Couple of Insider blog posts this week from Arizona, one on Kenta Maeda, Jose De Leon, and Sean Manaea, and on Cody Ponce, Casey Meisner, Daniel Gossett, and Trent Clark. I also held my weekly Klawchat from the Cartel Coffee Lab location in Tempe. Many thanks to the barista with purple hair.
I appeared on Tor.com’s Rocket Talk podcast, discussing science fiction, the Hugo Award, and a little baseball.
My most recent boardgame review for Paste covers the fast-moving deckbuilder Xenon Profiteer.
And now, the links…
- A vaccine-denier couple in Canada let their baby die of meningitis rather than get him medical attention, choosing instead to give him natural treatments like maple syrup. They’re now facing criminal charges, as they should, but they’re claiming they’re being persecuted for being anti-vaccine morons. Adults who contract viral meningitis usually recover on their own, but infants are at serious risk and require medical intervention and sometimes must be hospitalized. The article doesn’t specify how their child ended up with meningitis, but it can be caused by a number of viruses, some of which – like measles, mumps, and influenza – are vaccine-preventable.
- The BBC asks if Starbucks can succeed in Italy, where espresso is ingrained in the culture. The answer is of course they can, because Starbucks doesn’t really sell coffee: They sell highly caloric coffee-flavored drinks, food, wifi, clean bathrooms, but coffee is just a tiny part of the business. And what they’re selling more than any of that is a brand that has global cachet despite the poor quality of their products.
- Also from the BBC, feeding young children peanuts reduces the risk of peanut allergies. So that naturalist vaccine-denier cousin of yours who didn’t give her baby peanuts till he was six probably increased the chances he’ll end up with a serious peanut allergy. Whomp, whomp.
- Guardian sportswriter Marina Hyde with some highly intelligent fire-dropping on Maria Sharapova and why we shouldn’t believe her story.
- Nancy Reagan died this week at age 94; her legacy includes the failed “Just Say No” campaign and associated war on drugs, as well as her part in encouraging her husband to cut funding for AIDS research as the disease was spreading fast in the U.S. Buzzfeed ran a piece from last year on how she turned down Rock Hudson’s plea for help just a few weeks before he died. The Guardian also recounts the Reagans’ refusal to commit resources to fighting the disease.
- The New York Times with an excellent piece on the debunking of a fake CIA analyst who appeared on Fox News. While the fraudster himself, Wayne Simmons, is fascinating, the bigger question is how Fox let this guy go on air so often, saying so many inflammatory things, without anyone suspecting that his resume was inflated. We’re all susceptible to believing people who tell us what we want to hear.
- The lawyer who controls Harper Lee’s estate – and has been accused in recent years of manipulating the author to her own benefit – has informed the publisher of To Kill a Mockinbird that the estate will no longer permit the publisher to produce the mass market paperback version. That’s the cheapest version of the novel, the one most schools and schoolkids bought. Does anyone else think Harper Lee would never, ever have permitted this? Yet I see no legal recourse, unfortunately.
- Lot of Downton Abbey recaps, remembrances, and thinkpieces this week; this piece on Lady Mary as the series’ strongest and most central character was my favorite.
- I did not care for this Sports Illustrated feature story on Blackhawks star and accused rapist Patrick Kane, but I will post the link here for you to judge for yourselves. I thought that it underplayed the seriousness of the accusations, and the fact that the lack of charges was due to procedural issues and the difficulty of proving rape cases rather than exonerating evidence, and didn’t sufficiently debunk the ‘theory’ it broaches about the connection between the incident and his career year.
Re Harper Lee
I’m assuming the lawyer has been designated as the trustee for her estate. Depending on the powers accorded to the trustee and the terms of her trust/estate documents, a civil action could be filed against him if it can be established that the trustee is violating his fiduciary obligations to the estate. That being said, you’re likely right. I’m guessing the trust grants him powers to make such decisions, and if so, he’s just another d-bag giving my profession a bad name.
Had to laugh at the line about what Starbucks actually sells. At a B-school very familiar to you, I once committed the error of asserting out loud that Dunkin’ Donuts should organize its entire strategy around selling more donuts. At least I learned the lesson, for life! Of course, there are sports and media analogies, ones that suggest why some teams focus on areas other than on-field performance; why local TV stations expand local newscast hours while decreasing actual news content; why every store eventually becomes the average, mediocre store, etc.
The BBC study was for 550 children, that seems to ba a small sample size to me. And, one of the peanut allergy cures is to give children at first a tiny amount of of a peanut, at then gradually increase the amount. This falls in line with their small amount “finding”.
This whole diet cause theory for peanut allergy is very circumstantial at best. I’m supposed to believe that starting in the mid 1990’s millions of parents simultaneously stopped giving peanuts to their children? But I’m not supposed to wonder if the changes to the vaccines are partially to blame even though each time the CDC has made a major change in the last 25 years, an increase in allergies has been noted? It seems whichever side one wants to believe, they’ll choose the casual connection that suits them.
There’s laws on the books to hold the vaccine makers harmless in lawsuits, and by law they don’t have to disclose what’s in them, even to your doctor. I’m sure it’s all good though, it’s not like there’s any history to suggest that a billion dollar industry could influence a gov agency and suppress information linking their product to any illness, cough cough.
I find it funny that everyone mentions 4-6 diseases that we’re vaccinating against, and leaves off the others. Last I checked it’s a dozen with multiple boosters. Here in the US, we have the most aggressive vaccination schedule, and the highest incidence of food allergy. No way those two are connected though, right?
I’m not really anti-vaccines. Knowing that an allergic reaction is basically ones body over-reacting to an allergen, whether it be pollen or a nut, I don’t understand why there’s such a strong belief that there can’t possibly be any connection. Does anyone else remember when they used to say there’s no evidence to link smoking & cancer? I do. I suspect that when a cause is finally determined, there’ll be a slew of risk factors, and they’ll figure out that with a certain set of factors, they should use a different vaccination schedule, possibly with a different formula.
I’m not really anti-vaccines.
You most certainly are, using the argument from ignorance to try to push a totally unscientific claim that vaccinations are connected to the rise in food allergies. Several large scientific studies have looked into this and found no connection. You can read more here from immunologist Paul Offit, inventor of the rotavirus vaccine and someone who looks upon the type of pseudoscience argument you just made with appropriate disdain.
“Here in the US, we have the most aggressive vaccination schedule, and the highest incidence of food allergy. No way those two are connected though, right?”
Correct.
We also have the most native-born Hawaiians in the world and the entirety of the water contained in the Great Salt Lake. Obviously, those two things are connected.
“There’s laws on the books to hold the vaccine makers harmless in lawsuits, and by law they don’t have to disclose what’s in them, even to your doctor. I’m sure it’s all good though, it’s not like there’s any history to suggest that a billion dollar industry could influence a gov agency and suppress information linking their product to any illness, cough cough.”
Uh, what? Vaccines, like antibiotics, are drugs regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Now, not that the FDA is what any federal agency should aspire to be, and, yes, powers have been legislated out of the hands of the FDA (e.g., vitamins and supplements), but vaccines are not one of them. Vaccines ARE highly regulated.
Also, under FDA rules, the contents of vaccines MUST be disclosed. My God, where are you getting your information, a Trump rally featuring Jenny McCarthy? People are deathly allergic to many things in this country; the contents of a serum injected into your body are available for your perusal BY LAW.
/Took an FDA class in law school, have common sense and access to resources.
Please tell me/us that you are simply
You may want to brush up on the NCVIA act and how it was upheld by the Supreme Court. Please tell me/us you simply didn’t study that, and just haven’t bothered to use your access to those resources. I’ll take you at your word as far as law school though.
We all can agree to disagree on if we wonder about if there’s a connection linking vaccines to food allergies. My position is not one of ignorance, so acting like the intellectual superior who uses the Internet while I don’t would work better if you actually used the Internet.
The link for the BBC study was for 550 kids, and says they have 20,000 new cases each year. Is that one of the exhaustive studies? My child is up to date on vaccinations, so no, I am not anti-vaccinations. I even get a flu shot each year.
The Paul Offit link doesn’t reference the spike in food allergies in the allergy section. Perhaps I should have been more specific. I do not believe there is a connection to all of the other diseases he mentions, so the childish Trump-McCarthy comparison is off target.
Thomas, for the FDA, have you ever heard of the term generally accepted as safe as a means to get FDA approval? Perhaps you should research that.
My main point is there have been two large jumps in food allergies, and they don’t know why. Assuming it’s because the child wasn’t exposed until too late, I’m not buying that 100%. Does anyone think someone with a pollen allergy just wasn’t exposed to pollen at an early enough age? The jump in food allergies is not wholly explained by genetics or exposure, imo.
Until hey find an actual reason, why are we so quick to dismiss the vaccines? I get the majority of evidence is anecdotal, but studies done by entities with a vested interest in there not being a link as proof aren’t to be questioned? I can live with being wrong on my skepticism, and again, my child is up to date on vaccines, so do not compare me to this straw mommy that you have created.