LOS ANGELES – Scientists have created versions of the H5N1 bird flu that spread easily among mammals through droplets in sneezes and have concluded that the deadly virus could trigger a global pandemic in humans.
Writing in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, Dutch researchers laid out for their fellow scientists – and the public – precisely how they engineered bird flu strains that were contagious in ferrets, laboratory animals often used as proxies for people in influenza research. As few as five mutations, generated by passing the virus from ferret to ferret to ferret just 10 times, could be enough to allow it to infect new hosts through the air, said virologist Ron Fouchier, lead author of the report.
OK, I get why they did this. Chart the steps needed before the virus becomes a pandemic, necessary first step to create vaccines to protect the human population, identify the blood antibodies that will herald human infection. Great.
But publishing the research world-wide?
Sorry, too many stupid and insane people in this world. BAD IDEA, really, really, really bad idea. IMHO.
WASHINGTON—A standoff between Republicans and the Obama administration over a botched gun-trafficking operation escalated Wednesday, with a House committee voting to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.
The White House asserted executive privilege over gun-trafficking-probe documents sought by congressional Republicans, throwing into uncertainty a possible vote to sanction Attorney General Eric Holder. Peter Landers has details on Lunch Break.
The party-line vote came hours after President Barack Obama, for the first time, asserted executive privilege, aiming to block Republicans from gaining access to Justice Department documents about the operation.
House Republican leaders said they would bring the contempt measure to the House floor next week. Read the rest…
The congressman who led the Capitol Hill probe into the collapse of taxpayer-backed Solyndra is calling for an investigation of Cape Wind
This project is local economy Killer. The day it goes into service producing power, the cost of electricity (esp. for business) will rise, since it is mandated that the power companies pay several times the going rate for every watt and volt this turkey pumps out.
He claimed there was often a lack of clear evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking after terminally ill patients that is used in hospitals across the country.
It is designed to come into force when doctors believe it is impossible for a patient to recover and death is imminent.
It can include withdrawal of treatment – including the provision of water and nourishment by tube – and on average brings a patient to death in 33 hours.
Of course that’s nationalized health care in Britain, nothing like that would happen here!
A news anchor at the ABC affiliate in Chicago goes even further: Anyone who reads or writes about the epidemic of racial violence in Chicago is an “idiot” who engages in “meaningless … race baiting,” says Ravi Baichwal.
OR
Meanwhile, the Second City Cop web site says mob violence in the downtown precincts is massively under-reported:
“And for the record, the ‘three’ ‘muggings’ that are being ‘investigated?’ Add a zero to that for incidents occurring last night in 018 (the downtown precinct.) Crime is down and if no one reports it or the media doesn’t get a hold of it? It never happened.”
The Chicago New Report provides details of similar assaults for the following weekend: “Saturday, Chicago police officers were kept busy trying to control huge crowds of unruly, young African Americans in the city’s increasingly violent downtown area. Separate groups, of nearly two hundred people, were responsible for several disturbances and at least one robbery in the area.”
So, who are you going to believe? Local media or your own lying eyes?
Federal regulations can be maddening, but none more so than a current one that demands oil refiners use millions of gallons of a substance, cellulosic ethanol, that does not exist.
Can they substitute Unicorn farts in place of the non-existent fuel additive?
The right arm seems to be back to near full function, though I doubt I’ll be in good enough shape to try the NSRWA river race this year.
Tomorrow the weather forecast is warning of temperatures in the high 90’s. So… since I wanted to work up with a hard fast paddle to test the right arm I did it today.
Of course, first I had to get out of Weymouth. I thought school was out already?
River was busy today.
The YMCA was introducing new paddlers to the river. They must have been having fun, I heard them coming three bends downriver.
What the heck, I’m always game, and I did find a new spot to bring the kayak. I’ve been looking for a spot on the South River to launch from and Rexhame Beach seems like a good spot. During the summer, its $10 a day for parking. But the folks at Luminate tell me that after 5pm in the summer the town doesn’t collect the parking fee and you can go in and park.
Let me take a moment and give a shout-out to the nice kids at Luminate Surf and Skate.
I didn’t bring a camera out onto the water, but I did get some shots before and after.
Legally, President Obama has reiterated the principle that he can pick and choose which U.S. laws he wishes to enforce (see his decision to reverse the order of the Chrysler creditors, his decision not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, and his administration’s contempt for national-security confidentiality and Senate and House subpoenas to the attorney general). If one individual can decide to exempt nearly a million residents from the law — when he most certainly could not get the law amended or repealed through proper legislative or judicial action — then what can he not do? Obama is turning out to be the most subversive chief executive in terms of eroding U.S. law since Richard Nixon. Read the rest.
As I was arguing with a friend lately, Obama is gambling that his recent acts; the Gay Marriage declaration, the Illegal Immigrant amnesty, and the blatant leaks of National Security information for political gain. That these will gain him more votes than will it will cost him.
The Amnesty by Presidential Decree, it’s intent is to bolster his Latino support and make up for the votes lost from Independents. But, what if it also is what makes the African American vote, in 2008 completely his, falter? Every poll for decades has shown that the Black voters don’t support Gay marriage and to a lesser degree, gay rights. When waves of cheap labor come over the border, the existing, legal Latino workers and Black-Americans are who gets hurt worst. Only time will tell.
What scares me is what else Obama is likely to do, especially if those ideas don’t work for him. What scares me is, there is literally nothing, nothing at all that this president won’t do to get re-elected.
Clinton, like McCain, underestimated the power of the machine behind Obama. The new world order of digital power, manufactured cult-of-personality media complex and sheer arrogant rule-breaking. Slick Willy had tasted two out of that three in his time, but no one ever worshiped him as a god. And certainly no one was going to faint on listening to his wife or build statues to her. Hillary would not inspire works of art or paeans of praise.
But Bill also had the last laugh. Because gods are not allowed to let you down. Gods are not allowed to keep blaming Bush or the Republicans. They’re not allowed to promise to take care of things later. That’s not what people elect gods for.
There’s no doubt that he saw this coming early on and that in the dregs of his bitterness at losing, not just failing to win, but the humiliation of defeat, he knew that the day would come when the statues would fall. When people would stretch out their hands expecting help… and when it did not come, the hands would clench into fists.
People expect less of Presidents, than they do of gods. They expect more of men who claim to be able to lower sea levels and change history. And they don’t take “no” for an answer. Being ignored only makes them angrier.
A visual summary of activities associated with the recent flight testing of X-47B Air Vehicle Two (AV-2) at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The testing marked the completion of the airworthiness test phase of the Unmanned Combat Air System Carrier Demonstration (UCAS-D) program. Video courtesy of Northrop Grumman
The premier military dining facility in Kabul. Dashing Frenchmen sport oversize berets. A 30-foot replica of the Eiffel Tower looms over plates of creamy Camembert and smoky Gouda. French chefs serve up authentic French fries, crisp and hot. And fresh sole with a lemon cream sauce in a landlocked country — how did they do that? At this quaint French base, meals end sweetly, with rare deployment joy found in the delicate bûche de Noël. All in all, an exquisite dining experience that brings a bit of Paris to Kabul
Camp Julien DFAC
Rating: 1 Exploding Stars
“The food at Camp Julien was revolting and unhealthy…. I’d rather eat shell casings….” – Anonymous U.S. Special Operations service member
Paul K. posted this yesterday in the entry, “Notes from the Chicago Intifada.” I thank him for noticing, and providing a proper definition for, the coinage.
In the midst of all the debate over fossil fuels, we seem to have forgotten this fundamental role of energy in life. We think that all we need energy for is to drive our cars, fly around the world, run our electrical gadgets. But more important is that abundant energy is necessary for our way of life, for our civilization.
If that energy were to vanish, we would find ourselves once again living at the margin, and might well see the end of many things that we don’t associate with an energy supply, including democracy and the freedom and creativity that leisure makes possible. —Daniel B. Botkin
Does the phrase, “Nasty, brutish and short”, ring any bells? Today in the Western world we have opinionated and ignorant children sticking foreign objects into the spinning wheels of our energy infrastructure. Idolatry does not trump science.
But one’s belief in climate change is, in a sense, irrelevant to a discussion about energy for one reason: Nothing that Americans (or the rest of the developed world) can do now would significantly reduce the likelihood of environmental harms, even if the people predicting disaster are correct. Yes, we could tinker around the edges of our energy system and produce some slight reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, but the reality is, China is now the world’s second-largest economy, the world’s largest energy consumer, and the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. Their emission trajectory would make anything that the developed world did purely symbolic. The developing world is now behind the wheel when it comes to setting climate policy.
Remember that oil pipeline that was going to bring Canadian oil to US refinery’s? Built at Canadian expense, providing jobs for Americans, tariff revenue for the US government and cheaper, more reliable supplies of oil for the whole country. Well…the new decision is to build the pipeline west to the coast, to ship that oil to China. It’s being done now. Nice job on the part of the America-hating Kenyan bastard.
Got it? Your orders are to kill the pipeline before the Americans get any of the oil!
After President Obamarefused to grant a permit for Keystone XL in January, Stephen Harper, Canada’s prime minister, indicated that he would never again be “held hostage” to United States politics, saying that some Americans saw his country as “one giant national park.” He said Canada would redirect oil that had been destined for Gulf Coast refineries to other countries, particularly China.
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man.
Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded -- here and there, now and then -- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck." -- Robert A. Heinlein
Wrath Of Gnon
“In an age where the media publish endless stupidities, the cultured man is defined not by what he knows but by what he ignores.” ー Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Rating: 4 Exploding Stars
Rating: 1 Exploding Stars
On the North River 