Boffins create zombie dogs

New research:

Boffins create zombie dogs

Eerie ... boffins have brought dead dogs back to life, in the name of science. Scientists have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans.

No, it is not a movie review.

RFK Jr on vaccines

John sends this NY Times article on childhood vaccines and autism. I've been critisizing vaccine policy for years, including the policy that allowed thimerosal (mercury) in vaccines, but now some leftist kooks have gotten on board.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on this subject in Salon and Rolling Stone, and Salon had to issue this correction:

The article also misstated the level of ethylmercury received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It was 187 micrograms -- an amount 40 percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury.

Science reporter Fumento reports in the WSJ that Kennedy got is worse 4 days later:

But Mr. Kennedy isn't to be relied upon for facts. He told Mr. Scarborough in a June 21 interview: "We are injecting our children with 400 times the amount of mercury that FDA or EPA considers safe."

See also Skeptico. I guess we shouldn't trust any figures from Kennedy.

Fired for personal beliefs

WorldNetDaily.com says:

A former manager with Allstate has sued the insurance giant, alleging the company, which financially supports homosexual advocacy groups, fired him solely because he wrote a column posted on several websites that was critical of same-sex marriage and espoused his Christian beliefs.

I'm glad I don't work for AllState.

Zombies

Roger Ebert says:

The fatal flaw in almost every zombie movie I've seen is the fact that they are so easy to kill.

He gives thumb's up anyway.

Spielberg repents

Movie news:

STEVEN SPIELBERG is glad he made alien invasion classic CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND before he became a father - because the movie would have had a very different ending if he had been a dad at the time.

Spielberg admits he could never have a father turning his back on his family to leave earth with aliens because he could never imagine doing the same thing, now he's a father.

The father of seven says, "Close Encounters was about a man whose insatiable curiosity, more than just curiosity, developed into an obsession and the kind of psychic implantation drew him away from his family and, only looking back once, he walked onto the mother ship.

"That was before I had kids. That was 1977. So I wrote that blithely. Today, I would never have the guy leaving his family to go on the mother ship. I would have the guy doing everything he could to protect his children.

In 1977, the mainstream media were dominated by feminists who viewed dads as extraneous to child-rearing. Someday the public will wise up.

Charlie says, "The aliens chose him. That's plausible as hell to me!" Yeah, I like movies too.

Why Gender Matters

Some goofy child psychologists and educators think that things like competitive sports and other traditional activities for kids are bad because they promote aggression. But promoting aggression is actually beneficial, to a degree. Boys in particular learn to fight other boys, and to later make friends with those boys. This and similar issues are explained in Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences, By Leonard Sax.

Scientologist Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise lectures Matt Lauer:

I've never agreed with psychiatry, ever," declared Cruise. "Before I was a Scientologist I never agreed, and when I became a Scientologist, I never agreed. As far as the Brooke Shields thing is concerned you have to understand, look, I really care about Brooke Shields ? she's a wonderful and talented woman, and I want her to do well, and I know psychiatry is a pseudoscience. She doesn't understand the history of psychiatry, just as you don't understand it, Matt. I do. ... All it does is mask the problem.

You can find some Scientology info here.

Married men earn more if wives do the chores

A new study says:

LONDON (Reuters) - Married men earn more than bachelors so long as their wives stay at home doing the housework, according to a report on Wednesday from Britain's Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER).

Academics Elena Bardasi and Mark Taylor found that a married man whose wife does not go out to work but is primarily responsible for the cooking and cleaning earns about 3 percent more than comparably employed single men.

But that wage premium disappears if wives go out to work themselves or don't do most of the housework.

"It has been fairly well documented that married men earn more than single men," Taylor, a labour economist, told Reuters.

"However, our research established the wage premium is related to the wife doing the chores," said the academic who teaches at the University of Essex.

My guess is that a man earns less if the wife is a feminist with an attitude.

Talking to Strangers

Bruce Schneier says:

In Beyond Fear I wrote: "Many children are taught never to talk to strangers, an extreme precaution with minimal security benefit."

In talks, I'm even more direct. I think "don't talk to strangers" is just about the worst possible advice you can give a child. Most people are friendly and helpful, and if a child is in distress, asking the help of a stranger is probably the best possible thing he can do.

I told my kids that an 11-year-old boy was lost in the Utah wilderness for four days because his parents taught him not to talk to strangers.

Intersex and ambiguous toilets

John sends this story about a local restaurant:

The Saturn -- a gay-friendly vegan/vegetarian eatery that has been a Santa Cruz institution for a quarter-century -- is not just the place to go for the quintessential Santa Cruz dining experience. The Laurel Street restaurant is at the heart of a small but growing movement aimed at making transgender and ``intersex'' people -- those born with genitalia that aren't typically male or female -- feel more comfortable using public facilities.

``This is the new wave -- to really look at bathrooms,'' said Deborah Abbott, director of the Lionel Cantú Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex Resource Center at the University of California-Santa Cruz. ...

``Single-sex toilets give bigots another excuse to hit people,'' Ian Ayres, a Yale Law School professor, argued in a recent commentary published by the online magazine Slate.

Instead of trying to list all the deviant possibilities, I think that they should call their organization the Queer Center, and advocate a third bathroom just for queers.

Picky eaters may be healthy

The NY Times reports on picky eaters:

"From 1 year of age to about adolescence, there's a dearth of research," said Dr. Stephanie A. Atkinson, a member of a dietary panel at the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences.

"For children, there are no relationships established between nutrient intake and disease prevention," largely because lifelong studies beginning in childhood are difficult and expensive to conduct, she said. ...

In any case, picky eating does not seem to put children at risk for overall nutritional deficiencies, experts said. Although picky eaters do tend to take in fewer nutrients than more diverse eaters, a majority of American children meet the recommended intakes for most nutrients, according to national data, though there are increasing numbers of malnourished children among low-income families. ...

Researchers say that as onerous as it sounds, parents should expose a child to a food at least 10 times before giving up. Most parents give up after five attempts.

If the battle is staked over vegetables, experts say, give it a rest.

"Nutritionists tend to lump fruits and vegetables together," Dr. Birch said. "But for kids and most of us, these things are not all alike. Kids tend to eat fruits, which have a lot of the same nutrients as vegetables."

Parents of picky eaters often devote a lot of effort to force dietary preferences, but there is no scientific proof that such efforts do any good. Nearly all kids can get a healthy and balanced diet from food that they like.

Designer dresses v retailored breasts

Fashion news:

"I gave up my wardrobe to show off my breasts," says Tara Fierstatt, a national merchandiser for Buffalo Jeans in New York, who had implants in 2000 and now fits a C cup.

"Your options are so much better, but it's funny: I used to wear button-down shirts, and now they don't fit," she says. "I might have to go up a size on the top if it's too tight around the chest, but then it does not fit in the shoulders or the arms."

Elderly with friends live longer

New Scientist says:

Close friends make longer life more likely

Friends, not family, are the key to a longer life, a new study suggests. ...

The new study followed almost 1500 Australians, initially aged over 70. Those who at the start reported regular close personal or phone contact with five or more friends were 22% less likely to die in the next decade than those who had reported fewer, more-distant friends. But the presence or absence of close ties with children or other relatives had no impact on survival. ...

It is possible that close connections with friends might have a positive physiological effect on the body, in contrast to the negative effect caused by stress, adds Carlos Mendes de Leon of the Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, US, in an editorial accompanying the paper.

I think that it is more likely that sick and dying old people are abandoned by their friends. The healthy ones have a lot more friends.

Bad educator ideas

Friday was the last day of school, and my kid was sent home with a pamphlet saying:

Summer Support Activities for first and second graders

Reading:
Read to your child daily. This is the best thing that any
parent can do.

Then the principal herself told me some crazy story about how accelerated students are at risk for teenage suicide.

A problem with these educators is that they pay no attention to actual research on what works and what does not. Her ideas about accelerated students are completely false. And studies have found no benefit from parents reading to kids. It may even be more beneficial for a kid to watch TV than to listen to a parent read from a book.

Celebrate Father's Day

New Phyllis Schlafly column:

On this Father's Day, Americans should ponder the appalling fact that an estimated 40 percent of our nation's children are living in homes without their own father. Most of our social problems are caused by kids who grow up in homes without their own fathers: drug abuse, illicit sexual activity, unwed pregnancies, youth suicide, high school dropouts, runaways, and crime. ...

For 30 years, feminist organizations and writers have propagated the myth that women are victims of an oppressive patriarchal society and that marriage is an inherently abusive institution that makes wives second-class citizens. Feminists made divorce a major component of women's liberation and their political freedom. ...

During the Clinton Administration, the feminists parlayed their hysteria that domestic violence is a national epidemic into the passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). This created a gigantic gravy train of taxpayers' money, known as feminist pork, that empowers pro-divorce, anti-male activism.

Congress will soon have to vote on renewing VAWA. Part of it had been found unconstitutional.

Michael Jackson acquitted

Carole Lieberman, a psychiatrist on Fox News, complained about the Michael Jackson verdict, and said this of the 13-year-old accuser:

He didn't really get his experiences and his feelings validated. ... I think it is very sad for this boy, and for all children who have been molested.

Her analysis was that the prosecution coached the boy to tell the wrong set of lies, and that it didn't have "good expert witness psychiatric testimony". She claims that she has the ability to discern the truth, even in cases where the accuser changes his story multiple times.

She is an expert witness against Jackson is his child custody case.

I am glad that juries are not always fooled by phonies like her. I had predicted here that Jackson would be acquitted.

Political Expediency v Science

John sends this:

A bill introduced by Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D, NY) that attempts to end financial conflicts of interest among FDA advisory committee members passed by a vote of 218 to 210. The bill prevents the FDA from empaneling scientists with financial ties to companies whose products they are evaluating by eliminating FDA fees to such scientists.

He says that only 32 Republicans voted for the Hinchey amendment, but they included 2 medical doctors (Ron Paul and Dave Weldon) plus the 2 members with the greatest expertise on vaccine injuries (Dan Burton and Chris Shays).

The article tries to defend FDA decisions being made by scientists with obvious financial conflicts of interest. I think that scientists on an independent advisory committee be independent. We've had several bad vaccine approvals in recent years because of a lack of critical thinking on the committees.

Rosie says no breastfeeding

Malkin's blog:

Comedienne Rosie O'Donnell banned her partner Kelli Carpenter from breastfeeding their daughter Vivienne just a few weeks after she was born--because she was jealous of their bonding sessions. ... O'Donnell admits she felt left out of the motherhood process whenever she observed her partner nursing their child.

Remember this, when you hear about lesbians wanting to adopt kids.

Cats affect the brain

New British cat research:

The startling figures emerge from studies into toxoplasma gondii, a parasite carried by almost all the country?s feline population. They show that half of Britain?s human population carry the parasite in their brains, and that infected people may undergo slow but crucial changes in their behaviour.

Infected men, suggests one new study, tend to become more aggressive, scruffy, antisocial and are less attractive. Women, on the other hand, appear to exhibit the ?sex kitten? effect, becoming less trustworthy, more desirable, fun- loving and possibly more promiscuous. ...

He found the women infected with toxoplasma spent more money on clothes and were consistently rated as more attractive. ?We found they were more easy-going, more warm-hearted, had more friends and cared more about how they looked,? he said. ?However, they were also less trustworthy and had more relationships with men.?

That explains a lot. I never could trust those easy-going sexy sluts!

No Mass. spanking

From Boston news:

In April, a Plymouth, Mass., father landed on the front page of local papers and behind bars after he used a belt to spank his son Josh, 12. ...

But now, lawmakers are considering making "the willfull infliction of physical pain on children under 18," illegal. The measure would prohibit corporal punishment including whipping, spanking and pinching. Also forbidden would be washing a child's mouth out with soap and administering electric shocks.

The kids may figure out that they can get out of doing homework if they claim that it causes headaches.