Troika

[c9]

Knowing that many of my friends have different interests, I present several different items for comment:

1. This morning, when there's normally mindless pap, a local radio station accidentally allowed actual conversational debate to leak through: one DJ was defending his decision to never vaccinate his children, and the others were talking about how diseases used to wipe out thousands or millions every few decades, but vaccination has curbed this. His take was that "humans are the only species that does not allow nature to take its course," i.e. Darwinism. Thoughts?

2. The Pope has had a feeding tube inserted to help his caloric intake. a) would the reports have placed feeding tube in the headlines if Terry Schiavo hadn't taught us all the lingo? b) He is *so* not long for this world. Watch for the white smoke at the Vatican, kids.

3. Yesterday, school buses throughout large sections of Ontario north of London were delayed for two full hours. By fog. WTF?

Comments

[miket61.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I'll go first...

1) Humans are the only species that knows not to let nature take its course.

Also, Darwinism only applies to genetic traits that die out because individuals with the trait don't live to adulthood.

2) a) I haven't seen anyone making a big deal out of the Pope's feeding tube. But I expect either pro-Schindler people to point out that the leader of the Roman Catholic Church doesn't consider it extraordinary life-extending measures, or pro-Michael Schiavo people to suggest that the Pope is mentally incapacitated because no one with any quality of life would want one.

3) Can't help you there. Fog sucks.

[iambic-cub.livejournal.com]

1) I applaud that DJ. Stupidity is hereditary. Hopefully nature will take its course before those kids can reproduce.

2) Everything the pope does these days is major news. I'm sure that someplace online there's a website dedicated to tracking all his bowel movements. How hard up is the Vatican for cash? I bet John Paul's soiled Depends would rake it in on eBay.

3) I can understand it. A few years ago, there was a huge, huge, huge pileup on the 401??? between TO and Windsor caused my heavy fog. And maybe the school didn't use up all its snow-days, so they're looking for excuses.

[primary-suspect.livejournal.com]

1. On the other hand after taking a semester of immunology I can tell you that some people react badly to vaccinations (sometimes it can even cause your immune system to start an autoimmune response and lead to diseases like MS). Also, vaccines are just approximations to a disease and your body will create approximate antibodies as an immune response. So if your body does not create the correct antibodies, you could end up being worse off than if you didn't get the vaccine in the first place because your body does not mount a proper attack against the real disease.

Of course that only happens in a small amount of people, so the question is, do you want to take the chance?

[primary-suspect.livejournal.com]

2. Personally I don't think the position of pope should last until the dude dies. Can you imagine if George W Bush stayed as President until he croaked of old age?

[cap-hill-latte.livejournal.com]

1. The statement "humans are the only species that does not allow nature to take its course," relies on the falacy that humans are not part of nature. Unless I think that I'm somehow less 'natural' than the tree that I'm currently looking at outside my window then anything I do is, well, nature.

If a beaver builds a dam to flood a meadow so it can build a lodge rather than trying to find a pond in which to build the lodge, is it 'not letting nature take it's course'?


2. [something intelligent about the (hopeful) evolution of Catholosism past the point of having a pope]

3. WTF fog? Or WTF delaying buses?

[jpman.livejournal.com]

1. I rarely get vaccinated. Never get the flu shot, try to avoid these things when reasonable. I have an immune system that's meant to handle these things on it's own. Also, aren't vaccinations helping to create "super-bugs"?

2. a) Did feeding tubs lingo int he media start with her? I'm pretty sure there have been lots of high profule cases where that lingo has been used. b) in a related note, according to the author of Angels and Demons (not sure how reliable he is) no Pope in history has ever had an autopsy. I guess it makes them too human or something? I wonder what all these reports of PJPII will do for that angle?

3. Must've been bad fog.

[gueny.livejournal.com]

1. Modern day vaccinations definitely run the risk of creating "super-strains" of diseases (as do antibiotics). But for the most part, vaccinations have been successful at warding off major epidemics. I guess it's one of those risk/benefit things in which, for the most part, I think the benefit has far outstretched the risk.

2a. Not sure. I lean toward thinking it may have been placed in the headlines that way regardless (or irregardless, just for becuzimpretty). I'm sure this will add fuel to the crazy-nut-bar-conservative-religious-Republican pop story of the month. But we can take comfort that they will soon be getting tired of this, and will return to their discussions of the need to kill people as revenge for crimes.

3. If that were in Nova Scotia, they would have canceled school as soon as they heard that fog was in the forecast. In fact, I bet they did cancel it here because of the fog in Ontario. You never know. It could come here, so it's best to just take the week off.

[egregiousness.livejournal.com]

Well, OK, you sucked me in.

1. I'd really consider humans to be part of nature, not separate from it. But if you go just by the spirit of the DJ's comment, I trust he'd be happier if people routinely died from infections bourne of cavities from unbrushed teeth? Realistically, I think any animal would love to interfere with nature to advance their interests -- it's just that humans have become the most proficient (though not necessarily foresighted) at doing so...

2a. Reports probably wouldn't have assumed that people knew what "feeding tube" meant -- it's entered the lexicon now. That said, it sounds like his is somewhat different, if it's going in through the nose. I guess the plan is that it is supposed to be temporary?

2b. It will be interesting to see what happens, if it turns out that the current Pope could be kept "alive" indefinitely through heroic intervention. Who gets to make the call? Would his staff be fulfilling God's will by allowing him to die, or fulfilling God's will by keeping him alive?

3. Some of my most pleasant elementary-school memories involve walking to school through the fog. Suck it up, kids.

[zedinbed.livejournal.com]

OMG! I found this entry on my friends friends page. I made exactly the same point of humans not letting survival of the sittest work for themselves a little while back on my LJ. I know its a cruel concept but if it is practised I'd bet there would be a lot less diseases but then most medicine research is done after a disease is found. Meh.

[adamdavid85.livejournal.com]

1) The idea that not being vaccinated is an example of allowing nature to run its course is a little shaky, especially since we live in an age when basic surival relies less and less upon being the fittest in the pack. When was the last time you brought down a gazelle with your hunting party? If we as a species never messed around with the natural way (if 'natural' is taken to mean the way things go if you change nothing that is, and discover nothing that isn't) then I wouldn't be typing this response up right now. Call it being cautious, that's cool. Lazy is fine, too. But natural I don't buy, because we're so far removed from it that refusing vaccinations is not even close to being the first step in reattaining it.

2a) I doubt it would be as major a detail if the whole controversy weren't running amok in the states with Schiavo. The media is like an obsessive-compulsive child with ADD; it can't get enough until something else that's shiny catches its [lazy] eye.

2b) Speaking of the media, most news stations already have their correspondents lined up for the Pope's funeral. Amen to that.

3) Last October I was walking across the commons one night and it was covered in fog so dense you couldn't see the other side, but it wasn't very foggy anywhere else in the city. You could see the streetlights streaking through the fog and a few shadowy figures trudging across the green. It was my experience with creepy unexplained fog, although I'm sorry to report that, to my knowledge, it didn't delay any buses.