Updated: 3/27/08; 6:17:37 PM.
A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Blog
Thoughts on biotech, knowledge creation and Web 2.0
        

Thursday, February 13, 2003


Baghdad Back Flip - Colin Powell's cynical reversal. By William Saletan [Daypop Top 40]

Well, it is published by the antichrist, Bill Gates.   11:47:37 PM    



Allies Exchange Angry Words Over Turkey. (2003-02-12) -- At a dinner last night in Brussels, hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, NATO allies exchanged... [ScrappleFace]

Bin Laden Fears Attacking Washington D.C.. (2003-02-12) -- Linguists working to decipher the latest tape purporting to be from Usama bin Laden say the terrorist will... [ScrappleFace]

A couple of things to bring a smile to your face.  11:41:27 PM    



One thing I learned while looking up stuff on the Marshall plan was just how much of a financial committment it was. This article in Fortune makes it clear. Our government gave 10% of its budget EVERY year for 4 years to the plan!! Today, this would be the equivalent of $200 billion every year or about $800 billion in total. Wow!! My admiration for the statesmen who were able to accomplish this is huge. I can not imagine anyone today convincing the governent to make such a pledge today. Our government gives $12 billion a year in aid worldwide. The amount per year the US gave to Europe under the Marshall plan would be over $20 billion today. We are still a long, long way from the visionarys and statesmen of the late '40s. I hope that we will get similar ones in the coming years. We will need them.  11:28:56 PM    


Well, my mom brought up some very good points about American occupation and committment following WWII. That worked and the Marshall plan helped Europe rebuild, either directly or indirectly by allowing their tormented economies to recover. In both of those cases, the money we sent there was well-spent, since both Europe and Japan were major consumers of our products for many years after. We spent $90 billion dollars (in today's dollars) over a 4 year period. But, an interesting thing I read stated that we would have to spend about $900 billion for it to have the same effect on the American economy today. That is, in order to committ the same amount of the GDP today for rebuilding, we would have to use $900 billion. This shows just how much of a committment our government made to rebuilding Europe. Are we seeing the same committment today?

No one has made any such committment. Rumsfeld talked to the Senate Armed Services Comittee today and gave some informations. We would stay in Iraq for as long as it took to make it better than what was there, and not one day longer. Humanitarian and reconstruction efforts will require our military but he felt comfortable saying others would step up offer assistance. Not a very big committment yet but things are still early. What I found intersting was the belief that Iraq must be put on the path to self-governance, that we would work with Iraqis to find a solution that is appropriate for Iraq.

This might work IF Iraqis really had any national identity. But this is a country whose lines on a map were drawn by European powers and do not reflect any one identity. Sandra Mackey has a nice Op-Ed piece today that discusses some of the history and states that A Marshall-like Plan with Fail in Post-Saddam Iraq. It brings us back to the fact that, even if we wanted to reconstruct Iraq as we did in Europe, it will require a LOT more money than our government is willing to provide. What will our plan be? Maybe re-reading this would be helpful.  10:30:19 PM    



Gates holds forth on the 'pervasive Linux' threat. And he's all over the shop, as usual... [The Register]

It can be so much fun to read about Gates and the Linus message. I am sure that by next year they will be in the embrace and extend mode, trying to create even more confusion in an attempt to kill its enemies. Let's hope this will fail.  6:42:10 AM    



Crohn's drug may stop working due to antibodies [Reuters Health eLine]

But there is a humanized antibody that is now out on the market. It does the same thing that Remicade does but it does not raise antibodies to itself, as Remicade does.  6:40:40 AM    



French online cheese vendor hit by boycott over NATO. Brie-eating liberals lining up behind Bush? [The Register]

I love reading the Register. One thing to remember is that the French government may have a tendency to capitulate (but then so did others before the Nazi war machine), the French people some very brave things and they did participate in the previous Gulf War. To dismiss their concerns out of hand is not smart. But then, that is a term that may not really be appropriate for some of our Congressmen.  6:37:12 AM    



Most people kiss the right way [Nature Science Update]

I love this from the Nature report.

Over the next two and a half years, Güntürkün recorded 124 scientifically valid kisses in public places across the United States, Germany and Turkey.
Lucky he was not arrested as some sort of pervert. 'But, officer. I was simply trying to observe scientifically valid kisses.'  6:30:48 AM    


Dangerous levels of toxins miscalculated [Nature Science Update]

This is going to be a real hot button. One side will use it to say that we are vastly overregulating many chemicals, without any proof for that in humans. The other will say that, because this presents no proof in humans, we can ignore it and try to do everything in our power to remove all toxins at all levels from our environment. Both sides are wrong but that would require a lot more work and thought, some things that cost money and might undermine a group' position. So that will most likely never happen.

As a scientist, I am fascinated by the implication that some toxins may be beneficial at lower concentrations. Since the belief generally is that there really is no level of some things that is ever safe, this could cause a serious rethinking among reseachers. I love it when ideology slams into hard facts. It makes for a wonderfully inventive scenario.  6:25:57 AM    



Suspected Ebola virus kills nearly 50 in Congo [Reuters Health eLine]

Interesting that they trace the outbreak to infected bush meat. Also that the die off in other primates in the area had been noticed earlier. Since Ebola is usually passed by bodily fluids, it is relatively easy to contain. Not a lot of help if you have it but it is difficult for it to spread.  6:19:03 AM    



Bandage made of blood clotting factor on horizon [Reuters Health eLine]

Very nice technology and something I was excited about until I read that it feels like a flannel shirt. This might not be too comfortable but it sure would stop bleeding quickly. It would be very useful in an emergency setting.  6:15:52 AM    



Australia sailors refuse anthrax jab, leave Gulf [Reuters Health eLine]

While it is interesting that the vaccine is voluntary, not many Australian soldiers refused. They aleady pre-deployed in the Middle East and are every bit as much on Bush's side as we are (and probably with more reason. They are awfully close to terrorists in their part of the world.). We should hear more about what they have to say but our government is very focussed on Europe. I guess that many people here would not really care about the Aussies. They would be wrong.  6:13:58 AM    



New YorkerAfter Iraq.  This article tends to confirm what I suspected:  that the Bush brain trust doesn't have a firm grasp of the potential impact of the conquest of Iraq, nor a solid plan for the US role in rebuilding Iraq.

I certainly can understand the roots of the policy that led us to this point.  Mainly, that when we look 10 years out, it is likely that rogue states will have a many more nuclear and biological weapons than they have today (given how quickly the technology is spreading now -- North Korea and Iran are now furiously working on bomb programs) and that terrorist groups will serve as the delivery mechanism for these weapons (a poor man's ICBM that was proven effective in the test trial of 9/11 -- also, our current homeland security efforts are about as effective as the Star Wars program or nuclear civil defense initiatives that featured the famous: duck and cover).  The thinking follows that containment (founded on mutually assured destruction and enforced through active engagement at the edges of empire -- Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan) won't work with these nations (as it did with the USSR, mainly due to asynchronous costs/benefits involved) and that only through preventative action we can prevent millions of deaths in the next decade. 

The problem is that we need a strategy that goes beyond the elimination of rogue regimes as outlined in the paper "A Clean Break:  A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" -- it has been implied that this short paper, written in 1996 by leading hawks (including Perle and Feith, both part of the Bush hawk braintrust) for Netanyahu, serves as the basis for the Bush doctrine and subsequent strategies.  Given our rapid departure from Afghanistan and its subsequent disintegration, it is likely that a US policy in Iraq post invasion will be similar.  We will invade and abandon.  The conditions and mindsets that gave rise to these rogue states will continue to exist and may result in their re-emergence.  It will also serve as an object lesson to any and all states that are on Bush's list of rogue states to build as many nukes as possible to preclude future invasion. In all, this sounds like a strategy of long term failure. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

The end game must be better than attack and abandon, or attack and occupy. Basing troops in Iraq instead of Germany will not solve the problems in the long run. Occupation is not something we are good at and, if done wrong, could create more hazardous situations than before. Where is all this leading us? Without a well thought out strategy, we could be in real trouble. Empire will not make us safer and will most likely not only degrade the rights of those we occupy, but will degrade our own rights. I believe that these problems stem from the transition we are making as a world, the third wave that Toffler discussed 20 years ago. During the last transition (i.e. industrial society). Britain went in the world leader in economy , miltary and influence. But its policies made sure that after the transition, it was, to a large extent, irrelevant. Pre-eminece had transfered to another group, the US. Are we setting ourselves up for a similar path? How much will huge military outlays needed for occupation put a drain on our economy, reducing our ability to resppond to economic circumstances? How much are these outlays going to hamper any recovery RIGHT now? Are we on a path to make the US irrelevant after this transition? Things move so fast today, I am sure most of us will be alive to see what happens.  5:59:11 AM    



The Filter

It should be interesting to see what really smart lawyers start doing with all of this that is going on. It should make for some interesting battles.  5:47:01 AM    


Google Shapes What We Know, Especially About Each Other. The Boston Globe Mag looks at Google and the way it has changed our expectations about finding information, especially about each other (my bIPlog activities come up first in searching my name...). As things become more transparent (go to anybirthday.com where any hopes of lying about your age end there), people face themselves in arenas they weren't expecting, where having been Googled, they are confronted by their past, or worse, totally dismissed. In person, we... [bIPlog]

Getting used to transparency will be somewhat like living in a small town, I hope. If you are blogging, people will be able to see how you change during your life, what you find important and how. In the best groups it will help foster diversity of thought because this will lead to success (make your own definition of what that is) because diverse, creative groups will be more nimble in responding to the pressures of daily life. This is the opposite of the stereotypical inward looking, repressive small town. I think that the ability to 'move' online to find such a group, something that could not happen in many small towns, helps facilitate this. We shall see.  5:33:35 AM    



Business Intelligence. I've found that if you're looking for information about who's hiring, who's looking for funding, who's recently found it, and so on, you need look no further than an accountant. Both those working for large firms and those working for smaller businesses know a lot about the local business climate. They're a great source of intelligence. [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

I'll have to try this as a source for job hunting.  5:22:41 AM    



Gene expression of cell surface antigens in the early phase of murine influenza pneumonia determined by a cDNA expression array technique..

Mediators Inflamm. 2002 ; 11(6): 359-361
Sakai S, Mantani N, Kogure T, Ochiai H, Shimada Y, Terasawa K

BACKGROUND: Influenza virus is a worldwide health problem with significant economic consequences. To study the gene expression pattern induced by influenza virus infection, it is useful to reveal the pathogenesis of influenza virus infection; but this has not been well examined, especially in vivo study. AIMS: To assess the influence of influenza virus infection on gene expression in mice, mRNA levels in the lung and tracheal tissue 48 h after infection were investigated by cDNA array analysis. METHODS: Four-week-old outbred, specific pathogen free strain, ICR female mice were infected by intra-nasal inoculation of a virus solution under ether anesthesia. The mice were sacrificed 48 h after infection and the tracheas and lungs were removed. To determine gene expression, the membrane-based microtechnique with an Atlas cDNA expression array (mouse 1.2 array II) was performed in accordance with the manual provided. Results and conclusions: We focused on the expression of 46 mRNAs for cell surface antigens. Of these 46 mRNAs that we examined, four (CD1d2 antigen, CD39 antigen-like 1, CD39 antigen-like 3, CD68 antigen) were up-regulated and one (CD36 antigen) was down-regulated. Although further studies are required, these data suggest that these molecules play an important role in influenza virus infection, especially the phase before specific immunity. [HubMed - cd39]

Got this from HubMed today. What a nice surprise to see in my aggregator. This would not be a journal I would normally search. Using HubMed, I get the citation much sooner than I normally would. This a really nice application of RSS, but now, with a blogger, I can add perspective. CD39L1 and L3 are not molecules I would expect to be upregulated but then, since there is not a lot of information dealing with their biology, it could be very significant. Would it be worth examining their expression in other infectious diseases? Are protein levels on these cells for these mRNAs also increased? What cells are expressing CD39L1 and L3? Lots of interesting questions, if these results have any significance.  5:19:09 AM    



One of the nice things about a blog is it gives you something to do when you can't sleep. Still working on that prisoner puzzle.  5:01:13 AM    


 
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Last update: 3/27/08; 6:17:37 PM.