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Dipping fried egg in a tiny bit of Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing tastes JUST LIKE hollandaise sauce! Yum!

Megan is very fond of her Miyako ceramic chefs knife. It has dulled over time. I’m having trouble finding someone that can sharpen a ceramic knife. I found a place in Marin but I don’t visit there often. Blah. I wrote Miyako for sharpening advice and they offered me a discount on a new knife and also said that Kyocera makes a home sharpener “…but we found it inconsistent”. Blah. Too much trouble. I’ll stick with steel knives and my Accusharp sharpener.

My friend Zee runs a project that is focused on connecting makers to people with disabilities to create open-source assistive technologies. They are putting plans online so anyone can 3D print their own AT devices! One of their flagship devices is an inexpensive, open-source, mouth controlled input device to operate a touchscreen device. Check out their website with many open-source designs: http://www.makersmakingchange.com/.

Are you a maker that wants to help people with disabilities? Sign up at http://www.makersmakingchange.com/, connect, and build useful stuff!

Last year I bought 6 Cree “True White” LED light bulbs. Over the last few months, 4 of them have burned out: not so good for something with a 5 year warranty. I wrote to them and they sent me upgraded replacements. Hurray for Cree!

That’s better than the 10-year warranty Calphalon pans I tried to return. They required that I mail them back. The $60 postage for UPS ground (and maybe $30 for USPS but I didn’t bother checking) would have cost more than the pans :-( So out on the street they went.

Berkeley is getting more and more smokey from the wildfires to the north. I put on a respirator while inside the house and my vague headache went away almost immediately. I think the family might go someplace outside the bay area this weekend.

I am sad to say that the home of my in-laws Walt and Gail in Santa Rosa was destroyed by the recent wildfires. All family members got out safely with just a car-load of their possessions. They are now spending time locally to regroup.

I expected to watch a snippet and smile. At the end of the 10 minute video, I feel transformed, reminded of the vastness of our world.

Joy!

An article titled  Johns Hopkins Researcher Releases Shocking Report On Flu Vaccines  made it around Facebook about how you shouldn’t get the flu vaccine for a variety of reasons. The article used several dubious pseudoscientific scare tactics but I kept reading. Way down the list, it hit on an idea that looks pretty important. I’ve done some research and I am surprised to say that, in my mind, the jury is still out on the usefulness of the flu vaccine for many people.

Short form:

The CDC (a usually reliable source) says that getting the flu vaccine each year will reduce your chance of getting the flu by about 50% and it will usually shorten any flu you do get. But then I found another usually reliable source (Cochrane) that says flu vaccines are not worthwhile unless you are sick or a youth between 2 and 18 years-old. Hmmm. Hmmmmmmmm. Cochrane didn’t find any real downside to the vaccine so if you’re worried for your long term health, getting it is still the safer bet.

Long form:

First, here is Snopes tearing apart the article I found, calling it “mostly false.” So that’s not a good start!

In the “Johns Hopkins” article, they write  “… a study by the Cochrane group studied hundreds of thousands of people and found it offered zero protection for those three things in the general community.” I tracked that study down  here   (no thanks to the author, they need to cite their references!!! grrr).  This large meta-analysis reported “The preventive effect of parenteral [injected or inhaled] inactivated influenza vaccine on healthy adults is small: at least 40 people would need vaccination to avoid one ILI [influenze like illness] case”

The main conclusion of this Cochrane-backed meta-analysis with lots of participants is that  getting the flu vaccine decreases an adult’s (18-65 year-old) chance of getting the flu by 1 in 40, or a measly 2.5%!  That’s not worth $20 and feeling yucky for a week!

I went looking for other Cochrane meta-analyses:
Children – The flu vaccine probably doesn’t help kids 0-2 years-old. The flu vaccine helps kids 2-18 years-old.
Elderly – They looked for research on flu vaccines for people over 65 years-old but found, astoundingly, very poor evidence of the  safety, efficacy or effectiveness of vaccines for this population!

So at this point it’s not looking good for the flu vaccine for anyone except kids aged 2-18. But the CDC reports the flu vaccine is quite effective! This article   reports that it is roughly 50% effective, and works pretty well across all age ranges. Googling “cdc influenza vaccine effectiveness” turns up reports each year of how the vaccine saved thousands of lives!

Is the flu vaccine valuable? Probably, maybe, no. I don’t know.

Recommendation for Compact Washer and Dryer.

We may be replacing our compact (24″ wide) stacked washer dryer very soon. We have a vent. Can you recommend any particular models?

I long for when I used to have a tiny apartment washing machine. That was a completely awesome appliance! But no use in looking back, I’m a family man now!