|
 Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Ronald Reagan. "The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away." [Quotes of the Day]
John Lennon. "Would those of you in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry." [Quotes of the Day]
Douglas Adams. "The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." [Quotes of the Day]
Arthur Koestler. "The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards." [Quotes of the Day]
There always seems to be a connection in these Quotes of the Day but sometimes it takes a little thinking, and quite a few beers. 9:59:49 AM 
|
|
"Bush vs Bush" [Daypop Top 40]
You'll need realplayer to see this excellent example of satire to make a point from the Daily Show. 9:55:56 AM
|
|
J. Perren Cobb, Michael N. Mindrinos, Carol Miller-Graziano, Steve E. Calvano, Henry V. Baker, Wenzhong Xiao, Krzysztof Laudanski, Bernard H. Brownstein, Constance M. Elson, Douglas L. Hayden, David N. Herndon, Stephen F. Lowry, Ronald V. Maier, David A. Schoenfeld, Lyle L. Moldawer, Ronald W. Davis, Ronald G. Tompkins, Inflammation and Host Response to Injury Large-Scale Collaborative Research Program, Henry V. Baker, Paul Bankey, Timothy Billiar, Bernard H. Brownstein, Steve E. Calvano, David Camp, Irshad Chaudry, J. Perren Cobb, Ronald W. Davis, Constance M. Elson, Bradley Freeman, Richard Gamelli, Nicole Gibran, Brian Harbrecht, Douglas L. Hayden, Wyrta Heagy, David Heimbach, David N. Herndon, Jureta Horton, John Hunt, Krzysztof Laudanski, James Lederer, Stephen F. Lowry, Ronald V. Maier, John Mannick, Bruce McKinley, Carol Miller-Graziano, Michael N. Mindrinos, Joseph Minei, Lyle L. Moldawer, Ernest Moore, Frederick Moore, Robert Munford, Avery Nathens, Grant O'Keefe, Gary Purdue, Laurence Rahme, Daniel Remick, Matthew Sailors, David A. Schoenfeld, Michael Shapiro, Geoffrey Silver, Richard Smith, Gregory Stephanopoulos, Gary Stormo, Ronald G. Tompkins, Mehmet Toner, Shaw Warren, Michael West, Steven Wolfe, Wenzhong Xiao, and Vernon Young
Application of genome-wide expression analysis to human health and disease
PNAS
published
March 21, 2005,
10.1073/pnas.0409768102
(
Genetics
)
[Abstract]
[PDF]
[Supporting Information]
OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE
[PNAS Early Edition]
Potentially a very important paper and it is open access. Sweet. 9:43:40 AM
|
|
Creationists Take Their Fight to the Really Big Screen [CommonDreams NewsWire]
They save the best quote for last. James Cameron, the director of several IMAX filsm, as well as Aliens, Titanic, etc.; stated 'It seems to be a new phenomenon, obviously symptomatic of our shift away from empiricism in science to faith-based science.' That is truly a big problme with today's environment. The fundametalist, whether Christian or Moslem, does not care about empiricism. Everthing is about faith. And their expression of faith often takes very scary and intolerant paths. 9:38:35 AM
|
|
Freedom of Speech, Then and Now. Here's an interesting juxtaposition suggested by Ed Drone.
Freedom of Speech in Norman Rockwell's America.
Freedom of Speech in George Bush's America.
[First Draft]
I guess it is a really good time for satirists of all stripes. 9:34:58 AM
|
|
Mystery illness kills Angola kids. More than 90 people have died from an Ebola-like fever in northern Angola in the past five months. [BBC News | Health | World Edition]
It seems to strike children nder 5 and has almost a 90% mortality rate. They know what it is not but have not been able to nail down what virus it is, making treating it a little more difficult. 9:17:47 AM
|
|
CDs and DVDs. Barry has a post up about the differences in pricing strategies for DVDs and CDs. Let me just add that while there are numerous reasons for flat CD sales - shitty product, shitty radio/mtv, etc... - I imagine the single greatest one is the fact that they frequently cost more than DVDs. [Eschaton]
NIce discussion of one business model that works and another that is rapidly failing. Maybe Congress can get more involved, ingnore a few constitutional restrictions and fix the business model. 8:50:57 AM
|
|
Abramoff's Gamble. Jack Abramoff, former spokesman for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), has been in the spotlight recently on the suspicion of cheating and defrauding Indian casinos that paid him more than $80 million lobby on their behalf. Abramoff spent $4 million to create a "grassroots coalition" to force one casino to close[~]cutting down the competition for his other casino clients.
Among other things, [subpoenaed] e-mails document the fact that as soon as the Tiguas were forced to close their casino, Abramoff was on the next plane to El Paso, offering the tribe his services to help reopen the casino that he had secretly helped to close. His fee? Coincidentally, $4 million, which left the tribe all but bankrupt but did nothing to get its casino reopened.
David Brooks of the New York Times has his own take on Abramoff's sleazy schemes:
Only a genius like Abramoff could make money lobbying against an Indian tribe's casino and then turn around and make money defending that tribe against himself. Only a giant like Abramoff would have the guts to use one tribe's casino money to finance a Focus on the Family crusade against gambling in order to shut down a rival tribe's casino.
Only an artist like Abramoff could suggest to a tribe that it pay him by taking out life insurance policies on its eldest members. Then when the elders dropped off they could funnel the insurance money through a private school and into his pockets.
With dirty deals like this coming to light, is it any wonder the RNC has warned the House of Representatives that Republicans are "in danger of losing 25 seats in the 2006 election and, therefore, of losing control of the House for the first time since the 1994 election"? [Blog for America]
Is there any more appropriate aphorism than 'Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.' 8:49:16 AM
|
|
The Continuing Cover-Up at DOJ. Abu Al Gonzales' Justice Department is continuing to cover-up the torture techniques the president authorized for use on GITMO detainees.
U.S. law enforcement agents working at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, concluded that controversial interrogation practices used there by the Defense Department produced intelligence information that was "suspect at best," an FBI agent told a superior in a memo in May last year.
But the Justice Department, which reviewed the memo for national security secrets before releasing it to a civil liberties group in December, redacted the FBI agent's conclusion.
The department, acting after the Defense Department expressed its own views on which portions of the letter should be redacted, also blacked out a separate assertion in the memo that military interrogation practices could undermine future military trials for terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay.
It also withheld a statement by the memo's author that Justice Department criminal division officials were so concerned about the military interrogation practices that they took their complaints to the office of the Pentagon's chief attorney, William J. Haynes II, whom President Bush has nominated to become a federal appellate judge.
[snip]
[Sen. Carl] Levin, who had pushed the Justice Department to release a version of the memo that included the new disclosures, yesterday sharply criticized the department's initial handling of it. "As I suspected, the previously withheld information had nothing to do with protecting intelligence sources and methods, and everything to do with protecting the DOD from embarrassment," Levin said.
[snip]
Jeffrey Fogel, legal director for the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, an advocacy group that helped organize lawyers for 150 military detainees, said the newly disclosed passages could be used to persuade judges to "look behind" any military assertions during court trials that the suspects had confessed during questioning.
"An awful lot of cases have been built on information obtained through these kind of coercive interrogation techniques," Fogel said.
[First Draft]
Seems to me that this indicates that someone knows they are on shaky legal and moral grounds, that covering these comments up is a vain effort to delay the day of reckoning. 8:40:45 AM
|
|
|
|
|
