Idiot Anti-Vaxxers Can't Believe People Are So 'Vicious' About Them Being Idiots

• Like it's not bad enough that some trendy dumb parents are refusing to vaccinate their children, and helping to make all-but-extinct diseases like measles ALL THE RAGE. Because yeah, that's bad enough. But now they're complaining people who actually believe in science are being SO MEAN about it:

  Members of the anti-vaccine movement said the public backlash had terrified many parents. “People are now afraid they’re going to be jailed,” said Barbara Loe Fisher, the president of the National Vaccine Information Center, a clearinghouse for resisters. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing. It’s gotten so out of hand, and it’s gotten so vicious.”

  Wahhhh. It sure is unfair that parents who refuse to believe in science, and are endangering their children and their entire communities, might suffer any backlash for, like, doing that. Like this parent, who doesn't understand the point of so-called "medicine," apparently:

  “There is absolutely no reason to get the shot,” said Crystal McDonald, whose 16-year-old daughter was one of 66 students sent home from Palm Desert High School for the next two weeks because they did not have full measles immunizations.

  After researching the issue and reading information from a national anti-vaccine group, Ms. McDonald said she and her husband, a chiropractor, decided to raise their four children without vaccines. She said they ate well and had never been to the doctor, and she insisted that her daughter was healthier than many classmates. But when the school sent her home with a letter, Ms. McDonald’s daughter was so concerned about missing two weeks of Advanced Placement classes that she suggested simply getting a measles inoculation.

  “I said, ‘No, absolutely not,’ “ Ms. McDonald said. “I said, ‘I’d rather you miss an entire semester than you get the shot.'"

  But hey, if those kinds of parents want to have organic gluten-free unique snowflake children, that's their right, and they should be allowed to believe whatever they want, even if they are totally and completely wrong:

  Kelly McMenimen, a Lagunitas parent, said she “meditated on it a lot” before deciding not to vaccinate her son Tobias, 8, against even “deadly or deforming diseases.” She said she did not want “so many toxins” entering the slender body of a bright-eyed boy who loves math and geography.

  Tobias has endured chickenpox and whooping cough, though Ms. McMenimen said the latter seemed more like a common cold. She considered a tetanus shot after he cut himself on a wire fence but decided against it: “He has such a strong immune system.”

  Aw. Cute! She meditated on it, then decided that since her kid loves math so much, it's A-OK to assume his super-strong immune system can withstand anything, and therefore, all the other kids and their parents should be just fine with that too. What could possibly go wrong? Besides, you know, bringing back an epidemic of measles and polio and whatever other diseases we were done with in the last millennium. But besides that ...

• With the first caucus of 2016 only a year away (yes, really), it's time to start taking this whole Which Republican Is Going To Get To Lose To Hillary thing seriously. So keep your eye on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. He could totally be the one to save the party. Or at least that's what Iowans think. Or at least, that's what they think for now:  

  Presidential stage newcomer Scott Walker, the conservative reform pit bull who inspired death threats from the left, has become the one to watch in the race for the Republican nomination a year out from the Iowa caucuses.

  At 15 percentage points, he leads a big, tightly packed field of potential contenders in a new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll of likely Republican caucusgoers. The caucuses are scheduled for Feb. 1, 2016.

• A great read about what life, and electricity, is like in not-U.S. America. Like in Nigeria, for example:

  WE call it light; “electricity” is too sterile a word, and “power” too stiff, for this Nigerian phenomenon that can buoy spirits and smother dreams. Whenever I have been away from home for a while, my first question upon returning is always: “How has light been?” The response, from my gateman, comes in mournful degrees of a head shake.

  Bad. Very bad. [...]

  Like other privileged Nigerians who can afford to, I have become a reluctant libertarian, providing my own electricity, participating in a precarious frontier spirit. But millions of Nigerians do not have this choice. They depend on the malnourished supply from their electricity companies.

• Let's have some dinosaur news, shall we?

  Paleontologists have discovered a 50-foot "dragon" dinosaur species in China that may have roamed the earth 160 million years ago during the Late Jurassic period. [...]

  The dinosaur is the youngest addition to the mamenchisaurid group, which is only found in Asia. The discovery suggests that there may be other species of long-necks within the genus from different continents.

  "Qijianglong shows that long-necked dinosaurs diversified in unique ways in Asia during Jurassic times -- something very special was going on in that continent," said Miyashita.

  "Nowhere else we can find dinosaurs with longer necks than those in China. The new dinosaur tells us that these extreme species thrived in isolation from the rest of the world."

• Our friends at Happy Nice Time People have some Very Important News for you about how "sluttery is contagious," per America's Most Moral Reality TV Family, the Duggars:

  Apparently there was no cootie shot strong enough for Jill Duggar of19 Kidsfame, who wanted to use her midwifery skills to help big brother Josh’s wife Anna’s younger sister bring a little baby into the world, but Ma and Pa Duggar said no.

  Why? Because the little hussy is unmarried. [...]

  Can you imagine our sweet little Jill exposed to a festering va-jay-jay of sin? She might catch the cocklust! Or AIDS! Or worst of all, see that unmarried sex can still lead to a loving mother and healthy child!

• For the record, some of us would not know how to boil water if it weren't for Chris Kimball, founder and editor-in-chief ofCooks Illustrated. It is The Best, if you want to learn how to cook food and why to cook food and do you really need to buy that super-expensive fancy kitchen knife? (No, you do not not. The cheap one is better anyway. Thanks, Chris Kimball!) That said, this, from Mallory Ortberg, is genius. Geen-yus:

  Each issue of Cook’s Illustrated begins with a folksy letter with news from down on the old Vermont farm by founder and editor-in-chief Chris Kimball. These charming, old-timey updates remind us all of a slower, simpler way of life, where neighbors stop to swap plowing tips out by the trading post and run when they see Old Henry coming. Who’s Old Henry? Why, what a question, stranger. Old Henry knows who you are. That much is certain. Old Henry knows who you are just fine.

  The Toast has received an advance copy of Mr. Kimball’s most recent letter, which we are proud to publish in full here.