Bill Maher does not understand how vaccines work at all. I was watching (why, I still don’t know) that episode where he talked about them, and I terrified my poor cats by screaming at the television until I felt a little better. He thinks vaccines don’t let the immune system work when they actually stimulate the…

It’s dead easy and really delicious. I don’t even have a yogurt maker. You just need a thermometer, some milk, starter (either cultures or a tablespoon or two of commercial yogurt), a container and a container. I stuck mine in the oven (not on, just preheated a smidge to take away the chill and then switched off) to…

I love Fage. The only yogurt I love more is homemade, but since dairy and I had a painful breakup and are now only occasional hookups, I don’t make it anymore unless I’m taking it somewhere.

I generally think: http://www.wvc.org/images/session… as a good general reference for both cats and dogs and this (http://jfm.sagepub.com/content/15/9/7…) for cats. It’s good in that it actually sets out that revaccination should occur no more than every three years for core vaccines like FVRCP(except where required…

It’s so funny that human doctors get so much crap because, to me, the human guidelines seem reasonable and evidence-based compared to the shit show that is the pet recommendations. An initial series plus a booster and then revax based on actual duration of immunity seems like an enlightened Nirvana that many are just…

I’ve been bitten by dogs in exam rooms and have spouted fewer profanities than the cop who stopped me for not stopping for long enough at a sign (he admitted I stopped, but he insisted I should have stopped for longer).

The people I know who’ve done have actually kept their names legally on their checks and official documents, but just use their husband’s name socially like on invitations and Christmas cards. No matter what, there’s going to be confusion somewhere whether it’s with the kids, the licensing boards or wherever. I do…

Yeah, then definitely change it. The big advice engaged people got was to change it before taking boards if you wanted to change at all, and make sure the one you wanted was on the license and the diploma.

I don’t know. Most people that I know (Vet) have kept their maiden names professionally or were married when we graduated/ got licensed. I’d imagine you’d have to fax documents, pay fees, etc. to get your license changed. I know one person who is called Dr. MaidenName professionally, but socially is Mrs. HisLastname.…

I know. My sister and my former SIL were in a big hurry to change theirs, but I can’t imagine changing mine (even without the hassle of trying to change all the regular paperwork plus my professional license crap). I don’t actually want to get married, so maybe, that has something to do with it, but really, even when…

Yeah, people use the street, and it only a little sense when you’re having a discussion with someone who has never been around a toddler and says things like its never okay to grab them, you just have to use words. In those cases, I offer to see about getting them a loan of a two or three-year old for a day. But while…

Yeah, those dissents are weird right? If you read them after Kennedy’s, frankly gorgeous, opinion, they just seem flat and strange. Like Roberts and Alito just go on about how the lawyers just ruined everything because it should have been left up for a vote, and Scalia goes on and on about it makes no never mind to…

I’m reading it now too, and it’s kind of beautiful in more than one way so far. Kennedy and his clerks and everyone else who worked on it definitely went for the poetry of thing in addition to the legal reasoning.

When I suggest to Cara that to trust a man, she might have to revise an old and stubborn idea of hers — that women are perennially troubled and therefore only women will accept her — her smile says she concedes the point.

A lady in front of me at Target with 2 antsy toddlers, tried to politely interrupt the credit card pitch, but the cashier said she had to say the whole thing or she’d get in trouble. She said it while the customer tried to keep her kids from melting down and then said it again for me and for everyone else in that…

It’s not illegal in the U.S., and some fertility clinics advertise their success rates with it and even cater to people from overseas who want to do it but live in places where its illegal or legal only for medical reasons.

There are a couple ways to do it. One is prefertilization and is done by flow cytometry to sort by weight and separate X from Y sperm, but that’s not the most reliable method. A more surefire way to do it is to fertilize embryos as usual with IVF techniques and then to test them before implantation and only implant…

I have none either, but I have a niece who just had one, and I went to preserve family harmony. The whole thing was kind of surreal.

Fun times. Some of my relatives are virtually indistinct from fundamentalist evangelicals with the homeschooling, moments of personal revelation, and self righteousness except that they are Catholic. Some of them even moved to that pizza-funded Catholic town., but all of them are very quiet on the subject of the Pope.…

As someone with crazy right-wind conservative Catholic relatives, I feel almost giddy every time he says things like this. I don’t agree with all of his positions, but I love that he actually takes the whole sanctity of life thing far beyond a narrow need to police women’s bodies. I’ve heard people say that he’s an…