Dana, I know! I was holding my breath!

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Is anyone around who could translate a phrase into Latin for me?

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I'm reading a book on mathematical writing. It's a pretty useful book, but the author has a tendency to throw in some rather random-sounding examples. As an example of what not to do: "This semisimple, sesquilinear operator serves to show sometimes that subgroups of S are sequenced."

(He also insists that the proper way to write a mathematical paper is first person plural. I think it feels horribly awkward to write that way, but it seems to be standard, so I'll do it. Sorry, we think it feels horribly awkward to write that way, but it seems to be standard, so we'll do it.)

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Hil, there's a TB vaccine, now? I know there's the Tine test, but I didn't realize there was a vaccine.

Thirty years of mandatory vaccines had eradicated Polio in the US, and I was born the year after they lifted the mandatory vaccination of all children.

My kids had to be vaccinated. I wonder if they reinstituted it. My oldest got a live vaccine. They then had a lot of problems with it, and so my younger ones had a different one. One was a drink, one wasn't, but it's all fuzzy now.

OK, but the risk is not just to them. Vaccines have a limited protection for the person getting vaccinated if they are the only one taking them. In the case HPV I think is 75%, in other more. The real protection is the herd affect. If everone or almost everyone takes it then when it fails for one person, the odds are it won't be passed on to someone else, and if it is, the odds are it won't get passed to the next person.

So if you are vaccinated and no one else is , you still have a 1 in 4 chance of catching if exposed and a real good chance of getting exposed. But if everybody (or nearly everybody has the vaccine, you have a three in four chance of resistance if exposed, plus a good chance of not getting exposed.

Incidentally, this is why boys should be vaccinated against HPV as well. In addition to the chance that it does something we don't know about to them, even if they are asymptomatic they can pass it on to girls. If boys are vaccinated as well as girls you get a much better herd affect.

I agree with all this Gar, but I'm not part of the government's herd. As I said, I will choose to vaccinate my daughter (and my sons if my pedi recommends it, and if it has been tested on male humans, to prove it is safe for them), but if people can't catch it casually, I don't think the government has the right to force it, even though it is, in my opinion, right that everyone get it.

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Hil, there's a TB vaccine, now? I know there's the Tine test, but I didn't realize there was a vaccine.

Maybe the listing was for the test; it was on the "vaccines" page, but a lot of their website is pretty badly explained.

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I agree with all this Gar, but I'm not part of the government's herd. As I said, I will choose to vaccinate my daughter (and my sons if my pedi recommends it, and if it has been tested on male humans, to prove it is safe for them), but if people can't catch it casually, I don't think the government has the right to force it, even though it is, in my opinion, right that everyone get it.

But it seems like you can catch it casually--not through sneezing but through contact like cuddling and kissing. So if the government does not have a right to put strong pressure on you, that means you think you have a right to endanger others, or that others have a right to endanger your kids.

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there's a TB vaccine, now? I know there's the Tine test, but I didn't realize there was a vaccine.

I had one in grade school.

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So if the government does not have a right to put strong pressure on you, that means you think you have a right to endanger others, or that others have a right to endanger your kids.

The other thing is, you can choose to get your daughter(s) immunized. Right now, I'm not sure it's possible, and it's certainly not covered, for your sons. Maybe they have nothing to worry about. But what about their first girlfriend? And perhaps especially their second, or thereafter? If it's a crapshoot whether parents were willing or responsible enough to take this step - or had the insurance to cover it - every relationship is possibly a transmission zone. Kind of like now. But why keep it that way if we don't have to?

[The coverage thing is another matter - mandated vaccinations will at the very least not leave the underinsured kids out in the cold. Or the underparented.]

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Timelies all!

I spent the day at the Maryland Faery Festival(My dance group performed there) Good music, but still a bit twee for my taste.

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One of my errands today was going to the post office. They have triangular stamps!

I wasn't intending to buy stamps (well, some 2 cent stamps so I can use up my 39 cent stamps) but the triangular stamps were so cool I had to get them.

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