MUSICAL BREAST IMPLANTS?

LT. SMASH is conducting a wife auction.

A NANOTECH CURE FOR CANCER?

To anyone familiar with the long, often fruitless search for cancer’s cure, or the unfulfilled promise of nanotechnology, this may seem far-fetched. But in recent years, scientists have learned more about how cancer works at the cellular level. They have also learned to build molecules that could detect and destroy cancer cells, making today’s painful and often-ineffective treatments a thing of the past.

Though the jump from lab to patient is long, scientists are confident that it can be made.

“Developing any drug or diagnostic is a long process, and that’s still going to be the case,” said Greg Downing, director of the Office of Technology and Industrial Relations at the National Cancer Institute. “But these technologies have the potential to overcome challenges we can’t overcome now.”

The technologies now being developed are not the complex miniature machines usually associated with nanotechnology, but particles a few nanometers wide.

Don’t start smoking just yet, though.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON was on Hugh Hewitt tonight talking about the French riots. Here’s a transcript.

STRATEGYPAGE:

The U.S. Department of Defense sees urban schools as ones of its biggest recruiting obstacles. Not because leftist teachers in some of those schools try to keep recruiters out, but because so many potential recruits have to be turned down because of the poor education they have received in those schools. While only 21 percent of Americans live in rural areas, 44 percent of the qualified recruits come from these areas. What’s strange about all this is that the rural areas spend much less, per pupil, on education, but get much better results.

Hmm.

FRENCH BLOGGERS ARRESTED for inciting riots.

THE CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS is up!

I DON’T KNOW WHETHER I AGREE with the McCain bill completely — I’m against torture, but torture consists in applying electrodes to people’s testicles, not “mocking their religion,” wrapping them in Israeli flags, or frightening them with fake menstrual blood, and the McCain bill may be read as forbidding those non-torture activitities. They might be a bad idea, for a variety of reasons, but they’re not torture, and one of the reasons the “torture” issue has gotten less traction than it might have is that too many people have blown their credibility by conflating things they don’t like with things that are of a different order entirely — and by letting their desire to bash Bush, or to distance themselves from him, become all too obvious.

But I think that it’s Congress’s role to define this sort of thing, which means legislation. The President may have this power in the first instance when Congress doesn’t act (I think the area falls in what’s known as “Jackson Category Two” after Justice Jackson’s Youngstown concurrence), but Congress ought to act once there’s time, and there’s certainly time now. There was, in fact, time before the 2002 and 2004 elections. Having Congress act also forces members of Congress to take responsibility — both for what behavior they approve, and for what behavior they forbid. That’s a good thing.

But regardless of what rules Congress adopts, I’m certainly against the Cheney proposal to exempt the CIA.

First of all, if this sort of thing is too wrong for Americans to do, it’s too wrong for any Americans to do, period. Right? Second of all, if we are going to trust any agency with such extraordinary powers, surely it shouldn’t be the CIA, which has established, repeatedly, that it’s not to be trusted, either in terms of competence or in terms of, well, trustworthiness. I’d sooner entrust the power to the District of Columbia parking enforcement people. At least they’re respected for their zeal.

Earlier thoughts here, here, and, from 2001, here.

UPDATE: J.D. Johannes thinks I’m wrong:

I think we are making a huge tactical mistake on the torture issue.

I think sadism, intentional infliction of pain for the sake of amusing the perpetrator, should be a felony/courtmartial offense.

Torture may not be the most effective interrogation technique, but the threat of it can be very, very effective.

If terrorists know for a fact they will never ever have to face physical pain, discomfort or cognitive disruption through humiliation and capricious situations, they are less likely to give up the information needed to prosecute the war.

Unlike most journalists and policy makers, I have looked into the eyes of real life terrorists. One was a member of the Green Battalion. The Green Battalion is known for their propensity to saw people’s heads off.

A person who is that deranged, is not going to break under the threat of confinement and mere questioning.

To break a person like that, you need to break their mind through the creation of an arbitrary and capricious world where the possibility of things getting much, much worse is always a possibility in their mind.

If the terrorists know exactly how far we can go, there will be a fixed point, a limit, and the ability to create an arbitrary and capricious world is reduced.

There are no guaranteed costless decisions here.

MICKEY KAUS: “I’m going to vote for Proposition 77, which would try to end gerrymandering in California by giving the job of drawing district lines to a panel of retired judges. (There’s a similar ballot proposition in GOP-controlled Ohio. There, unlike in California, it’s the Democrats pushing reform.)”

N.Z. BEAR has a topic page on the French riots.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Here’s a report on the latest conference call with Sen. Coburn.

LARRY LESSIG talks about U.N. control of the Internet in Foreign Policy.

HERE’S A MAP showing the spread of riots to as many as 300 towns in France.

HERE’S MORE on the jailing of Egyptian blogger Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman: Reportedly, hostility toward him stems in part from his efforts to protect the rights of Muslim women by starting a human rights law firm. “Can’t imagine why the Egyptian government would want to suppress a human rights law firm before it takes root in Egypt. Not a clue. It’s a complete mystery, an utter bafflement.”

It’s certainly getting a lot of attention in the blogosphere.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: “[I]f the Republican Party had shown a continued interest in federalism, I think Raich might have come out the other way. It’s no coincidence, in my mind, that Lopez was decided just after the “Republican Revolution” of 1994, and no coincidence that Raich was decided when the Republican Party was no longer paying lip service to a limited federal government.”

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE notes that the drive to the Baghdad airport has become largely uneventful.

JONAH GOLDBERG: “But I’m wondering: Where did Jimmy Carter get the reputation of being a savvy political operator?”

Carter does seem to be undergoing a modest revival of influence lately, which probably bodes poorly for the Democrats.

PARISBLOGGING: BoiFromTroy has posts from a Paris correspondent. And Patrick Belton of Oxblog is in Paris and will be posting reports regularly.

UPDATE: More on Paris, here. “So, are we in a clash of civilizations, or aren’t we? . . . I tend to think the evidence is quite strong that if we aren’t in a clash of civilizations at the moment, we are at least teetering on the brink.”

A FISH, A BARREL, A SMOKING GUN: Ann Althouse on Larry Tribe on Sam Alito: “The ‘nearly identical’ Chittister case didn’t involve caring for a family member. It involved self-care. Tell me, Professor Tribe, when men are sick, don’t they stay home? I’m really having a hard time seeing what gender discrimination Congress is dismantling there.”

NORM GERAS takes an uncharitable look at liberal-hawk backtracking on Iraq, which he regards as a political dodge.

HYBRID UPDATE: I’ve driven the Highlander over 500 miles now, and filled the tank up to figure (from actual consumption, not just the trip computer) that it’s gotten about 30.5 miles per gallon average over the past week. That’s about right, given the mix of highway and city driving I’ve done. I’m surprised to find that it seems nimbler than the Passat wagon, even though it’s (very slightly) longer.

The Insta-Wife finds the size intimidating when parking in the garage, though. Maybe I’ll get one of these gadgets if she doesn’t get over that.

As I’ve said before, if you just want to save money, a hybrid isn’t the way to go, yet. With SUV prices depressed at the moment, you’re better off buying a gas-powered SUV at a steep discount or — better still — getting, say, a 3-year-old Ford Expedition on a lease turn-in. But I’m very impressed that the Highlander hybrid has more pickup, and better handling, than most SUVs, and I also have to say that I like the electronic continuously variable transmission a lot more than I thought I would. Some people don’t like the absence of shift points, but I don’t miss ’em.

UPDATE: Reader Jeff Quade emails:

Don’t spend the money! Park the car in the garage, just where you want it. Hang a tennis ball from a string from the ceiling, so it just touches the windshield right in front of the driver’s seat. Viola! When the insta-wife pulls in, she pulls in till she sees the ball just kiss the windshield – perfect!

Cool. The Highlander, by the way, has a backup proximity-alarm that I thought was silly, but that actually turns out to be useful. But the obvious solution — back in to the garage — doesn’t appeal.

Meanwhile, reader Chris Runhaar emails:

Regarding the CVT: we’ve got a Nissan Murano with a CVT and also love it. It makes for better gas mileage and better acceleration. But when I loved it the most was when I was towing a 3300 lb trailer from San Jose to Austin (moving due to real estate prices). Set the cruise control, and the transmission smoothly adjusts the RPM to match the grade. No abrupt downshifts, no need to disable overdrive. It was so much smoother than any automatic I’ve been in, even when the automatic wasn’t pulling almost four tons of car, trailer, and cargo.

But I do tend to accelerate too long when merging onto a freeway, etc. because the constant-rpm engine noise doesn’t give any aural hints of acceleration. Pretty soon, I’m doing 10mph or 20mph faster than I intended, but the tach needle is still at 4000. If it weren’t for arbitrarily low speed limits, I’d consider that a bonus!

They are arbitrarily low, aren’t they?

DANIEL GLOVER wonders why bloggers aren’t more upset about U.N. efforts to regulate the Internet.

UPDATE: More here, on why this deserves more attention. And here’s a warning from Sen. Norm Coleman about a “digital Munich.”

But shouldn’t the “digital brownshirts” want that? . . . .

TRACY QUAN AND KERRY HOWLEY look at prostitution, sweatshops, and human rights.

THE CARNIVAL OF PERSONAL FINANCE is up! So is the Carnival of Computing, the Carnival of the Recipes, and Haveil Havalim.

MUSLIMS MARCH IN MOROCCO to denounce terrorism and Al Qaeda:

Holding banners and chanting “Muslims are brothers. A Muslim does not kill his brother” and “Yes to freedom, No to terrorism and barbarity”, the protesters on Sunday marched through Casablanca, a city of six million and Morocco’s financial capital.

Al-Qaida has said it decided to kill the Moroccan embassy employees, Abderrahim Boualem and Abdelkrim al Mouhafidi, because of Morocco’s support for the US-backed Iraqi government. . . .

Morocco’s influential organisation of Islamic scholars, known as the High Council of the Ulema and the Councils of Ulema in the Moroccan Kingdom, dismissed al-Qaida’s argument that its verdict to kill the two embassy employees was “God’s judgment”.

“The two Moroccans would be considered martyrs if this iniquitous verdict were to be carried out, as they were carrying out a duty assigned to them by their nation and legitimate state,” the Moroccan Islamic body said on Saturday.

(Via ATC).

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has much more.