View 431 September 11 - 17, 2006 (original) (raw)
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Tuesday, September 12, 2006
From Joanne Dow:
Subject: Newly released private footage of 9/11
http://hotair.com/archives/2006/09/11/video-911-as-it-happened/
It's the bottom clip on the page. It is ABSOLUTE dynamite.
{O.O}
Fair warning: these are the real thing.
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I found all these in my mail today:
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TB emergency declared in Africa http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/4182990.stm Published: 2005/08/25 23:57:01 GMT
African health ministers have announced a regional tuberculosis emergency due to a sharp rise in the number of cases.
The declaration was made in Mozambique at a meeting of the World Health Organization's (WHO) African region.
WHO Regional Director for Africa Dr Luis Gomes Sambo appealed for "urgent and extraordinary" action to prevent the situation from getting worse.
Tuberculosis, or TB, kills half a million people a year in Africa, a quarter of the global total.
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'Virtually untreatable' TB found http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/health/5317624.stm Wednesday, 6 September 2006, 07:56 GMT 08:56 UK
Transmission electron micrograph of TB (Science Photo Library/K Kim) A "virtually untreatable" form of TB has emerged, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Extreme drug resistant TB (XDR TB) has been seen worldwide, including in the US, Eastern Europe and Africa, although Western Europe has had no cases.
Dr Paul Nunn, from the WHO, said a failure to correctly implement treatment strategies was to blame.
TB experts have convened in Johannesburg, South Africa, to discuss how to address the problem.
TB presently causes about 1.7 million deaths a year worldwide, but researchers are worried about the emergence of strains that are resistant to drugs.
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Four out of five migrants 'take more from economy than they put back' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/
news.html?in_article_id=402607&in_page_id=1770
&in_page_id=1770&expand=true#StartCommentsBy JAMES SLACK Last updated at 00:01am on 29th August 2006
Comments Reader comments (6)
Migrants aren't putting back into the economy what they are taking out. Click enlarge to see the full, table of migrants' earnings
Four out of five migrants take more from the British economy than they contribute, a report has warned today.
The analysis demolishes the Government's key claim that migrants pay more in taxes than they take back in public services.
Instead, a small number of very high earning foreign workers are masking the fact that 80 per cent of immigrants are taking more out of the economy than they contribute over their lifetimes.
Only one in five is earning the �27,000 a year required to make a positive contribution over the course of their lifetime. It means that, if they settle here, they will cost the taxpayer money.
That, of course, is Britain; but surely the economics are about the same here?
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Phillip J. Hubbell: My home became a ghetto
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/
opinion/points/stories/DN-hubbell_03edi.ART.State.Edition1.3e597bc.htmlAs immigrants moved in, our peaceful neighborhood declined
03:05 PM CDT on Sunday, September 3, 2006
I'm a Fort Worth native and lifelong Texan who's spent the last 21 years living and working in North Texas. But now, I'm living in Omaha, Neb.
I love my home state and never would have moved if my company hadn't transferred me. I could have delayed the move until 2009, but I decided to get out of Carrollton sooner, before my property value plummeted even further. That, plus I was getting tired of having to make an effort to be understood in English in my own town.
The two are connected.
The property values in my south Carrollton neighborhood had been steadily rising for years. My wife and I bought our home in 1988 when she became pregnant with our second child. It was a nice, quiet neighborhood on a dead-end street. Lots of little homes whose owners took responsibility for the upkeep, mowed their lawns and who had pride in the look of the place.
I don't care about skin color, ethnicity, religion, creed or anything other than the content of someone's character. These are external attributes and have no bearing on whether someone is a good neighbor or a good person. Ours was a mixed neighborhood, with whites, African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, Middle Easterners and even some gay folks.
At some point things changed. The trigger was 9/11. A lot of people lost their jobs as a result of the economic downturn caused by that event - myself included. The economic demographic of the neighborhood changed, and so did the general makeup of our part of town, which includes southern Carrollton and northern Farmers Branch. Along with a lot of the houses becoming rental properties, the number of Hispanics whom I believe to be illegal aliens skyrocketed.
For some reason Farmers Branch and southern Carrollton seem a favorite stopping off point for these lawbreakers. Our government declines to do anything about people breaking these laws, and people who complain are branded as racist. Of course being called a racist these days on the immigration issue doesn't really mean much. It just means that you disagree with blame-America-first liberals on the left and open-borders, cheap-labor businesspeople on the right.
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http://health.msn.com/healthnews/ArticlePage.aspx?cp-documentid=100144052
Cognitive reserve
By Harvard Health Publications
People with more years of education, more intellectually demanding occupations, or higher IQs are less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. A meta-analysis of 20 studies including more than 30,000 subjects, indicates a fairly close and consistent correlation over an average of seven years. It looks as though some brains have a backup capacity, now called cognitive reserve, that can delay or prevent the onset of dementia. What's unclear is the source of this reserve capacity and its practical significance.
A simple explanation for cognitive reserve is that by virtue of heredity, environment, or both, people with higher education and higher IQs can tolerate more loss because they have larger brains - more neurons, or more synaptic connections among neurons. A larger head size (which usually implies a larger brain size) is associated with a lower risk of dementia. In the Minnesota Nun Study, for example, autopsies revealed that Catholic sisters with a head size greater than average were less likely to develop symptoms of dementia with the same amount of apparently Alzheimer's-induced brain damage (amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles).
But it may be the software - active reserve - rather than the hardware that provides protection. Brains with the same number of neurons and synapses may differ in efficiency, especially as they age. And just as new blood vessels sometimes grow around blocked arteries, some people may make better use of existing circuits or recruit alternative circuits to compensate for losses and prevent disruption of mental activity.
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Synthetic biology: Life 2.0
http://www.economist.com/business/
PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=7854314
[Related material appended.]Aug 31st 2006 | BERKELEY, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, AND ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND
The new science of synthetic biology is poised between hype and hope. But its time will soon come
IN 1965 few people outside Silicon Valley had heard of Gordon Moore. For that matter, no one at all had heard of Silicon Valley. The name did not exist and the orchards of Santa Clara county still brought forth apples, not Macintoshes. But Mr Moore could already discern the outlines. For 1965 was the year when he published the paper that gave birth to his famous "law" that the power of computers, as measured by the number of transistors that could be fitted on a silicon chip, would double every 18 months or so.
Four decades later, equally few people have heard of Rob Carlson. Dr Carlson is a researcher at the University of Washington, and some graphs of the growing efficiency of DNA synthesis that he drew a few years ago look suspiciously like the biological equivalent of Moore's law. By the end of the decade their practical upshot will, if they continue to hold true, be the power to synthesise a string of DNA the size of a human genome in a day.
At the moment, what passes for genetic engineering is mere pottering. It means moving genes one at a time from species to species so that bacteria can produce human proteins that are useful as drugs, and crops can produce bacterial proteins that are useful as insecticides. True engineering would involve more radical redesigns. But the Carlson curve (Dr Carlson disavows the name, but that may not stop it from sticking) is making that possible.
In the short run such engineering means assembling genes from different organisms to create new metabolic pathways or even new organisms. In the long run it might involve re-writing the genetic code altogether, to create things that are beyond the range of existing biology. These are enterprises far more worthy of the name of genetic engineering than today's tinkering. But since that name is taken, the field's pioneers have had to come up with a new one. They have dubbed their fledgling discipline "synthetic biology".
Truly intelligent design
One of synthetic biology's most radical spirits is Drew Endy. Dr Endy, who works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came to the subject from engineering, not biology. As an engineer, he can recognise a kludge when he sees one. And life, in his opinion, is a kludge.
No intelligent designer would have put the genomes of living organisms together in the way that evolution has. Some parts overlap, meaning that they cannot change jobs independently of one another. Others have lost their function but have not been removed, so they simply clutter things up. And there is no sense of organisation or hierarchy. That is because, unlike an engineer, evolution cannot go back to the drawing board, it can merely play with what already exists. Biologists, who seek merely to understand how life works, accept this. Engineers such as Dr Endy, who wish to change the way it works, do not. They want to start again.
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The Situation Report
This is an update of what I posted last Saturday before I knew what was going on. Pardon the repitition.
First, we now know from extensive xrays and CT scans that my problem is not a sinus infection at all, nor is it cancer. I have a form of arthritis in my neck and this sends signals that my brain interprets as pains in my head. I had deduced this from experiments: lying flat on the floor would usually get rid of the "sinus" pain, which didn't seem reasonable if the source were some kind of infection. And as I said last Saturday, "I sit in a most improbable position, head braced hard against the back of a high-back office chair (my expensive and comfortable chair having been temporarily exiled), arm straight out, eyes looking at a level. It's not comfortable, but it does stop the headaches. If my head is held just right it doesn't hurt to sit here. At least not a lot, and when it does it's fixable by adjusting my position.
"That tells me that my problems have to be structural, pinched nerves, unstretched muscles, blocked blood flow, something of the sort, which is probably adjustable. I can't think that a sinus infection would be relieved by sitting in a particular position. I still get flashes of a sinus headache alternating with the hideous migraine-like whammy in the back of my head, but if I hold my head just right -- which means bracing against the back of the chair in just the right position -- I can get some work done without doping myself to the point of being unable to think. And since it is structural, I expect there's a treatment. Chiropractors, perhaps. Orthopedists. Physical therapy. Surely there's a way out of this, and I intend to find it. "
Today (Tuesday 12 September) I went to Physical Therapy where I was fitted with a collar. It makes me look like a very old fashioned priest, or perhaps a victim of whiplash. I wore it driving from the physicians to various places where I had errands. I took it off to go inside shopping for various items including salads for our Hollywood Bowl outing tonight. I'd put it back on driving from one place to another, and I am wearing it now. The result of all this is that it's 3:30 PM and I haven't had to take any pain killers, although I don't know how much longer that will go on. Sitting here writing this gives me some pains, but as long as I hold my head up they aren't too bad. It's looking down at the keyboard that really causes problems. I need to adjust to that.
For those who don't know: several months ago I developed what felt like sinus headaches. They combined with an old migraine that I used to get when I was younger but which I hadn't experienced for years. The two then alternated in periods of minutes to hours, sometimes in phase so I got both, and they got progressively worse until it became very difficult to work. I have since had XRAYS, dental Xrays, CT SCAN, blood tests, and other medical witchcraft. The experts have been over all these, and they find nothing except for arthritis. We're now looking for treatments, both pills and physical.
All this made me mildly late I have been late on columns, but I am caught up now, and I expect to stay caught up. My apologies for missing a week. I won't miss a month. Writing with a collar on and sitting in a ridiculous position to write is a small price to pay for being on time monthly for 27 years.
To repeat Saturday's exposition:
The old paper BYTE column was 5,000 words. Sometimes they wanted longer, as for example when they sold a lot of advertisements and needed editorial content to hold the ad pages apart, so it might go up to 7,500 words. When we went over to On-Line I wrote the column monthly, and it generally came out to about 12,000 words, sometime creeping up to 14 or 15 thousand. The editors chopped it into segments and doled it out weekly. This went on for a while until someone made the mistake of chopping it into 4 segments when there were 5 Mondays in the month. I saw they had fired themselves dry and rushed in 2500 words to cover. This happened a couple of times. I still did the columns monthly but sometimes with a weekly supplement. It was interesting being able to comment on things that had just happened. IN the paper BYTE days, I would prepare the April column and get it in before 7 January; it would be on the stands in mid-March. That meant having to write things that would still be interesting when they came out.
I have been doing the Chaos Manor Reviews columns weekly. For a while that was easy enough, and left plenty of time for fiction; after all, I am primarily a science fact and fiction writer who found a great gig as a computer columnist to bring in a steady income. Now that it doesn't insure a steady income (more on that in a moment) fiction has to come first; still, it was no problem at all, until the headaches hit me. Why they happened I don't know. Is this a message? Memento mori? Bones getting soft? But it sure did remind me; after all, we lost Charlie Sheffield just as we were about to do another Higher Education book (my turn to write most of it; he did most of the work on the first one), and Bob Forward, both to brain cancer, and both without much warning. That doesn't seem to be the case here, but it sure scared me.
Anyway: I will continue to do the columns, and I will continue to try to post a new one ever Monday; but the guarantee will have to be about 8,000 words a month. More if I can do them. Plus the mail bag. I contend thatChaos Manor Mail (part of this web site) is one of, if not the, best mail columns on the web; and I contend that the mail bag at http://www.ChaosManorReviews is as good as any computer-related mail feature you will find on line or in print.
I also do this page, which is arguably the first blog; certainly I was doing an on line public daybook long before anyone else I know of. I didn't -- and don't -- organize in "blog format" with the latest on top, because I find that hard to make sense of. I don't call this a blog -- I find the name ugly. This is a daybook, or journal, and while the subject is often political I don't think of it as a political journal. I have had my successes in politics, having successfully managed campaigns for Congress and Mayor of Los Angeles and having been an advisor to a President and a Speaker as well as to several Members of Congress. I still have a have a few political contacts, but I don't often use them. Politics has left me a bit behind: I am frightened of both parties and the continuing trend to make everything a federal case, leaving nothing to the states and to the people, and I don't find either party very sound on those matters. I do not believe in "big government conservatism" and I find the term self-contradictory. I don't believe in "compassionate conservatism" in any political sense. One ought to be compassionate, but to the extent that this should be a government activity it ought to be local; and for the most part it ought not be governmental at all. The major benefit of charity is to the giver. There may be necessities -- for a man to love his country, his country ought to be lovely, and it is not lovely when one lives in a land of beggars -- but in many cases the welfare bureaucracy is self perpetuating. And I see I am rambling: my point is that I try to be more philosophical than political. Political victories can affect principles, and have done so; but if one has a nation with strong enough principles, then it ought not matter much which party prevails, except that no party ought to govern for too long. If you wish to call this page political, it is hard to disagree, yet I do disagree in that it is not just political: I am concerned about principles which endure long after elections are forgotten.
I suppose, though, that this page is a result of my having been offered a position teaching a senior seminar on technology and civilization to a technical university, only to have that withdrawn because of my work in "Star Wars." I don't apologize for being one of the founders of a strategy of Assured Survival -- that was the title of a chapter in Possony and Pournelle, The Strategy of Technology, 1970 -- nor will I ever; but that did cost me the professorship, so this page is my compensation, so to speak.
Strategy of Technology in pdf format:
And enough rambling.
All of this is, of course, a pitch to get you to subscribe. I do thank all those who have subscribed, particularly those who showed great confidence by sending in new subscriptions or renewals in the past couple of weeks while things were erratic.
The simplest way to subscribe is through paypal:
That button makes it painless to send in a patron subscription. There are other methods, all described here.
I do both the computer columns and this page in part because it's usually enjoyable, but they do have to make enough money to justify their continuance. And I am doing more fiction, and now that I know how to sit to write fiction I'll be doing more.
It's sure an odd position to sit in, but it does seem to be working. And now I have to go work on the column. In part this ramble has come about because it is taking more than two hours to download the newest VISTA. More on Vista in the column.
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End repetition and pitch for subscribers.
In upcoming columns you will see: Vista vs. Linux. I am setting up two computers of about equal capability, one using Linux, the other Vista. I'll alternate work with each, and we'll see what happens. And in a couple of months I'll try the whole experiment on an Intel Mac, with Mac, Linux, and Vista all running on the same machine. That ought to be fun...
And I'm turning out fiction. I ain't licked yet.
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