Warning Shots and Missiles

The point is simple: Warning shots are not missiles.

We'll leave the discussion about whether or not one should even fire warning shots for another time (you shouldn't by the way.... ever).

A lot of the arguments about why you shouldn't is that if you fire up into the air, it will come down and kill some innocent little honor student who's personal story amounts to something that should have been featured on the cover of the next Times. And the finger of blame will be pointed straight at you for ripping that life away from the world. You start sounding like a liberal at that point when you get mired in the what if's and ignore factual input.

Here are some things to consider:

1. Bullets do not correct their trajectory in any way, shape, or form once they leave your barrel. If you listen to alarmists, that bullet fired up in the air will begin to fall back to the Earth and orient itself point first, directly at little Susie's brain with full intent to ruin her day. In what world on non-Newtonian physics are you living in? Newton's first law states: When viewed in an inertial reference frame, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force. in plain English that means that if something is moving, it will continue on it's course unless something pushes it. The only two forces acting on a bullet after leaving the barrel are wind resistance and gravity. Neither of those have any particular attraction to Susie. Bullets will travel in a ballistic trajectory governed by classical mechanics.

2. Statistically, the odds of hitting a person with a bullet fired up into the air (We must assume a non trivial angle) are very slim. Perhaps better than winning the lottery but still very low. Think about what percentage of the earth is covered by bodies. Even when you correct the impact plane to account for angle of impact, it's still not very big.

3. Velocity will be substantially limited (we'll assume a shot fired will be relatively close to normal.... say given a variation of +/-20 degrees). The entire vertical component of velocity will disappear and the return to earth will be the cause of gravity and subject to gravitational acceleration. We've all heard the story about how dropping a penny from the observation deck of the Empire State Building would get falling so fast it would kill someone if it hit them on the sidewalk. Less common is the realization that the math of that claim fails to consider two very important concepts: Terminal Velocity and Free Fall. Terminal velocity governs the maximum speed a falling object will achieve, and Free Fall speaks to the absence of orientation. Just like the penny could never travel fast enough or be oriented the correct way to put a hole in someone's skull, a free falling bullet could not kill somebody. Ruin their day, and probably give them a nasty headache? Yes. But not kill them.

So come off it. Stop being alarmist about bullets fired into the air. It's not going to kill someone. Leave that out of the discussion and instead talk about the legal, ethical, and logical arguments of warning shots. Stop using false statements to justify your position... you just end up looking like an idiot.

Vaccination Troubles

Vaccines have been getting a lot of press recently. The reason is not as important as the flood of information that comes across the news-wire. Aside from it being a slow news day and the need to present sensational news that doesn't come from the other side of the globe, the action word is "informed". People need to be informed.

There is a disturbing trend in vaccination. Fewer and fewer parents are opting to have their children vaccinated because of the belief that vaccines are harmful to health. The claims take a variety of forms but the most prevalent is the idea that vaccination causes autism.

The current generation of new parents grew up in a world of vaccination and therefore do not remember what life was like before the common vaccinations became available. The scourge of polio, measles, smallpox, rubella, etc. They do not have memories of the kid down the street falling prey to one of these diseases. They cannot imagine a world where Suzi just stopped showing up to school and finding out a week later that she had smallpox.  They may never see Suzi again. This is unheard of in developed countries. The danger, if any, was far outweighed by the benefits of not having to worry if your child was going to contract a serious disease.

Let's examine the ":dangers" of vaccines:

Where did the original claim of vaccination danger come from? It was first supposed in a 19998 paper published in "The Lancet" by Andrew Wakefield. The paper suggested a link between the MMR (Mumps, Measles, Rubella) vaccine and a condition called autistic enterocolitis and other gastrointestinal pathologies. The paper recommended further study on the link between the vaccine and these conditions which were supposedly linked to autism. That's were it all started.
It turns out that the paper was utterly fraudulent. Autistic enterocolitis is not real condition and was invented by Mr. Wakefield to support the data. The paper was completely discredited and Mr. Wakefield was placed under investigation for ethics violations, professional misconduct, fraud, and conflict of interest. This ultimately led to the revocation of his ability to practice medicine. You would think that the issue would have been put to rest there, but it didn't die with the original fake paper.

There are so many conditions, diseases, complications said to have been caused by some form of vaccination that I could not possibly list all of them. They run the spectrum from Autism, to arthritis, cancer, and death. Pick a condition and someone has probably blamed it on a vaccination. Many times the articles or research links to things that the lay person would have no idea about. I know of no one (including myself) outside of a medical professional who knows what Acute Encephalopathy, Thrombocytopenia, Febrile Seizures, or Brachial Neuritis is without looking it up. And even then, the definitions are often presented in even more medical jargon making a full understanding of the condition very difficult. Take into account that a full understanding of a disease includes more than the definition. It would include things like pathology, transmission, prognosis, treatment, etc. However.... they all sound scary and that is enough.

What of the credentials of the people making the claims? Firstly, anyone who says something causes a disease should be a medical professional. They are the only people who have the knowledge base to understand the complexity of the human body enough to come to reasonable conclusions. And these people must have degrees from accredited universities with proper graduate degree programs. Bob's School of Medicine doesn't count despite the fact that every graduate puts "Dr." before their name and "MD" after it on their business cards and letterhead.
Secondly, it takes much more than medical expertise to determine cause; most notably, statisticians. I don't know of many MDs who have their medical PhD and a doctorate degree in statistics. You need people to design the experiment, those who can carry it out, and people who can interpret the data and form conclusions. Then, it must be subjected to peer review and repeat-ability trials. This cannot be accomplished in a matter of months, it must be done over the course of years.

It comes down to a few well known claims:

• Vaccines cause diseases, including autism and autoimmune diseases.
• Vaccines contain toxins, which can harm the body in unknown ways.
• Too many vaccines given together can overwhelm the immune system.
• Vaccines are unnecessary, and/or do not work.

None of these claims have been supported by medical research that meets the standard above. The claims have been refuted at length by people a whole lot smarter than me. The catch-all logically fallacious defense amounts to some form of conspiracy theory. The claims resort to fear, uncertainty, and doubt.... a common tool for those who wish to influence someone else's behavior.

So who cares? What difference does it make if you choose not to vaccinate? Many claim the same answer when challenged about other dubious health practices such as gluten free diet, organic floods, etc. It's "well it's my choice and this is what I'm choosing." Yes, a reasonable, although childish, defense. But there is a big difference here: You not eating gluten has no potential impact on my life. Failure to immunize can. There is a concept called "herd immunity" which refers to the percent of immune individuals that must be resent in a herd to establish immunity of the whole group. It's the main reason people are encouraged to get the flu vaccine.... it's not that the flu will kill you (although I know it can lead to fatal complications in people who have compromised immune systems), it's that immunization will prevent everyone from getting it. We are rapidly approaching the herd immunity threshold for some of the diseases that are unheard of in developed countries. 

The current trend of ignorance and the idea that they are somehow smarter than the whole of the scientific community will drag us back to the days of applying the same treatments as were done for the plague. If anyone can show me credible research, I am open to changing my opinion. But I am confident in my stance that such research does not exist.