what about a story when a kid became deaf? why isn't the deafness-measles connection more in the news? it's a lot more common than death as a side effect but of course not a lot of fun to deal with

thing is that measles doesn't have only death as a serious side effect, much more common is deafness and inner ear disorders, which make your life not a lot of fun, believe me, and those are not necessarily always linked in the stats (esp. considering that the risk for things like meniere's goes up A LOT if you've had measles as a child, but you might not get it until decades later)

if you have a set of slides there is no flexibility, if you are giving a chalk talk (and you actually know what you are talking about) you can tailor the talk to the audience, if you know a part is understood you can skip things, if you find a point that is more difficult to understand you can add context, provide more examples etc.

Slide talks are best at presenting facts, not that great at conveying information (since there is no flexibility), and quite bad at fostering discussion (since your audience generally won't be very engaged), so the decision here to stick to chalkboard talks seems like a good idea.

the same thing that you would do if you don't vaccinate and your kid gets measles and ends up permanently deaf, in the end it's about probabilities, the probability of measles having bad side effects seems a LOT higher than the probability of vaccines having bad side effects, ergo it should be obvious what to do.

This said people are not rational, the odds of getting run over crossing the street are much higher than a lot of other events people worry way more about...

Windows:
- microsoft security essentials
- windows firewall control (commercial)
- cygwin
- notepad++
- sysutils (procmon etc.)
- ultramon (commercial)
- launchy
- sharpkeys
- autohotkey
- visual c++ express
- 7-zip

Mac:
- little snitch (commercial)
- macports
- better touch tool
- keyremap4macbook
- iterm2
- alfred
- geektool
- menumeters
- caffeine
- xcode

Linux:
- whatever distro-specific set of packages gets me all the dev stuff
- (if needed) whatever distro-specific repository gets me extra packages (say, epel)
- kde
- xfce
- various personal customizations done over the years (xmodmap, ...)

Everywhere:
- firefox (noscript, requestpolicy, adblock, flashblock)
- emacs
- python / virtualenvwrapper / git ...
- bash customizations (powerline, bash completions, personal scripts)
- libreoffice and latex
- truecrypt
- virtualbox
- dropbox
- gimp

these are the baseline, beyond that it depends from what I am using the actual computer for

I played WOW from vanilla to cataclysm (I played the most during tbc and wotlk) but did not play MOP, from my perspective the most fun of the game was to meet people while levelling, grouping together and then having that develop in a friendship and/or starting a guild and so on.

When I left nobody grouped for anything during levelling due to the content being way too easy, x-realm dungeons removed any sort of incentive to behave (in the "old days" if you were a ninja or you ruined a party your reputation on the server would be immediately affected, meaning no more runs for you, kicked out of your guild etc.), and in general realms did not have much of a feeling of community anymore. After I left apparently they introduced x-realm zones which seem to me the worst of both worlds, you have people everywhere ( so competition for nodes / quest items ) *and* they are not from your realm, so you can't really interact much with them and there is no incentive again to be nice.

From my perspective if I could make decisions I would:

- remove automatic x-realm gameplay (if you know somebody on a different realm and you want to invite them, fine) so no x-realm raid finder or dungeons or bgs
- make all nodes or quest mobs drop shareable loot so there is no competition for them
- merge low-pop realms, create a couple of "special" low-pop realms players can be moved to if they so choose
- significantly increase the difficulty of levelling and dungeons, and I mean difficulty, not just lowering drop percentages of items
- increase the role of 'proving grounds' to make them more and more mandatory, every time you run through a proving ground you get a buff (say, lasting a day or two) and only with this buff you can PUG (raids or dungeons or bgs)
- any time you fly when you dismount you get a "can't pvp debuff" so you cannot attack players unless they attack you first

these IMHO would bring back more of a feeling of community and achievement to the game, OTOH I am sure they are still making money hand over fist with the current model so I doubt anything like this will happen, which is sad because there definitely was a period of time where wow was an incredible game to play.

You don't need to eat processed food AT ALL to eat a balanced plant-based diet, you can get everything you need from unprocessed foods just fine... yes, everybody going veggie will start with the processed foods for familiarity and ease of cooking, I of course did that myself, but you don't have to stay there if you don't want to.

It takes a while to retrain your tastebuds, of course, and it makes it next to impossible to eat out, this can be a deal breaker for some, but I have been eating plant-based whole foods for years and am doing just fine. It does take more planning but in general various combinations of a grain, beans, greens and veggies can give you what you need. The only thing you can't get on a purely plant-based diet is b12, and that's the only "supplement" I take, nothing else.

From my perspective the less labels one uses the better, in the end putting aside any ethical considerations (which people might or might not agree with) it is unarguably more environmental to eat lower on the food chain, so the more plant-based meals people eat the better for everybody: it is nice to see more effort being put towards simpler goals (like vegan before 6, meatless mondays, etc. etc.) to lower the impact our food has on the planet without being too black-or-white about it, this is also why I don't like the term "vegan" anymore as it has way too many judgemental overtones.

I personally eat plant-based 100% of the time, but I realize it's not for everybody (it is definitely difficult especially in the working environment where these days it seems "team lunches" are a mainstay of most jobs), this said IMHO it's not hard to lower the amount of animal and/or processed products you eat at least some of the time, and having an egg substitute that works exactly the same as "real" eggs is a good step in that direction (not to mention that folks allergic to eggs would sure be happier!).