that's great! . when I started teaching people stuff,
I had to learn the same -- upside down and backwards.
and I had to learn to write like that, sort-of. . it did
help when tutoring kids in math and science.
genuine home-making moms are about to go
extinct. . it's a pity, because they weld a neighborhood
together and pass on civilization beautifully. -- j

My Mom was a sweet and loving woman who was a good cook and an immaculate housekeeper. But beyond that she had a hard time coping with life. I even invented a word to describe her: "copeless." She suffered from copelessness. However, she did one really wonderful thing for me. She taught me to read at an early age. We would sit on our couch, she would open a book and read to me. I would follow along as she pointed to the words. Only problem was, I sat opposite of her and learned to read upside down and backwards. Try explaining that to a first grade teacher.

Moms have a way of portraying things in wonderful
ways -- mine gave me a sense of interpersonal
grace which moderates everything I do. . she was
a genuine southern belle, married to a man whose
lifelong dream was to be a forester. . like an artist
and a mechanic, they made quite a pair! . but I
got only english heritage, so I am white privilege
through-and-through (har-de-har-har). -- j

I think she was referring to the horse's ability to win a race. It's statistics can look great, and it can even be the favorite and still lose by umpteen furlongs. Therefore, the horse was lying. Hey -- I dunno, after all, she was Polish.(Don't post me anything saying I denigrate Poles. I am 1/2 you know.)

now, sir, I have admired, ridden, shod, delivered
and medicated horses . . . and I never caught one
lying. . they pretend to want to move away from
the barn, but you can tell that it's pretense. . they
act like they will stand still for you to shoe them,
but they won't. . for simple animals, they are
pretty honest, don't you think? -- j

I understand. I hope your daughter is doing well.

I appreciate the diligence of the admins here in maintaining civilized standards of conversation and exercising restraint in use of the downvote. Adding a comment for each vote I find awkward when a comment may end up far down the rope from where it applies. I reserve the right to downthumb an insulting, nasty, aggressive remark without a justifying editorial and would be fine with just having my name appended to the vote. Or would it be a horrendous chore to amend the program?

Elsewhere today I encountered another discussion about why trolls for hire are ubiquitous. My comment:

The explanation is far simpler than it seems:
Their brains are infected; it's a battle of memes.

Is the flu a devastating disease? No? The spanish flu killed 5% of the population of the planet and there were cases worldwide, nearly everywhere.

Can there be a strain of measles like that?

you're partially correct. YEs, there was a problem with massive downvoting done by trolls who set up multiple accts. What was implemented was the rule that new accts had to reach a point total of 100 to have voting "rights" If you are reading comments from a suspected troll, you can downvote those comments as you see them, possibly flag them for admin to check out. What's not allowed is massive down voting-going through all of their comments and posts and voting them down at once. That alerts admin. as well.

See H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds" (the aliens die because they have no immunities) or "I am Legend" by Richard Matheson.

You can't inoculate against Diabetes. It isn't a communicable disease. Leprosy is the same way.

Inoculations only work against communicable diseases and the focus is generally on those which are air-borne and virulent.

Diabetes isn't really a good example for your argument. The dissemination mechanism of Type I Diabetes (also known as juvenile-onset Diabetes) is unknown at this point. There has been no causal link established through genetics.

I have a daughter with Type I and a father-in-law with Type I. My daughter has had it since she was two and my father-in-law since 16, but science has not yet found any causal evidence linking Type I Diabetes with genetics. My entire family and my wife's entire family even voluntarily gave blood to be used for establishing a DNA-based link to diabetes, and we were told by the scientists that they could find no correlation at all.

Now there are genetically-linked risk factors for Type II Diabetes, but Type I and Type II are completely different animals. Type II Diabetes can be controlled through diet (unless it gets ignored for too long and turns into Type I). Type II is the result of a lifestyle choice and can be remedied with the same. Type I is a permanent condition until they get things like islet-replacement therapy or stem cell treatments working.

I don't know if the culprit was ever outed. There has been talk as a feature upgrade to have the ability to see who up-voted/down-voted a post, but nothing has been tested yet.

Interesting. Did they identify who it was? So malicious downvoting can be a kind of assassination. That should not count against the victim. I still think each vote should show who did it. No secret ballots in this context.

No wonder Facebook has only "likes", no dislikes, to minimize endless feuds and quarrels.

Some people just live to fight, even in groups where all the members allegedly share similar values. Sniff divergence on the smallest issue and the name-calling starts. Sheesh.

Yeah because I always trust a site that relies on calling people names to further its agenda. Sounds like what liberals do all the time, why would I listen to that site?

I have a daughter that got type I at the age of two and a father-in-law (still alive at over 60 running half-marathons) who got it at sixteen. They brought in my entire family (parents, brothers, sisters) AND my wife's entire family and had us all give blood to use in research as to genetic heritage. So far, they have found no genetic link in proclivity for Type I Diabetes, which is an actual disease.

Now, I did have a grandfather on my mother's side and an aunt (mother's sister) who both were designated as high-risk for Type II Diabetes and my aunt eventually contracted it because she didn't take care of herself. They say that the _risk factors_ for Type II ARE hereditary, but since Type II is a diet-driven condition (not a disease), you can be screened for the _risk factors_.

On the Gulch, it's also used as a membership check. If someone gets downvoted enough, they are prevented from posting or voting on others' posts - effectively ostracizing them. It was implemented after someone went on an epic downvoting tirade and was literally downvoting every post being made.

Yours is the best procedure. Gambling, unless you're a true professional is a sucker's game, particularly if you are using it to actually make substantial wealth. I haven't been to the track in 30 years, but I did enjoy the spectacle. My mom had a favorite phrase that I never heard anyone else use. When talking of a constant prevaricator she would say, "She lies like a racehorse."

Unless you're homosexual or some "minority", in which event she could get sued right out of her BMW.

which is why I said the part about reason. and I am sorry your child had such an adverse reaction to the vaccines. You make a great point about acknowledging those who experience adverse reactions to the vaccines and why. But it is also important to remember that these vaccines are not just slap dashed together. Years of research go into their formulations, then they must stand up to rigorous FDA testing and clinical trials. I do think there are agendas out there. being skeptical is healthy.

there is a symbiotic relationship between the CDC and pharma. There are also NIH grants supporting university research in these areas. Often that research is done in labs of pharma companies. so both really

I decide what I want to do.

Like your post, scojohnson. The only thing I'd like to point out is that more people are delaying first pregnancies until later in life. Before reliable birth control, it was common for women to have babies into their 30s, and even 40s.

You characterized a parent who is reluctant to vaccinate as "willing to resist reason and ignore expert advice."

When one watches his or her child react badly to a vaccine (as I did), and listens to doctors deny what happened, and then watches it again with the next series of vaccines, and again no medical professional will acknowledge the reality of what is happening... I would say it is a choice at that point between blindly listening to the experts' advice and ignoring reason, OR ELSE honoring reason and ignoring the supposed experts. I'm certainly not the only parent who has experienced this, as I've read dozens of similar stories online. There's an unwillingness to trust that a parent (who certainly knows the child better than the doctor) can be an accurate witness to the harm caused by vaccines, and I think that's a huge mistake.

If the medical community would better acknowledge the cases of harm that occur, and try to ascertain WHY they occurred, instead of trying to sweep them under the rug and insist that vaccines are "safe," there wouldn't be such mistrust of those who advocate and administer vaccines.