Month: August 2012

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As more parents skip shots for kids, other children put at risk

When I opened The Pioneer Press this morning, this was the article at the top of the front page (with the title above) and I did a little happy dance inside. Lemme explain why.

Basically, it drives me nuts when people make ridiculous, non-scientific claims and present them as objective truth: a woman’s body is capable of preventing pregnancy if she’s been raped (Rep. Todd Akin); Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for America’s abortion policy (Pat Robertson); and there’s a link between vaccines and autism (Jenny McCarthy, among others), something that’s never been proven. Never ever ever.

From the article: “Public health officials strongly maintain that there is no proof vaccinations cause autism. Last year, a prominent medical journal found a British researcher whose work gave rise to the childhood-vaccines-cause-autism movement in 1998 faked his data. Before that, other researchers checked out Andrew Wakefield’s hypothesis and none found a link between vaccines and autism.”

And to all the bull-headed parents who feel justified in ignoring the fact that there’s no data to support their beliefs about the dangers of vaccination, I have some good news: you’re putting everyone else’s kids in danger, too.

There’s something called “herd immunity”, which is pretty well explained by this website. As long as most kids get their shots, the rest should be fairly safe. As an increasing number of parents decide not to vaccinate their kids, my doctor has to start warning her patients about things like a local outbreak of whooping cough.

There is no connection between vaccines and autism. NONE. Scientific studies have demonstrated this fact time and time again. Consequently, if I have to accept medical advice from either my doctor or a Hollywood celebrity, I’d like to say this: Jenny McCarthy, shut the fuck up.

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“Hey, they should be able to get us back, right?”

NASA has confirmed today that Neil Armstrong has passed away, marking the end of his decades-long struggle to prove that he has indeed been alive since his first trip into space on the Titan II on March 16, 1966.

Numerous people at in the space program have claimed that they participated in the cover-up. Buzz Aldrin went so far as to say that whenever engineers contacted them in space, “I would mimic Neil’s voice as well as I could to tell everyone we were fine.”

Armstrong had always pointed to the fact that he had successfully passed every physical a doctor had administered year after year, but finally decided it was time to pass on.

Because Armstrong has chosen not to arbitrate against the determination that he has finally died, NASA is stripping him of all his famous accomplishments, including his presence on Apollo 11 and his world-famous quote upon touching the surface of the moon: “That’s one small step for man, one giant step for mankind.”

The official first words spoken on the moon will now be Aldrin’s asking, “Hey, they should be able to get us back, right?”

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Call me the Glass House weatherman!

Because I predicted a large chance of Andrea-win at the beginning of this final episode, but in the end, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Hell, as one of the final three, she ended up with the fewest votes, whereas Kevin emerged victorious! Cha-ching!

My mother’s theory for how he pulled out the win? He’s an attractive dude, so he had a majority of the female vote. (She also suggested that females are more likely to watch reality TV than males, but I imagine “Kevin’s a dude” was the more important factor.)

So Kevin took home the grand prize of $250,000; Stephanie came in second with her bribe money of $37,600; Mike gave himself a couple thousand during one of the challenges (he lost the challenge because of it)… Not everyone went home broke, but compared to $250K, a lot of the contestants don’t have much to brag about, especially considering how ABC presented them on TV.

The show is over, so I’m at peace now. Congratulations to Kevin, even though he’s not Steph. Congratulations to everyone else who didn’t get prize money, but still got a lot of national television exposure, even though some of them are jerks. And most importantly, congratulations to all the viewers and voters who survived this train wreck. The Glass House wouldn’t have been the same without you.

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Would you like some coffee with your sugar?

I hate coffee.

Okay, maybe “hate” is a little strong. It’s not like my grandmother choked to death one night, then during the autopsy, they found a bunch of whole coffee beans lodged in her throat, leading me to fly to South America so I could wreak havoc across the Colombian coffee bean fields in a massive and violent rage of despair. I just really dislike the flavor.

I’ve tried various kinds and they all tasted yucky. I once showed up late to a picnic and almost everyone had finished eating. One person pointed to about two-thirds of a chocolate cake that hadn’t been eaten and said, “It’s all yours!” My eyes lit up and I began gorging myself… for three bites. Half the people who’d tried it couldn’t taste the coffee inside, but it was enough to spoil my appetite for a chocolate cake, so… yeah. I really dislike the flavor.

Consequently, my caffeine source of preference is Mountain Dew. Go ahead, judge all you want, Judgey McJudgerson. It helps me stay focused when I’m studying and stay awake when I’m in class (the tired head bob is really awkward and really noticeable when you’re in a class of 12 people). And the sugary taste doesn’t hurt, either.

In class last week, the person sitting next to me saw my Mountain Dew and mentioned a show that revealed in each can, there are [blank] packets of sugar. (I don’t remember the number, but I did my own research later that night…) I was surprised, then took a big gulp from the can. Yummy.

So here’s what I found upon further research via Google and the can of Dew I was drinking—if these numbers are wrong, feel free to correct me in the comments section:

There are 4 grams of sugar in a packet of sugar.
There are 46 grams of sugar in a can of Mountain Dew.
Therefore, the sugar content in one can of Mountain Dew is 11.5 packets of sugar.

Since I was looking at sugar content, I decided to look at some caffeine content as well:

There are 54 mg of caffeine in a 12 oz can of Mountain Dew.
There are 260 mg of caffeine in a tall coffee (12 oz) at Starbucks. (Sorry, forgot to write down the web address where I found that number…)
Therefore, the caffeine content in a tall coffee at Starbucks is 4.8 cans of Mountain Dew.

According to these numbers, if I ever find a way to stand the taste of coffee, going to Starbucks and getting a proportional amount of sugar to caffeine as Mountain Dew means I’d have to order: “Tall coffee, no cream and 55 packets of sugar, please.”

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Insecure about the size of your man boobs?

Recently, someone put up a new ad on a billboard that asks drivers a simple question:

“Got man boobs?”

For those who do, they can visit the website manboobsMN.com (the creativity that must have required is awe-inspiring). That site sends you immediately to a page for what?

A plastic surgeon.

That in itself isn’t all that surprising. I imagine a lot of you figured out the answer on your own. What you might not have figured out is the specialty of “Dr. Joe” (and yes, the Welcome page shows his name in quotation marks):

Breast augmentation.

“By performing several hundred breast augmentations each year, ‘Dr. Joe’ has perfected his surgical technique to give his patients beautiful results and a much easier recovery. He speaks internationally on breast augmentation and has published in peer review journals on breast implants and breast augmentation.”

There’s also a list of other available services like facial fat grafting and eyelash growth. (Don’t ask me if he’s injecting saline or silicone into people’s eyelashes because I really don’t want to know.) Gynecomastia—male breasts reduction—is ninth on that list, so at least the billboard isn’t blatant false advertising, but seriously, if I’m a man whose boobs are too big, would I really want to consult a plastic surgeon who specializes in making them bigger?