Celebrating Reason

A couple of bright spots in the effort to see reason valued as a keystone in any decision making.

First, today is Darwin's' birthday; Observation and the application of reason led him to one of the great scientific discoveries. It defines most of modern biological science today, including much of what is done in the medical field.

And in the Medical field, the anti-vaccine forces have suffered a major defeat.

Vaccines didn't cause autism, court rules

special court ruled Thursday that parents of autistic children are not entitled to compensation in their contention that certain vaccines caused autism in their children.

"I must decide this case not on sentiment, but by analyzing the evidence," one of the "special masters" hearing the case said in denying the families' claims, ruling that the families had not presented sufficient evidence to prove their allegations.

Something to celebrate on Darwin's day
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Science

B106 and a Trillion Dollars

My morning commute is fairly short and fairly regimented. One of the habits that has been refined to an automatic behavior is my radio listening.

I start with SC-ETV radio until the local programing starts at about 749, then I move over to B-106 (Pop music, local traffic, quick news, weather) until I get to work just before 8am.

Today during their 'humor' portion of the morning news they started talking about the economic recovery act and just how much a trillion dollars is. They mentioned the twelve zeros, the lay 100 dollar bills side by side and circle the earth 30+ time, the number of years a trillion seconds is (30,000+) and other fun facts.

The one they didn't mention in their subtle efforts to discredit the bailout.

A trillion dollars is about how much we have spent on the US military, every year for the last for years (including the war effort costs).

I wonder how and why they missed that 'fun fact'?


Tags
Economics, Iraq