Are there even a lot of anti-vaccination people out there though? Is it really even a thing now, or did Jenny McCarthy just stir up some shit briefly before getting debunked into oblivion? I see people making fun of anti-vaccers and getting angry at them, but I've never met one. Isn't this kind of like getting mad at those damn flat-Earthers? THE EARTH IS SPHERICAL GOD DAMMIT!!
Fortunately I've not met any myself but these shows that the Fuckwit is putting on have sold out already. Stupid is spreading.
Thomas Dolby is a member of the Flat Earth Society. That's right: the guy who sang "She Blinded Me With Science" thinks out planet is actually an infinite piece of flat land mass that is unexplainable, or the our planet is actually a coin-shaped disc and Antarctica is an impassable ice wall that surrounds us on all sides. When I was a kid, I was at the Aerospace museum D.C. When Voyager II came into Neptune's orbit. We got to see close-ups of a planet 1.5 billion miles away. But..... That shit is invalid because a select group of very stupid people enjoy pulling their facts out of their ass.
Om nom nom The people that I am around the most are fairly well educated or professional people, and my day-to-day interactions are pretty insular. I pump gas by swiping a card, I self checkout at the grocery store, I buy online, I don't do Facebook, and so on. And, that's one of the reasons I prefer TiB over most other online sources of interaction. So, I often forget about the stupid people - and how many there are. I went out to eat at a Japanese steakhouse on New Year's eve. The folks I shared a table with spent all their time in the shallow end of the gene pool, for sure. The mom's eyes didn't cooperate with each other and looked like this: Spoiler The dad, despite continuously looking at it, clearly wasn't sure how to operate his cell phone and fumbled with or commented about it regularly. The oldest of the three daughters had obviously moved back in with the parents after a failed marriage and was in mid transition to trying out being butch. While the chef was finishing handing out the last of the grilled chicken, the youngest daughter, who was probably 13-14 asked loudly, "Really, though, where does chicken come from? From chickens?" And, she wasn't trying to make a joke.
You'd be surprised at the average education level of anti-vaccination folks. In my experience, the anti-vaccination crowd tends to actually be composed of college educated, wealthy parents with too much time on their hands. For example, the non-vaccination rates are in many places higher among private school children. It's bizarrely not a matter of lack of education, it's more willful miseducation.
Yep. Rich, self-centered assholes: Mapping LA Schools With Vaccination Rates as Low as S. Sudan On a side note, I worked out in a gym for the first time in a few years yesterday. Wasn't my first choice for what to do, but picking up the bar was a welcome feeling- at least it was then. I thought I took it easy and got some good stretching in afterwards but holy shit sitting down like an octogenarian in pain today says forget that. Oh it's fun getting back into shape.
You'd be surprised at the amount of people who denounce a lot of things that are easily backed up by mountains of scientific fact. Whether its evolution, nuclear energy, or vaccines, people will shit on it just because. But the biggest reason things like that are idiotically railed against is confirmation bias. They want to believe something, so they only look at the evidence (however pseudo-scientific) that supports the conclusion they agree with. People don't like accepting that sometimes things occur by just a shitty roll of the dice. Your kids autistic? Must be the vaccines. They couldnt possibly have just had some issue during brain development that caused it. There has to be a reason.
Just posted this above but it's more pertinent to your post... Whole Foods: America’s Temple of Pseudoscience.
It's been awhile since I belonged to a mom board where vaxxing was discussed regularly, but my impression of why people buy into it so easily is a combination of two things: 1) fear of putting poison into our bodies - this is most commonly manifested in food, but applies to a lot of other things 2) peer pressure from other moms - being judged because you are putting poison into your child. That's why it is so common amongst middle and upper class - time and money provide the opportunity to fixate on these things.
Add 3) Or a variation of it: sometimes it is REALLY hard to sort through what is science and what is pseudo-science because of both the mountain of data that is available and lack of your own detailed background knowledge. Not for the vaccine issue, but for a lot of others, you can often find what seems like very credible evidence / researchers / pundits who defend both sides of an issue. So, either you try and do your own mountain of research, sorting through what you hope are unbiased (lol) opinions and facts; or, you try to shortcut by going through people / websites / sources that you trust . . . and "trust" really ends up becoming "conclusions you agree with."
I think that "those people" (flat earthers, anti-vaccine, conspiracy theorists, climate change deniers, anti-intellectuals, etc.) should be given their own country to live in and therefore kept away from the rest of us. We'll call it "Stupidville" and despite having a three-tier electric fence around its entire borders, all sharp edges will be filed down, corners will be rounded off and of course sidewalks are removed to prevent knuckle injuries. Then, they can all get sick and die while mentally jerking each other off on how they have the inside scoop on life because they "did their own research".
Judging from the whooping cough and measles outbreaks, yes, there are many more than you may think. http://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/outbreaks/trends.html http://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html
Well this shit got heavy, a non-heavy topic. So I was out at a "clubby" type establishment on Saturday night, and I was reminded of my least favorite type of female. I jokingly referred to them as "bowlers". The girls that get REALLY dressed up, dressed to kill, and then place themselves in close proximity to dudes to routinely and aggressively shoot them down. Set em up to knock em down, if you will. I don't fucking get it. I get girls who get tired on dudes hitting on them endlessly, I get girls who are out with their friends not looking to meet anyone, I even get girls who are out "just to dance". I don't get evenings out where your sole purpose is to sneer at and lightweight humiliate dudes. There were 2-3 different groups of them. And I saw them give the same treatment to any number of guys, black and white, good looking and scrubby, it was equal opportunity. I learned long ago what those girls are about and don't even waste my time, but I still got a yank away and a glare when I had the audacity to stand within 5 feet of them when i was waiting for a drink. Idiots would call them sluts, but they are far from it, just bitches. I'd love a Tibette to shine any sort of reasonable light on that, but I doubt reason comes into play.
The other thing is that people don't know how to separate and define correlation versus causation. They think that just because something happens at the same time as something else, they must be related. They also fail to acknowledge that cases of autism have risen sharply because the criteria to include other forms and less severe forms like Aspergers are now the norm. If you widen the criteria, of course the numbers will rise. But no, it must be the vaccines.
This is the simplest thing. They do it because they're insecure, boring, and because they can. I know several like this, including one of my best friends. It is a chore to hang with her some nights because it doesn't stop at the club/bar, it follows you home or when you're over for fucking dinner. Nor is it exclusively men they bag on. It's everyone right down to the waitresses across the room. It's gotten to the point where, nearing 30, they still do this shit, and it is tedious for me, and fucking pathetic for them. They need a hobby. Unfortunately their hobby is desperately trying to elevate their own ego and status. Their only real success so far is being popular in a clique-y night club. However, my group also bags on the guys they drunkenly fucked. You think it's over once you nail a girl, you're over the hurdle? That you can have a normal conversation, a normal date? Oh, no. It doesn't end. You're a weird creep because you dared smile in the morning or call her once she sobered up. "It got weird." Of course it got weird. Either you didn't express what you wanted because you were both black out, or turned cold the second you woke up that morning, and now you're giving this guy the evil eye because he dared to come up to ask how you were doing. There are no secrets in this town, mainly because about 20 people don't know how to shut the fuck up.