The Return of Mumps

Update: (9:54a, 4-22-06) Foodconsumer.org has a list of FAQs about mumps here.
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A disease once thought largely eradicated in the US is making its way through college campuses in the Midwest. The good news? Mumps is almost never fatal. (Almost never – kinda like that 'virtually spotless' bullsh*t the dishwasher detergent companies try to sell us.)

From Newsweek:

For the last three weeks, mumps, a virus many people think of as an early-20th-century disease of children, has been moving through Midwestern college towns like so many spring tornadoes. The largest U.S. eruption of the disease in 20 years has sickened 1,165 people and counting in eight states; seven other states are investigating whether they may have caught the same strain. Although doctors said last week that some recent cases in North Dakota and Michigan were not linked to the larger Midwestern outbreak, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials announced Thursday that the epidemic was indeed "unstable" and spreading, and that they couldn't predict where it would show up next. It has already made it as far west as Nebraska–assuming a possible case in California turns out to be a false alarm–and as far east as Indiana. "It's a cascade of transmission that's going to take a while to curtail and stop," says CDC Director Julie Gerberding. "We are expecting more cases, definitely."

[snip]

Mumps is spread by coughing and sneezing, and victims also are contagious for three days before they develop symptoms, so the close quarters of college are a naturally vulnerable site for the virus to spread. "This happened on spring break, and it's very easy to unwittingly spread it," Watson says. If the disease hasn't retreated by summer, kids leaving school could cause another wave of infection in parts of the country that thus far remain unaffected.

So, to all you idiot parents out there who didn't bother immunizing their kids – either from sheer ignorance or willful stupidity – or didn't follow through and make sure their kids received the boosters: Way to go! Hope you'll all happy once your child contracts a serious, possibly deadly illness like diphtheria or polio.

Yeah, I know some of you are going to say, "But…but…thimerosol…autism.." blah, blah, blah.

You know what? Whether there is an actual link or not – and it has NEVER been definitively proven that there is one – I would rather protect my kids from the known effects of a possibly deadly disease than worry about a miniscule chance of autism. Even if your child is one of the lucky ones who doesn't die from a 'kids disease', there can be lasting effects from sterilization (mumps) to paralysis (polio).

Friday Anti-War Song

Peace on Earth — U2

Heaven on Earth
We need it now
I'm sick of all of this
Hanging around

Sick of sorrow
I'm sick of the pain
I'm sick of hearing
Again and again
That there's gonna be
Peace on Earth

Where I grew up
There weren't many trees
Where there was we'd tear them down
And use them on our enemies

They say that what you mock
Will surely overtake you
And you become a monster
So the monster will not break you

And it's already gone too far
Who said that if you go in hard
You won't get hurt

Jesus can you take the time
To throw a drowning man a line
Peace on Earth

Tell the ones who hear no sound
Whose sons are living in the ground
Peace on Earth

No whos or whys
No one cries like a mother cries
For peace on Earth

She never got to say goodbye
To see the color in his eyes
Now he's in the dirt
Peace on Earth

They're reading names out
Over the radio
All the folks the rest of us
Won't get to know

Sean and Julia
Gareth, Ann, and Breda
Their lives are bigger than
Any big idea

Jesus can you take the time
To throw a drowning man a line
Peace on Earth

To tell the ones who hear no sound
Whose sons are living in the ground
Peace on Earth

Jesus in this song you wrote
The words are sticking in my throat
Peace on Earth

Hear it every Christmas time
But hope and history won't rhyme
So what's it worth

This peace on Earth
Peace on Earth
Peace on Earth
Peace on Earth

Get A Life Already!

I first heard about this on The Crazy Liberal.

A woman in [no surprise] Georgia wants the Gwinnett County school libraries to ban the Harry Potter books. Laura Mallory says she's doing this in order to "protect my kids, children and others from evil". 

From 11Alive:

“I’m a true example of how Harry Potter books can open your life to witchcraft,” said Jordan Susch.

Susch says she read the first Harry Potter novel when she was in the fourth grade. Two years later, she says, she and her friends were practicing witchcraft.

“We wanted to know if spells, potions and curses worked. By the seventh grade, I was so depressed, I set a date to kill myself,” Susch said.

Susch has joined Laura Mallory’s fight to get the novels removed from the Gwinnett County Schools’ shelves.

As Jim says:

If you're dumb enough to entertain the notion that spells, potions and curses might work, then go ahead and kill yourself if you get depressed that they don't. It's called "thinning the herd."

All three of my kids have read the Harry Potter books, and I haven't noticed any of them taking an interest in practicing witchcraft, conducting Satanic rituals, or acting depressed. They've also read all or most of R.L. Stine's Fear Street and Goosebumps books as well, but I'm not blaming them for – among other things – causing my 13yo daughter to act like a brainless twit. [That I blame solely on the Disney Channel and its stupid 'Lizzie McGuire' show.] 

It's a BOOK for Pete's sake!! Books and the ideas contained within them aren't responsible for what stupid idiots do. Same goes for music, movies, and video games. 

Long Live the Queen

Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth II is 80 today. She has been Queen for the past 54 years, and needs only another decade to beat Queen Victoria's record reign of 64 years.

While I'm not a huge fan of royals, I do have a great admiration for a woman who became became one of the world's earliest and best-known working mothers.

A few interesting facts about the Queen, from 80 Facts about The Queen:

The Queen is patron of more than 620 charities and organisations.

The Queen's real birthday is on April 21, but it is celebrated officially in June.

Every year The Queen sends Christmas trees to Westminster Abbey, Wellington Barracks, St Paul's Cathedral, St Giles, Edinburgh, The Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh, Crathie Church and local schools and churches in the Sandringham area.

The Queen learnt to drive in 1945 when she joined the Army.

The Queen was a Girl Guide (1937) and Sea Ranger (1943).

The Queen sent her first email in 1976 from an Army base.

History was made in 1982 when Pope John Paul II visited Britain, the first Pope to do so for 450 years. The Queen, Titular Head of the Church of England, received him at Buckingham Palace.

Send the Queen a birthday email here!

More on the Queen's birthday here and here and here and here.