Archive for 2011
August 11, 2011
FASTER, PLEASE: Possible Progress In Medicine: “In a development that could transform how viral infections are treated, a team of researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory has designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection.”
GREENPEACE SLAMS VOLKSWAGEN, from a server in China? “Greenpeace decided to run its campaign from China, a country that usually gets blasted for having a questionable environmental record. Internet freedoms? Greenpeace infects the internet with its viral video spread from a country whose firewall is more famous than the Great Wall. The video is sent from a site which only exists because YouTube is banned in China. When it comes to China, Greenpeace’s own environmental record becomes a bit murky.” Tools.
IN THE UK, a changed mood.
UPDATE: Reader Brent Salmons emails:
I just got back from a two year stint living in London, and I found that I generally agreed with Allister Heath’s editorials in the City Paper. But I’m conservative even by US standards, so all of my British friends thought that I was an extreme right-winger. Allister Heath is also pretty far to the right by British political standards and, as such, may be fooling himself.
That said, I just spoke with one of my friends in London (a Labour voter) and she said that the rioters should have been shot in the streets and then proceeded to complain about paying taxes to pay for those “do nothings”. So, perhaps Mr. Heath is correct after all.
We’ll see.
MESSAGE DISCIPLINE: Dem Senator Says Economy ‘Strong’ Same Day DSCC Attacks GOPer For Same Thing. “The second highest ranking Democrat in the Senate, Dick Durbin (D-IL) told a local TV station on Wednesday that the economy is ‘strong’ despite the S&P downgrade. While largely in line with the White House’s views on the downgrade, his comments came the same day that Democrats attacked Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) over a near identical quote.”
Of course, what’s really disturbing is that Dick Durbin is the second-highest ranking Democrat in the Senate . . . .
WELL, CERTAINLY COMPARED WITH NO GUN AT ALL: Question of the Day: Is .380 a Suitable Self-Defense Caliber?
KEN BLACKWELL: GM Needs A Shakeup.
PROTECTING AGAINST RADIATION DAMAGE with flax seed? Back when I was in junior high I wanted to do a science-fair project that involved dosing rats with antioxidants and then zapping them with radiation to see if it improved their resistance. The science fair folks didn’t like it, but it seems there was something to this approach.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Graduates accuse law schools of scamming students. “Facing a stagnant job market, law graduates from New York and Michigan schools on Wednesday accused their alma maters of duping graduates out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition by publishing misleading post-graduation employment and salary statistics.”
And here’s a roundup of coverage.
GIVING NEW MEANING TO THE TERM “DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE:” Nissan Leaf powered by… single malt scotch?
ILYA SOMIN ON Federalism And Property Rights.
ABE GREENWALD: What We Got Right In The War On Terror. Related event here.
MICHAEL YON: Infiltration: Operation Flintlock Part II.
IN THE MAIL: From Tim Groseclose, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.
A LIBRARY-BASED PROPOSAL:
I retrieved my Proust, and opened it up to find that a ring box-sized hole had been carved from it, at which point I checked to ensure that this was not, indeed a library copy. (Aside: thanks to Jimmy at FreeHollowBooks for his fabulous work) Inside the hole was a specially made ring box with the date and my and partner’s initials carved into it. And inside the box was a vintage 1930s-era ring.
Very sweet.
FASTER, PLEASE: New cancer treatment reprograms immune system. “A small medical study out today is generating a huge amount of excitement among cancer researchers. For the first time, scientists have been able to successfully target cancer cells by using cells from a patient’s own immune system. . . . Researchers engineered a patient’s own immune cells to treat a type of blood cancer called chronic lymphocytic leukemia, or CLL. CLL affects nearly 15,000 men and women a year and more than 4,000 will die from it.”
We’ve seen excitement along these lines before, but I hope that this time it pans out.
BRYAN PRESTON: Joe Wilson Was Right.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Anti-Nanotech Terrorism by “Individuals Tending Toward the Savage.” Treat them savagely.
Plus, from the comments: “I guess this is a positive sign for Mexico that they have an Institute of Technology that’s researching something that someone thinks is worth bombing. Another four years of Obama and it will be Mexico with the illegal immigration problem.”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON The Politics Of Liberals Bashing Obama. “At worst, there is a sort of victimization that might be described as, ‘Obama mesmerized us and therefore we did not quite appreciate how inexperienced and unaccomplished he was until now when we sobered up — and when it is too late.’ . . . A number of us throughout 2008 and later were criticized for raising just these issues, both about Obama’s lack of experience and his Hamlet-like propensity of hesitation and his academic disengagement. But why this sudden about-face from former disciples?”
EXCITING KNOXVILLE NEWS: Southern food evangelist Sean Brock is guest chef at Baconfest.
That’s right. Baconfest.
AT AMAZON, MARKDOWNS ON bestselling books on survival skills. It’s interesting how many of the top books involve surviving a financial collapse, as opposed to natural disasters, etc.
JOBLESS CLAIMS PRINT AT 395K, WHICH IS GOOD, but what about the revision? “The noise that is the initial claims data presents just one question: will next week’s upward revision bring today’s 395K print to over 400K (yes, last week was revised higher as always from 400K to 402K, or 18 consecutive weekly 400K+ prints).”