Thursday, April 26, 2007

Great News from Medicine

Findings described in a new study by Stanford scientists may be the first step toward a major revolution in human regenerative medicine—a future where advanced organ damage can be repaired by the body itself. In the May 2007 issue of The FASEB Journal, researchers show that a human evolutionary ancestor, the sea squirt, can correct abnormalities over a series of generations, suggesting that a similar regenerative process might be possible in people.

“We hope the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon will ultimately lead to new insights regarding the potential of cells and tissues to be reprogrammed and regenerate compromised organs in humans,” said Ayelet Voskoboynik, Ph.D., of Stanford University and first author of the study.

Missing limbs, scarred hearts, broken spines, and wounded muscles always try to repair themselves, but often the result is invalidism or disease. Even some tumors try to revert to normal, but are unsuccessful. If the genetic sequence described in the sea squirt applies to humans, this study represents a major step for regenerative medicine.

Physorg.com

Green into Gold

If you want more proof that GW is all about the Benjamins, check this out.

Companies and individuals rushing to go green have been spending millions on “carbon credit” projects that yield few if any environmental benefits.

A Financial Times investigation has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place.

Others are meanwhile making big profits from carbon trading for very small expenditure and in some cases for clean-ups that they would have made anyway.

The growing political salience of environmental politics has sparked a “green gold rush”, which has seen a dramatic expansion in the number of businesses offering both companies and individuals the chance to go “carbon neutral”, offsetting their own energy use by buying carbon credits that cancel out their contribution to global warming.

Meanwhile, they are desperately trying to discredit the excellent “Great Global Warming Swindle” film that aired on British TV. They are trying to neuter it before it goes to DVD. It was a devastating piece on GW and they got to be running scared.

Bob Ward, the former spokesman for the Royal Society, Britain’s academy of science, and one of the letter’s signatories, said director Mark Durkin made a “long catalog of fundamental and profound mistakes”—including the claim that volcanoes produce more carbon dioxide than humans, and that the Earth’s atmosphere was warmer during the Middle Ages than it is today.

“Free speech does not extend to misleading the public by making factually inaccurate statements,” he said. “Somebody has to stand up for the public interest here.”

Here’s the problem with those two arguments. No one really knows how much CO² is exhaled by volcanoes. They can only speculate. But since most of what Volcanoes exhale is water vapor, and water vapor is the largest component of “greenhouse gasses”, that would make the film accurate on that score. The Medieval Warming Period absolutely was warmer than today’s temperatures. Again, the hacks are lying.

They don’t bother to address the more damning indictments the film makes about GW. Like the fact that solar cycles seem to increase the planet’s CO² when it warms it during sunspot seasons.  Or the fact that a lot of the signatories in the IPCC documents are not in agreement with it. Many of them are in fact skeptics, but they are included to make it look like the numbers of believers is overwhelming.

From the above article you can see that GW is a big money business now. All you have to do is channel surf to catch one commercial after another talking about “green”. But seeing how fake the whole thing is, it’s not surprising they would consider anything factual a threat. 

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

American Idol 4/25

I really hate charity shows. Since they are all about hard sell and manipulation. While I think what American Idol is doing seems very positive, the show last night was pretty annoying to say the least.

There were some good performances, but a lot of excruciating filler. The worst had to be a video of a bunch of celebs lip syncing “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees. And Ryan had the gall to suggest you can buy it at iTunes.

Parts of it were decent. I enjoyed the Jack Black/Seal bit. Black sang Kiss from a Rose and the judges said he sucked. So his response was, if Seal were here he would like it. Simon said, no he wouldn’t. Then it turns out Seal was in the audience and he gave Black a thumbs up.

Most of the bits were lame, such a Ben Stiller segment, doing his usual exasperated lameo routine. Most of the songs were pretty sappy, as you’d expect from a charity show. The worst part is no decision for who loses this week. The bottom two were supposedly Jordin and Chris. I find it hard to believe that Jordin was in the bottom. Her performance on Tuesday was astounding. But Chris probably was. I also think Lakisha deserved to be there.

Next week they will eliminate the bottom two for real, based on this weeks and next week’s votes.

That combined with all the shots of weeping children made this episode hard to take. I’m glad its over. But they will probably do the same thing next year.

Ants

Continuing with our bug posts of the day, a scientist poured some plaster into an ant mound and dug out the casting. What it reveals is the amazing structure of the ant colony. Fascinating. 

Beeeezzzz

Some facts on Bees and the rampant bee hysteria (how many hysterias can the media juggle at the same time?).

I’m really finding a hard time listening to the news anymore. I get most of my news from online news sources. Even then, it’s annoying. It’s just one rampant doom and gloom story after another and half the time (if not more so) they are completely wrong.

This bee story is a good example. The ignorant pree clowns want us to believe that we’ll all starve if honeybees die off. Not so. It’s also questionable if honeybees are dying off or in decline due to other factors. 

The Trouble With Islam

Real Progress Doesn’t Come from “Progressives”

I was a young teen with the first Earth Day happened in 1971. I remember it well. Who can argue with the idea that we need to make the earth a cleaner, greener place? Thr problem is, the environmentalist movement became hijacked by anti-capitalist, crypto-Marxists. In order to deter capitalism, you have to hurt industry, so theyve become anti-technology which actually works at cross purposes to making the world a greener place.

As John Stossel explains, the aims of Earth Day are not based in reality.

John Semmens of Arizona’s Laissez Faire Institute points out that Earth Day misses an important point. In the April issue of The Freeman magazine, Semmens says the environmental movement overlooks how hospitable the earth has become—thanks to technology. “The environmental alarmists have it backwards. If anything imperils the earth it is ignorant obstruction of science and progress. ... That technology provides the best option for serving human wants and conserving the environment should be evident in the progress made in environmental improvement in the United States. Virtually every measure shows that pollution is headed downward and that nature is making a comeback.” (Carbon dioxide excepted, if it is really a pollutant.)

Semmens describes his visit to historic Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, an area “lush with trees and greenery.” It wasn’t always that way. In 1775, the land was cleared so it could be farmed. Today, technology makes farmers so efficient that only a fraction of the land is needed to produce much more food. As a result, “Massachusetts farmland has been allowed to revert back to forest.”

Human ingenuity and technology not only raised living standards, but also restored environmental amenities. How about a day to celebrate that?

Yet, Semmens writes, the environmental movement is skeptical about technology and is attracted to three dubious principles: sustainable development, the precautionary principle, and stakeholder participation.

Earth day is being used as a tool to empower more Marxist type measures to limit and curtail technological development and capitalism. Read the article and you’ll see what those terms mean and why they are bogus.

We live at the most prosperous time in human history. And these people would try to turn back the clock to some 19th century pre-industrial world. A world that was incredibly harsh and life expectancy was much lower.

The resources of the earth, as far as we’re concerned, are far from finite at this point. More importantly, technology provides us with the means to do things cleaner and more efficiently as technology improves. We are a long way from the 1940s, 50s and 60s technology. As a computer person, I can tell you how far computers have come since the 80s. We’re making constant progress. What these people want is regression. They are not progressive at all.

We need took forward, not back. As Bjorn Lomborg once said, “We didn’t leave the stone age from lack of stones.” The real progress in society will come largely from science. And those who would stand in the way, are not real friends of the earth. As we improve our technology it will have less and less impact on nature and will do more to make the world a better place for every living thing. 

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Roger Ebert

I used to chat with Roger Ebert back in the 90s back when I was on Compuserve. He’s a nice guy. Very approachable. For the last year he has not been on his TV show or has even written many article. Now he talks about why (sort of), including some pictures that will tell you a lot. Good luck, Roger. 

The New Smoking

Being fat is probably going to get you discriminated againt in the workplace, if it already hasn’t. As another group of hack researchers come out with a claim to bolster the anti-obesity hysteria.

Overweight workers cost their bosses more in injury claims than their lean colleagues, suggests a study that found the heaviest employees had twice the rate of workers’ compensation claims as their fit co-workers.

Obesity experts said they hope the study will convince employers to invest in programs to help fight obesity. One employment attorney warned companies that treating fat workers differently could lead to discrimination complaints.

Duke University researchers also found that the fattest workers had 13 times more lost workdays due to work-related injuries, and their medical claims for those injuries were seven times higher than their fit co-workers.

Overweight workers were more likely to have claims involving injuries to the back, wrist, arm, neck, shoulder, hip, knee and foot than other employees.

What this study will do is encourage employers to not hire fat people. What this study does is stigmatize a major part of the population. It also is another justification for nanny state clowns to start segregating and quasi-criminalizing them the way they have smokers.

This is the pattern for this kind of work. First someone creates a crisis. Like global warming, for example. Then they get a handful of scientists to say its a real crisis. Then some government stooges call for an investigation. Then some other scientists put in for grant money to study the problem, get it and support the findings. More government stooges make more dumb statements and the cycle escalates until you have laws restricting more of our liberties and limiting our choices even more. It’s the drip drip process of government stupidity and we really need to figure out how to stop this nonsense.

Earth Like Planet Discovered?

It’s coming from an odd source, so I don’t know how accurate it is. And the planet described lacks certain features that make our world habitable (like a moon that keeps the atmosphere from getting too thick). But this is still a great find if its true.

An international team of astronomers from Switzerland, France and Portugal have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date.

The planet has a radius only 50 percent larger than Earth and is very likely to contain liquid water on its surface.

The research team used the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) 3.6-m telescope to discover the super-Earth, which has a mass about five times that of the Earth and orbits a red dwarf already known to harbour a Neptune-mass planet.

Astronomers believe there is a strong possibility in the presence of a third planet with a mass about eight times that of the Earth in the system.

However, unlike our Earth, this planet takes only 13 days to complete one orbit round its star. It is also 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is from the Sun.

However, since its host star, the red dwarf Gliese 581, is smaller and colder than the Sun - and thus less luminous - the planet lies in the habitable zone, the region around a star where water could be liquid!