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Saturday, May 21, 2005
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It's for this judge that the Republicans want to drop a nuclear bomb on the U.S. Senate. In what sense is she not responsible for Willie Searcy's death?
10:12:03 AM 
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A couple of signposts on the road to theocratic backwater status:
Koreans Report Ease in Cloning for Stem Cells
South Korean researchers are reporting today that they have developed a highly efficient recipe for producing human embryos through cloning, and then extracting their stem cells.Writing in the journal Science, the researchers, led by Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and Dr. Shin Yong Moon of Seoul National University, said they used their method to produce 11 human stem cell lines that were genetic matches of patients who ranged in age from 2 to 56 . . . .
Because the stem cells come from embryos that are clones of individuals, they would be exact genetic matches and less likely to be rejected by a patient's immune system. Scientists want to obtain such stem cells from patients with certain disorders and illnesses to study the origin of diseases and to develop replacement cells that would be identical to those a patient has lost in a disease like Parkinson's.
Bush Vows to Veto Measure Easing Stem Cell Restriction
Setting up a showdown with Congress over the thorny issue of embryonic stem cell research, President Bush vowed today to veto any measure that would expand federal funding for the studies - an extremely rare personal threat from a president who has never exercised his veto power.
"I am a strong supporter of stem cell research, but I've made very clear to Congress that the use of federal taxpayer money to promote science that destroys life in order to save life, I am against this," said Mr. Bush . . . .
(Via King of Zembla.)
9:40:55 AM
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I saw Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Thursday night, and Star Wars Episode 3 last night. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed both. I haven't read the Hitchhiker book (I've only read the first) in decades, so I didn't bring a lot of baggage to the party. It was fun movie; Ken and Rick and I laughed quite a bit. Maybe it wasn't as funny or as edgy as I would have liked, but it was still a pretty good time. Star Wars was better than I thought it would be, anchored by the scenes between Anakin and Palpatine; I thought these scenes worked very well. I also love seeing the alien planets in the Star Wars movies, looking back, I think that's the best part of all of them. The dialog in this one wasn't as leaden as it was in the last two (and when you look back at them, all the movies have a lot of leaden dialog). And, when you think if it, Anakin is just plain too stupid to be convincing as Darth Vader; this guy is really a dim bulb, but that's not the way you think of Vader in the first movies. Finally, I just hate the wholesale abrogation of the laws of physics in the Star Wars movies. Oh, well, it was still a lot of fun, and it's good news that there won't be any more.
9:32:17 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Steve Michel.
Last update: 6/28/2005; 9:09:45 AM.
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