h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One of the best cinemas in Houston was already closed before I ever went there. When I was just out of high school, I discovered the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I saw it at a cinema outside a mall in SW Houston (Almeda Mall). But the cast was originally from The Alabama Theater. They had been displaced when the classic old cinema closed its doors. The Alabama had been converted into a Book Stop. It was still pretty cool as the stage area and sloping floors still remained.

Now it's a Trader Joe's.
http://www.google.com/maps/@29.7394062,-95.4106638,3a,75y,246.85h,94.76t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4jSfju-Sfec4_ot4XxRleA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

The Good ol' days?

I doubt there ever were good ol' days. Just different.

As the saying goes, 'Things are more like they are now than they ever used to be'.

I seem to remember more of the unpleasant aspects like the power cuts, the General Strike, the winter of '67.

However I do remember some things that I'd consider good.

No stupid health and safety rules for children so we could climb trees, make go-karts out of old pram bases and ride them on the road, make dens on old building sites, play on the swings, slides and umbrella roundabouts without the safety police shouting at us.

Children making their own pleasures with little or no technology needed.

The threepenny rush on Saturday morning at the cinema, and trying to get in to the cinema to see an 18 certificate rudey film when only 14, no buckets of popcorn so visitors actually watched the film.

Proper school uniforms, and walking to school unaccompanied (which in my case was about a mile). being affordable, but it was still more than a packet of cigarettes.

Getting into trouble and getting a cuff around the ear from the copper before being taken home and getting another cuff from my parents.

I think that will do for now.



MMF

One day folks will consider these to be the good ol' days. You know, back when there were great cities on the coasts. When there were so many different species. Back when there weren't the radioactive zones.

Thanks for the GOOGLE LINK Baron Grim it adds a lot more to the post, that looks a very elegant building it is good to see it preserved

" when there were great cities on the coasts. When there were so many different species. Back when there weren't the radioactive zones" [Baron Grim]

I'm picturing radioactive cities filled with lots of radioactive animals.

Why do I suddenly have a yen for something barbecued?

One of the odd things happening around Pripyat is that the leaf litter isn't decaying. It seems many microbes and fungi were wiped out after Chernobyl. The animals are "thriving" but mostly because the place is abandoned by humans. Fertility rates are low and abnormalities are high, of course.

A post-radioactive gay-90s song?



Won't you come with me, Lucille,
Down to merry Chernobyl?
Down the doroga of zhizn we'll fly
Glowing like suns, oh you and I.

Clouds of mushrooms we will pass,
breathing radioactive gas.
You can come as far as you like with me,
Down in merry Chernobyl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFruHQJeaRg

what MMF said.... except for the bit about beer and cigarettes... - I'm not quite old enough to remember that price differnce!

Back to that same time that I mentioned earlier - as a very junior NCO . . .

A pay raise from $625 per month to $675 (375 GBP to 405) was huge. And even with that, I always had plenty for smokes and brews. I clearly recall one pub lunch (a nearly daily affair) when I declared that I would quit smoking when a pack hit $1 . . . And the next week, when the price became $1.05 . . . "Yup, I'll definitely give them up when they hit $2."

Here is an image posted to Reddit captioned, "Remember the good old days before vaccines ruined our children?"

http://imgur.com/i92vgnv.jpg

Autism Spectrum disorders may have more to do with increase d incidence of Caesarean Section births than it does with vaccination. Just sayin'.

Could very well be since autism spectrum disorders have bugg'rall to do with vaccinations.

Some studies suggest that Caesarean Section deliveries deprive newborns of essential microbes from their mothers.

The anti-vax movement started with some study as well. I'll reserve judgement until the experts weigh in.

The experts, as usual, will have oceans of data to sift through.

I would just as soon have people do things that might help and probably won't do any harm. Inoculation protects more than just the individuals who experience it. It also protects people who come in contact with them, and who would be harmed if a noninoculated person caught a disease and passed it on. The public good needs to be part of the discussion. It isn't just individual rights that matter.

My youngest sister cannot build an immunity to rubella, which may be why she was sterilised. She had rubella three times, but regretted the sterilisation and would, I think, have preferred to have children. Pets now fill that void.

Immunisation is something I am passionate about. I am against the global world of Microsoft, but support the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation for campaigning to eradicate Malaria.

May it be the second disease after Smallpox to disappear.

MMF

My parents were against immunisation and we were limited to the obligatory ones (only polio in those days, as far as I recall, and smallpox if you left the country in about 1974). We went through the usual illnesses of measles, chicken pox., etc. Neither I nor my children have ever had scarlet fever, although it was often about in their kindergarten days. I never got mumps even though I was sleeping in the same room as my sister when she had it.

I had German measles (rubella) twice, but I was told there are two kinds, and I went on to have 3 children, one of whom had German measles himself in babyhood while he was still fed entirely on breast milk. No one mentioned sterilisation - heaven forbid!

Nowadays, and when my 3 were small in the 80s, there were far more compulsory vaccinations. After GB's experience, I would still be careful with them.

A flu jab certainly makes me ill. They seem to get quite a lot of people that way. Without it I don't have any trouble - love the winter!

Er - ..... where were we? Useless facts. Well, all that rambling is useless to everyone really, except my own family. In fact, I probably won't even post it.......

I had the usual childhood diseases, but it was the fifties. They didn't even *have* vaccines against them yet. But polio was important, and you needed protection against it. I knew someone who actually got it. Likewise smallpox. If they can tackle things like malaria and AIDS, that would be great.

Maybe there should be a middle ground?

I would think it is very hard to quantify vaccine versus disease.

Obviously the number of people being affected by life threatening viruses is a known, but what must be more difficult is to calculate how many lives are saved, and people protected, by immunisation who would otherwise add to those statistics. I believe that since the MMR brouhaha and a proportion of parents opting not to give their children the vaccination, the number of measles cases has risen.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/outbreak-of-measles-declared-in-london-after-spate-of-cases-a3236556.html

I appreciate that reactions to vaccines can happen, but by not having them, the effects of the disease are often worse. Also, although a non-vaccinated person may not experience the effects of the disease they could be a carrier and so pass it on to others.

This was noticed in London with Eastern Europeans having TB and transmitting it to the homeless, causing a spike in incidences.

However, I am unsure whether compulsory vaccination, as I believe was performed in Europe after WWII with TB, is something to be recommended.

MMF

Compulsory *anything* will draw opposition, I'm afraid.