I have to admit, although I support vaccination this one confuses me

Hence why I said double check if the FDA claims it safe - if they claim it to be dangerous then they're probably right though.

While this helps protect the unvaccinated, i'm wondering - if I choose to vaccinate but everyone else around me chooses not to, am I in danger?

If science says it's safe then it probably is, if the FDA says it's dangerous then it probably is, if the FDA says it's safe then double check with the science.

Why did you ask "are you vaccinated?" only to complain when people answer "yes".

Adults choosing not to vaccinate themselves is stupid but fine, adults choosing not to vaccinate their children is neglect - pure and simple.

I consider it a parental duty to look after one's children using all means at your disposal - modern medical science has given us the ability to prevent a whole pile of diseases that could otherwise be deadly and it's often very very simple to take advantage of such treatment.

It's forgivable to not vaccinate where you don't know better (despite all the public education on the subject), or where you have been deceived by bad science or where you lack the resources and it's literally a choice between food and drink or medical care........ but at least for anyone reading this i'm betting you have the ability to read up on the subject and that you have the financial resources.

There is perhaps a bit of paranoia involved with vaccines as many governments make it mandatory, and in this community in particular that won't sit well. I would say that government mandate does not transform a good idea into a bad idea - vaccinating your kids is still a duty even if the government mandates it, and vaccinating yourself is still a damn good idea.

Vaccines have side effects in a minority of patients - that's true. (Autism isn't one of them by the way)

The diseases they prevent have some rather nastier effects which are far more deadly in a majority of patients.


Do the maths.

You could give a bunch of links - would they be good science or just more conspiracy theories about vaccines?

To be clear, there are appropriate uses for psychiatric meds, but greater care needs to be taken with developing brains and some are known for causing later problems - as with all medicine it's a tradeoff between therapeutic effects and side effects.

No problem, looking out for fellow autistics is something i've been doing actively for years

True in this case but not in general:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/lw/reversed_stupidity_is_not_intelligence/

Something that constantly pops up from newbies - is bitcoin itself a scam somehow?

My very sarcastic answer - of course it is.

Here's the plan:

First, enable people to buy and sell BTC at prices determined by the market on exchange sites
Second, enable people to exchange BTC for goods and services
Third, enable some merchants to cash out their BTC back for fiat again while enjoying the lack of chargebacks and other advantages
Fourth,
Fifth, profit (and loss for all those silly people who purchased or provided goods and services in the free market)


Question here is what the "" is.

Newbies making the scam claim have a vague sense that someone is profiting and one day will reveal it was all a scam, something along the lines of this:

1 - Satoshi premines a pile of BTC and keeps hold of it
2 - BTC grows in value as people find it useful
3 - Satoshi goes "ya ha! now I can reveal my evil scam by getting rich off my innovation"
4 - Satoshi puts BTC on the exchange markets and sells it to willing buyers, thus profiting more - either dumping all at once and crashing the value or selling off a bit at a time
5 - In order to maximise profits, Satoshi chooses to sell off a bit at a time, again to willing buyers at market rates

If Satoshi is a scammer, so is anyone who ever got rich off a new and useful invention.

So is the "they" if not Satoshi?

Bitcoin exchanges and services to move funds into them (*cough*)?
What's the scam there exactly? "We'll provide a service to hook up buyers and sellers and will profit from this nicely" doesn't strike me as very deceptive.

Bitcoin-accepting merchants?
"A ha! Now we've encouraged you to come into the bitcoin scam by investing into bitcoin and paying them to us so we carry the risk of bitcoin itself being insecure or suffering a price crash, behold our evil scheme"
"Now we have you, our scam has worked and we have provided you with goods and services while you gave us worthless bitcoins, err......"

Miners?
Miner1: "All we have to do is invest in hardware and electricity costs and wait and soon the newbies will buy from us and we'll be rich! mwahahahaha"
Miner2: "Yeah, we could be rich or we could lose loads if this thing doesn't work out"
Miner1: "Shit, you're right - quickly, encourage a useful market for buying goods and services in bitcoin so that it has actual value for users"

Anyone who thinks bitcoin is a scam, here's a real scam:
Please send 1BTC to 14tu6Uvj6LAaK1cngz8BpRtzjCy6cm9n9g
If you send to this address and post the transaction ID here together with your own address and ask for it back, I promise I will not pay it back
(for those in on the scam - the scam is that I will in fact send it back if asked to, how very evil of me)

If your wife chose to vaccinate your child and you did not, your wife took the decision to listen to the actual science and protect your child from a preventable disease.
The vaccination theory started by andrew wakefield has been completely and utterly debunked by now, so there's really no excuse for not vaccinating.

If he had a brain tumour they would have performed an MRI or CAT to find it and then surgically removed it - but any brain tumour being removed will have the side effect of removing some healthy tissue, there may even be neural circuits inside the tumour that were still being used. In a young brain, especially a nontypical brain (autism+ADD), the potential problems are multiplied.

There is some good news though - young brains are more neuroplastic, meaning they can more easily rewire themselves and self-repair with the right support under the expert care of a neurologist and psychiatrist - this is what is needed, not cannabis.

Best approach is this:

• Professional support from both a neurologist and psychiatrist
  I can't stress this enough - and they need to work closely together to best help, the good news here is that there should already be a consultant on his case due to the recent surgery, I would ask them for referral to a good psychiatrist for outpatient treatment
• Avoid unprescribed psychoactive substances
  This would include cannabis but also includes things such as caffeine or even certain antihistamines (allergy pills) - it's best to mess with his neurochemistry as little as possible, especially with any substance that carries a risk of addiction or psychosis - this ties in heavily with the above
• Maximise sensory input of a tolerable nature
  Emphasis on tolerable - i'm autistic myself (aspergers) and know just how nightmarish sensory overload can be, for a child it must be even worse so I urge you to avoid risking sensory overload, at the same time you need to provide a stimulating environment to help encourage growth and repair
• Diet
  Make sure the diet is high in protein and omega 3 in order to give the raw fuel needed to encourage neurogenesis (growth of new neurons) - there's tons of evidence on omega3 in particular being incredibly safe and effective for behavioural issues in children too, find one of those children's orange flavour chewy supplements and give it daily
• Exercise - but not forced
  Running especially helps production of endorphins and can make anyone better able to cope with stress - but only if it isn't forced, any kind of cardio which isn't forced could be beneficial here so long as it's fun

As you've mentioned autism, here's a few "treatments" and organisations to avoid like the plague:
Autism speaks
Defeat autism now
Generation rescue
Chelation
MB12 shots
ABA

I would also caution against ritalin or any of the other older ADD meds - ask the psychiatrist about atomoxetine and other atypical ADD medications - the older stimulant based medications while effective are known to cause memory problems later in life while the newer ones do not. Don't cut off any meds suddenly that are already prescribed though, ask the psychiatrist first.

Go to our site and select walmart as the "Pay from" then fill out the other details, it's fairly self-explanatory and you will end up with a slip you can take into walmart where you can make payment at the financial services desk.

I'm not a lawyer, but it would seem to me that you may be able to take action against bad debtors by claiming breach of contract - they have obtained something of value from you and violated the contract to repay. You should be entitled to a repayment in either the current market value in legal tender (this is what legal tender actually means - good for all debts) or the original amount owed - the latter would be called "specific performance".

Talk to a lawyer to do it properly.

This

THC is a bad bad idea for anyone with a risk of psychosis and even worse in such a young child.

My advice would be an anti-psychotic - these drugs are specifically DESIGNED for things like this.

Sidetrack I know, but......


Here's a thought that's more "out there" - there's been talk of self-sustaining agents for a long time, with the right sort of setup an AGI could sustain itself using this strategy and actually run without human oversight, it could be setup to interact with hosting providers that do not accept bitcoin by sending wire transfers using exchanges and thus interact with the mainstream economy at the same time.

It might even be possible to wrap up the AI inside a corporation whose sole purpose is giving the AI legal identity with the shareholders all holding nonvoting shares and the articles of organisation giving decision-making power to the automated systems (the AI). Once that's been done, this corporation can itself own stock in others - an AI could legally acquire controlling interest in any company and direct it.

I'm bored, let's start skynet.

Mainstream nonprofits routinely use endowment funds for precisely this - take a big lump sum, invest it into various securities and use the returns to fund recurring expenses.

Theoretically, it could be completely automated - take donations and automatically buy whatever securities have the highest dividend payouts - split between at least 2 for risk hedging.

Withdraw 50% on a regular basis into a wallet somewhere, pay out of that wallet to your faucet, use the other 50% to buy more securities for growth.

If the faucet account is running too low, liquidate some holdings at GLBSE up to a certain configured limit and warn human operators that more fundraising is required.



Obviously there's lots of tweaks to be made and human oversight can't be completely eliminated, but you can go a long way with the above kind of scheme.