Thursday, September 29, 2005
SCIENCE: Now, this story is completely awesome.
In an apparent major breakthrough, scientists in Korea report using umbilical cord blood stem cells to restore feeling and mobility to a spinal-cord injury patient.We're so close to not having to worry about this stuff.
"The patient could move her hips and feel her hip skin on day 15 after transplantation. On day 25 after transplantation her feet responded to stimulation."
Within 10 years, prosthetic legs should be a common and in no way worse than regular legs. Prosthetic arms are harder but will still make huge leaps in the next decade. Large numbers of cancers are close to being eradicated. Waiting for an organ transplant should no longer kill people within 20 years. Alzheimers, Parkinson's, many other degenerative diseases, all gone within 20-30 years. Of course those will probably be done in other countries and available only to the rich with the money to go to Korea (or wherever, but Korea is very receptive to this type of work) unless our government gets their heads out of their asses on stem cells and other important medical breakthroughs. The fact that so many deadly problems could be to my kids what polio is to me, a distant memory, is very exciting.
tags: grommes, science,stem cells
Monday, September 19, 2005
PHONEYS: This is a great article in Mother Jones on the one thing the Bush Administration does very, very, well: show business.
It may be true that, for a week or more, this administration couldn't get a bottle of water to a diabetic grandmother, but when something was actually at stake -- what reporters far and wide referred to as the "rebuilding" not of New Orleans but of a presidency, or simply of the presidential "image" -- efficiency, coordination, and togetherness were the by-words of the day.They do public relations and staged events better than anybody. P.R. is built into their DNA it seems. They just appointed a PR flack to go to Arab countries and try to bolster our image. And they think this is a perfectly valid and normal thing to do. They are "Always On Message" (to steal a phrase from Larry Young) no matter how inhuman, how idiotic, or how just blatantly offensive it might be. Even if you're a die-hard Bush fan, come on, this is insane.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
QUOTES: Here's a couple of quotes from the remarkable book I'm reading right now, Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse. Mostly I want to preserve them for myself.
To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.
Only by free self-concealment can persons believe that they obey the law because the law is powerful; in fact, the law is powerful for persons only because they obey it. We do not proceed through a traffic intersection because the signal changes, but when it changes.
And one that's especially relevant to today's society:
Conflict with other societies is, in fact, an effective way for a society to restrain its own culture. Powerful societies do not silence their poietai [original thinkers, artists, etc.] in order that they may go to war; they go to war as a way of silencing their poietai.
tags: grommes, books,quotes
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
BRILLIANCE: Turning anti-abortion protestors into profit: Planned Parenthood Pledge-A-Picket! Whoever thought of this deserves an award.
From the page:
Every time protesters gather outside of our Locust Street health center, our patients face verbal attacks from them. They see graphic signs meant to confuse and intimidate. They are sometimes blocked from entering the building and occasionally they are videotaped. They are offered anti-choice propaganda and free rides to the closest "crisis pregnancy center."
Here's how it works: You decide on the amount you would like to pledge for each protester (minimum 10 cents). When protesters show up on our sidewalks, Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania will count and record their number each day from October 1 through November 30, 2005. We will place a signoutside the health center that tracks pledges and makes protesters fully aware that their actions are benefiting PPSP.
via Warren
tags: grommes, abortion,pro-choice
Thursday, September 08, 2005
SCIENCE: We've been having a mini-discussion here in Albuquerque about the local city of Rio Rancho deciding to take a step toward including Intelligent Design in their school curiculum. Of course, as they do, the ID people haven't tried to actually include ID in the classroom as such. Instead, they've tried to weaken support for evolution in the classroom as a precursor to putting ID in later. Our newspaper (the Albuquerque Journal) seems to be on the side of the ID people since probably 75% of the letters they publish are pro-ID or anti-evolution (the same thing really since ID has literally nothing going for it so their only way forward is trying to knock evolution, the same tactic they tried for years when they had the courage of their convictions and called it creationism). To contribute to the side of science and logic I sent the following letter in to the Journal.
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The recent letters on the Rio Rancho Intelligent Design issue show one thing for sure, science and reason have already been dealt a blow by the ID crowd and they haven't even been successful in getting their doctrine into the schools. The fact that people still think that evolution is in any way a controversial topic shows a real failure for science education in this country.
It also shows the power of the word games ID proponents play. Once you notice the game, you can't help but see it every time in everything they say. The game goes like this: First you say something about evolution that is clearly wrong or is based on a misunderstanding. Then when a scientist corrects the incorrect statement you say "Look, we have a disagreement! This shows there's some controversy!" Combine this game with the frankly dismal state of science education and it's clear why perfectly reasonable people are hoodwinked by the ID "debate" when there is no real debate to be had.
The idea that thousands of scientists in dozens of related fields have, for decades, been pushing an idea that they didn't have proof of just because it's become a "religion" to them is preposterous. If a scientist had come up with 1 iota of evidence for Intelligent Design or something that disproved evolution they would recieve the Nobel Prize. Evolution has a mountain of evidence from every related field and decades of research all pointing to it and only it as the theory. Before ID is taught in science classrooms there must be some proof of it. Something, some morsel of evidence or a credible hypothosis must be put forth. Speculation, mathematical noodlings, and word games do not a science make.
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tags: grommes, evolution,intelligent+design
Saturday, September 03, 2005
IDENTITY: This post will probably be a bit geeky so be warned.
I had an idea after reading this post by Mary Hodder on her blog. It's about managing identity on the internet, a topic that has been getting a lot of talk recently. The problem with a lot of these ideas is that they're top-down and require quite an infrastructure in most cases. Or, they let one company be in charge. This is clearly not in the spirit of the modern internet.
My idea is based on the RADIUS community model. When I go to SiteX, I'm presented with a Distributed ID (DID) login box (Distributed ID is undoubtedly already taken as a name, I just use it because that's how I think of it). I put in my email address (or something like it, as I'll get to later) and SiteX says 'ok, your DID name is matt@mattorama.net' at which point it looks in the DNS for mattorama.net and determines the server I've appointed as my DID server. Email works the same way, I have an MX record which tells every website where to send my email. It then sends my DID name and password to that server and the server looks up my DID and returns the personal information I've filled in for that DID. Say for that DID I've put in my name, email, and website only. SiteX takes that information and uses that for my account on their site. I don't have to fill it all out again. If they require more info than I've given, they can ask for it and either require or hope I fill it in. If I want to have many DIDs with different info on each, I can do that. matt@mattorama.net would be my limited info, fullmatt@mattorama.net would be my full info for billing or whatnot. fakematt@mattorama.net would be a fake name I'd use for pointless login sites like newspapers.
The benefit is many-fold. First, it works like many other existing internet services. MX records in DNS, RADIUS, and mail servers are all old tech so I'm not reinventing traversing any new ground idea-wise. The server is small and could become a staple like smtp servers. I'd do as open source so nobody controlled it and a bunch of implementations could grow, again like smtp servers. RADIUS servers use flat text files which are easy for small ISPs or individuals, or database servers for bigger sites (like Yahoo which just got in some hot water with making Flickr people switch to Yahoo IDs. With this system, they could manage both sets of IDs just as easily as just the Yahoo ID) ISPs could use it as an sales tool. 'We give you 5 DIDs with your account or you can buy 5 more for $X a month!' The user manages the DIDs through a website or other ISP administration tool. No one authority is in the middle. This is better for security since there's no big database to hack and steal everybody's identity. Undoubtedly there's some technical issues to overcome since I just thought of this like 15 minutes ago but the idea is simple enough and like I say I'm not breaking any new ground. RADIUS has been doing this for years.
I have so little free time that I doubt I'll get to implementing this any time soon. I think I'll do it as part of my website I'm building (core functionality is almost done so I'll be putting into a stealth beta test mode soon!) to get at least one implementation out there. It's an easy idea though so if anybody's reading who has some feedback or wants to spread this idea around or actually do an implementation, please do. Also, if you happen to be doing a digital lifestyle aggregation system (ahem, Marc Canter) and have some feedback for this idea, I'd love to hear.