10/28/14

Vaccinating with an Open Mind


I’ve been asked by an old friend to respond to an article published by Doctor Kurt Perkins, a Doctor of Chiropractic from southern Colorado with a background in biochemistry and genetics.  In this episode of Intervals…no one on either side of the “Vaccination Debate” will change their minds. I believe, as a fact, in the critical importance of vaccinations and the immunization schedule BUT I also believe that we should continue to test vaccinations and the effect of the vaccination schedule to ensure that people are not made to suffer.

In other words, having considered the overwhelming scientific evidence I’m inclined to feel that vaccinations are important, and that herd immunity due to the vaccination schedule is real…based on the evidence.

HOWEVER, I’m not an immunologist…I’m an engineer, not a doctor…so I have about the same credibility as a certified wellness practitioner…but that’s okay, I’m going to go into this with an open mind.


Here’s the study I referred to: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10493337

Here’s my problem with a lot of the arguments raised in this blog post: http://naturalmomma.tumblr.com/post/69552734721/logicalfallacies

Here’s a classic definition of “vaccine”: A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as foreign, destroy it, and keep a record of it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters.  


And then there’s THIS: http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/shocking-news-antivaccine-chiropractor-ignores-science/

AND this: ]http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/BiologicsLicenseApplicationsBLAProcess/ucm133096.htm

10/22/14

Listen to The Train Wreck.


On the next episode of Phedippidations, I’m going to get a lot of you ANGRY. That’s not my intention of course…but it’ll probably happen.  I produced this show a few weeks ago, and have delayed publishing it because I wasn’t really sure if I should.

But I’m going to do it anyway.  Just remember: you’ve been warned.


10/12/14

Sick, Tired and Weary-ism

I’m growing very weary of certain ISMs in my life....that dividing Greek suffix that forms abstract nouns of action, state, condition, or doctrine.

I’m increasingly tired of actions and processes such as absolutism, asceticism, chauvinism, conservatism, egotism, evangelicalism, fundamentalism, hedonism, idealism, obstructionism, racism, radicalism, theism, his-ism and that-ism...just to name a few.

It’s not that I’m against all ISMs in the world, just alot more these days than ever before in my life.

I really don’t have a lot to say about this anti-ism attitude.... and while you’ll think it’s a tangent; I feel like I’m leading up to something: a fundamental change in my way of thinking about the universe. This change in my understanding has been brewing over the past four years and while no single event has instigated this change I can tell you where it started.

It started, as you might expect, when I was drinking a glass of wine in a Vineyard in northeastern
Sharpe Hill, CT
Connecticut four summers ago...I was sitting at the top of Sharpe Hill, looking across the rows of vines and the beautiful cloudless blue skies towards the orchards of Danielson to the east... and I was thinking about life and consciousness...kind of a deep topic to contemplate on a sunny afternoon. I was thinking about what life is...is it the atoms that make up the molecules that compose my body...or any body for that matter?

While organizations such as S.E.T.I. and NASA search for life on Mars and exoplanets, are they looking for carbon or methane based life? Is that was life is...something you can touch? If that’s true riddle me this: what is consciousness? Nobody seems to know, or at least they can’t point to a thing made of molecules and say: THAT thing experiences consciousness.

But, what if consciousness was just a process...similar in a way to the processes of dehydration, hydrolysis, or as with my wine: oxidation.

What if life can’t really be touched...what if life isn’t a thing...but was simply a process that occurs to things, like a flame occurs to a candle.

The more I thought about this, the more it made sense. Life is just a process; and when the candle is extinguished...the process stops, the flame doesn’t go anywhere, it just stops.

There are a lot of “ISMs” in the world that encourage violence, hatred and pain to promote the idea that the flame continues to burn elsewhere. I haven’t quite figured out why this is so, but I do understand that it’s a waste.

Life is short, but it should be long enough...and if what we’re experiencing is a process of life then we must savor it like a fine wine and avoid all of the ISM’s that would cause any harm.

I’m Steve Runner, reminding you to run long and taper. 

10/9/14

John Ellis Greatest HIIT


The Great John Ellis, fellow runner, coach and friend…joins the podcast with a response to my latest Phedippidations tirade titled “What Does the Fox Say?”.  Here John gives us his impression of "High Intensity Interval Training" and the notion that the "Long Slow Run" will KILL YOU!