This video game installation, currently playable only in Finland, is like Dance Dance Revolution — except it’s a kung fu fighting game, and you make kung-fu fighting moves on a mat to control your on-screen character.
This is a picture Clara drew last week at preschool. Teacher Sheila wrote down the story Clara told to go with it:
It’s a person. It’s my Daddy. It’s an angry Daddy. Because I did something bad that he didn’t like. I was throwing things at him. I threw markers at him. They had a top on. I threw toys at him. He said, “You May Not Do That.” I cried when he said that. Then I calmed down. If he holds me I calm down. Then he gets happy. I’m happy too.
Clara
6-21-05
I am so proud!
In other news, Clara learned how to jump into the pool without holding my hand for the first time this past Saturday.
Avast, ye scurvy swabs!
One of the big medical mysteries of the past decade is the alarming rise in the number of autism cases among children. In 1991, autism hit one kid in 2,500. It was rare enough that it lurked in the background, a spooky but not terribly immediate possibility for most parents. Since then, the rate has risen fifteen times, so that it now strikes one out of every 166 children. There are half a million autistic children in the U.S. right now. With the amount of effort, care, and cost that it takes to raise an autistic child–not to mention continuing costs and support required throughout adulthood–this is an enormous, looming public health crisis.
It’s also a tragedy — a tragedy because it could have been prevented. While many causes have been proposed for the rise in autism (including, incredibly, geeky parents), none have really stuck. Until now.
Robert Kennedy Jr. reports in Salon on what seems to be a very clear linkage between thimerosal and autism. Thimerosal is a preservative that, until recently, was used in many vaccines. It also contains mercury, which has been shown to have dramatic effects on the brains of infants and young children. In small doses, it may be no big deal. But since 1991, the number of vaccinations children in the U.S. get has risen from 3 to about 22. That’s a sharp increase in mercury exposure–and it correlates extremely well with the rise in autism.
Shockingly, the Centers for Disease Control has known about this link since before 2000. The FDA reports that thimerosal has been greatly reduced if not eliminated from most vaccines — at least the ones used in the U.S. — since then. Yet the federal government has done nothing to publicize the effects of thimerosal–in fact, it covered up research confirming the autistic effects of thimerosal. Even worse: Senate Majority leader Bill Frist (who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, by the way) keeps trying to put riders on various bills to protect thimerosal’s maker, Eli Lilly, from legal liability.
I’m not eager to join the freaky ranks of the anti-vaccination crowd, but the research on this seems quite specific and quite scary. (More details.)
Fortunately for babies currently being vaccinated in the U.S., thimerosal is no longer an issue. But if Kennedy is right, this is a huge scandal–and because it should have been identified and corrected years ago, it’s especially shocking. If I were a reporter this is the story I’d be chasing right now.
Note: One reporter, Dan Olmsted, has been doing just that (more Olmsted links here).
Thought I’d post a quick tip on this, since I couldn’t find it published anywhere else: If you’ve got a table you want to put inside an MT entry, you’ve got to put all the HTML table code on a single line. Otherwise, MT will add <br /> tags after every line — and when the page is published, these line breaks will add up to a huge, inexplicable white space just above the table.
My latest feature for Mobile pits the top 10 notebook vendors against each other to see who provides the best tech support — and who’s the worst. No holds barred!
UPDATE 6/16/06: This story got slashdotted. Woo hoo!
We’ve just published a second “100 Greatest Gadgets of All Time” story — this one featuring 100 of the best gadgets suggested by readers–including the slide rule, the Princess phone, and Merlin. The #1 gadget of all time, according to Mobile’s readers? I don’t think you’ll be surprised to find out what it is.
Somebody wrote a giant message to his sweetie in the Utah desert. A satellite captured a picture of it, and now you can see it thanks to Google Maps. (via Googlesightseeing)
I’m wasting way too much time playing shooting arrows into oncoming hordes of medieval soldiers, archers, and ogres. I haven’t had this much fun with trajectories since Gorillas.
Here is one cool 8-year-old: Hey, Klingons Have Feelings Too
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Federation of Planets, and to the galaxy for which it stands, one universe, under everybody, with liberty and justice for all species.”
