jessica_b's shared items
Writing in the Huffington Post, the vaccines-cause-autism advocate Jenny McCarthy refutes the claims made last week by Brian Deer in the British Medical Journal that the major study linking autism to vaccines was fraudulent.
McCarthy defends the study's author and the parents whose children were studied, quoting one of the parents as saying:
How could the BMJ scrutinize what Brian Deer has said without looking at our children's medical notes which they are not allowed to have? This needs to be challenged.
Everyone seems to be missing a key point: Fradulent or not, the science of the study was already refuted and retracted by the Lancet. We don't really need to be arguing it any more, as its no longer part of the scientific record. It's the entire basis for any sort of "medical" belief that vaccines and autism are linked and it's no longer valid. Vaccines don't cause autism, and it's grossly irresponsible for parents to not vaccinate their kids because they think that they do. It's even more grossly irresponsible for a non-medical professional like Jenny McCarthy to keep using her celebrity to keep pushing the issue. There are real consequences to these actions: They make kids sick and cause outbreaks of disease that we should have eliminated long ago. Please stop.
What he said. I'm bookmarking this to refer to whenever this topic comes up for the rest of my life.
Especially:
Why don’t I believe in God? No, no no, why do YOU believe in God? Surely the burden of proof is on the believer. You started all this. If I came up to you and said, “Why don’t you believe I can fly?” You’d say, “Why would I?” I’d reply, “Because it’s a matter of faith”. If I then said, “Prove I can’t fly. Prove I can’t fly see, see, you can’t prove it can you?” You’d probably either walk away, call security or throw me out of the window and shout, ‘’F—ing fly then you lunatic.”
And his conclusion sums it all up perfectly:
“Do unto others…” is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. Buts that’s exactly what it is - a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for it in heaven. My reward is here and now. It’s knowing that I try to do the right thing. That I lived a good life. And that’s where spirituality really lost its way. When it became a stick to beat people with. “Do this or you’ll burn in hell.”
You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway.
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- DPC
- WWI Anti-War Poster
The Hollywood District sponsored its annual Veterans' Day parade this morning—and parades are great, but if you really want to help out a veteran this week go cheer at the parade, then go volunteer at a homeless shelter.
Thirty three percent of the nation's homeless population are veterans, according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. Many vets need help finding jobs, they need help finding housing, they need help readjusting to civilian life, and living in a society that tries hard to keep its knowledge of war at arms' length.
If you're looking to do more than wave a flag this week, here is a list of places that work with homeless vets and here is a list of homeless shelters.
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Great WordPress plugins are gems, and sometimes they’re difficult to find. Here’s a list of the current plugins I’m fascinated by.
If you look, you may find that some of them are just right for you, too. These plugins range from Administration, to Copyright management to future posts. Feel free to dig in!
Cleverness To-Do List
Integrates a multi-featured to-do list into the WordPress administration area that is very customizable.
This plugin provides users with a to-do list feature.
You can configure the plugin to have private to-do lists for each user, for all users to share a to-do list, or a master list with individual completing of items. The shared to-do list has a variety of settings available. You can assign tasks to a specific user (includes a setting to email a new task to the assigned user) and have only those tasks assigned viewable to a user. You can also assign different permission levels using capabilities. There are also settings to show deadline and progress fields. Category support is now included.
A new menu item is added to manage your list and it is also listed on a dashboard widget.
A sidebar widget is available as well as shortcode to display the to-do list items on your site.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cleverness-to-do-list/
Average Rating – 5 Stars (10 ratings)
Adminimize
Adminimize is a WordPress plugin that lets you hide ‘unnecessary’ items from the WordPress backend and many many more …
What does this plugin do?
The plugin changes the administration backend and gives you the power to assign rights on certain parts. Admins can activate/deactivate every part of the menu and even parts of the submenu. Meta fields can be administered separately for posts and pages. Certain parts of the write menu can be deactivated separately for admins or non-admins. The header of the backend is minimized and optimized to give you more space and the structure of the menu gets changed to make it more logical – this can all be done per user so each user can have his own settings.
Average Rating – 5 Stars (66 ratings)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/adminimize/
WP Admin Microblog
WP Admin Microblog adds a seperate microblog in your WordPress backend.
The plugin transforms automatically urls to links, supports tagging and some bbcodes and it’s possible to send a message via e-mail to other users. Now, with the new dashboard widget, you can read, respond, edit and delete messages directly. So, WP Admin Microblog is great for supporting the communication within blog teams or it’s a nice scratchpad. 
Average Rating – 5 Stars (3 ratings)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-admin-microblog/
Simple Admin Menu Editor
Ever get tired of seeing the same menu options you literally never use? Or setting up a WordPress install for a client, and want to get rid of the stuff they don’t use, or would screw up if they could?
Easily and Simply show and hide what is in your admin nav. That’s it.
Us too. So we made this handy little plugin that gives you little checkboxes next to each menu item and sub-menu item, even for other plugins! Just uncheck the items you don’t want to see anymore, and they’re gone! When you need them again, just recheck and they’re back! No editing core files, and being over-written upon upgrade.
Average Rating – 5 Stars (1 rating)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-admin-menu-editor/
CataBlog
CataBlog is a comprehensive and effortless tool that allows you to create catalogs and galleries for your blog.
CataBlog allows you to catalog pretty much anything you would want and share it through your blog in a simple but elegant gallery. Upload images, give them titles, links, descriptions and then save them into your catalog. Use tags to organize and filter your catalog items into multiple different catalogs. Show off your photos in high resolution too, now with the new lightbox effect which can be turned on in one simple step. Easy, intuitive design makes it child’s play to keep track of all your different catalogs and create amazing e-stores, galleries, lists and more.
Average Rating – 5 Stars (8 ratings)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/catablog/
Anywhere
Adds Twitter @anywhere javascript code to your blog, enabling Hovercards and linkification of @usernames.
Average Rating – 5 Stars (2 ratings)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/anywhere/
Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu
All admin links available in a neat horizontal drop down menu. Saves lots of screen real estate!
The lazy and the productive will love it : all admin links available in a neat horizontal CSS driven drop down menu. No need to click on “Manage” then “Pages” to edit pages. And plenty more space on your screen.
For documentation, examples, screenshot and a live demo, please refer to the official plugin page for Admin Drop Down Menu. There is also an API for plugin coders (give your plugin its own special icon!).
Average Rating – 4.85 Stars (884 ratings)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ozh-admin-drop-down-menu/
AutoChimp
Keep website users and mailing lists in sync and create campaigns from posts.
Automatically add, remove, and update users to your MailChimp mailing list as users subscribe and unsubscribe to your site. Create MailChimp mail campaigns automatically from blog posts. AutoChimp uses a single options page to help you to simply and quickly manage your preferred settings. In order to use AutoChimp, you must already have an account with MailChimp and at least one mailing list.
To use, save your MailChimp API Key on the options page then start adding your new registrations to any selected MailChimp mailing list. You can configure the plugin to update your mailing list when 1) a new user subscribes, 2) a user unsubscribes, or 3) a user updates his information. You may also choose to create campaigns automatically from post categories of your choosing. You can send the campaigns immediately or just save them.
Average Rating – 5 Stars (2 ratings)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/autochimp/
WP-AlertBox
A simple alert box configureable by the admin. User get’s a overlay div with the alert message once or more, just like you want it.
Well it is all what is says it is, an ‘alert box’, nothing more, nothing less. It displays a predefined message once. It uses the Lightbox-2 and the prototype window, both are included.
Average Rating – 5 Stars (3 ratings)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-alertbox/
Change Image Type
“Change image type”, you can change the image type. In doing so, you can do to facilitate the operation of the site.
Examples of changes
*.bmp => *.jpg, *.png, *.gif . *.jpg => *.png, *.gif .
Average Rating – 5 Stars (2 ratings)
ComicPress Manager
ComicPress Manager is intended to reduce the amount of work required to administer a site running ComicPress. ComicPress Manager works in conjunction with an installation of ComicPress, the Webcomic theme for WordPress.
ComicPress Manager allows you to:
- Upload individual comic files or a Zip archive of comic files directly into your comics folder and generate posts for each comic as it’s uploaded with the correct go-live date and time
- To save a trip to the Edit Post page, you can use the Visual Editor right in ComicPress Manager to add styled text content to your post.
- Using this method ensures that the post has the correct date and time as it’s being created, reducing mistakes in posting.
- You can also upload a single file that does not specify a date in the filename, and enter in the post date on the upload page.
- You can also replace a single existing file with any other file, preserving the original file’s name after upload
- If you’re using a different date naming convention, you can convert the old convention to the currently defined date naming convention
- To keep nosy readers from snooping around, you can obfuscate filenames, either by adding random characters to the end, or by replacing the title in the filename with random characters.
- Images are thoroughly checked while being uploaded and fixed when possible
Average Rating – 5 Stars (19 ratings)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/comicpress-manager/
List Yo’ Files
Adds the ability to list files by file name for a given folder with hyperlinks to each file making it downloadable. The plugin admin pages also allow
Adds the ability to list files by file name for the given folder with hyperlinks to each file making it downloadable. You can include file size, date, and even an icon as part of the file list. You can sort by filename, size, or date (and reverse). The plugin admin pages also allow you to conveniently upload and delete files. This is a easy way for organizations, groups, and clubs to share files with members. For example, Home Owner Associations have used this plugin to list their minutes. Music websites use this plugin to show a list of downloadable sample files to visitors.
Average Rating – 5 Stars (4 ratings)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/list-yo-files/
Post Page Associator
The Post-Page-Associator enables you to attach posts to a page. This Plugin has been granted the “Famous Software” Award!
Description
As the name suggests, the Post-Page-Associator enables you to attach posts to a page. You can select a set of posts by category, tag, author or you just select some posts explicitly.
Handling
The handling is very easy. When you are going to edit a page you will see a box with the title “Associate posts with this page”. There you can choose categories, tags, authors and posts which should attached to this page. Optionally you can set the number of posts which should be shown on the page and some more settings like the post order.
Average Rating – 5 Stars (19 ratings)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/post-page-association-plugin/
Hide Update Reminder
Hides the Update Reminder in the Admin for all non Admin users.
This plugin allows you to hide the update WordPress reminder from all users that are not assumed Administrators (cannot upgrade plugins).
If you have multiple users then this means those who are not admins don’t need to see the message. Useful for CMS based sites, so the client doesn’t see the notice.
Average Rating – 5 Stars (10 ratings)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/hide-update-reminder/
Blog Copyright (BC)
Inject a copyright notice into the footer.
Blog Copyright injects a copyright notice into the blog footer. You can see it in action on this very site. The copyright notice automatically updates the year range as time goes one removing the need to ever revisit your copyright once the plugin is put in place… Adjustments can be made to a variety of options including the starting year and the rights reserved statement.
Average Rating – 4.5 Stars (10 ratings)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/blogcopyright/
YD Network-wide Options
Automatically replicate any plugin setting network-wide: apply sitewide settings. Spread your settings or options on all your multisite blogs.
This plugin has been thoroughly tested and is fully compatible with WordPress 3.0 multisite or with WPMU 2.9.
This plugin was originally named YD WPMU Sitewide Options. The name has been changed with version 3.0 to match WordPress 3.0 vocabulary and concepts. Backwards compatibility with WordPress MU has been maintained.
Centralized management of your network-wide installed plugins!
This WordPress 3.0 multisite or WPMU plugin installs a new settings page where you can choose which blog or plugin settings you want to replicate site-wide or network-wide to all your children sites. Any change (update) to those settings (options) on the mother site admin pages can be automatically copied to all the sub-sites (blogs).
Average Rating – 5 Stars (6 ratings)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yd-wpmu-sitewide-options/
Future Posts Calendar
This plugin adds a monthly calendar that shows all the dates you have future posts.
It adds a simple month-by-month calendar that shows all the months you have future posts for (and the current month no matter what), it highlights the days you have posts for, and as an added bonus if you click a day, the Post Timestamp boxes change to that day, month and year.
Also includes a widget so you can show users what upcoming posts you have on your website.
Average Rating – 4 Stars (9 ratings)
