day 5

This might get boring for other people but it is the original purpose of me getting a journal in the first place.

Anyway: 1800+ words. Chapter total:3600+. Novel total: 9200.

Accomplished today: the ponies got named, and the scope of Yanek's hurt over the ponies much better done, and Yanek's day running around being anywhere but where the ponies are when the riding tutor comes, and the handyman's search for him.

Yanek has not got a pony yet. He might not, the way things are shaping up. But the little Duke has named his pony after Yanek -- in honor of Yanek, though Yanek thinks it's anything but an honor.

Also, indicated the ethnic diversity of the villages.

Tomorrow: finish up the pony thing. Monday: Ludmilla's microscope.


Also, I have a sore throat and no voice and I'm supposed to go to a training that starts in twenty minutes. I wonder if it will be okay to be late.

Signal boost: Delta Airlines and anti-vaccination propaganda

The Bad Astronomer tells us that Delta Airlines has contracted to show commercials produced by the anti-vaccination group that sarcastically calls itself "The National Vaccine Information Center."

I wasn't sure how best to contact Delta over this, so I used the customer complaint form. This is what I said:

I have used Delta almost exclusively for travel between Europe and the United States since my son began medical school in Prague. I pay for my own and my son's travel back and forth, and also for his travel to other countries and other continents, where he goes to practice his life-saving learning. But I won't be any longer unless I hear that the anti-vaccination ads are removed from your inflight material.

My family has made a great sacrifice to send my son to school to learn to save lives. It's not an exaggeration. I am a widow in a low-paying job. Every penny we spend has to count. And I will not be spending any of my hard-earned money to support an airline which is helping to convince people to put their children at danger of death. Last year at least nine babies died in California alone of pertussis because they were too young for vaccinations and the disease was passed to them from unvaccinated children or adults. Can you see where it might be especially galling for me -- the mother of a young doctor and a caregiver for infants too young for vaccination -- to buy my son and myself tickets to fly on a flight that lies to parents about this?

I can't believe you would take advertising money from these murderers, whose fallacious claims are rooted in the fraudulent claims of a known criminal (Wakefield, who has been stripped of his credentials and fled his home country to live off the fears of his gullible followers here in the US). I'll be telling everyone I know not to buy tickets for your flights until you stop.

I have had otherwise good experiences with your airline and would be more than happy to recommend your services if it were not for this scandalous complicity with murderous fraud.

I maybe did thr wrong thing by focussing on pertussis because the ads are against flu vaccines. However, any equally strong case can be made for flu vaccines. I got both the latest flu and a D-TAP booster yesterday, by the way. How about you? They're being recommended for everyone, now, not just high risk groups and their caregivers.

another signal boost: gtake action against shoo!Tag

Bug Girl gathers up all the information you need to help take down a $600,000 business that sells useless bits of plastic claiming that they generate an electromagnetic field that repels mosquitoes or ticks. Read the whole post, and follow the links: you'll need the Shoo!Tag contact information to follow up and file a complaint.

Thank you midwesterners . . .

I had thught I had heard about Delta airlines doing bad things in the past, but when I went to buy tickets for us earlier in the year (and I had to buy three sets of intercontinental flights: 2 roundtrips SF-Prague, 1 roundtrip Prague-Accra, and 1 roundtrip Prague-SF -- this may not seem like a lot to some people, which amounts to about a third of my income for 2011, not counting mysterious legacies that keep popping up suspiciously) I could not find anything when I googled, so I had decided I must have remembered wrongly. It turns out I googled wrongly, not knowingf exactly what to ask for, and completely failed to find the records of Delta's swalling of Northwestern and their bad labor policy.

This is where you kind of have to know what you're looking for to find thngs. Googling "delta labor policy" reveals on the first page a slew of articles about flying pregnant, an attack on Harry Reid by the US Chamber of Commerce, and three hits for Delta's PR machine including their "applauding" a decision by a House committee to investigate the Labor Board. But this time, knowing for sure that there was something to look for, I changed up the words, and "Delta labor violations" turns out to be an overwhelmingly productive search.

Thanks, Pamela and Mike!