Vaccines don't cause autism

So what did the investigators find? I think you probably know the answer to that question. They found nothing. Nada. Zip. There wasn't even a hint of a correlation between TCV exposure and either ASD, AD, or ASD with regression:

"There were no findings of increased risk for any of the 3 ASD outcomes. The adjusted odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) for ASD associated with a 2-SD increase in ethylmercury exposure were 1.12 (0.83-1.51) for prenatal exposure, 0.88 (0.62-1.26) for exposure from birth to 1 month, 0.60 (0.36-0.99) for exposure from birth to 7 months, and 0.60 (0.32- 0.97) for exposure from birth to 20 months."

Your Office Chair Is Killing You - BusinessWeek

If you're standing around and puttering, you recruit specialized muscles designed for postural support that never tire," he says. "They're unique in that the nervous system recruits them for low-intensity activity and they're very rich in enzymes." One enzyme, lipoprotein lipase, grabs fat and cholesterol from the blood, burning the fat into energy while shifting the cholesterol from LDL (the bad kind) to HDL (the healthy kind). When you sit, the muscles are relaxed, and enzyme activity drops by 90% to 95%, leaving fat to camp out in the bloodstream. Within a couple hours of sitting, healthy cholesterol plummets by 20%.

Greetings, Greetings, Fellow Star-Gazers!

Jack Horkheimer, Directory of Miami's Space Transit Planetarium and host of the PBS mini-show "Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler", has passed away. I remember his show coming on OETA after Doctor Who in the 80's, and I used to make ruthless fun of his corny delivery. (I still remember the intro voice-over: "Some people hustle pool, some people hustle cars; then there's that man you've heard about, the one who hustles *stars*!")

In retrospect though, I liked his popped-cork enthusiasm more than I did Sagan's new-agey "We are all made of star-stuff". RIP, Jack; we'll keep looking up.

Five Years Ago: Google Buys Android

Android (www.android.com) has operated under a cloak of secrecy, so little is known about its work. Rubin & Co. have sparingly described the outfit as making software for mobile phones, providing little more detail than that. One source familiar with the company says Android had at one point been working on a software operating system for cell phones.

It's a theme that I've hit more than once in my blogging, but it bears repeating: Android Matters. I believe it will succeed Windows as the platform most people use to do their computing and online communications. And because it is Linux without the X Window System ball-and-chain, it will become what Ubuntu can only aspire to be: Linux for ordinary people.

I just got a shiny new Samsung Vibrant, but I'm keeping my old G1, for the same reason that one might hang onto an original Apple I, IBM PC, or first-generation iPod: it's an historical artifact, the first look we had at the shape of things to come.

Too much time on his hands - Boing Boing

"That guy has too much spare time" is one of the most odious, intellectually dishonest, dismissive things a person can say. It disguises a vicious ad-hominem attack as a lighthearted verbal shrug. The subtext of the remark is that the subject's passions -- this remark is almost always directed at someone engaged in some labor of love -- are so meritless that their specific shortcomings don't even warrant discussion.

The man has a point. Resolved: I'm never going to use that phrase again.

The Ghosts of World War II's Past (20 photos) - My Modern Metropolis

Taking old World War II photos, Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov carefully photoshops them over more recent shots to make the past come alive. Not only do we get to experience places like Berlin, Prague, and Vienna in ways we could have never imagined, more importantly, we are able to appreciate our shared history in a whole new and unbelievably meaningful way.

The Top Idea in Your Mind

Turning the other cheek turns out to have selfish advantages. Someone who does you an injury hurts you twice: first by the injury itself, and second by taking up your time afterward thinking about it. If you learn to ignore injuries you can at least avoid the second half. I've found I can to some extent avoid thinking about nasty things people have done to me by telling myself: this doesn't deserve space in my head. I'm always delighted to find I've forgotten the details of disputes, because that means I hadn't been thinking about them. My wife thinks I'm more forgiving than she is, but my motives are purely selfish.