In case you missed Newsweek’s brilliant “Why Health Advice on ‘Oprah’ Could Make You Sick” article last month, here’s an excerpt:

In 2007, Oprah invited Jenny McCarthy, the Playboy model and actress, to describe her struggle to find help for her young son. When he was 2½, Evan suffered a series of seizures. A neurologist told McCarthy he was autistic. “So what do you think triggered the autism?” Oprah asked McCarthy. “I know you have a theory.”

McCarthy is certain that her son contracted autism from the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination he received as a baby. She told Oprah that the morning he went in for his checkup, her instincts told her not to allow the doctor to give him the vaccine. “I said to the doctor, I have a very bad feeling about this shot. This is the autism shot, isn’t it? And he said no, that is ridiculous; it is a mother’s desperate attempt to blame something on autism. And he swore at me.” The nurse gave Evan the shot. “And not soon thereafter,” McCarthy said, “boom, soul gone from his eyes.”

Read the rest of the article here. Good for Newsweek to call out Oprah on these issues. Next to the Glenn Beck program on Fox News, this is the epitome of ignorant brainwashing. What the heck happened to Oprah?

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Hey all, as you’ve probably noticed my blog posts are becoming less and less frequent. I’m very busy with school and volunteering, but a lot of my time has also been devoted to guerrilla marketing a pet project of mine called Cinephile Magazine. I’ve just completed designing a new revision of the site, and we’ve also started a podcast called Cinephile Spoilers. We have three episodes under our belt and will continue to release a new episode every week on the latest movie release(s). You can follow Cinephile Magazine on Twitter at twitter.com/cinephilemag, and subscribe to Cinephile Spoilers via iTunes here.

So while I’ll continue to keep this blog live, don’t expect updates to come every day as they once were. In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/literallyfresh, or at Cinephile Magazine occasionally contributing reviews, but mainly behind the scenes tweaking the site, editing and publishing reviews, and producing, editing, and opining on our podcast.

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I finally sprung for the Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player (horrible name), and I have to say I’m very pleased. The lack of WiFi or ethernet port doesn’t bother me as I’ll eventually hook up a Drobo or NAS drive to it via USB. This device has played absolutely everything I’ve thrown at it, including 1080p MKV videos. There is currently no cover art support for MKV or AVI files, but I’ve been told that Western Digital is working on that on an upcoming firmware update.

Browsing photos, music, and video files is a breeze and quite snappy. Subtitle support works right out of the box. The interface is reminiscent of the Playstation 3 and is very easy to navigate with the included remote control (comes with batteries!).

I was previously using my PC with TVersity software to stream content to my XBOX 360 over WiFi. Large HD files would choke and stutter, and having to leave my PC on while watching movies was costly. So all in all this was a great purchase ($149.99) and should pay for itself in no time. Highly recommended.

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