The Art of Vaccinations

I was reading earlier this week that the National Archives in the UK has digitized and shared with Wikimedia Commons a large selection of its war art collection dating from the Second World War. Looking through the pictures I was struck in particular by the poster below, encouraging parents to vaccinate their children against diptheria: […]

“He’s only a…”

I first became aware of the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) after reading a 2007 article in Mother Jones. I was horrified; and that was before both my children received an autism diagnosis. In April of this year I was astonished to hear that, not only was the JRC still open, it was STILL shocking children. […]

Mourning public figures – thoughts prompted by the reaction to the death of Steve Jobs

This blog post isn’t about Steve Jobs per se, but there are some things I need to say about him in order to make my point (if I in fact have one; writing this blog was an attempt to marshal my thoughts, let me know if I succeeded?!). “I come to bury Caesar, not to […]

Reflections on The Panic Virus by Seth Mnookin

I know this is the kind of blog post that has the capacity to attract some attention and not all of it positive. For that reason I hesitated about whether or not I would even publish it but decided to forge ahead. Why did I decide to share my thoughts about this book? Well, I’m a parent of […]

The first world war as it relates to my birthday

It’s my birthday this month. I’m not going to tell you how old I will be but suffice it to say that if you’ve read Douglas Adams then my age is the answer to the meaning of life. Despite the fact that I share a date of birth with such luminaries as Henry VIII, Peter […]