ANd how come they are so popular in Law and Order? Slate has the answer.

The federal grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame affair today indicted Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for perjury, making false statements, and obstruction of justice. What is a grand jury, and what does it do? In 1998, Bruce Gottlieb explained the role and composition of grand juries, in connection with the end of Kenneth Starr's Whitewater investigations. "Grand juries make the initial decision to indict—formally accuse—a criminal defendant and require him or her to stand trial," he wrote. "Grand jury indictments are required for all federal felonies. About half the states have some sort of grand jury hurdle, too. Grand jurors are ordinary citizens who listen to the prosecutor questioning witnesses. Unlike a trial, a Grand Jury proceeding is private, and there is no cross examination or presentation of the defense case. In fact, witnesses may not even have a lawyer present during questioning. And jurors themselves may ask questions."

Continu

chocoholics rejoice.

Something I know nothing about. Apparently a lab at Berkley has designed a DNA-protein chimera which will specifically bind cancer markers in levels too low for traditional tests. Then they use existing DNA technology (PCR) to amplify the DNA and determine how much of the blood marker is present. It's more sensitive, but PCR isn't exactly quantitative, because it's a logarithmic process. Anyway, sounds cool.

Maureen Dowd, the liberal shrill, actually wrote a non-political piece about modern feminism and the hard choices women have to make about sacrificing career vs family, or even to find a guy. Powerful women, according to her, will have a very difficult time finding mates; men would rather marry their assistants. I guess that's a cozy theory. I'd rather marry someone close to my equal, so I didn't have to worry about being the sole bread provider. What is interesting to me is all of the things that women 'must' do in 2005 didn't happen to us. We got married at a reasonable age, we both had the same income, we will both be PhDs, she will almost assuredly make more money than I (fine by me), she didn't change her name (theKnot.com says that 80% of women now do) (but in science women tend not to change their names). Anyway, i'm glad, really really glad, I no longer have to worry about 'the chase', finding the perfect girl (i did, of course), endless series of dates, night clubs and bars...

Is good news as they say. Well i managed to work on the dissertation some this weekend, i've been getting kinda lazy about it. I think its easy to slip into this denial state brought about by a temporary interuption in work, leading to a cascade of finding other things to do besides working on the wretched dissertation. Anyway, i finished a decent draft (really revision 2 or 3), its 103 pages, so it's long enough for a serious dissertation. I'd like to send it out to committee next week, and this week the goal is to get my boss and a committee member to look at it and make sure it's not terrible. I need to get the committee's signature on a form saying they've read it, two weeks before defense. So i have until approximately thanksgiving to do so, but most people are out that week. So, really I have two weeks left to do so.

Anyway we decided, after much thought, to have a halloween party; its a tradition of mine. It will be next week saturday. Too bad so many of my friends are now gone. There are still enough here, but there is the feeling that this is the last hurrah, a bunch of people are getting ready to graduate. That is the nature of grad school after all, eventually you graduate or quit. That i've stayed this long speaks to fortitude, really.

An interesting summary of how things are going in Iraq.

Here's a juicy quote.

Please tell our families they are always in our thought and prayers, and as long as they support us and do not lose faith in us or our mission, we will accomplish that mission. There is good news to be reported from Iraq but at the same time it's not all milk and honey. We have difficult work to do. We have set out with a purpose and a goal, and are progressing nicely to achieve these goals.

The realities of history are never as clean as the revisionists make them appear to be. The history of World War II shows us that the peace won is never easy. There were failures throughout the war, and after the defeat of Germany, the country lay in ruins for two years before the Marshall Plan began, and years later before the German people built their government.

Today's war is no different. Miscalculations were made but there is real progress here today that needs to be known. We are giving Iraq the chance to rejoin the world of free nations.

What's a sblog? It's a blog made up of pages created by bloggers and stollen by spammers to generate ad revenue (Viagra, etc.). Well, i guess it's a good thing that the blogosphere has been inundated by spam. I guess i'm lucky enough to not worry about spam, being such a minor player.

Second Life, yet another MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game), boasts that's its pretty much like real life.

Becoming a resident of Second Life is free unless you want to own property or add a second avatar, both of which require a monthly service charge.

Skeptics wonder why Second Lifers aren't spending more time in their actual lives, which also boast 3-D, interactive environments populated by people.

Of course, in the real world, people can't fly.

We recently went out to dinner with friends and discovered that they dropped out of grad school, and are looking for a job. In the meanwhile, they are playing MMRPGs 12-18 hours a day. Yikes. We with addictive personalities must be very careful about such things. I am glad I dont' really like MMORPGs, for one reason it costs too much ($15/month), for another they tend to be populated by braty kids, finally I am just scared of ending up like that; i can see it happening easily. I tried everquest briefly and couldn't really see what all the fuss was about...the interphase was archaic, and the game just stupid to boot. Very, very repitious.

I'm busy with the second draft of my dissertation. It's assembled but loose. ANyway, the Miers thing. Yeah, i think its great that she didn't become SCOTUS. Howard Kurtz seems to be right on target.

Miers's 24 days in the searing spotlight demonstrated many things. One, that the conservative punditocracy is a powerful force, and never more so than when it decides to break with a Republican president. Two, that the normally disciplined White House can look amateurish when it makes as many mistakes as it did on this nomination. Three, that a Supreme Court candidate may be able to survive a thin resume, but not also a bungled questionnaire, unimpressive meetings with senators, an attempt to sell her on religious grounds, gushing letters to her boss, and no trace of ever trying to seriously address constitutional issues. Four, that nominating cronies is risky business. Five, that the party seems divided (former senator Jack Danforth told CNN that the activists' attacks were "mean" and "outrageous," though they simply used the power of their words to undermine a shaky nominee). Six, that presidents really do seem snakebitten in their second terms (see Watergate, Iran-contra, Lewinsky).

So, not only was she a crony, but had no con law experience, and she's never been a judge. If the constitution framers wanted the SCOTUS to be made up of essentially lay-people, they would have said so.

Or, how come the Exxon post 10 billion in profits per quarter. It's simple. There is a finite supply of oil. Currently they are extracting from fields in the mid-east. Those costs are pretty much stable and don't increase. However, demand has skyrocketed, thanks to CHina and India. So, if they spend $10 /barrel of oil to extract it, but demand pushes the sale price from $20 to $60, their profit triples. Isn't that simple? The thing is, if they lower their prices, supply won't be able to keep up with demand. So they say, anyway. And they are in no rush to increase refineries and therefore increase supply. So that's how they rig both sides of the equation. And when the oil runs out, and the oil companies have done shit to discover alternatives, the global economy will collapse. Here, capitalism doesn't really work. The oil companies have zero interest in increasing supply or looking for alternatives. And meanwhile they sing this song of 'conserve use', while jacking up the price of oil.

The human haplotype map (or HapMap) is out. Basically, very small polymorphisms in the human population were identified via sequencing methodologies (I don't know the details). Quick science lesson. Disease is caused by genetics and environment, and interactions between the two. Science can't help much if you decide to subside on red meat and get heart disease, but genetics can be helped, from treatment to cures. For example, a certain percentage of people get familial hypercholerterolemia; for whatever reason, otherwise normal people have really high levels of cholesterol. Some drugs can treat this more or less effectively. How do we identify people with this disease? If we know the gene that's one thing. But what if you don't? What if it is only known that your entire family has very high levels of cholersterol. Well, you get a bunch of DNA samples from this family, and get some DNA samples from otherwise normal people. Then you look for a link between genetic markers and the phenotype; high cholerstrol. What is a genetic marker? It's anything DNA related that will give a variable result depending on the person. The least precise are chromosome spreads, looking at whole chromsomes. The most precise is looking at polymorphisms in individual DNA base pairs; for example I have a A while you have a C. Then you analyize all these markers, and look for linkage. If I have high cholesterol, and 100 other people also have high chol, and the 'A' marker, but you and 100 other low chol. people have the 'C' marker, then it's a match. The more markers there are, the finer map it is. The finer the map, the easier it is to find genetic disease. My masters dealt with exactly this issue, using two strains of mice that were genetically different in certain areas which caused a change in toxic effect of chemotherapy drugs. I eventually got a very very high linkage (something like 1 to a million) on chromosome 17, near a gene-rich cluster. Problem is, that cluster has 250 genes in it, so we have no idea which gene it is. Finer mapping would help with that issue.

It aint over till it's over...well the astros lost the game, and the series. They didn't win a single game, and left 18 men on base. They pulled their typical Astros dive. But at least they got to the series. And the White Sox haven't been since 1919. So they deserve it as much as the astros. I'm still proud of my team for making it this far. The sox were simply the better team, and dominated all aspects of the game, and managed to do very well against the astros pitchers. The astros batted well in the first two games, but the later two were typical of the stros, very weak batting, leaving alot of guys on. That's not going to win many games, unless it's the little sisters of the poor.

Technorati: astros

I'm a few days away from the first draft of the dissertation. It's not exactly huge by any means, it will be close to 100 pages when all is said; but that's due to the idiotic formatting requirements of the graduate school, double space and all of that. It probably won't be as good as it could be, but considering the limited value of this...My advisor had me spend 4 months on the manuscript, and it's still not good enough for her. In contrast, she gave me 3 weeks to write the entire dissertation. I've been working on it for 6 months though, so by the time those 3 weeks rolled around, I was mostly done. Anyway I have about two weeks to get it in good enough shape to give it to the committee; I have to get a document with all the committee's signatures saying they read it and it was good enough for defending, and that has to be done two weeks before defense. So that needs to happen in mid-November, bare minimum. Defense is Dec 8th. ANyway i'm under the gun, but it's managable; I am not writing every waking moment, more like every other waking moment, or 2 out of 3 moments.

This is stupid. MLB (baseball) says to Astros: Open the roof. The roof will make it colder than it normally should be (remember the stros are not used to october weather), and decrease the home field advantage. Yet in Chicago it was near freezing and nothing was done (or could be done) to help out our warm-weather team. Says teh VP of MLB Solomon

"It's a beautiful day," Solomon said. "This is not unprecedented. It happened in 2001 down in Arizona. The roof was open all four games there."

Yet by late innings, the temp will be in the mid 50s or lower. First, why punish the fans unnecessarily? Second, why punish our team? Third, why is it the MLB decision when its our roof, bought and paid for by Texas taxpayers? Crap like this turns people off from baseball.

SI is all over game 3, of course. Roy O, our hero, is our last hope. If we go down 0-3 we can kiss the series goodbye. Still, we have 3 games here, if we win all 3, we just need to win 1 over there.

We went here for dinner last night. Sambuca is rated as one of the best dinner/music cafes in Houston. It's in the middle of downtown. The evening started out on a bad note after we circled and circled trying to find a place to park. We found a garage in the next block, and as we pulled up we noted the prices were a max of 8 dollars per day, which is normal for downtown. How much do they want for evening parking? $10. It kinda blew my mind, but anyway. The city downtown structures were $5, but they were two blocks away. Anyway, live and learn. So as we got there the jazz band was playing; it was fun but not all that memorable. Blue Moons i think they were called? Later I realized that I missed spyrogyra by several weeks, a jazz band whom I actually know of and like (one of the three). Maybe we can go back and see them. The restaurant was not that crowded, due to the sunday night and the World Series. We ordered an appetizer of garlic shrimp, and that's what we got. 4 pieces of shrimp, soaked in garlic butter. We next each got salads, J liked her house salad. The ceasar was decent but I could have done better. Will have to try that recipe again, soon. We then got our dinner (after a fair amount of time), J got her lobster ravioli, basically four squares of ravioli. She said it was somewhat bland. I had lamb; I wanted a steak but they really didn't have much of a meat selection. I got 6 ribs of lamb, and a gollup of mashed potatoes. The lamb was good. We agreed that the potatoes were bland.

Dessert was the saving grace. Although they only had 4-5 choices, we managed to get the best one I guess; we had bananas foster bread pudding. It was reasonably priced and incredibly good. Like I said, the saving grace.

We each had a glass (her) or two (me) of wine; I had a pinot noir which was basically water and ethanol, and a merlot from Blackstone wineries. They were good, but again I expected more. The wine by the glass selection was decent, but way overpriced. The blackstone merlot was $8/glass, yet a bottle can be had for $15. So 1) the wine was way overpriced. 2) The wines were not high quality. The comment goes for the food in general. We spent as much at Che Nieu, the french restaurant, for our dating anniversary, and had better food I think. Anyway. The music was definately a plus, and it didn't really matter if we went to whataburger or stayed home, or whatever.

Afterwords we went to Dave and Busters, and brought home (another) stuffed frog as a prize for 'winning' arcade games. Overall it was a great evening with fabulous company.

It was rather heartbreaking to see the Astros. They played hard, for sure, we had a decent lead until the 7th. Maybe we'll get them in game 3.

It was exactly 365 days ago when J & I got married. So, today is our first anniversary. I mused with puzzlement over the term. Should it be a wedding anniversary, or a marriage anniversary? If its a wedding anniversary, then we are celebrating the event itself, not the product (matrimony). If it's the later, then our marriage only lasted a day, and that doesn't sound right either. I'm going for the generic term 'anniversary' and hope my wife will forgive me. We are going to Sambuca Jazz Cafe, which combines live music and good food. We may go to dave and busters afterwords.

Astros leave for Chicago to battle the white sox. Mayor White has declared this weekend 'no socks weekend'. This is a good time to be a astros fan.

The US soldier who defected to north Korea during the Korean War says he made a colossal mistake, and that he was treated horribly.

Hmm, okay. So why:

1) Is this coming to light after 40 years
2) Did he remain in NK for 40 years
3) Where is the media on this story? Where is the media on any NK story? Why does nobody know whats going on in NK?

It seems like one of two hypothesis are correct.

1) The defector was lying in his interview to save his skin from the wraith of the US public, and things are really fine there.

2) He wasn't lying, things are horrible, not only was he under guard for 40 years, but was effectively silenced. He couldn't communicate to the outside world, and he couldn't escape.

There's probably a story in there somewhere. Other people who have fled from NK have also said that conditions are terrible. Its funny that in the NK things are terrible and they have no wealth to speak of, in fact half of the population must rely on food aid, and in SK, 30 miles away, things are great and they have a very high GNP. It's not like the natural resouces are any different; the system of govt and the economy is dift.

Technorati: Korea

I just registered. I need to raise $400 next year. Wish me luck. I'll be glad to get back on the bike again, i took this year off, and my weight increased from 155 in April of last year (before the ride) to 180 now. Likely it will climb somewhat before defense, since I am not getting much exercise at all. Sigh. yet another sacrifice on the road to graduation. I've already given up so much.

At issue is google's plan to scan books and create a searchable database. It would go a long way towards erasing boundaries between the offline and online world, as well as enormously help scholarly pursuits. From what I've heard, google doesn't plan to make the full text available online,but instead offer links to buy the book. Book publishers are against the scanning idea, saying it's copywrite infringment. Google says its 'fair use' under copywrite law.

"Creating an easy-to-use index of books is fair use under copyright law and supports the purpose of copyright: to increase the awareness and sales of books, directly benefiting copyright holders," David Drummond, Google's general counsel, said in a statement.

The drug herceptin has been found to half the risk of recurrance when given long term after standard treatments. It only works in Her2 positive breast ca. Her2/Neu is a potent proto-oncogene which becomes upregulated in many cancers. Its a receptor tyrosine kinase, but it's ligand (the usual activator of RTKs) is unknown. I work with a protein involved in downregulation of RTKs, so this is somewhat relevant to my research. I'm not exactly sure how the drug, herceptin works, it's an antibody against Her2, it may cause downregulation of teh signal. Since there no known ligand, the usual model that the antibody interferes with ligand/receptor interaction (resulting in receptor activation) may not be true.

Anyway, this is good news for many breast ca patients. 200,000 get it every year, and 40k die every year.

Slate has a review of the first (?) show. I saw it today, I didn't see it yesterday; maybe it was a repeat (laugh). Comedy central has a website up. It's...busy.

Anyway, i agree w/ them, the best part was the Gravitas-off with Stone Phillips (guest).

But the show's centerpiece—an interview with NBC anchor Stone Phillips, and the subsequent "gravitas-off" in which the two men took turns reading nonsensical fragments of news copy—worked brilliantly. The gravitas-off in particular was a beautifully orchestrated spiral of ascending absurdity: "If you have ever sat naked on a hotel bedspread, we have a chilling report you won't want to miss," intoned a deadpan Phillips, only to be topped by an even sterner-sounding Colbert: "Thankfully, alert gauchos were able to save the llama before it was swept into the blades of the turbine." This segment was the show's first real flight into pure verbal fancy, and the moment in which it seemed to break free of opening-night nerves and really take off.

I entertain the notion of Dr. Rob being on the show. I'd speak bout the absurdity of science.

Slate has a...uninformed article on the 'supposed' genomics revolution and why it's failed to produce results.

I don't fisk much (critize) but this is juicy. Here we go.

The Disappointment Gene
Why genetics is so far a boondoggle.

This is the title. The scientific field is genomics and proteomics, which deals with protein or RNA expression differences. For example, protein X may be upregulated, and protein X is a hallmark of cancer. Pretty simple. Genetics is a different situation, and has to do with heritable genes, and has to do with DNA analysis,ie why gene Y doesn't work properly. The heart of medical genetics is finding a correlation of disease Y with mutations in gene Y. As far as 'genomics' type studies, SNP analysis can uncover this. So, anyway, the title sucks.

President Bill Clinton declared the decipherment of its 3 billion base pairs "the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by mankind."

Did you ask a scientist? No. WTF does Bill Clinton know about genomics? It takes time, people. We only 'know' 1% of genes, what their function is, how they impact disease. If you get a whole genome screening, but only 1% of the results are useful, that's not the best thing to do. Best case scenario is that genomics will support further research and narrow down genes that are misbehaving, things that we've missed so far. Most of the big genes have been well characterized, like p53, the guardian of the genome. Others are just a footnote. That's what most scientists are doing nowadays, pick a gene, and analyze it. That's what I am doing.

The drug industry submitted 50 percent fewer applications to the Food and Drug Administration in 2002 and 2003 than in 1997 and 1998, despite the fact that biotech research investment doubled between the two periods.

True, so far biotech and genomics studies haven't helped too much. Still, drugs such as Embrel, or Mendelson's EGFR antibody, or a host of siRNA products (in trials) have come through. However, it takes hundreds of millions of dollars and 13 (thirteen) years to get one drug through FDA approval, approximately. It's only been three years since the genome was sequenced. Also the regulatory hurdles have increased, thanks to Vioxx and other issues. Getting FDA approval, to put it lightly, is a bitch, but once that is done the drug company can make billions off of one drug. That compensates for the thousands that don't make it.

Several companies now offer genetic scans, some available at a supermarket near you, that claim to provide all you need to "take the guesswork" out of living. So, let's get started: In the words of Sciona, a leading "nutrigenetics" company, "It's time to discover The Science of You!"

Yeah it's called snake oil. We are far from knowing what gene profiles actually mean. Don't buy this crap.

Investors rewarded Haseltine with more than $1 billion in 2000. The drugs bombed out early in clinical trials, the stock plummeted, and Haseltine decamped with his millions to become a philanthropist. Three other big genomics companies—Incyte, Celera, and Millenium Pharmaceuticals—also failed to spin genetic discoveries into drugs.

Not surprising, since it takes 13 years. See above. For small pharm compounds, thousands are screening to get one that will get FDA approval. For biological compounds, it's not really understood (to me) how the success ratio will play out, but regardless, there are less 'candidates'. There are also a varity of delivery and productions issues. The major players that produce drugs, produce drugs, not biologicals (such as antibodies, siRNA). So, be patient, and don't invest into biotech right at the moment. And don't listen to stupid journalists.

Welcome to Houston, where we are mostly armed. HT: TBIFOC

A southeast Houston resident killed a suspected robber he said had been hiding in a trash can in his yard.

The resident told police he arrived home around 3 a.m. today and was opening the front door to his house in the 100 block of North Carolina when he heard a noise and turned around to see an unknown man pointing a gun at him.

The resident took out his own gun and shot the man multiple times, police said, then went to a neighbor's home to call police. He reported seeing two other men flee.

The robbery suspect was pronounced dead at the scene.

.

THE ASTROS WIN, THE ASTROS WIN!
The much suffering Houston Astros dominated game 6 of the NLCS, wining 5-1. It was a long long time coming. We have never even been to the world series. The world series has never been played in Texas. Craig Biggio and other stailwarts have never been. Too bad it happened to the Cards ,but they won last year. Now it's our turn. Is a World Series win in the Astros future? It will be a great series, regardless. ALl i can say is, thank god they didn't choke, again.

Update: Oswald was on fire, wasn't he? Gave up 1 run in six innings. He's the reason we're going to the series.

And what was with that call in the sixth (?). The cards had a man on 1st and 2nd, no outs, there was a infield play to second, a bad throw to Everett, he comes off the bag, does some sort of acrobatic to tag the runner, misses barely, but was blocking the ump Greg Gibson's view. Gibson called the runner out, and it was a runner on 1st and 3rd and one out, instead of bases loaded and no outs. Huge difference. Oswalt got out of teh inning fine, with one run, and that's all they wrote.


Update: Fans are celebrating downtown. Would like to go,but got stuff to do, like sleep.. What a game. Another story on the downtown celebration here. Apparently the game was projected on a side of a building on Binz street. Sounds like fun!


Go Astros

The US govt has long held that we should not be a signatory to the international court in the Hague, because we did not want to have our soldiers subject to foreign laws. Rather they argue, if our soldiers commit a crime, they will be punished according to our judicial system, which we believe to be fair. One example for this arguement appeared today when the Spanish govt posted arrest warrents for three officers in the chain of command above a tank unit which opened fire on the Palestine hotel in Bagdad during the fall of the city to US forces. I read Thunder Run by David Zucchino, a journalist who was embedded with the 3rd infantry division during the famous 'Thunder Run'. From his account, the unit was being shelled, and there were spotters in high rise buildings surrounding the unit. They saw what appeared to be a spotter (later it was determined it was a journalist taking pictures), and fired on that position with a tank round, killing 3. Zucchino assigned blame to the intelligence officials who didnt' communicate that the building was a hotel which housed journalists. From my perspective, it was a regretable, terrible accident. But, people with a political agenda or some other agenda aren't happy with the investigation of the incident. Further details about the incident are at Mudville Gazette

Barcelona Blogger has this say:

Don't get me wrong, I still think it was a honest mistake by the tank crewmembers but, even if they had fired on purpose, they probably wouldn't be liable of any crime.

Good article from gateway pundit.

Meanwhile the response to Rita is underwealming. I haven't seen any organized drives for Rita. I have the feeling that if the authorities said 'we need people to man the shelters' they would get it. If they said 'we need food/clothing donations' they would get it. So far, nothing.

[Hurricane Rita]

Opps, i mean silver arch thing. WTF were the designers thinking about that silly arch anyway? Heres praying we win this game. Found this in one of the sports blog comments. (From teh houston chronicle). I think the HC is doing the online thing very well, I often check back with them. They have multiple blogs, and they are usually interesting and relevent.

Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma were, unfortunately, for the Gulf Coast.

St Louis, HURRICANE OSWALT is predicted to arrive at approximately 7:28 CT.

Be warned...

From Foxnews

It's every city dweller's worst fear: rodents on crack.

Squirrels in Brixton, South London, have been observed behaving bizarrely — and authorities there believe it may be because they're hooked on crack cocaine hidden by addicts, according to the London Sun.

A recent crackdown by cops on dealers and addicts is thought to have inspired users to start hiding their stashes in the ground — which the squirrels are digging up.

"My neighbor said dealers had used my garden to hide crack," one Brixton resident told the Sun.

"Just an hour earlier I'd seen a squirrel digging in the flower-beds," the resident told the paper. "It was ill-looking and its eyes looked bloodshot, but it kept on desperately digging. It seems a strange thing to say, but it seemed to know what it was looking for."

So-called "crack squirrels" are already acknowledged as a problem in American cities such as Washington, D.C., and New York.

I'm a, surprise surprise, moderate.

The Republican Loyalty Quiz

10 Questions to Test Your Allegiance to the GOP

Your score is 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. You are a moderate. You agree with Republicans on some issues and Democrats on others, while rejecting the blind, naked partisanship of both sides. You base your vote on issues rather than ideology and principle rather than party, which makes you the quintessential swing voter the media loves to fawn over.

Shameful, just shameful. I want to bury my head in the sand. It was like watching your kid get hit by a bus. (jk).

So..scientology. Pretty cooky. Tom Cruise, also cooky. Now he and his wife (TomKit) are having a kid (TomKitten). They may go the route of 'silent labor', meaning there should be no screams or talkingn during labor. For some inexplicable reason. One thing that strikes me, is that L Ron Hubbard, the novelist, you know, fiction, wrote up this stupid religion, and is now telling women in labor they should shut up? You try passing a watermelon through a hole the size of your fist and tell me you are going to sing Silent Night?

My favorite current show? Law and Order. (I need something to get me through dissertation/manuscript writing). The best actors: Jerry Orbach, the detective, and Sam Waterson, the DA. Jerry did 12 years on the show; its now 15 years old. How many TV shows can you say that about? The show is an hour long, and is always about a homocide. Usually there is a a plot twist or two. The show has relevance and meaning, in a landscape of the Simpsons and the 70's show. It's on TNT now, usually at 2-3pm weekdays.

Also, the old DVDs are dirt cheap, used about $25-30. (compare to $100 for ST, ST:TNG, or X-files). I don't think I like the spin-offs though: L&O criminal intent, and L&O special victims unit

Christopher Hitchens from Slate discusses the ethnic tensions in Iraq and deplores the media for confusing religion (shiite/sunni) and ethnicity or tribal identification. It's something that most media here don't really understand; i suppose we are too happy to breakdown everything into small, easily digested bits. But it has real consequencs, since not all killers in Iraq are sunni, and not all peaceful people are shiites. I just wonder what the iraqi insurgent excuse will be once there is a legit govt and the US forces left...i can guess 'well, it's not the govt we (0.001% of the population) want, therefore we will continue our campaign of terror'. Asshats.

The stros are trying to do what they haven't before and get to the world series. And those evil red birds are in our way. The stros are doing what they couldn't do all season, and clobber the Cards. I actually saw both of the LCS games last night (i never watch baseball) and it was real exciting. SI.com thinks that if teh cards come back it will be the greatest come-back in history. Except for the red socks vs yankees last year. I guess every dog has his day...I don't know what is the deal with baseball and stats, but basically Jacob Luft thinks the Cards have very little chance due to the awesomness of the stros pitching lineup.

First, from what I've seen of islamic terrorists, they are too stupid and sloppy to build weapons of mass destruction. However, many commentators, including those from the 'legendary' New York Times are panicking because of the publication of the genome. That in itself isn't a big deal, because to get from a published genome to the rebuilding of an organism is a very different thing. Basically what the scientists did, as much as I can extrapolate, is that they used previously existing flu strains, and swapped out genetic data. So you need to start from a flu virus already. Then you need to spend god knows how long and how much to swap out everything to make a killer virus. And you need to keep everything at maximum biosafety levels, which is incredibly difficult to work in, let alone set up. Then you need to figure out how to propogate it, which will require, again, high biohazard safety levels, and a carrier, perhaps tissue culture. I am not sure what would be a good mass replicator of flu viruses. Not a mammal, for sure, because of the lethality of the disease. Maybe you infect mohammed and get them in an airplane. Anyway, i just don't see a huge plague breaking out, for the stupidity reason and due to the enhanced epidemiology measures that exist today; less crowding, better hygene, etc. Further, very toxic viruses self-contain because they kill the patients faster than they can spread. Remember Ebola? It is a very lethal virus, but hardly infects anyone because of the fact that it kills too quickly. Which is why HIV is a great killer, its a retrovirus, attacks the immune system, and is dormant for decades before activation. Anyway, don't panic.

There are other approaches, however, to sharing the scientifically useful information. Specific insights - for example, that a key mutation noted in one gene may in part explain the virus's unusual virulence - could be published without disclosing the complete genetic recipe. The precise genome could potentially be shared with scientists with suitable security assurances.

Launchcast has a (free) Halloween music station up, here. It's on the top-right. You need internet explorer and windows media player to listen.

For a laugh, I looked up this book on intelligent design on Amazon. The reviews are uniformly negative. It is apparent to me that even lay people with little understanding of biology reject this piece as a poorly thought out arguement. And the experts, they aren't exactly kind.

Some random snips from the reviews. I somehow enjoy a book or other piece of artistic work being torn to shreds. These are just random blurbs, don't expect them to be connected because, well, they aren't.

As a propoganda tool, Of Pandas and People is of marginal value, as its muddy arguments are not likely to make much of an impression on thoughtful students. As a "science textbook" it is downright shameful.

Pandas is guilty of violating every fallacy of argumentation ...lessons learned by first-year philosophy students, and amounts to little more than vague and ad hoc negative argumentation based on a false dichotomy with frequent hyperbolic congratulatory statements epitomizing delusions of grandeur.

6) "To put it in the context of origins, we see things resulting from two kinds of causes: natural and intelligent."

[rebuttal: if this were true, this book could be considered mostly natural, and some of my hair follicles would be demonstrably more intelligent than others.]

That's one cute giant panda on the cover. Indeed, I see no similarity whatsoever between this cute, innocent creature and us ugly, dirty, corrupt humans, except we all have two eyes, two ears, one nose, two nostrils

... even though accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and getting a permanent place in Heaven applies to murderers, rapists, kidnappers, child abusers, and every rotten person ever born who merely says "God had a baby boy and I invited him into my life!", God MUST have an exception to this rule. And that exception should clearly apply to everybody who had anything to do with bringing this deliberately deceitful, insultingly stupid, and terribly written book onto the marketplace. These people clearly should be punished for all of eternity, if not substantially longer.

The authors simply do not know what they are talking about, and serious errors abound. For instance, they completely misinterpret the results of molecular phylogeny, because they do not understand that a modern fish and a modern man are equally remote in time from their last common ancestor. This leads them to conclude that the data favor separate creation rather than common descent, whereas the exact reverse is true.

That silly fossil record has all the scientists fooled.

And when you see a panda, you know it must have been created by an intelligent designer! It is just too adorable! The book convinced me of the existence of such a designer, the same way I'm convinced the sun revolves around the earth so that it can be closer to all the beautiful pandas.

I think the book does broach an interesting topic, and one we don't have a good handle on. What exactly happened to start life nearly 4 billion years ago? This is the major hole in evolutionary science today I think, and something not easily figured out.

The ID people will point to the example that life only uses certain structures of so called building block molecules (amino acids and sugars. These structures are enantomers, and are basically mirror opposites. However, proteins can only assemble from one enantomer of amino acids, and sugars can only be digested using one enantomer of sugar. Anyway, this may or may not be evidence of ID. Evolutionarily, it can be explained that the system evolved to use only one enantomer due to efficiency reasons.

Another issue is the so called RNA world. RNA is known to do different things, and can act to catalyze certain biochemical reactions. It's structure is very diverse, resulting from its single-stranded nature. So the theory goes, in the begining, RNA first evolved and was the first self-replicating molecule. Problem is, the evidence of RNA self-replication is not widespread. Actually I don't know of any such evidence. DNA is a more complex structure, being double stranded, so the thought is that DNA evolved from RNA, and eventually life figured out how to make protein from DNA via RNA. Anyway, this whole scheme is very complex in modern organisms, and remarkably conserved. So you could somewhat use that as a arguement for ID.

I guess the thing that upsets people of a scientific view is that they don't like people challenging their dogma - Darwinism, esp if those who challenge it do so with infallable theory, which is what religion is. Religion can't be tested, proven, or disproven. It is, and you will believe all tenents of the religion. So it's easy to see why religion and science butt heads, usually over evolution. I don't think neo-Darwinism is the end product of evolutionary theory, just a handy way-station. There is more to be discovered.

This weeks offbeat images are up at CNN

I think their reporting has calmed down somewhat recently. Just a perception.

Check out this CNN/Money article about how good vet hospitals are, when it comes to turning a profit. It's kinda sad.

Cafe Du Mont is almost up and running. The title is satirical of course.

One of the soldiers has a blog and shared his perspective. IT's pretty much what the right and moderate bloggers have been saying all along; the media is way overblowing the incident.

In other news the Iraqi referrendum is a huge success, judging by the turn out (60-70%) and the number of violent acts (13 vs 340). Glenn Reynolds has more. As does probably every blogger remotely interested in Iraq.

Omar of Iraq the Model voted yes. Previously he was unsure.

Some nice pictures here.

I agree with this columnist that this is a huge scientific breakthrough, 10 years in the making. This site has some general info on influenza and this discovery. Two teams of scientists reported last week 1) the mostly full sequence of the 1918 influenza virus and 2) the reconstitution of this virus using 'reverse genetics'. Hard to figure out exactly what they did, but basically they used existing influenza strains and just cut and pasted the 1918 strain into that genome and packaged it. They found some features of the 1918 strain that may explain the mortality; two of the genes did not need protease cleavage for activation; this lessened the requirement for toxicity (somehow). Here is the main point of the article in part of the first figure. First, the 1918 strain is much more virulent than other strains they used. Figure A (top) shows the minimal amount of virus required to kill 50% of mice. The 1918 virus needs the least amount of viral particles to do so. Figure B (bottom) shows the survival of mice inoculated with virus; mice treated with the 1918 virus die within 4 days, whereas mice treated with other influenza don't die.

From the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2005.

As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.

A recent Ann Althouse post brought this on. Read the comments.

Some idiot thinks that 1 billion iPods (well, all MP3 players) will be sold in 2009 alone (up from .25 billion). Okay, i'll bite. The world population, is what, 6 billion? And market saturation is maybe 1 billion, probably less than that. So they are thinking that every person who has a computer will have 2 or more of these devices? And they'll buy one every year? That's pretty stupid.

IDC predicted that annual sales of compressed audio players will reach 945.5 million units worth $145.4 billion in 2009, up from 224.9 units worth $46.7 billion in 2004. IDC defines these devices as everything from portable MP3 players to DVD devices and phones that can play music compressed by software.

From SciGuy. Interesting facts.

1. Last year more than 600,000 engineers graduated from institutions of higher education in China. In India, the figure was 350,000. In America, it was about 70,000.

2. In 1999 only 41 percent of U.S. eighth-graders had a math teacher who had majored in mathematics at the undergraduate or graduate level or studied the subject for teacher certification -- a figure that was considerably lower than the international average of 71 percent.

3. In 2001 U.S. industry spent more on tort litigation than on research and development.

Michael Yon has a great story on embeds in Iraq, and why it's so difficult for a journalist to be there. #1 is the money; thousands of dollars per day. #2 is the danger; the insurgency actively hunts for journalists and kidnaps or kills them. I take back most of the bad things i've said about journalists in Iraq. Still, there are very few that are actually willing to go out and get the news. We are better off listening to the military and the iraq citizens. Supposedly there are 150 newspapers in Iraq right now (up from 1 pre-invasion). Yes, it's a total failure, right. Quagmire. So much so that traffic jams are a big problem b/c of all the imported cars. And satellite dishes are everywhere, as are cell phones. Still, it's hard to get the straight story from that region.

The latest flap from the bush admin is a non-event. Liberals are all over it. For me, it's somewhat of a non-event. Who cares?

NAS = National Acadamy of Sciences. Glenn Reynolds is all over this. It's alot of the stuff that I've been saying. Science, including biological science is in trouble, and the highest ranking scientists acknowledge this.
However, I have no idea what they said because their report costs $60 to get. So, they are crying wolf, but there is no public access to what they are crying for. SO...how do they expect anything to happen? Or is this just another feel good 'hey look we're doing something' committee?

Update: Figured out by signing in you can download the book in PDF form. Otherwise the paper version costs around 60 bucks.

Update: Glancing at the report, they basically say that the US will lose it's lead in science and technology, unless specific funding-related initatives take place. This includes getting more science and math teachers, making them better trained, allow more grants for graduate studies, etc.

Two things struck me: 1) Making available pedology based science degrees (MS) via the issuance of 50,000 grants to pay for students; this is designed to increase the amount of specifically trained science teachers. This is highly applicable to my life; a friend recently quit grad school because she wanted to teach, and this grad school only offered research careers. I dont know of any grad schools that are pediology and not research based.

2) I'll quote from the report.

Action C-2: Increase the number of US citizens pursuing graduate study “in areas of national need” by funding 5,000 new graduate fellowships each year. NSF should administer the program and draw on the advice of other federal research agencies to define areas of national need. The focus on areas of national need is important both to ensure an adequate supply of doctoral scientists and engineers and to ensure that there are appropriate employment opportunities for students upon receipt of their degrees. Portable
fellowships would provide funds directly to students, who would choose where to pursue graduate studies instead of being required to follow faculty research grants.

The amount of US citizens in science as a percentage is plummenting. In the interest of national survival we must increase the amount of Americans getting science PhDs. Yet, there is no real motivation for us to do so, and it's a hard trek, particularly against the swarm of foreigners. Our graduate school just released exit survey statistics; approximately 35% of exiting students from UT Houston GSBS last year were US citizens. If this isn't shocking, I don't know what is.

Rereading the above quote from the NSF report, the portable grant idea is revolutionary and its time has come. I already ranted about the difficulty being tying to an advisors grant here. But this idea can be summerized as such. WHy is grad school hell? Because you are under the express authority of one person. They can kick you out of school, they can deny you entry to your career, they can do anything they want. Why dod they have this much authority? Because they are paying your salery, and they are your boss. This is an inherent conflict of interest, they want research out of you and have no interest in you graduating, while you just want to graduate. A portable student-based grant will eliminate this, and put advisors back in their place as advice givers. I can't stress how revolutionary and huge this idea is.

This is a pretty cool article about the role of anesthesiologists in the OR. Besides knocking the patient out. Makes sense, I think music can help improve many tasks, but it depends on the person.

Reinhart surveyed 301 American Society of Anesthesiology members and found that providing operating music was among non-medical tasks many performed. Anesthesiologists in private practice and those under 50 were most likely to serve as the operating-room DJs.

Apparently newborns cry 3.5 hours per day. If this isn't birth control I don't know what is.

He's nominating the guy he met at the mall to be the head of the federal reserve.

Bush said that the two men met while they were waiting in line at a David's Cookies store: "I was very impressed with the way he counted his change, and I am confident he will bring that same understanding of money to his new role as head of the Federal Reserve."

Tell me this is satire. Cring.

Ghazi Kannan is dead.

Syria's interior minister, who was head of the country's military intelligence in neighboring Lebanon for nearly 20 years, has committed suicide, officials said.

Couple things of interest. Two hours before he died, he called a radio station to deny charges of bribery and that he had something to do with Lebanese prime minster Hariri's death.

Second, he died a few days before the UN report surrounding the death and corruption scandel surfaced.

He had something to hide, but denied even going to his death. Who was he trying to protect?

Story is here. I think alot of people do that; seems healthy to me.

heh
UNICEF isn't the best aid organization though. See here
Also their funding has been used to pay for abortion.Gasp. I really don't care about that issue though.

Video is here (via Crooks and Liars)

Wonder what they will do? Initially set at $ 1 billion, its close to the top twenty foundations in terms of endowment. The site is goggle.org, but as you can see, they are not exactly up yet. A Foxnews article stated that google.org is investing in socially conscience companies. ALso they will give 1% of their yearly profit to the foundation. Nice. Wonder if that is the extent of their charitable giving. Churchs like to see their members tithe 5-10% of their income. I'm not saying its chump change. I suppose capitalism doens't breed altruism. Still, its better than some companies are doing, I am sure.

I don't know the details, but google will be smart to diversify their holdings; ie not have their philatropic foundation dependant on the value of their stock, which could take a nosedive. It could soar of course, too. Same goes for people holding google stock, currently valued at $300/share. Their P/E (price/earnings) ratio, a good initial bellmark of how reasonably prices their stock is, is 90. Most companies are within the 10-20 range. Google is seriously, seriously overpriced. I wonder what idiotic investor would buy at that P/E.

From Kausfiles.

Another huge drawback to Times Select is that the columnists are under extreme pressure to produce writing that can justify a surcharge. You can sense they're straining. No doubt they will pound out a perfectly fine column and then think: Is it good enough for Times Select?

He's talking about, again, the NY Times Select program and how it made the world at large ignorant of the NYT columnists, including Dowd and Krugman (bunch of idiots, i think). Anyway. Yeah, this is my advisor totally. So, I've been blogging for years. I wrote a letter to the editor of the Houston Chronicle last week and they published it, apparently the chances of publication is between 5-10%. I wrote my masters thesis and it was fine for that committee. Now my boss is saying I have the worst writing in the world?

I've been writing a manuscript for submission to a major journal since July. I have gone through at least 20 major drafts. Yet it is still 'not even close' to submission. I have this week to get it done, if i can't get it done to her satisfaction, there is the major threat of it not getting published. In this lab anyway. Yeah, it's pretty tough. After this week, I simply must work on the dissertation. I will have until Nov 14th at absolute max to submit the thesis. These events are both deal stoppers for me; if it doesn't happen, I wont' graduate in December. I won't be allowed to apply for fellowships. I won't be able to work in the post-doc lab. Grad school is hell, then you actually try to graduate. THere is so much hoops and flaming barrels to jump over, it's no wonder that many grad students leave during dissertation writing.

The sad truth that it took 8 years to learn is that it doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game, and how much ass you have to kiss to avoid ruining your career. My MS advisor is now the head of the board to determine post-doc fellowships at the instituation (as well as being involved in just about every major educational event at MDACC). We parted amicably, barely, but surprisingly she was glad to hear from me when I asked her about the fellowship.

The second sad truth is that the advisor is there to exploit you as much as possible, and things are done their way or the highway. This lab has 4 grad students and one postdoc; we've been there, combined, 12-15 years. None of us has succeeded in writing a single manuscript, although five were published in the lab (which is low). The standards in this lab are so high as to make even the thought daunting. Jee, its like she doesn't want us to succeed.

The third truth is that the advisor does not want you to succeed, nor continue in the field. Because the grad student is a threat for funding. Particularly when funding gets tight, as it is now. The less papers you have, the less chance you have of getting funding. THe more time that is spent repeating and chasing down rabbit holes concotted by the advisor, the less time is spent making actual progress. I spent four years in the lab, and I barely have enough data for one paper. Something is wrong. Either I am criminally stupid or got poor direction and advice.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. I am sure not all advisors are like that. But the treatment of grad students currently is horrific and is directly to blame for the collapse of science research in the US.

This seems like good news

Under the deal, the two sides agreed that a commission would be set up to consider amendments to the charter that would then be put to a vote in parliament and then submitted to a new referendum next year.

The agreement would allow the Sunnis to try to amend the constitution to reduce the autonomous powers that Shiites and Kurds would have under the federal system created by the charter, negotiators said.

So basically they will have constitutional ammendments, somewhat like the US constitution. The news report suggests that the public will be allowed to vote on the deal. So now it seems more and more likely that the constution will pass. Seems like the Sunnis are bidding time, trying to get more members into the govt. From what I recall, however, some sunnis in the govt have already agreed to the constitution. These talks, seemingly, were with new Sunnin groups. I don't think the divisions in Iraq are necessarily sunni vs Shi'ite. It's more ethnic and tribal. The kurds are Sunni, if I recall, and their region is relatively stable. Of course the whole process is hampered by Syrian and Iranian interference. Iran is definately pro-Shi'ite, and would have the country more theocratically ruled. Syria is Ba'athist, and supports the bad old days and the bad old day's people.

Another Rodney King. The mug shot shows the victim pretty badly beaten. The video shows three or four cops sitting on him, punching him. He was arrest for public drunkeness, but he swears he hasn't had a drink in 25 years. What the hell? The guy is 64. What could a 64 year old done that was so criminal and henious that he deserved that. This plus the looting spree that some cops took part in, plus the 200+ that walked off the job when they were needed most, gives the NOPD a very bad rep indeed. I think I'm not the only one who wouldn't want to go back anytime soon, if I didn't know I wasn't going to be victimized by the cops.

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake hit south Asia a few days ago. Already they are forecasting deaths of 30,000. The devestation, I would guess, is similiar to Katrina in scope and geographic distribution. I think, unfortunately, that disasters will become larger and larger as more and more people populate the earth. It's simple statistics.

Already people are wondering if Osama is dead. I hope so.
(there was a foxnews story about this yesterday, but i can't find the link.).

1) TiVo, of course. It's crack for TV.
2) Internet radio. I can listen to it at work or home, and it's much more variety than my MP3 collection (and always will be). I can plug in headphones and not bother anyone. I use launchcast by Yahoo. Sure, Iradio has been around a long time, but I think recently it's gotten better, or that everyone got broadband and can actually play it. Best thing: continuous streaming, even if other applications crash. Used to be a major problem.

From FOXNews So what is SIDS? Apparently the baby falls asleep too deeply, and suffocates as a result. Some think that neural trauma is one factor. Basically the part of the brain stem that says 'wake up' when the baby is suffercating doesn't trigger. Seems pretty hard to judge. Anyway SIDS deaths have dropped substantially in the last few years, seemingly because parents now know to let the baby sleep on their backs. AAP now recommends not letting them sleep in the parents bed (they sleep too deeply), and letting them have pacifiers only if they want them. Seems like what they are trying to say is make sure baby doesn't sleep too deeply. Sounds fun for new parents.

Never thought I'd see it, but my brother gets spam from every post. Too bad. He uses blogger, apparently Google hasn't been all that active in cracking down. Guess I am glad i got away from blogger.

So some FOXnews guy got himself a blog, and he's in Bagdad, probably in the Green Zone, probably in a hotel. Who knows. I can't figure out his rambling. There is no news there, unless the fact that the newsroom got a bag of whoopers candy this week. Who cares? Compare and contrast with Michael Yon, who was in Basra for a year, and deserves a Pullitzer (sp). Although big awards being the popularity contest they are, he probably won't. J & I were discuss Joss Weldon's various TV shows (Buffy, Angel, Firefly) and remarked how they never got awards. Neither did hardly any sci-fi shows. I don't think they have an award catagory; it's either drama or documentary or comedy. Sci-fi is completely ignored when it comes to recognition. Not popular enough, i guess. If I were president...

Steven Milloy does a thorough fisking of “Future of Food” a new 'documentary' which doesn't seem to have it's facts straight. Farenheit 9/11 anyone?

Wings over Houston is today Apparently it's a really big airshow. But tickets are somewhat expensive ($20) and I have to write. I only have two months left to finish everything. I have 5 weeks to send out my dissertation. I have 1 week to finish this paper. Basically I don't have any time to spare right now.

Well, maybe a little. We saw Serenity last night, it was pretty good, but I was somewhat surprised at the abrupt way Joss kills off his characters. The two twins in the Bar that Mal and Jayne talk to? They are actual real life twins. I was pretty sure they didn't make that part up. Another cool factoid. I wonder if the series will come back to TV or to movies? The ending was definately open ended.

I predicted this when I was a teenager and the internet was just starting to come alive. Glad to know I've rejected this form of addicition.

Huh, CNN?

The story is on the homecoming for a Marine battalion (3rd of the 25th).

But you wouldn't know that from reading the first two sentences. It's another body count story, and makes it sound worse than it is.

BROOK PARK, Ohio (AP) -- A Marine Corps battalion that lost 48 members in Iraq arrived home Thursday to cheers and a parade attended by thousands of people.

Crowds lined the one-mile parade route from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport to welcome back the 160 members of the Headquarters & Service Company of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines.

See, they switched battalion and company. The Battalion lost 48 members. The company has 150 members. You immediately do the math, unconsciensly. A headquarters company lost 48 members? That's terrible. Yet not true. They probably didn't lose anyone. The whole battalion, as is revealed in the final sentence of the story, has 900 members. So the casulty rate is 48/900. Which is still high, but not 48/150 (for a HQ company). Big difference. Jee, its like they aren't on our side or anything. Oh, wait, they're not.

I don't know what has gotten into CNN today, they are increasingly shrill and left wing. Even Slate isn't as bad.

The IAEA. Color me shocked. The nomination screams why. Have they done anything to stop nucluar (W's spelling) proliferations?

(ha). My letter made it to the paper. They printed the full thing, surprisingly. Here is the link.

is here

At least I think it's his last update. It's very long and informative, and I think it's really striking how the Iraqi forces are getting themselves together and really pushing forward to better secure themselves and their country. They are fighting and dying; 600-700 iraqi forces died in Mosul in the last 1.5 years (estimate). Yon says Mosul is now a much safer place. Why the success? He cites leadership as the big key:

In some wars, it’s about the resources. In other wars, it’s about the equipment or manpower. In some, the weather turns out to be the Great Decider. This one is about the expectations, philosophies and individuals who wear the mantle of leadership. As for these individuals, from the young sergeants to the senior officers, the Coalition simply has superior leaders, and they are mentoring the best Iraqi leaders, and the results are transparent.

If you think about Darwinism, it's basically survival of the fittest...that's social Darwinism, not the modern form of neo-Darwinism. Anyway, both groups; insurgents and police, started out on fairly equal footing with regard to experience and equipment. You'd think as the fighting intensifies, one side would learn how not to die and survive longer. This would be the Iraqi forces side. I agree with Yon that it's due to leadership and philosophy. Native iraqi insurgents just want to kill anyone they can, including children. The insurgents turn on each other, and the foreign insurgents who are captured can't wait to confess all they know. So while the enemy is fractured and has no popular support (b/c they kill kids), the Iraqi forces are leading missions, finding the bad guys, and taking them down.

Of course questions remain. 1) Will the Iraqi forces become corrupt and inept? 2) Will they turn to the insurgency? In the near future it doesn't seem like this will be the case, because of the moral issues. As the coalition forces continue to draw down and play a less active roll, and build more infrastructure, the less the public will dislike the 'occupation'. The more the iraqi forces become accustomed to success, they will breed success and it will spread throughout the country. It's a huge domino effect, I think, something our forces were on the opposite side of in Vietnam. The more we 'passified' villages, the more they hated us, the more gurillas that were recruited, the more we repessed and provoked the Vietnamese. So, basically, this isn't Vietnam. People keep wanting to say it, but it's not.

This seems like good news. Bike sales have climbed since August. Of course, that tends to happen anyway due to start of school. But hopefully more people will use bikes now. I think pain at the pump will lead to pain on the bike, and will let people become more healthy. Maybe more of our transport dollars will go to improving bike infrastructure. I think that's a major reason people do not bike commute, it's just not safe.

Charity and University hospitals in New Orleans have been labeled as 'beyond help', a death blow to some of the oldest and biggest hospitals in New Orleans. ALso CNN has a video of Methodist hospital there. When the basic infestructure has been condemed, then you know its going to a long, slow process to get the city back on its feet. Could take decades. It will take probably 5 years to rebuild the hospitals, and about a billion dollars. The bright side: They are both old; 1930 and 1960.

It's an old whine. Anyway CNN/Money has some quips from various readers about it. Seems like for these people gas prices have really affected their living standard. Or perhaps they just woke up a bit more. I see a definate shift to healthier living, less driving, more biking and walking.

Makes me glad i'll be still able to bike to work for the next 1-2 years while I do my postdoc.

You may have seen the stat, for every 100 men receiving college degrees, 135 women are doing the same. Dr. Helen (wife of Instapundit), wrote this about it.

This article from USA Today has more: "Currently, 135 women receive bachelor's degrees for every 100 men. That gender imbalance will widen in the coming years, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Education. This is ominous for every parent with a male child. The decline in college attendance means many will needlessly miss out on success in life. The loss of educated workers also means the country will be less able to compete economically. The social implications — women having a hard time finding equally educated mates — are already beginning to play out. But the inequity has yet to provoke the kind of response that finally opened opportunities for women a generation ago. In fact, virtually no one is exploring the obvious questions: What has gone wrong? And what happens to all the boys who aren't in college?"

To which I sent her a email stating:

Dear Dr. Helen,

I just saw your post on the above mentioned topic.
This is more of a socialogical problem, perhaps. I
can only recount my experience. I am still in higher
education, getting my PhD in December of this year. I
started my BS in '92. I received my MS in 2000. My
two male cousins, in contrast, went to college but did
not finish. Both of them are doing fine. They work
in different aspects of the computer field
(information technology industry, to be fancy).
Perhaps there is more of a onus on women to get their
education, to prove that they are their equals to men.
Perhaps men no longer feel that onus, and have
realized that a BS/BA is no longer the gatekeeper like
it once was. Perhaps more sociologists should figure
out why people bail out of higher education, and what
the schools can do about it. I've seen alot of
colleages up and quit in graduate school; this is a
very demanding field. They quit for various reasons,
but most American friends of mine don't see much point
in getting a PhD and getting paid a pitance and
competing with the huge flood of Indian/Chinese PhDs
that are being shipped to the U.S.; this tide
increases every year. I don't blame them. In
contrast, I don't know of any chinese students who
have quit the PhD program. So I suspect the drop out
rate is much different. I don't know about other
schools, but here in Houston the flood of foreign
researchers is a huge problem for us American
citizens.

Update: She wrote back with this. Seems like a very nice person.

Thanks so much for your email about your experience in higher ed. There mainly seem to be fewer men going into undergraduate colleges--for various reasons, I expect. Boys seem to dominate dropping out of high school more so than girls. It is an interesting trend--I would like to interview boys and men and put together a documentray that might give insight into where all the guys are going, if not to college. I can see why no one wants a PhD--given the time involved and the low pay.

My work as a forensic psychologist is now a hobby due to there being no money in the kind of work I wish to do with criminal investigation etc. I mainly work on the internet (writing, selling, etc.) to make a living and frankly, I could have done this with a high school diploma! Good luck to you and congrats on obtaining your PhD--it is quite an accomplishment. Helen Smith

I just sent this to the Houston Chronicle, about a article in Sundays paper regarding jobs that don't require higher ed.

Dear Chronicle,

I read this article in Sundays paper by Banks Albach
with interest. My job is in the biological sciences,
doing cancer research. My wife is also in hard
science, doing physics work related to cancer
treatment. We will both have our PhDs next year.
Yet, our combined household income will be 70k, which
is the NIH guideline for a first year postdoc. If we
are lucky, in ten years (when I am 40) we'll have a
combined income of 200k. This is a hard reality of
scientific work; low pay, high education, hard work.
In contrast, my equally-intelligent cousin, who lives
here in Houston too, makes six-figures, doing computer
work from home. He attended one semester of college.
His wife is a nurse and makes about the same amount as
he. They both work extremely hard and deserve every
penny of their compensation.

So, there are jobs that don't require a college degree
(computer work), or a bachelors only (nursing and
engineering), and are in high demand and are payed
according to that demand. In contrast, there are jobs
like mine. My advice for someone deciding whether or
not to go to college is to first figure out what
skills or aptitude you have, and if those skills are
in demand. ALso, determine if the field you want will
benefit from a college degree or experience.
Sometimes you need the degree plus experience, other
times one or the other. Lastly money is only one side
of the equation, and very few people will have those
well paying jobs. Happiness, job satisfaction, these
are fringe benefits that are not measured in dollars.

Sincerely,

Rob Dejournett, MS

here

Seems like the stros are a better team than the braves. But give the performance of the last few days, it's not stellar. What is interesting to me is that the best teams only have a win percentage of 60%, meaning they lose four out of ten games on average. So seems like most teams in baseball are evenly stacked. Except the yanks of course. I hope we won't have to face them. But if we do make it to the series, so much the better. Should be interesting.

Bush to nominate Harriet Miers to the supreme court, his personal lawyer in Texas, and White House counsel. Get this, she's not a judge. How can you nominate a non-judge to the highest judicial office in the land?

From Tigerhawk

Mostly regarding the state of the training of Iraqi armed forces. Not surprisingly, this report is much more upbeat that those found in the mainstream media.

here. He's described as a 'radical moderate' who wants to end teh connection between corporations and politicians. I say go for it. Delay is as corrupt as they come. I will never forgive the GOP for the gerrymandering that occured a few years ago in TX that gave the GOP 12 (?) House seats. It was inexcusable and against the law, and nothing was done about it.

Who knew? Basically a podcast is a audio file that you can play in a digital music player such as a iPod. Just saw the cliffhanger episode for season 2 (#10), wow it's good. Can't wait to see the finale. Which is in January, according to SciFi.

The show also has a (not-so-regular) blog.

This is somewhat funny, if deadpan.

Dear Abby: Q: My friend, "Rose," asked me something I'm not sure about — so I'm turning to you. An elderly friend of hers was ill, so Rose bought a get- well card and the people at her senior center all signed it. Before she could mail it, the friend passed away, so Rose asked me if it would be OK to send the get-well card along with a sympathy card.

I told her she should have the friends at the senior center just sign the sympathy card and send it. Now I'm having second thoughts. Do you think I said the right thing? UNSURE in Campbell, Calif.

Dear Unsure: A: Absolutely. It was a little late to send a get-well card.

And Duma too. Serenity is the Joss Whedon movie based on Firefly. While I enjoy Firefly, it's not on the same scale as Stargate SG1 or Battlestar Galactica. We are rich indeed that there are four good shows on SciFi now. In addition to Buffy and Angel, he did the screenplay for Toy Story, and Titan A