A Random Assortment

~ So vaccinating your kids, not according to the schedule, is anti-vax? With no defense of "the schedule"? (Not that Slate is at all reputable source, but it annoys me: there is no proof that spacing them out helps in any way, but there's also no proof at all that it helps or that "the schedule" is some golden rule. It just corresponds with baby well-visits and is easier to keep track of. There's no particular reason that a child needs an HPV vaccine at 9, for instance, nor Hep B the day they're born, if the parents have been tested and don't have it.) What drives me nuts is the medical establishment's condescension toward ordinary people. I space out my baby's vaccinations over a couple of weeks, rather than giving them to him all at one appointment. Am I anti-vax?

~ I couldn't be happier just to have Pope Francis in America. Well, I would have been happier if I had gotten into the mass on time. But this is great:

I speak to you as the Bishop of Rome, called by God in old age, and from a land which is also American, to watch over the unity of the universal Church and to encourage in charity the journey of all the particular Churches toward ever greater knowledge, faith and love of Christ. 

 ...
Dialogue is our method, not as a shrewd strategy but out of fidelity to the One who never wearies of visiting the marketplace, even at the eleventh hour, to propose his offer of love (Mt 20:1-16).

~ On de-disabling autism. (I guess Slate isn't all bad.)

~ More Trump, although I think the hype is subsiding:

A curious feature of the mob scene that has surrounded Trump at most public events since August is that people keep handing him money to sign. ... You don’t often see politicians signing money. If asked, some will refuse — I’ve seen Hillary Clinton do this — possibly because it is technically illegal to deface currency. But it is a fitting souvenir from one of the high priests of the nation’s secular religion: aspirational consumerism. 

... 

And yet, throughout his rise, Trump has been labeled a ‘‘populist.’’ I had always equated populism with economic uprisings by the disenfranchised against the privileged.