Hoop Dreams

Last week I shared about the pedestal table I found at my local resale shop. While there I also scored an entire bag of wooden embroidery hoops (6 round and 1 oval) for just a few dollars! I've got them hanging in my craft room; they look almost sculptural hanging there, like a work of art. Maybe I should install a series of these in a museum...

Journal Publication

I've got another publication to share with you!  The article, Disparities in health care utilization among Latino children suffering from asthma in California, came out yesterday in the Journal of Pediatric Health, Medicine and Therapeutics.

Junk Science Isn't a Victimless Crime

Taking a break from my regular trivial postings to share this bit of news with you...

Junk Science Isn't a Victimless Crime

January 11, 2011
Vaccines don't cause autism—and there was never any proof that they do. Too bad kids had to die while we figured that out.

By PAUL A. OFFIT

 In 1998, a British surgeon named Andrew Wakefield published a paper claiming that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine might cause autism. To support his case, Dr. Wakefield reported the stories of eight children who had developed symptoms of autism within one month of receiving MMR. He proposed that measles vaccine virus travels to the intestine, causes intestinal damage, and allows for brain-damaging proteins to enter children's blood streams.

The problem with Dr. Wakefield's study—published in the Lancet, a leading medical journal—was that it didn't study the question. To prove his hypothesis, he should have examined the incidence of autism in hundreds of thousands of children who had or hadn't received MMR. This kind of study has now been performed 14 times on several continents by many investigators. The studies have shown that MMR doesn't cause autism.

As several different investigations—summed up in a British Medical Journal (BMJ) editorial this month—have shown, not a single aspect of Dr. Wakefield's notion of how MMR causes autism has proven correct. He wasn't just wrong, he was spectacularly wrong. Moreover, some of the children in his report had developed symptoms of autism before they had received the vaccine—and others never actually had autism.
In addition, as journalist Brian Deer found, Dr. Wakefield received tens of thousands of pounds from a personal-injury lawyer in the midst of suing pharmaceutical companies over MMR. (After Mr. Deer's discovery, Dr. Wakefield admitted to receiving the money.) Last year, when the Lancet found out about the money, it retracted his paper. But it was far too late.

Dr. Wakefield's paper created a firestorm. Thousands of parents in the United Kingdom and Ireland chose not to vaccinate their children. Hundreds of children were hospitalized and four killed by measles. In 2008, for the first time in 14 years, measles was declared endemic in England and Wales.
Dr. Wakefield's claim sparked a general distrust of vaccines. In recent years—as more parents chose not to vaccinate their children—epidemics of measles, mumps, bacterial meningitis and whooping cough swept across the United States. The whooping cough epidemic currently raging in California is larger than any since 1955.

Although it's easy to blame Andrew Wakefield, he's not the only one with dirty hands. The editor of the Lancet, Richard Horton, sent Dr. Wakefield's paper to six reviewers, four of whom rejected it. That should have been enough to preclude publication. But Mr. Horton thought the paper was provocative and published it anyway.

Many others in the media showed similar poor judgment, proclaiming Dr. Wakefield's paper an important study even though it was merely a report of eight children that, at best, raised an untested hypothesis.

Meanwhile, public-health officials and scientists were slow to explain in clear, emphatic terms that Dr. Wakefield's hypothesis didn't make a bit of sense.
Even today, important voices aren't drawing the right conclusions. The BMJ, for example, wrote in its editorial that "clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare." But it's not Dr. Wakefield's lapses that matter—it's that his hypothesis was so wrong.

Even if Dr. Wakefield hadn't been fraudulent, his hypothesis would have been no less incorrect or damaging. Indeed, by continuing to focus on Dr. Wakefield's indiscretions rather than on the serious studies that have proved him wrong, we only elevate his status among antivaccine groups as a countercultural hero.

The American astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan once wrote that, "Extraordinary claims should be backed by extraordinary evidence." Dr. Wakefield made an extraordinary claim backed by scant evidence. Undoubtedly, bad science will continue to be submitted for publication. Next time, one can only hope that journal editors and the media will be far more circumspect.

 Dr. Offit, the chief of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, is the author of "Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All" (Basic Books, 2011).

On a Pedestal

We have an area in our living room with a bay window. It sits empty most of the year with the exception of a Christmas tree in December. I've had an image in my mind of a nice little sitting area, with two upholstered armchairs, and a round glass-topped pedestal table tucked between them. Perfect for playing Scrabble on.

Picture something like this (sans prairie grass)

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or this set from Young House Love, minus the modern chairs

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or a scaled down version of this

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As with  most of my design or craft ideas, I had a pretty specific image in mind. Let's just say I'm stubborn about my artistic visions. I searched online, on Craigslist, and at Goodwill, but never had any luck. Then, a few months ago, I found the exact table I was looking for in a catalog! Isn't it pretty?

Unfortunately, it was $200, not including the cost of shipping. And buying a glass top would add even more to the cost. So I just stored it in my mental catalog of decor ideas and kept looking.

Fast forward to last week when I went into my local resale shop looking for a cake dome. I got out of the car and there it was in front of the store. I went straight to the counter and told them very politely "I would like to buy that round pedestal table, please," all the while looking over my shoulder to make sure no other shoppers were eyeing MY table. And did I mention that it came with a glass top? For $25, I was pretty darn excited about my find! I will probably paint it white but haven't quite decided yet.

Now to find two armchairs...

Chickpea & Tofu Curry with Quinoa

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I usually follow recipes for most of my cooking, but came up with this one on my own. According to Zach, it's one of the best dishes I've made without a recipe...I'll take that as a compliment. This dish is quick and easy to prepare, and uses basic staples such as canned tomatoes and chickpeas. It's also vegetarian, gluten free, and high in protein.

Ingredients
Sesame oil
1 can (15 oz) chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes
1 pkg (16 oz) tofu, cubed
Tikka masala paste
Salt, pepper, and curry, to taste
1 cup quinoa, rinsed

Bring two cups lightly salted water to a boil. Add the quinoa. Reduce heat and cook covered for 20 minutes.
In a medium pot, heat a small amount of sesame oil over medium heat. Add the tofu and 2 spoonfuls of tikka masala paste and cook for a few minutes. Add the chickpeas and diced tomatoes. Season with salt, pepper, and curry. Cook until heated through.

Serve the curry mixture on top of the quinoa.

Serves 4.

About the Ingredients

Quinoa is a grain-like crop, closely related to species such as beets and spinach. Quinoa has high protein content and contains a balanced set of essential amino acids. It's a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten-free and easy to digest.

Tofu is a very good source of protein, specifically soy protein. It's also high in iron, while low in calories, sodium and fat.
  
Chickpeas are a good source of  folate and protein and are high in dietary fiber. Chickpeas are low in fat and high in minerals such as phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc.

I've also shared this recipe on Allrecipes.com.

Beverage Tags

Etsy has a wonderful feature called Alchemy. Buyers can post requests for custom handmade items, and then sellers bid on the opportunity to make the item. As much as I'd like to branch out into every corner of the craft world, I just don't have the money or the space for all the tools and supplies I'd need. So when I wanted to create ceramic beverage tags, I turned to Etsy Alchemy. It's like having your own personal genie. I dream up an item, make a wish on Alchemy, and within hours there's a whole slew of sellers ready to do my bidding with bids.

I wanted labeled tags to go along with my beverage servers, that way guests would know what they were drinking. Of course they could try the age old method of actually tasting the drink, or I could inform them of their options. But tags are prettier...and I love labeling things.

Along with a detailed description, I included this illustration with my Alchemy request:

I chose to work with Wise Impressions, who offered a very fair price. Here's the end result:

Beverage Servers

Punch bowl vs. beverage server?
I'm definitely on the beverage server side of this debate.

Argument # 1: You can put beverages other than punch in a server. Sure a punch bowl can hold any liquid, but do you really want to be that hostess who filled her punch bowl with water? A server filled with water, on the other hand, looks classy.

Argument #2: Servers have spigots. We've all been there; the clumsy guest who spilled punch all over the tablecloth while trying to use that enormous ladle to pour a drink into their tiny plastic cup.

Argument #3: Servers have lids. Very useful for keeping out things like sneezes and whatever else might make its way into your punch bowl.

These, among other reasons, are why I set out to find a set of beverage servers. I knew I wanted something with a stand or pedestal, but the majority of these were pretty expensive. Then I had an idea:

I have to give credit to my four sources of inspiration: Pottery Barn, Young House Love for their pet feeding station idea, Target, and Zach, who always ensures the structural integrity of my ideas.

I purchased two inexpensive servers at Target and Zach helped me build stands for them. We used crown molding blocks for the legs and assembled the rest from scrap wood we had on hand. Zach used a router to give the top a nice edge, and then I gave both stands a couple coats of white semi-gloss paint.

I found the little white dishes at Goodwill, and they help to catch any drips.

Did you spy the beverage tags in the picture above? More on those tomorrow...