That stupid lawsuit against McDonalds for making people fat has been tossed out of court.
Peace In Our Time
The EU says that we can’t go into Iraq without UN approval.
Well, I guess that settles it. Might as well have the ships turn back.
More and more, as I look across the Atlantic, it seems to be through a looking glass.
There seem to be multiple delusions going on here. First of all, we already have UN approval. SCR 1441 was carefully crafted by Powell to ensure that was the case. But the Europeans continue to fantasize that there is a need for another resolution (one that the French can therefore block by veto), when they lost that battle in October.
I guess that they’re in denial. If they were to no longer believe this, they’d have to confront the reality that they’ve made themselves utterly irrelevant. They’d no longer be able to pretend that they were players on the stage of world events.
But here are the other major delusions:
Prime Minister Costas Simitis of Greece, EU president until the end of June, said a war would harm peace and stability in the Middle East.
Speaking after a meeting with visiting Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, Simitis said:
“We both estimate that peace (in Iraq) must be preserved. We both believe a conflict will result in delaying many developments and is a conflict that will not benefit stability and peace in the region.”
This supposes that “stability” is a positive attribute in a hellhole. After all, a grave is stable.
It also postulates that there is some existing “peace” in Iraq that is preservable, and that it is desirable to preserve it.
Take the second first. Can a country whose government terrorizes its own citizens, that has Al Qaeda guerillas attacking the northern parts nightly (the parts not under Saddam’s control), be properly said to be at peace? Not in my book. There will be no peace in Iraq as long as Saddam or one of his partners in monstrousness are in power there, and as long as Al Qaeda has safe haven in Iran from which to attack the Kurds in the north.
The Middle East is not at peace now, and will not be until there are wholesale changes in governments there. Thus, stability is not our friend, because it’s the stability of constant warfare by the regional governments against their own people (and particularly their women), some of which spills over into attacks on us, as we saw a year and a half ago.
We want to, we must destabilize the present Middle East–it’s the only hope of restabilizing it into something that offers hope for its inhabitants, and true peace, for us as well as them. As the old saying goes, sometimes, the only way out is through.
The Eurocrats who would perpetuate the notions described above are not contributing to peace, any more than did Neville Chamberlain sixty five years ago. Their course of delay and obfuscate would just make the ultimate necessary outcome much more difficult and costly in human lives, as did his.
Implosion
Trent Telenko says that we are already at war with North Korea, and we’re quietly winning.
Karl Rove, Beware
I just saw Gary Hart interviewed on Hannity and Colmes. Glenn’s right–he’s definitely the most formidable candidate that the donkeys could put up against Bush, and he might beat him if circumstances are right, particularly given the lame home security policies of the Administration, which are extremely vulnerable to attack from, well, a non-idiotarian perspective.
The only silver lining is that the Dems would probably be too dumb to nominate him.
So, It’s Not You Again
Many people are confused about the difference between genotypes and phenotypes, and the relative effects of genetics versus environment in creating the latter. The genotype is the genetic information, and by Dawkins’ “selfish gene” theory, this is what “attempts” to replicate itself. (I use quotes around the word “attempts” because genes don’t really have any sense of purpose, or anything else.)
The phenotype is the body–the expression of the genotype in the physical world that is used to do the actual replication.
Much of the opposition to cloning stems from the assumption that the genotype is a blueprint , or specification for the phenotype, and fully describes the phenotype. In fact, blueprint is a poor analogy. Genes are much more akin to a recipe. That is, they’re not a plan–they’re a procedure. First grow this, here, next grow that there.
The difference is crucial, because if something is built to spec, it will, by definition, be very similar to another thing built to that same spec. A recipe, on the other hand, can come out dramatically differently, depending on the type of kitchen, available materials, the mood of the cook, etc. Two people can follow the same recipe and come out with different results.
The same applies to the expression of the genotype–the phenotype. Even identical twins have different retinal scans and fingerprints, so clearly they weren’t built to a specification–there’s nothing in the DNA to describe the exact configuration of the whorls and loops on the thumb.
What does this mean? It means that clones may, in fact, end up not being very similar to each other, meaning in turn that the fears about, e.g., armies of superwarriors are overblown. Identical twins share both genetics and the womb environment, so they are indeed close to identical, but even they will have distinct differences, as anyone who knows twins well can tell you. Two genetically-identical individuals gestated in entirely different environments may turn out to be dramatically different, to the point that it’s not at all obvious that they’re even related.
This has always been the theory.
Now apparently it’s the practice as well.
The first cats to be cloned ended up not being, well, clones.
So, It’s Not You Again
Many people are confused about the difference between genotypes and phenotypes, and the relative effects of genetics versus environment in creating the latter. The genotype is the genetic information, and by Dawkins’ “selfish gene” theory, this is what “attempts” to replicate itself. (I use quotes around the word “attempts” because genes don’t really have any sense of purpose, or anything else.)
The phenotype is the body–the expression of the genotype in the physical world that is used to do the actual replication.
Much of the opposition to cloning stems from the assumption that the genotype is a blueprint , or specification for the phenotype, and fully describes the phenotype. In fact, blueprint is a poor analogy. Genes are much more akin to a recipe. That is, they’re not a plan–they’re a procedure. First grow this, here, next grow that there.
The difference is crucial, because if something is built to spec, it will, by definition, be very similar to another thing built to that same spec. A recipe, on the other hand, can come out dramatically differently, depending on the type of kitchen, available materials, the mood of the cook, etc. Two people can follow the same recipe and come out with different results.
The same applies to the expression of the genotype–the phenotype. Even identical twins have different retinal scans and fingerprints, so clearly they weren’t built to a specification–there’s nothing in the DNA to describe the exact configuration of the whorls and loops on the thumb.
What does this mean? It means that clones may, in fact, end up not being very similar to each other, meaning in turn that the fears about, e.g., armies of superwarriors are overblown. Identical twins share both genetics and the womb environment, so they are indeed close to identical, but even they will have distinct differences, as anyone who knows twins well can tell you. Two genetically-identical individuals gestated in entirely different environments may turn out to be dramatically different, to the point that it’s not at all obvious that they’re even related.
This has always been the theory.
Now apparently it’s the practice as well.
The first cats to be cloned ended up not being, well, clones.
So, It’s Not You Again
Many people are confused about the difference between genotypes and phenotypes, and the relative effects of genetics versus environment in creating the latter. The genotype is the genetic information, and by Dawkins’ “selfish gene” theory, this is what “attempts” to replicate itself. (I use quotes around the word “attempts” because genes don’t really have any sense of purpose, or anything else.)
The phenotype is the body–the expression of the genotype in the physical world that is used to do the actual replication.
Much of the opposition to cloning stems from the assumption that the genotype is a blueprint , or specification for the phenotype, and fully describes the phenotype. In fact, blueprint is a poor analogy. Genes are much more akin to a recipe. That is, they’re not a plan–they’re a procedure. First grow this, here, next grow that there.
The difference is crucial, because if something is built to spec, it will, by definition, be very similar to another thing built to that same spec. A recipe, on the other hand, can come out dramatically differently, depending on the type of kitchen, available materials, the mood of the cook, etc. Two people can follow the same recipe and come out with different results.
The same applies to the expression of the genotype–the phenotype. Even identical twins have different retinal scans and fingerprints, so clearly they weren’t built to a specification–there’s nothing in the DNA to describe the exact configuration of the whorls and loops on the thumb.
What does this mean? It means that clones may, in fact, end up not being very similar to each other, meaning in turn that the fears about, e.g., armies of superwarriors are overblown. Identical twins share both genetics and the womb environment, so they are indeed close to identical, but even they will have distinct differences, as anyone who knows twins well can tell you. Two genetically-identical individuals gestated in entirely different environments may turn out to be dramatically different, to the point that it’s not at all obvious that they’re even related.
This has always been the theory.
Now apparently it’s the practice as well.
The first cats to be cloned ended up not being, well, clones.
Not Sure This Is Better Than An Ape…
Some researchers have discovered that we (and all other placental mammals) are descended from an aardvark-like creature.
The scientists said that the common ancestor probably belonged to a mammalian ?super order? known as Afrotheria, which includes the aardvark and both species of elephant.
Kind of makes me peckish for some ants.
A Peaceful Religion
Christians in Pakistan fear a backlash when we depose Saddam.
Christians are a small minority in Pakistan and dozens of Christians died in targeted killings by Muslim extremists last year.
Their fears have been exacerbated by a pamphlet distributed last week in Pakistan, which urged Muslims to attack Christians to avenge “the defeat of the Taliban government in Afghanistan and an expected U.S. invasion of Iraq.”
A New Ring In The Circus
Al Sharpton has entered the presidential race.
This should be fun.