Russ from Wired GeekDad: I Revoke Your Geek Card.
posted on October 24th, 2009 by Lawrence Miller
My problem with this recent Wired GeekDad post is not about whether Russ and his family get vaccinated against seasonal flu or H1N1, but about HPV:
First, my disclaimers - I’m not an anti-vaccination advocate, and all of my children have been vaccinated per school requirements. However, we have not vaccinated our daughters against HPV (Gardasil) and have no plans to.
No, Sorry, Russ, if you’re not willing to get your daughters (and soon, your sons) vaccinated against HPV, even in the face of factual information you yourself link to, then you’re an anti-vaccination advocate. And that’s not a good thing for a geek to be. If you want to make a case-by-case decision about each individual vaccination based on risk and efficacy, that’s cool. But if you’re doing that, the decision to get the HPV vaccine should be a no-brainer. Therefore, your decision must be based on some other factor, and whatever that factor is, it is almost definitely anti-geek.
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On Which Factor in the Following Crime will the Newspaper Focus?
posted on August 28th, 2009 by Lawrence Miller
A Utah man apparently broke into his friends’ apartment and beat them with a hammer. Can you guess which of the following three factors related to the motive the Salt Lake Tribune picked up on?
- The attacker had taken sleeping pills prior to the attack.
- The attacker and one of the victims had argued the day before when the attacker learned that the victim had been dating a girl they had both agreed not to date.
- The attacker played Dungeons & Dragons with the victims the day before.
All three are true. Did you guess correctly?
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On Trust, Fairness, and the Auto Industry Bailout
posted on December 11th, 2008 by Lawrence Miller
The proposed bailout for the big three domestic auto makers upsets me. Nobody is rushing to the aid of workers in the not-for-profit sector, despite the fact that a) there are many of us, and b) the economic slowdown isn’t our fault, either. Other auto makers who manufacture and sell cars in the United States aren’t asking for handouts. So why does an industry that has been run terribly inefficiently deserve a bailout? The rant continues…
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Oh, Right, I’d Forgotten About Anthrax
posted on August 6th, 2008 by Lawrence Miller
I’m not going to suggest that I have any reason to suspect that Bruce Ivins, the scientist who was the victim of an apparent suicide last week as the FBI closed in, was innocent. Nor am I going to suggest that he was guilty. Nor, finally, do I wish to in any way be disrespectful to the memories or families of the 5 people killed in the 2001 anthrax attacks. But suicide is not an admission of guilt. The rant continues…
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One Obvious Problem with an Armed Populace
posted on March 27th, 2008 by Lawrence Miller
As you may have heard, an armed airline pilot discharged his pistol inside the cockpit while the plane was in the air on Saturday. He was apparently attempting to stow it when it discharged. As a gun owner, I recognize that it would take countless hours of training and ongoing practice to be able to use my gun effectively in any sort of self-defense scenario. I’m not willing to put in that much effort, so my Walther P-22 stays locked up when I’m not actually target shooting. I’m also nervous about airline pilots carrying guns; it’s very difficult to prevent a determined team of attackers from disarming a single target, so I typically follow the “never carry a weapon that I wouldn’t want an attacker to take away from me” rule. These concerns are only slightly mitigated by the reality that most airline pilots are former military pilots; when they were in the military, perhaps they practiced with their sidearms frequently, and perhaps even practiced the tactical skills necessary to use a gun effectively in a stressful situation. But have they been getting that kind of practice in lately?
Peter Biddle, putting it much more simply than I ever could, notes that “trust is not transitive”. The best part:
We can assume that a trained pilot, when facing piloty thingies, will act like a trained pilot. WE CANNOT ASSUME THAT A TRAINED PILOT WILL ACT LIKE A TRAINED LION-TAMER WHEN FACING A WILD LION.
If I were to walk around with a loaded gun, even one I’d fired 10,000 rounds through, I’d be an accident waiting to happen. What steps are being followed to make sure airline pilots are not?
