that counters some of the most egregious of their lies.  Sadly, it's hard to keep up with lies since people are just randomly making crap up.  But this should give you an idea as to how weak their position is.  In the sub-menu section, I think DEATHS is the most important page to visit.

Evolution:  The fact that this page is needed is just a sad testament to the influence of bronze age fairy tales in today's society.  No one argues gravity or tries to promote "intelligent falling" yet we have this argument over and over again.  The theory of evolution is as close to a fact that science can have at this point.  The denialism involved in this just staggers the mind.  Of the sub menu pages, I think Creationists, read this! is my favorite.

Also, I am always open for others to join this blog to contribute.  Feel free to drop me a line and I will add you to the list of authors.  Thank you.

Framed!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Google decided not to support blogging via FTP, so I am forced to make some changes in the way that this blog is published. As such, over the next couple of weeks, this blog is going to show up as a frame inside this main window.

The Good: Hopefully I can even figure out a way to embed RSS feeds into this blog so that you all can come here for news on autism, vaccines, and evolution. And since there will be another domain associated with this site, I am hoping that it will increase traffic here.

The Bad: Sadly by doing this, it will remove the list of contributors and the direct link to archives. What I plan to do is make a link to the outside URL, and that way you can go see the full blog if you want to.

The Ugly: Yeah, this is a kluge. Frames are ugly, but my brother-in-law worked hard on the functionality of this page, and it's pretty slick on the menu system and all. This was the fastest solution that we could come up with that kept the main part of the web page intact.

Anyway, just an update to let you know what is coming down the pike as a change.

Google Fail

So recently Google put out this announcement on their blog management page:

FTP publishing will no longer be available after May 1, 2010

You currently have blogs that are published using FTP. You must migrate your blogs to a new custom domain URL or a blogspot URL. To learn more, see our dedicated blog and help documentation.

Which means that I need to figure out how to update folks on what is going on and keep this going (even though I have been rather negligent of late). At least I have a couple of months to figure this out, and in the meantime I'll be letting things run as normal.

Mainstream Scaremongering Over Gardasil

Usually my colleague, Larian LeQuella, does the job of re-posting articles from other blogs, but since he is preoccupied with personal matters, I'll do this for him...

This is a blog entry, "Mainstream Scaremongering Over Gardasil", by Dr. Phil Plait (a.k.a. The Bad Astronomer), which I am re-posting here:

Gardasil is the brand name of a vaccination that protects young girls and women against the human papillomavirus (HPV), a virus that has been positively linked with cervical cancer along with other horrible diseases. It also can trigger cancers in men as well.

I've written about this topic before; 4000 women in the United States die every year alone from cervical cancer, an appalling 1/3 fatality rate for those diagnosed with the disease. Tens of millions of people — both men and women — carry HPV.

Gardasil protects young women from ever getting HPV. These women have a substantially lower chance of contracting the virus and getting cervical cancer. I consider that a very, very good thing.

But you wouldn't think so if you read the New York Times, or the (Australian) ABC News. Both posted articles playing up the dangers of Gardasil as revealed by a new government study of the vaccine. That would be fine if it were true, but both reports, in my opinion, unfairly inflate the apparent danger. The ABC article is particularly egregious, with a headline saying "US doctors question Gardasil side effects" when it's clear from the article that this isn't really the case.

What are the dangers? The worst one would of course be death. In a study of the vaccine, there were 20 deaths of young girls at some time after they got the shot. Twenty! That sounds like a lot! However, there are two MAJOR problems with that statement:

1) There is no obvious link between the deaths and the vaccination other than in time. One girl died from drug abuse. Another from hepatitis, and others from embolisms, cardiac failure, and other problems. While these are all very sad — and as a father of a young girl at the age to get Gardasil, my heart aches for those families — none of these can be directly tied to the vaccination.

2) There were 20 deaths out of 7 million girls who received the vaccine. Those odds are 1 in 350,000. That's roughly the same odds as dying from falling off a bed, chair, or other furniture.

I can just imagine the antivaxxers yelling "It's a BIG FURNITURE CONSPIRACY!" over that one.

In truth, I imagine the antivaxxers are already licking their chops over this news, ready to fold, spindle, and mutilate reality as they oh-so-often do. The last thing we need are misleading articles like these two. It's like red meat for them.

The New York Times article quotes a doctor who urges caution over giving girls the shots. She says that proper cancer screening will prevent women from getting cervical cancer. That's true, but misses the point entirely. Not everyone can or does get screened for cancer. If they did, we wouldn’t be losing 4000 women every year to it. I'd rather close the barn door before the horse escapes.

I'm not a doctor [of medicine], so I can't tell you to go get your daughters vaccinated with Gardasil. What I will tell you is that your best weapon here is to simply understand the situation, and don't just believe what you read. Don't even believe me. Read up on this yourself and talk to your doctor.

Oh, and to the antivaxxers who [...] try to muddy the situation with distortions and spin, I'll answer your question before it's even asked: Yes, The Little Astronomer [Editor: Phil's daughter] did get her course of Gardasil vaccinations. And now she gets an even better shot at living a long, long time to talk about it.

Weekend News! (11 JUL 09)

I generally don't intend to blog on weekends (I have a family and all those social obligations to fulfill), but today I am making an exception. Not because I have something exciting to share or because it's a particularly news worthy day, but just to get back into the swing of things, and to remind readers that this site is mainly updated on weekdays.

Also, on the evolution page, the "standard rebuttals" page was getting unmanageable, so I broke it down into three specific sections. One section is the standard rebuttals that we put together on our own. Then there is one section that lists 25 rebuttals as written by Dr. Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine (and also a writer for Scientific American). Another section takes on 15 specific items, and was written by John Rennie for Scientific American. I hope this makes the evolution page a little more manageable for our readers. Please send us feedback on this if you would like to see more.

Anyway, on Monday, you'll get news and information again. Also, I am going to attempt (at the risk of my sanity) to go to the age of autism site, and tear apart random articles of theirs, should I find the time in the future. I know that generally our sources have been a little narrow, but with the sheer amount of lies and distortion out there, it's hard to find anything that passes the baloney detection kit... So, just to give you a look into the crazy, we'll attempt to delve into their strange little world. Maybe not now, but eventually, just so we aren't accused of only going to one source.

Also, we are still looking for more guest writers. While I enjoy finding and researching things, it does take up a lot of time, and since this is strictly a volunteer project, I am finding my real life obligations taking away from this from time to time. I sincerely apprecite IVAN3MAN's help and Todd W.'s help, but the more the merrier.

Larian on Vacation (Until 9 Jul)

I just wanted to drop in and let you all know I have not abandoned this page. I have just had a whirlwind of activity taking place in my life with retirement from the military, trying to find a new job (in this economy) and the like. I will be on vacation for the next couple of weeks, so don't expect to hear a lot from me, unless I get a wild hair and manage to get a random post up.

And again, if anyone is interested in joining us and helping us blog here, please let us know. We would sincerely appreciate any help.