Flu vaccine article

This is an interesting piece on the effectiveness of the flu vaccine. Get through his first section section where he vents about the fact that vaccine producers won't do evidence-based research. He has a valid point, but he needs to move more to the meat, which is the Cochrane Collaboration, which is heading toward becoming the gold standard in studies on health care. This is where the facts come out -- that the flu vaccine is effective, at best, 1 out of every 100 people, and that it does not help prevent transmission of the disease. Interesting. Yet as a society we continue to inject this over and over again, faithfully doing what the poster at the grocery store tells me to do.

And while I'm linking to articles, here's a good one on exercise and nutrition.

Sounds like it should be a children's book

I just read about this group of people who rode out Ike in a church, with a lion from a local zoo. Sounds like it's just asking to be a children's book to me.

Knoxville church shooting

I wanted to write something about the shooting at the Unitarian church in Knoxville, where a man who disagreed with their liberal ideals stepped into the church during a children's program, pulled a shotgun out of a guitar case, and started shooting, but really, whatever I start to type quickly sounds trivial and distant. It's just truly sad.

Lisa called us on Sunday, when she saw the news report, to make sure that this wasn't the church where Doug's kids go. It wasn't, but they know people who attend that church, one couple who decided to sleep in that morning instead of going to church. It is a very tense moment when you call your brother about a shooting in town where the details are vague and you get voice mail (knowing Doug sleeps with his phone).

But this isn't about me, but the sadness that someone had enough hate for another person's opinion that he felt all he could do is kill. (This is where I keep deleting the "what kind of world..." line because it starts to sound trivial. You know what I mean, because you're thinking it too...)

Going to college in Knoxville, Jeni and I drove past that church all the time. So it's close to home, even though that's not home anymore.

It's just sad -- sadder because there's no reason for it.

Scavenger Hunt Apartment

Apparently when this architect renovated this apartment in New York, he built into it a bunch of hidden clues and puzzles and created a giant puzzle box/scavenger hunt in the house. The homeowners took a few months to realize this, and then a few weeks to put all the clues together and break the codes and solve the puzzles.
link 1
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Smoking, breastfeeding and your baby's sleep

I saw this the other day in a newspaper and thought it was interesting enough to scan in and share.

A brief version of the article can be seen here as well. I think one of the interesting findings was that even though the breast milk tasted like nicotine in the initial portion of the study, the intake of milk did not vary much. So while the babies fed the same amount, the length and quality of sleep was much worse.