Which president will Barack Obama want to emulate? He has said that he admires Reagan, but only for his transformational qualities, not for his political beliefs. But if he persists in his apparent desire to implement some combination of Hoover and FDR policies (raising taxes on the productive, protectionism, enforcing high wages), he’ll end up making a bad situation much worse, and end up being a one-termer for sure.
Better (And Longer) Living
In monkeys, a single injection of a drug to induce RNA interference against PCSK9 lowered levels of bad cholesterol by about 60 percent, an effect that lasted up to three weeks. Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, the biotechnology company that developed the drug, hopes to begin testing it in people next year.
The drug is a practical application of scientific discoveries that are showing that RNA, once considered a mere messenger boy for DNA, actually helps to run the show. The classic, protein-making genes are still there on the double helix, but RNA seems to play a powerful role in how genes function.
“This is potentially the biggest change in our understanding of biology since the discovery of the double helix,” said John S. Mattick, a professor of molecular biology at the University of Queensland in Australia.
Of course, as the article points out, there’s still a lot we don’t know, and there are likely to be unforeseen side effects until we understand how this all works much better. But this is a breakthrough in itself.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s an interesting article on how far genetics has come in the ninety-nine years since the word “gene” was coined.
[via Derbyshire, who has other thoughts]
When The Military Gets It Right
All veterans are to be honored, but these guys seem particularly noteworthy, particularly considering that they’re still serving.
Hope the word gets out what happened to the perps. I don’t think they got their virgins. Perhaps it will discourage further kidnappings in Afghanistan, at least of Americans.
An Extinct Species?
Would that it had been so. In honor of Veterans’ Day, here’s an interesting story of a recording captured to preserve the memory of the war that was to end all wars. Unfortunately, that part didn’t work out.
[Update mid morning]
On the ninetieth anniversary of the Armistice, three British veterans are still alive. The oldest is 112, the oldest man in the country. Did he ever imagine, in the midst of the war, that he would survive another nine tenths of a century beyond its end?
Cottage Cheesy Ruminations
Did you know that there were regional styles of cottage cheese?
Neither did I, until I moved to Florida (and even then it took me over four years to discover it). I’ve been buying the stuff for a while, and mostly, I’ve been buying the store generic (Publix, if you must know), which I’ve never been that pleased with–liquidy and runny, regardless of curd size. Recently, Patricia tried a different, name brand. Same thing. So it’s not like they saved money for the store brand by adding water and/or other locally available liquids, such as alligator effluent.
But I was recently there, searching for some other kind, and I found a brand called “Friendship.” And on the side of the plastic container, it said, “California style.” And a light went on. That’s why the local cottage cheese sucked (at least to me). I’d been spoiled by eating the real stuff back in the Golden State for the previous quarter century. I bought it. It was dry, flavorful, ricotta like. Just the way I remembered from LA. One more reason that Florida sux (at least southeast Florida), though at least I can buy the exotic import here.
So, question. Why do the locals like it runny, and do they like it that way up in New York and New Jersey (whence came their ancient ancestors)? Are there other varieties in (say) the Midwest, or Mountain states?
Space Advice For Obama
Jeff Foust has some thoughts about issues facing the new administration. It may in fact be an opportunity to undo the damage in the 1990s when Congress arbitrarily put space hardware on the munitions list. Duncan Hunter won’t be in a position to stop it now, being firmly in the minority.
The Military Space Mess
The other day I pointed out a report on the general military acquisition problems. Today at The Space Review, Dwayne Day discusses the military space problem in particular. As he notes, Pentagon space makes NASA look like a model of efficiency. NASA at least has the excuse that what it does isn’t really important. The same is not true of our defense systems, but the bureaucracy and porkmeisters act as though it is.
“When Good Men Did Nothing”
It’s the seventieth anniversary of Kristallnacht.
While many Americans would also claim they were unaware of the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, the events of November 9-10 were well documented. The New York Times ran a front-page story on November 11: “A wave of destruction, looting and incendiarism unparalleled in Germany since the Thirty Years War and in Europe generally since the Bolshevist Revolution swept over Great Germany today as National Socialist cohorts took vengeance on Jewish shops, offices and synagogues for the murder by a young Polish Jew of Ernst vom Rath, third secretary of the German Embassy in Paris.” Another Times story was headlined, “All Vienna’s synagogues attacked.”
FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT made no immediate comment after Kristallnacht, referring questions about it to the State Department. Only after five days of widespread public outrage did he take any action: recalling the US ambassador from Germany and stating in a press conference, “The news of the past few days from Germany has deeply shocked public opinion in the US. Such news from any part of the world would inevitably produce a similar profound reaction among American people in every part of the nation. I myself could scarcely believe that such things could happen in a 20th century civilization…”
Roosevelt agreed to allow 15,000 German Jews already in the United States to remain, but resisted all calls to increase the overall quota of immigrants from Nazi-occupied countries. Equally significant, his failure to take any action against Germany, or to mobilize an international coalition to challenge Hitler, sent the message that the world would not intervene to save the Jews. How much he could have done given the isolationist and xenophobic mood of the American public at that time is debatable, but the consequences of his inaction were catastrophic.
If President Obama continues to show signs of coddling Ahmajinedad and the Iranian mullahs, he will be sending a similar signal. If this history ever repeats itself, it won’t be farce–it will be tragedy anew, because we inexcusably forgot it.
[Update a few minutes later]
Synagogues around the world are being asked to keep their lights on tonight, in remembrance.
Getting Better All The Time
Military researchers have developed techniques to regenerate limbs and organs, using nanoscaffolds. I like the idea of growing a new heart.
I have to say, though, that it’s not the headline I would have chosen. Those military researchers are going to look kind of funny with those new limbs.
Chicago-Style Politics
In Minnesota. It looks like this election is being stolen, right before our eyes.