In the eighties and nineties, I was a devoted reader of the Economist. It was my primary source for news (having long before given up on the pablum offered up by Newsweek and Time). But things like this are the reason that I no longer am. It would be nice if we could once again get a classically liberal news magazine.
Breakthrough?
This is a huge story if it pans out, and the headline is exactly right. Researchers create stem cells without destroying embryos. I’ve never been as upset about embryo destruction as many want me to be, but if this can take that issue off the table, it will make it much easier to forge ahead. In fact, what’s great about it is that it seems to be a much more promising technique than nuclear transfer:
…it’s not such a surprise that Ian Wilmut, the man who cloned Dolly the sheep a decade ago, recently said he has been persuaded to give up his own cloning experiments, thanks to news of Dr. Yamanaka’s successes.
“Any scientist with basic technology in molecular and cell biology can do reprogramming,” says Dr. Yamanaka. “If we can overcome the issue [of having to use dangerous viruses to ferry the genes into cells], many more people will move from nuclear transfer to this method.”
As the article notes, it’s surprising how quickly they got to this ability. We could conceivably see it in action within a decade, and perhaps within a very few years. Good news for those of us still in relatively good health. It may significantly accelerate our progress toward actuarial escape velocity.
Deconstructing Charmin
That he himself was rebuked for failing to stay his own desire to squeeze, some say, was proof of a Natural Law above Whipple and the society he represented, but this was seen quite correctly by critics as a reflexive sop tossed to the reactionaries, a way of undercutting the existential truths Whipple
Autoimmune Disorder
…of the Internet.
Popularity
The audio of the king of Spain telling Hugo Chavez to shut his pie hole is being downloaded as a ringtone:
In Venezuela, a group of students who oppose Mr Chavez’s government have also been downloading the ringtone, a US newspaper reported.
“It’s a form of protest,” a 21-year-old student in Caracas told the Miami Herald. “It’s something that a lot of people would like to tell the president.”
As that great philosopher, Nelson Muntz (more than) once said, “Ha ha!”
Life Imitates Art (Take 2)
Substitute rat’s milk for cow’s milk and you will help save the world. At least, that
Spacemail Act is Key to Energy Security
All things green are getting a thorough look with oil poised to bust through $100/barrel as Russia, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria and other major exporters view high prices as a time to reap profits and consolidate political control rather than feed the goose that is laying the golden eggs–i.e. invest. One hope for cheap clean energy (energy independence is at our fingertips if we decide to widely deploy coal-to-liquid technology used by SASOL in South Africa and is estimated to cost $35/barrel by Wikipedia) is space based solar power (SBSP). But Taylor Dinerman gets to the key roadblock to SBSP in his Space Review article today, “The chicken and the egg: RLVs and space-based solar power”:
The SBSP Study Group universally acknowledged that a necessary pre-requisite for the technical and economic viability of SBSP was inexpensive and reliable access to orbit….
Phase one proposes a strategy that will
The Good News From Iraq
Christopher Hitchens has some thoughts:
As I began by saying, I am not at all certain that any of this apparently good news is really genuine or will be really lasting. However, I am quite sure both that it could be true and that it would be wonderful if it were to be true. What worries me about the reaction of liberals and Democrats is not the skepticism, which is pardonable, but the dank and sinister impression they give that the worse the tidings, the better they would be pleased. The latter mentality isn’t pardonable and ought not to be pardoned, either.
Indeed. I have a feeling that the Dems aren’t going to have as good an election next year as they hope. Particularly since they continue to delude themselves that they won last year because the American people want to surrender in Iraq:
All signs indicate that Democrats will continue proposing such measures as long as Mr. Bush remains in office and troops remain in Iraq.
He Shoots, He Scores!
Norman Podhoretz, 1, Andrew Sullivan and The Economist, nothing, in the latters’ attempts to minimize the danger of a nuclear mullahcracy.
What Civil War?
Sunni and Shiite are uniting to fight Al Qaeda:
Commanders in the field think they have tapped into a genuine public expression of reconciliation that has outpaced the elected government’s progress on mending the sectarian rift.
“What you find is these people have lived together for decades with no problem until the terrorists arrived and tried to instigate the problem,” said Lt. Col. Valery Keaveny, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 509th Airborne unit in the Iskandariya area south of Baghdad. “So they are perfectly willing to work together to keep the terrorists out.”
Note that this is grass roots, bottom-up cooperation. Over time, let’s hope that it filters its way up to the government itself. If Iraq is really becoming a democracy, it should.
[Update a few minutes later]
Speaking of civil wars, it’s been a dozen dozen years, seven score and four, since Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address. Here’s my post on the subject from three years ago.