satmandu

Thursday, July 14, 2005

FW: [IP] "Human-Brained" Monkeys

The moment they start singing spirituals...

-----Original Message-----
From: "David Farber" <dave@farber.net>
Date: Thursday, Jul 14, 2005 10:32 am
Subject: [IP] "Human-Brained" Monkeys

-----Original Message-----
From: "Randall"<rvh40@insightbb.com>
Sent: 13/07/05 10:12:46 PM
To: "Dave"<dave@farber.net>
Cc: "JMG"<johnmacsgroup@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: "Human-Brained" Monkeys

http://tinyurl.com/8ajqt

SCIENTISTS have been warned that their latest experiments may accidently produce monkeys with brains more human than animal.

In cutting-edge experiments, scientists have injected human brain cells into monkey fetuses to study the effects.

Critics argue that if these fetuses are allowed to develop into
self-aware subjects, science will be thrown into an ethical nightmare.

An eminent committee of American scientists will call for restrictions into the research, saying the outcome of such studies cannot be
predicted and may in fact produce subjects with a 'super-animal'
intelligence.

The high-powered committee of animal behaviourists, lawyers,
philosophers, bio-ethicists and neuro-scientists was established four years ago to examine the growing numbers of human/monkey experiments.

These procedures, known as 'human-primate chimeras', involve the
combination of human and monkey cells, tissue and DNA to observe any
effect and examine the possibility that such combination could actually exist.

Chimeras are mythical monsters from Greek literature, which combined various bodyparts from lions, goats nd snakes.

Advertisement:

This team will soon publish its conclusions in leading journal Science. In the report the committee will address such unsettling questions as whether introducing human cells into non-human primate brains could
cause "significant physical or biochemical changes that make the brain more human-like" and how those changes could be detected.

The committee will also examine how detectable differences in the
monkey's brains, for example emotional or behavioural changes, or if the monkeys developed 'self awareness', could be measured - and dealt with.

"What we were trying to do was anticipate - recognising that if science were to take that path there might be some different kinds of moral
challenges." said committee co-chairman Dr Ruth Faden, a professor in biomedical ethics.

--
"We've got the hatemongers who literally hate this president, and that is so wrong. . . . The people who hate George Bush hate him because he's a follower of Jesus Christ, unashamedly says so and applies his faith in his day-to-day operations." -- Rev. Jerry Falwell, on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal"

------------------------------------

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

Aren't there federal laws about transporting pollutants across state lines?

Unborn babies carry pollutants, study finds: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Unborn U.S. babies are soaking in a
stew of chemicals, including mercury, gasoline byproducts and
pesticides, according to a report released on Thursday."

(Via Reuters: Top News.)

Hillary announced today that the Smut allegations in GTA should be looked into.

Humor is the antidote to wallowing in cynicism.

days of future past

Yesterday I went to the futur...: "

days of future past

Yesterday I went to the future an it was awesome! I took the moon train to a city on Mars an blew up an evil computer with the power of thinkin an helped Captain Space And His Spacekateers fight off an invasion from Neptunia Queen of the Planet Women an all for under three Quizlats!

Today I go back to the future an somebody's paved over all the bubble cities an the tube transports an the tractor beams an replaced em with a series of planned communities with tastefully homogeneous designs based on a pastiche of local cultures. I figure maybe somebody's sorta moved the future off to the side so I call up information an ask for Robotopolis but all I get is directions to the strip mall. I run into Nebulox the Living Thing That Lives but he's just baggin groceries at a Stop-U-Mart. I ask if he's gonna use his fearsome galactaray to conquer these tater tots but he just wraps em in recycled paper instead.

I start thinkin maybe space future's lookin better than normal future so I go to the rental guy an I go I'd like a moon rocket please an the rental guy goes don't got moon rockets an I go how bout a flyin car an he goes none a them either an I go what about a spaceplane or a blimpwich or a moosemobile an he goes nope nope nope an I go whattayougot an he goes a boat an I go what kinda boat, a space boat or a time boat or a mysterious negaboat or what an he says it's just a boat. So I end up walkin around the future with some moldy ol boat. This isn't the future. This is some fake plastic future. This is a soy-based future substitute.

I spend the rest a the day hangin out in the past. Winston Churchill just smokes up an eats doritos an Abraham Lincoln turns out to be a complex animatronic device operated by freemasons.

"

(Via Fafblog.)

a lovely animation: "

daw_

(Via jwz.)

dutifully block quoted:

funny picture of cat

So pieds-à-terre means second home.

Why you can't just come out and say second home boggles the mind.

Pretentious wankers.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Is this true?

Women leaving tech jobs in droves: "
In Where have all the women gone? Roy Mark highlights evidence presented in various studies that women are leaving tech jobs en masse.

This is happening at a time when Bill Gates, Craig Barrett and John Chambers, et al., are trooping to Capitol Hill to decry the declining American IT talent pool. They want relaxed immigration rules. They want more tax dollars invested in science and technology. They want outsourcing.

Perhaps they should also call for an equal playing field among the sexes.

The IT industry prides itself as a working model for the new global economy, blind to everything but talent and hard work. Tech, though, is taking a big hike on walking the walk when it comes to women.

'Women don't feel valued by IT. They are forced into being a certain type of person, i.e. a white male model: linear, analytical, 24/7, in-your-face, your-job-is-your life,' says Barbara Annis, author of Same Words, Different Language. 'Women don't see a future for themselves [in IT] as they are.'

And as he points out, it's not about getting 'more women in the feeder pool' -- we're actually doing a pretty good job of educating girls in technology and getting them into their initial tech jobs. What's hard is keeping them there with the work environments being what they are."

(Via misbehaving.net.)

Vin Diesel on location...

Triple Sunset: Planet Discovered in 3-Star System: "The first known world of its kind in a gravitationally challenging setup."

(Via SPACE.com.)

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you that the suicide bombers (what's the terminology these days?) were British Muslims of Pakistani origin.

Christopher Hitchens on the distance from Srebenica to Baghdad. As always, he's damn good.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Karl Rove: "
I've been told the same thing as Duncan Black has: Karl Rove did not call Matt Cooper and say, 'I really mean it when I say that you are free of any obligation to me not to testify.' Instead, the loudness of Karl Rove's and his lawyer's claims that he had freed reporters who talked to him of any obligation pushed Cooper beyond the limit:

Eschaton: [The] New York Times article on the Rove case is typically clear as mud, but after reading it several times and consulting with a handful of liberal intellectuals, I've gained new respect for Matt Cooper. Basically, he got fed up with Rove's lawyer lying to the press, and figured that combined with the waiver he'd previously received and the emphasis Luskin placed on it, was enough.

In other words, Rove's lawyer, acting as an agent of Rove, mounted a too extreme PR campaign on behalf of his client, and sufficient deceptive remarks led Cooper to say f*** it. Luskin thought Cooper wouldn't testify no matter what he said, and he was wrong.

Good for Cooper.

"

(Via Semi-Daily Journal.)

"Small, Hairless, Blind, and Dependent on a Larger Rodent for All His Information: "
Snark! Snark! Snark!

Scott McClellan Wanders Off Reservation, Is Shot and Killed:

We would like to apologize for our characterization yesterday of Scott McClellan as a puppy dog. Thanks to the New York Times, we were able to review all of his statements on the Rove-Plame matter and now we feel that a more accurate analogy would be that Scott McClellan is like a hapless baby rodent of some kind. Perhaps a gerbil or a weasel. Small, hairless, blind, and dependent on a larger rodent for all his information. So it's true, McClellan did, in extreme flustered mode, yelp out such regrettable declarations as 'I've made it very clear, [Rove] was not involved, that there's no truth to the suggestion that he was,' and 'The president knows that Karl Rove wasn't involved,' and, more brazenly, 'There has been absolutely nothing brought to our attention to suggest any White House involvement.'

These statements are all in sharp contrast to the more maturely weasely statements of the President and Rove himself, around which there is enough wiggle room for a fat, bald man to slither through and stay employed for at least three more years. All this proves is that no one tells Scotty anything. It's not really his job to know anything. His job is to say what he's told to say, or, in some extraordinary cases, what he intuits they might say with the power of his mind:

I've known Karl for a long time, and I didn't even need to go ask Karl, because I know the kind of person that he is, and he is someone that is committed to the highest standards of conduct.

Like we said, he doesn't know anything.

Past White House Briefings on C.I.A. Leak Case [NYT]

Earlier: The Rove Show, with Scott McLellan as Old Yeller [Wonkette]

"

(Via Semi-Daily Journal.)

There's a new beta of the Flash 8.0 plugin for the mac, which is supposed to address the serious performance issues with the mac version.

It doesn't play strongbad emails, making it in my mind

Useless.

The idea has come up of declaring the mice terrorists, and thus having a rationale to have the Department of Homeland Security come in for a "cleanup" operation.

Monday, July 11, 2005

1995 was a hell of a year. But calling diaries protoblogging?

Belgrade native Jasmina Tesanovic on 10 years since Srebenica massacre: "Xeni Jardin:

Jasmina Tesanovic is an author, translator, and filmmaker from Belgrade. Here's a link to one of her books, and here are a couple of urls with more about her work. Here was her proto-blog penned during the war, 'A Diary from Belgrade.'

Below, snip from a recent essay she wrote on the massacre in Srebenica, which took place exactly ten years ago today.

In June 1995, I was finishing off my book on refugees from former Yugoslavia, The Suitcase, interviewing women and men of different nationalities, wherever they came from and wherever they had been displaced.

One of them was a young man from Srebrenica: displaced in Vienna. He was a Muslim, very polite and kind to me, a Serb writing for the Americans; he invited me to his flat, offered me dinner and told me how he fled the troubled country through the Red Cross in Belgrade. He considered himself a Yugoslav and loathed the wars, according to him made by politicians, not people.

At the end, he said something I will never forget, a sentence that at the time sounded creepy and muddy: If something happens to my family back there in Srebrenica which is a Muslim enclave protected by UN troops, I swear to God that I will kill with my own hands the first Serb I come across here, my co-worker in Vienna, and I don't care that he is not guilty, I don't care if I go to prison forever...

Link to the complete textfile of 'Srebenica 2005.'

Ms. Tesanovic can be reached via e-mail: [politicalidiot] at [yahoo.com]."

(Via Boing Boing.)