This month, I’m doing a little mini-series where I journal about Google Alerts that I get on asexuality.  Not sure that interests anyone, but for me it’s some harmless fun.

Just a few links this month.

Happy humans and the atheist ‘A’s; the symbolism of AHS+ | AHS+ Blog – I rather appreciate this tour through the many symbols adopted by atheists, humanists, and associated groups.  I think most of these are quite good, honestly, although that may just be because we selectively forget the bad ones.  For example, does anyone remember the symbol of the Rational Response Squad?  The less said about them, the better.

Why Scientists Know More About Sexy Plants | Rebecca Watson (text/video, 10 min) – I’m fascinated by the time lapse video of Watson’s moving houseplant.  There’s also discussion of scientists’ bias towards plants and animals that look more interesting.

Vaccines: A Measured response | H Bomberguy (video, 1:44 hours) – The video walks through the story of how the modern anti-vaccine movement began.  It starts out with a single low-quality study by (former) doctor Andrew Wakefield, making a connection between autism and the MMR vaccine.  But what initially just looks like bad science turns out to be way more fraudulent and malicious.  I remember hearing about Andrew Wakefield back when the story broke, but I never had the full story spelled out for me.  The interesting thing is, since news of Andrew Wakefield’s fraud was primarily covered in the UK, vaccine hesitancy in the UK is lower than in other countries.  I suppose here in the US we’ve absorbed vaccine hesitancy through osmosis, with few people understanding its origins in a fraudulent doctor.