Archive for June, 2005

Eminent Domain

Thursday, June 30th, 2005

While I can’t write quite as eloquently as Jim, I think a brief post regarding a recent Supreme Court decision is required, and I’ll let Jim expand with his thoughts.

Recently, a case went to the Supreme Court in which a city wished to uproot a good number of people from their homes in order to then turn the property over to a private developer. Their reasoning is that the developer’s planned hotel would bring in more taxes than the homes thereby helping the “public good.” By a 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court decided this was a valid argument. I, for one, am not amused.

To see the opinions, both majority and dissenting, check out this link http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-108.ZS.html.

However, never let it past some brilliant (read slightly off kilter) people to then turn this into a mockery, all be it an amusing one.

Freestar Media has decided that since Eminent Domain allows for a flexible interpretation of “public good” as well as quite a few other laws, they have requested the city of Weare exercise their right to higher revenue by excising property from on Mr. Souter, who just happened to read the Supreme Court’s majority opinion. You can see the letter and their press release at their website. There is also a petition for anyone interested in staying at the afore mentioned hotel.

While the interpretation of Eminent Domain seems to require economic blight, I think this makes for an interesting story nonetheless.

Jim, your thoughts?

Happy FFAF

Friday, June 24th, 2005

Hello Jim, I’m Jenny from It’s All Greek To Me
First of all your joke was reall really good !! And because of that I will share with you 3 quick blonde jokes (yeah I’m a brunette lol)

A police officer stops a blonde for speeding and asks her very nicely if he could see her license.
She replied in a huff, “I wish you guys would get your act together. Just yesterday you take away my license and then today you expect me to show it to you!”
——————————
A blonde was playing Trivial Pursuit one night. It was her turn. She rolled the dice and she landed on “Science & Nature.” Her question was, “If you are in a vacuum and someone calls your name, can you hear it?”
She thought for a time and then asked, “Is it on or off?”
——————————
There’s this blonde out for a walk. She comes to a river and sees another blonde on the opposite bank.
“Yoo-hoo” she shouts, “how can I get to the other side?”
The second blonde looks up the river then down the river then shouts back, “You are on the other side.”

FFAF is Back, Yo

Thursday, June 23rd, 2005

Tomorrow (6/24) is Free-For-All Friday! Free for All means you can post whatever you want on my blog. Say what you want to say, share a link, complain about household appliances, etc…all you have to do is login and post!

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Go to http://www.pinkeyedjim.com/wp-login.php
  2. Login/Password: guest/freeforall
  3. Click on the “Write” tab on the top left of your screen
  4. Enter a title, check the box for the category “Free for All.” Make sure all other categories are unchecked
  5. Type what you want to type in the box called “Post”
  6. When you’re done, click “Publish”

Rules:

  1. Please keep it somewhat clean…if you don’t think I would post it, don’t. God forbid if I find spam or (non-free) porn links…
  2. Feel free to link your blog or site, so long as it’s not the sort of site that would get you in trouble regarding rule #1…
  3. I reserve the right to edit/delete inappropriate posts (or those with really obvious spelling mistakes)
  4. Do not edit the guest user profile or I will eat your children.
  5. Have fun!
  6. Check out some of these other cool FFAF blogs.

Vaccine Preservative Linked to Autism, ADD, Other Brain Disorders

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005

I first heard of this link back in 2001 on WOR 710 AM, a talk radio station that plays host to mostly conservative and financial radio hosts. But there is a really in-depth article in this month’s Rolling Stone, written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that lays out the link between a mercury-based (yes, mercury) preservative used in vaccines called thimerosal and developmental brain disorders such as autism, and the huge cover-up of CDC study data involving this link. “All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly ‘embargoed.’ There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.”

Why would a government agency like the CDC hide its study data from the public? Perhaps because after studying the medical records of over 100,000 children, a certain epidemiologist noticed an alarming trend in the increase of neurological disorders when the number of vaccines containing thimerosal were increased. “Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants — in one case, within hours of birth — the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.” A fifteen-fold increase in nine years due to three extra vaccines!

To be fair, the need for preservatives in vaccines is definitely present. Third world countries simply don’t have the resources to handle non-preserved vaccines, and neither do some American hospitals. But is autism in one out of 166 children really the price that we want to pay for increased availability to vaccination? And it seems that the more vaccines that a child receives with thimerosol, the more likely it is that that child will develop some sort of neurological disorder. Add to this the fact that children born after 1989 receive twice the infant vaccinations that a baby born before 1989 did, and you have some scary implications.

Sadly, these implications are a reality; 40,000 new cases of autism are diagnosed every year. I volunteered a few summers ago at a camp for autistic children run by The Eden Institute, and it’s a horrible thing to witness a child (or anyone) go through. It’s not like “Rain Man;” the children don’t have special powers. Some can be violent, some never speak, most will never be able to live on their own.

What is most disheartening about the thimerosol issue is the many cover-ups that have been done regarding it, most because of conflict of interest in CDC scientists. I’m going to quote the article at length here, because you need to read all of this:

What is most striking is the lengths to which many of the leading detectives have gone to ignore — and cover up — the evidence against thimerosal. From the very beginning, the scientific case against the mercury additive has been overwhelming. The preservative, which is used to stem fungi and bacterial growth in vaccines, contains ethylmercury, a potent neurotoxin. Truckloads of studies have shown that mercury tends to accumulate in the brains of primates and other animals after they are injected with vaccines — and that the developing brains of infants are particularly susceptible. In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to much lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to American children still suffered brain damage years later. Russia banned thimerosal from children’s vaccines twenty years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed suit.

“You couldn’t even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe,” says Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. “It’s just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage.”

Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could cause damage — and even death — in both animals and humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by administering it to twenty-two patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within weeks of being injected — a fact Lilly didn’t bother to report in its study declaring thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine manufacturer, Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal’s safety “did not check with ours.” Half the dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal-based vaccines became sick, leading researchers there to declare the preservative “unsatisfactory as a serum intended for use on dogs.”

In the decades that followed, the evidence against thimerosal continued to mount. During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it “poison.” In 1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice when added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lilly’s own studies discerned that thimerosal was “toxic to tissue cells” in concentrations as low as one part per million — 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as “nontoxic” and also incorporated it into topical disinfectants. In 1977, ten babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their umbilical cords.

In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines. But tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for hepatitis B within twenty-four hours of birth, and two-month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.

The drug industry knew the additional vaccines posed a danger. The same year that the CDC approved the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck’s vaccine programs, warned the company that six-month-olds who were administered the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury. He recommended that thimerosal be discontinued, “especially when used on infants and children,” noting that the industry knew of nontoxic alternatives. “The best way to go,” he added, “is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without adding preservatives.”

Just sick. Fucking sick.

Man has brain dead wife kept on life support until her baby can be born…

Friday, June 17th, 2005

I just want to start this rant by saying that I can completely sympathize with this man. I don’t object to this per se. There is something that I do object to, though. First of all some introduction.


A brain-dead woman is being kept on life support in hopes that her 21-week-old fetus survives, and the woman’s husband said he is certain that’s what she would have wanted.

Jason Torres said doctors believe the fetus could have a chance if Susan Torres lives another month and her cancer stays away from her uterus.

I feel so bad for this man and his wife and this poor baby. I totally believe that he should be able to do this to his wife if it’s what he believed she’d want. (Wasn’t that what the whole Terri Schiavo thing about anyway? I’ll have some things to say on the results of her autopsy later on.) There is, however, one thing about this scenario that saddens me.


Torres quit his job as a printing salesman and has moved into his wife’s hospital room. The couple’s 2-year-old son, Peter, is staying with grandparents.

Why would you quit your job at a time when your family is expanding? How are you supporting your kid, or your wife’s hospital bills? Why why why? That’s not the kind of Pregnancy or Baby Information that’d I’d give any expecting father. You need to support yourself and your kids, I know you’re sad about your wife dying, but if she’s the sort of woman who would want to be kept on life support until her baby could come to term, then I’m sure she’s the sort of woman who would have wanted you to go one and keep working and support your family. Seriously.

Howdy Stranger!

Thursday, June 9th, 2005

I finally have the internet again after nine excruciating days. Over that time I have been up to a bit. First of all, I moved. Second of all, I’m playing my guitar again after a hiatus of over a year, and I’m loving it. I’m nearly finished Richard Clarke’s book. The Supreme Court ruled that the feds have the authority to prosecute medical marijuana users (take that cancer-lady!), but the House of Representatives could vote as early as next week on a clause in the US Department of Justice Law that will forbid federal prosecution of those that use medicinal marijuana with state permission (which was the proper channel to go through in the first place, in my opinion), so you should seriously consider emailing your Representative and urging him or her to support this provision. But I digress.

I’m trying to get my life back on track, I’ve been working a lot at Rutgers Club (we’re painting most of the upstairs). Now that I have internet access again, I’ll start again with the regular updates of this thing. And I’ll also be announcing a few new features very soon, so be on the lookout.

I’ll see you guys in a couple of days or so.