We've met some of the most amazing moms and dads who are forging their own path to prevention and recovery. When our son, Evan, was diagnosed with autism we were lucky enough to benefit from their knowledge and experience. Evan has been healed to a great extent by many breakthroughs that, while perhaps not scientifically proven, have definitely helped Evan and many other children who are recovering from autism.

There are some who wonder what we mean when we say "recovering" from autism. They confuse the word recover with cure. While you may not be able to cure an injury caused in a terrible car accident, you can recover; you can regain many skills that you once lost. In the case of autism, we think there are treatments that often bring about such healing, so that the observable symptoms of the condition no longer exist. Even though we may no longer see any symptoms of autism, we can't say a child is "cured" because we do not know what they would have been like had they never been injured.

Idiot celebrities who think they know more than 50 years of proven science also sometimes confuse "diagnose" with "your son's a moron".

[..House is in an exam room with a young mother and her baby.]
..
Young Mother: Her whole face just got swollen like this overnight.

House: Mmhmm. No fever, glands normal, missing her vaccination dates.

Young Mother: We're not vaccinating.
...
House: Think they don't work?

Young Mother: I think some multinational pharmaceutical company wants me to think they work. Pad their bottom line.

House: Mmmm. May I? [He takes the frog and starts to do the gribbit noise with the baby]

Young Mother: [Whispered] Sure.

House: Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit. [The baby laughs] All natural no
dies. That's a good business: all-natural children's toys. Those toy companies, they don't arbitrarily mark up their frogs. They don't lie about how much they spend in research and development. The worst a toy company can be accused of is making a really boring frog.

[Young Mother laughs and so does House. The baby giggles again]

House: Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit. You know another really good business? Teeny tiny baby coffins. You can get them in frog green or fire engine red. Really. The antibodies in yummy mummy only protect the kid for 6 months, which is why these companies think they can gouge you. They think that you'll spend whatever they ask to keep your kid alive. Want to change things? Prove them wrong. A few hundred parents like you decide they'd rather let their kid die then cough up 40 bucks for a vaccination, believe me, prices will drop REALLY fast. Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit, gribbit, gribbit.

Young Mother: Tell me what she has.

House: A cold.

-janelane, vaccinated non-moron

Jenny McCarthy: My son's recovery from autism - CNN.com

Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who was a key negotiator of the bill, said Republican leaders were blaming Pelosi because they were embarrassed that they failed to get a majority of the Republicans to vote for the bill.

"There's a terrible crisis affecting the American economy. We have come together on a bill to alleviate the crisis," Frank said. "And because somebody hurt their feelings they decide to punish the country? I mean, I would not have imputed that degree of pettiness and hypersensitivity."

Holy shit, the Repubs voted 2 to 1 against the bill. Wow. I guess even the measly amount headed towards taxpayer protection was just too much.

-janelane, regulate. regulate. regulate.

Lawmakers quickly point fingers after bailout fails - CNN.com

Since that day, Trig Paxson Van Palin, still only 143 days old, has had an unexpected effect on his mother’s political fortunes. Before her son was born, Ms. Palin went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that his arrival would not compromise her work. She hid the pregnancy. She traveled to Texas a month before her due date to give an important speech, delivering it even though her amniotic fluid was leaking. Three days after giving birth, she returned to work.

Real mom-of-the-year material. I wonder who's raising her son? Down Syndrome patients need specialized care. How nice she can afford to outsource her childcare...that she has that "choice" to make.

-janelane, a fan of working mothers as long as they don't sidestep reality to try to become VP

P.S. On a side note, what is with this family and batarded baby names?

Fusing Politics and Motherhood in a New Way - NYTimes.com

Use the File Association Settings:

You have to tell Excel not to use DDE to open the worksheet.
Open Windows Explorer, Tools, Options, File Types
Scroll down to XLS
Select Advance Button
Click on OPEN in the Actions window, Then Edit
On the 2nd line for application used add "%1".
Make sure to put the quotes around %1.
Example ...\Excel.exe" /e "%1"
Write down what you see in the DDE Section.
You will need this information if you want to return to the original settings.
Now DeSelect Use DDE
When you double click on any XLS file a separate instance of excel will run. Another advantage is that you can open more than one XLS file with the same name.

This problem has bugged the shit out of me since my office upgraded to Office 2007. Windows, I circumvent you!

-janelane, now I just need to get rid of that damned ribbon

Open Excel in Different Window

Phelps already is collecting about $5 million a year in endorsement checks from companies like Visa -- payments that came after he won six gold medals during the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.

His performance in Beijing, where he won a record eight gold medals, puts him in line to earn much more.

"He may be at $30, $40, $50 million a year in endorsements after all this is said and done," said David Harrow of the National Sports Lawyers Association.

Last week I wondered what Olympians do after its all over and maybe they're too old to go back next time. For some of them, it means raking in the cash, at least in the short term.

-janelane

Endorsements pure gold for Phelps - CNN.com

For instance, Michael Kohan, a recent graduate of Hofstra University’s law school, decided that hundreds of dollars a month filling up his 2006 Land Rover LR3 would be better spent paying down his student loans. He calculated that his vehicle — loaded with luxuries like a navigation system, xenon lights, parking assist sensors, heated leather seats and three sunroofs — should be worth at least $31,000, according to the Kelley Blue Book.

But with a V-8 engine that gets only about 14 miles per gallon, Mr. Kohan, 24, decided to list his LR3 on eBay and Craigslist for $18,000. And yet, he told a reporter this week, “As low as I set the price, you’re the first person to call.”

Holy shit! Don't let this guy represent you. He's throwing away $13,000 when he could be using that to drive another 3 years (14 mpg, $4/gal, 15,000 mi/year).

Nothing else about the cost of the car -- insurance, maintenance, monthly payment -- has gone up. There's just no legitimate/logical/economical reason to dump it. Just suck it up that you, like Detroit, can't read the writing on the wall.

-janelane

An S.U.V. Traffic Jam - NYTimes.com

This silent film clip shows several victims of a disease called kuru. They are - or rather were - members of the South Fore, a tribe of approximately 8,000 people who inhabit the Okapa subdistrict of the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. In the 1950s and '60s, a kuru epidemic swept through the South Fore, claiming the lives of more than 1,000 members of the tribe. Later it was established that the disease was transmitted by the tribe's practice of ritualistic mortuary cannibalism.

Yuck!

The word kuru means "shaking death" in the Fore language, and describes the characteristic symptoms of the disease. Because it affects mainly the cerebellum, a part of the brain involved in the co-ordination of movement, the first symptoms to manifest themselves in those infected with the disease would typically be an unsteady gait and tremors. As the disease progresses, victims become unable to stand or eat, and eventually die between 6-12 months after the symptoms first appear.

Kuru belongs to a class of progressive neurodegenerative diseases called the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), which also includes variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, more popularly known as "Mad Cow Disease"). TSEs are fatal and infectious; in humans, they are relatively rare, and can arise sporadically, by infection, or because of genetic mutations. They are unusual in that the infectious agent which transmits the diseases is believed to a misfolded protein. (Hence, the TSEs are also referred to as the prion diseases, "prion" being a shortened form of the term "proteinaceous infectious particle").
...
Following the outbreak of kuru among the Fore in the 1950s, cultural anthropologists quickly established that the disease was transmitted by the practice of mortuary cannibalism. When an individual died, the female relatives were responsible for dismembering the body. They would remove the brain, arms and feet, strip the muscle from the limbs and open the chest and abdomen to remove the internal organs. Those that died of kuru were highly regarded as sources of food, because they had layers of fat which resembled pork. It was primarily the Fore women who took part in this ritual. Often they would feed morsels of brain to young children and elderly relatives. Among the tribe, it was, therefore, women, children and the elderly who most often became infected.

Double Yuck! Seriously, I know that it's a time-honored ritual and all, but some dude in your family dies of something obvious like shaking accompanied by dementia, perhaps you might think there's something in their body causing the symptoms and just bury them. Could they have been so starved for protein? Or just mindlessly bent on following a ritual despite obvious risks? Or afraid of the consequences of not abiding?

-janelane, using commonsense

Update: Even granting this analysis, could they not have wanted to protect themselves? Or, will we be just as flabbergasted at ourselves in 50 years?

Cannibalism & the shaking death: A new form of the disease & a possible epidemic

Other workers are making the Volt more functional, giving it the room and feel of a regular car "such that the vehicle is not just a battery on wheels," Farah said.

The early concept, a low-riding, sleek silver hatchback, was uncomfortable to sit in and not very functional, Farah said. The new five-door hatchback version more resembles a normal car, a little larger than a Honda Civic.
...
Although GM has promised to begin selling the Volt in a little more than two years, experts wonder if it will be ready in time, whether enough batteries will be available to sell the cars in significant numbers, and whether the cost can be reduced to make the car affordable to the masses. GM has said the Volt will cost $30,000 to $40,000, and that it expects to sell 100,000 per year starting in 2012. While ambitious, that's still 81,000 fewer than the number of Prius gas-electric hybrids sold by Toyota last year.

C'mon! An electric car larger than the Civic and twice the price?! WTF?! Not to mention the completely asinine idea of a plug-in hybrid. We already can't bully the big electric companies into meeting their air emissions obligations.

If you haven't already, dump your GM stock. These guys just about can't get an more idiotic. Wait, maybe they can.

-janelane, people are eeediots

Hurdles remain for GM's pioneering electric car - CNN.com

“People do not understand what happens in a disenfranchised community,” said Councilwoman Perry, who represents neighborhoods in the area. “The fact remains, there are not a lot of food choices in South L.A.”

Since there is not much land left to develop in the area, the moratorium will allow city planners time to determine what kinds of businesses would be best in an area where rates of obesity and diseases related to it are disproportionately high.

“Anybody who believes fast food is the source of all dietary evil is, of course, being naïve,” she said. Other facets of modern life contribute to obesity. People drive more than they walk. Children play video games more often than stickball. And daily life has become saturated with opportunities to eat.

Hard to believe you have a grasp on current health problems when you refer to antiquated past-times like "stickball." Suddenly South Los Angeleans can't drive outside the city limits for a hamburger from a freshly minted fast food joint? And what about the existing 45% of restaurants that are fast food joints? I just don't see how this is going to get to the roots of the problem like few grocery stores and sit-down restaurants (which, for some reason, the council thinks have much better food choices).

-janelane

Los Angeles Stages a Fast Food Intervention - NYTimes.com

You can achieve similar results by following these nine commandments of hypermiling.

I agree with all of them except maintaining accelerator pressure even going up and down hills. I want to ACME mallet people who go 20 mph uphill and 60 mph downhill in a 45 mph zone. No matter how much fuel you might save, that's not safe or in the best interest of traffic flow.

-janelane

Get 50 mpg -- in your own car - MSN Money