Monday, March 01, 2004

Symantec's stock closed at $41.99 today. My remaining stock options finally vested, and I'm watching the price closely. 1:25:20 PM    comment () Night of the Long Pipettes. Via reader Jeff Smith comes the news that Bush has changed the lineup on his Council on Bioethics. Unsurprisingly, he's gotten rid of one of the strongest supporters of therapeutic cloning. From the Reuters version of the story: President Bush reshuffled his advisory council on cloning and related medical issues on Friday, adding a prominent neurosurgeon known for his work on conjoined twins and two conservatives who have spoken out strongly against cloning. He replaced one of the most prominent scientists on his Council on Bioethics, cell biology expert Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California San Francisco. The Australian- born Blackburn has spoken in favor of so-called therapeutic cloning in which cloning technology is used for medical and biological research. Whole thing here. Read Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey's take on the original lineup here. [Hit & Run] I haven't seen a clear explanation of what power this council has, if any. However, even if they turn out to have been given absolute dictatorial power (via the FDA, for example) over stem-cell research and cloning, it wouldn't matter in the long run. Future Alzheimer sufferers might have to go to a more enlightened country (such as South Korea). 12:00:35 PM    comment () # Frank Ney at The Libertarian Enterprise - Banned From Flying - Mr. Ney recently discovered that he is on the No-Fly list. He has taken on the job of "Editor Reporting on the Travel Gestapo" at TLE. [tle] The reason why I am not happy about taking this job is the simple fact that this job should not exist. We should not be having to worry about finding ourselves on some government list that denies us the freedom to travel as we please. TSA and Homeland Security should not exist -- not as they are now, not in some more efficient, "kinder and gentler" form either. We should not have to live in fear of official "under the table" retaliation for exercising our constitutional rights, if this is in fact what happened and I'm reasonably sure it is. This is the United States of America, not 1970's Eastern Europe thank-you-very-much. [End the War on Freedom] L. Neil Smith has already written a comment on this. Although I don't know Mr. Ney personally, I've been reading his posts on the web and Usenet for years. Given his involvement with anime conventions, it's entirely possible that I've met him without realizing it. From his writing it's apparent that his political beliefs are practically identical to mine. His addition to the "banned from travel" list tells me that my name will be added. It may take months or years to happen, because I'm a nobody and post about my political beliefs mostly in this obscure weblog, but sooner or later whatever bureaucrat is responsible for adding people to the list will get around to me. For that matter, it may have already happened--it all depends on whether some obscure government thug has turned up my name in a Google search or not. Now, this might not seem to concern my directly, since I've already decided not to fly for as long as our airports resemble Checkpoint Charlie (which probably means "for the rest of my life"), but as Mr. Ney points out, this list will eventually be applied to rail and road travel. I'm sure the Terrorist Safety Administration goons are just waiting for an excuse to begin providing terrorists with safe and secure work environments on the nations railways and roads. 9:49:20 AM    comment () William Lind:  "Mercenaries mark the state's loss of its monopoly on war just as surely as do the rise of non-state actors." [John Robb's Weblog] Given that he's talking about mercenaries providing supplementary security in Iraq, it's hard to see how this conclusion is supported. Does Lind think that some private individual or company would be paying those mercenaries to be there if the Feds hadn't decided to conquer the country first? 6:17:15 AM    comment ()

© Copyright 2006 Ken Hagler. Last update: 2/15/2006; 1:59:54 PM.