Yo.

1. Cancer.
2. A chant at a sporting event.
3. Property rights and theology.
4. They don’t just try to turn elections by biasing their audits. They also lie and cheat.
5. Seems like the last sentence of the first paragraph says, “and you should ignore this paper.”
6. A problem for the left.
7. A year of living dangerously? Or a lifetime?
8. Small screen and large screen.
9. Another small screen suggestion here.
10. I’m not buying the freedom of speech thing. Lots of employment options limit speech. If you want a job with the restrictions then live by the restrictions.
11. Drones.
12. Heh.
13. Foreign policy reboot.
14. Naked! (SFW)

Nuff said, err, linked.

G/day

1. The (unintentional?) parody Obama created (or approved) returns to haunt.
2. ATF in the news.
3. My suggestion was indulgences.
4. Pedagogy.
5. An account of an Evangelical who crossed the Tiber.
6. Hollywood Austin, apparently channels Bronte instead of being faith to Jane.
7. Two women named Martha.
8. Is it an order of magnitude or just half of that?
9. More than what? Not a good description. Some of the more colorful terms from Heartbreak Ridge come to mind.
10. So, was Mr Obama ignorant or lying?
11. How about Mr Krugman?
12. Democrat (not) keeping it classy. That’s gotta be embarrassing.
13. Employment, actually when I read this my first thought was, those people with those figures, my wife has raised our kids for almost two decades. I’d say she’s been gainfully employed the entire time. Would they?
14. My curiosity is piqued.

• Those who think or write that the Washington DC football team’s name “Redskins” needs to be changed are the modern equivalent of those in the 13th century buying indulgences. Sporting team names are pretty far down on the actual list of problems in the daily life of indigenous Americans, drug abuse, alcoholism, poverty, suicide and so on. Those are issues much higher. Seems to me if you actual cared one whit about the native American you’d be acting on real issues not pretend ones. (for extra credit, cite last time you heard the term redskin used as a derogatory racial epithet. If you, like me, never have … gosh perhaps it isn’t actually a derogatory racial epithet).
• Continuing that theme, of modern indulgences. The Redskin thing is a racial/racism indulgence or guilt expiation.  It is interesting to note that those same people who are pretending at concern for Native Americans with the Redskin thing are the same ones punting for SSM … what sin is that indulgence paying for?
• On the other side of the coin (those against SSM), just remember “Jesus came to save sinners, of whom I am first.” Gays can’t destroy marriage as thoroughly as heterosexuals are doing right now.
• One hard fast rule of Internet punditry to remember, there is always, yes always, someone smarter than you, better informed than you, and better in whatever way you can imagine who disagrees rationally and logically with that strongly held opinion of yours. So the next time you call someone an idiot or stupid because they hold an opinion (especially political or religious) different than you, remember that.
• American politicians should play more Go than Chess. A paradigm intrinsic to Chess is forking, putting the opposition into a corner where he only has two bad choices. Go’s fundamental paradigm by contrast teaches you how to quickly recognize a losing position and moving elsewhere.

Good, well, whatever.

1. Peter principle in practice.
2. Baby Bunting Boo-boo. My view is that the Son will judge and he will judge rightly, which is enough for me. How he will judge? Dunno.
3. My faith teaches the Christian life is summed up in the goal of acquisition of the Holy Spirit … how that figures into this little phrase … I don’t know. Which is your first clue that it is heading in the wrong direction.
4. Geeky game for girls (and boys).
5. Making equines to elephants has nothing to do with these two notions of equality and opportunity.
6. Race.
7. Failure.
8. A demographic question.
9. Putting global warming in historical context.
10. A film.
11. Fast.
12. Markets in everything.
13. Geometry and the bulb.
14. Heh.

Here’s something I’ve not done in a while. Let’s once again play “Name That Quote”. This is the game where I read someone’s words verbatim, and you try to figure out who said it. If you’re playing along at home, give yourself 10 points for being correct, 5 points if you’re close (and I’ll let you determine what close is), and 1 point if you get the political party right. (Hey, it’s a 50-50 chance.) And for this quote, party is a factor. Here’s the quote:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.

There’s lots more, but you get the gist of it. Come to the website and see the show notes for a link to the full text of this rant against a debt limit increase.

I will give you a hint; this is not from the current debt limit fight. The speaker is someone who has been on both sides of the debate. That’s right, he was against the debt limit increase before he was for it. No, it’s not John Kerry, but if you thought that, you were close.

This quote, from March 16th, 2006, during a Republican presidential administration, is from the, then, junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. Of course, now that he’s in the Oval Office, it’s just as reckless, and just as much a failure of leadership, to agree with what he said. You’re likely to get whiplash discovering what a difference an administration makes.

Good morning.

1. A non-cowboy (or a man who’s word is not trusted) in charge and consequences.
2. Faith and unbelief.
3. WWII memorial shutdowns and a photo-essay. Apparently manning barricades was less expensive than janitorial services. I’m not convinced.
4. Milk now costs more than gasoline, a facet to consider when reading this quote on price indices and inflation.
5. “Great news”.
6. Debt and the rolling pin.
7. Apparently “millenials” all either live in cities with awesome mass transit or are unemployed …  or perhaps only those polled.
8. A smarter, uhm, land-mine of sorts.
9. I’d like to hear those advocates of affirmative action in schooling explain the need for capping Asian student populations. ‘Cause you know, Asians run everything in this country, look at how they dominate everything in the beltway and wall street.
10. Rape. Meet not-Rape.

Yo.

1. NPR crosses a fence.
2. Can’t be fixed, toss it.
3. Above the law, not.
4. Cuteness.
5. Maybe, maybe not, probably will apply far more in your future healthcare experience.
6. Rocks.
7. Disasters help schools?
8. I’d say so.
9. Getting older?
10. Happy now?

Back when Christopher Reeves was still alive and getting the word out on stem cell research, the big push was for embryonic stem cells to be used in that research. All those in-vitro fertilized eggs that didn’t get used were just waiting to be harvested and experimented on. There was just one thing. Pro-lifers, like me, considered them human embryos, simply an earlier form of a regular human life, and therefore considered destroying them for experimentation it on par with abortion, with the added baggage that we’d be, well, experimenting on them. Adult stem cells, even back then, had been proving their worth in many, many situations, didn’t have a tendency to become cancerous when used, and if properly fed and cared for, would never be anything other than adult stem cells. That is, they would never become a human being. The ethical baggage simply wasn’t there, especially for those who thought science ought to be, indeed, ethical.

When President George W. Bush decided to limit the number of existing embryonic stem cell lines that could be used to experimentation, he did two things. First, he put a stake in the ground of scientific ethics; this far and no farther. Second, he lit a fire under the line of research that was trying to find a way to make adult stem cells, which cannot differentiate themselves in quite as many other kinds of cells as embryonic, just as flexible and changeable as their embryonic counterparts.

Research has been advancing quickly, and results have been getting better and better, until last month, this bit of good news came out.

Researchers have for the first time converted cultured skin cells into stem cells with near-perfect efficiency.

By removing a single protein, called Mbd3, a team at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, was able to increase the conversion rate to almost 100% — ten times that normally achieved. The discovery could clear the way for scientists to produce large volumes of stem cells on demand, hastening the development of new treatments.

Almost 100%. From skin cells. Had we taken the easy way out, and not the harder, ethical one, A) the Left would not have branded the Right as “anti-science” over this. (Well, at least, not as much as they normally would.) And B) this research would not have continued at such a pace, allowing us now to produce stem cells at a rate we probably could not have done before.

Anti-science, indeed. More like pro-ethical-science, especially when you can have your ethics, and stem cells, too.

Not morning, but still … got it done.

1. I’m unclear on this strategy. In most “shutdowns” people do less. In this shutdown they actively do more work than normal. I mean seriously why do stuff like this … oh, wait.
2. In a State with a high population of those for which it was targeted … signed up -> zero.
3. Sex and display and pressure.
4. Killer joke or joke killer?
5. Something to remember the next time a Democrat bloviates about needing that access to guns is the solution. It isn’t.
6. Standards and sticking to them.
7. Those seven really really active effective al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan.
8. Doublethink.
9. Teaching and metrics.
10. Tactics.
11. How to do customer support.
12. Uhm, people aren’t “rushing into” the CEO business because giving up your life for work 24/7 and jumping on a continuous work treadmill isn’t what most of us want to do.
13. Getting well.

This past weekend, veterans and their supporters protested in Washington, DC. They took down the barricades surrounding the open-air World War II memorial, and dumped some of them half a mile away outside the White House. It seems like spending money, during an alleged government shutdown, to close something that doesn’t actually require opening was a bridge too far for an administration bent on making sure you feel the pain, even if the pain is manufactured.

Speaking at this protest were politicians of all stripes, standing with and supporting our vets. Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin spoke to the crowd, and… Hmm, just a minute. Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin… Aren’t they both Republicans? Why yes; yes they are. What should have been a bipartisan show of support, was partisan only because every available Democrat either supported this manufactured pain, or dare not cross his party leaders with a show of independence or support of the troops.

Is the question of this manufactured pain — shutting down things that have never been shut down during a government shutdown – a partisan issue? It shouldn’t be. And I do understand supporting the President who happens to be of your party. Generally, you don’t want to be the one giving the other side an easy target. I get that. But aren’t there some things beyond the pale? For some, it appears not.

Oh, and on Monday, the barricades were put back up. Now there’s an essential service for ya. Seems the World War II Memorial is more secure than our borders.

A recent study out of Harvard concludes that gun bans do not reduce the murder rate. In fact, if anything, they increase it. Researchers looked at crime data from several European countries and found that countries with higher gun ownership often had lower murder rates. Russia, with very strict gun laws, has a murder rate 4 times higher than our own United States, which is, according to some, awash in guns. Meanwhile, European countries with significant gun ownership, like Norway, Finland, Germany and France, had remarkably low murder rates.

Basically, the study found no evidence, anywhere in the world, to suggest that more guns meant more murder.

Additionally, the study found, “the determinants of murder and suicide are basic social, economic, and cultural factors, not the prevalence of some form of deadly mechanism.” That is to say, if you want to know why someone kills others or themself, there are loads of other things to look at than the gun.

I doubt you heard about this on network news. Consider this a public service. In short, Harvard found that guns don’t kill, people do. Not that we needed a study to know that. Well, I guess some people needed a study. The rest of us know that inanimate objects rarely, if ever, have a mind of their own.

Where you should look at the gun is in the many incidents where a gun was used to save lives. Check out this list of mass shootings that didn’t happen because of law abiding citizens carrying guns that stopped them.

Good morning.

1. Biplane trainers at the tail end of the Pacific war.
2. Slavery, modern.
3. Sounds like an Israeli mistake, sending over 10’s of thousands of concrete construction slabs and not realizing how many are disappearing.
4. Free will.
5. Cost and higher education, here and here.
6. The final point is good, if the “Redskins” are bad ’cause they are insulting to some … how about “Fighting Irish”, which too can be taken as an ethnic slur.
7. Goals.
8. Barricade relocation to White House … two views here and here.
9. Obama and counter-terror operations.
10. Huff puff.
11. A long post considering Russia and the US.
12. Beltway discord.
13. Structural discord.

Good morning.

1. Body and the Christian life.
2. Not unrelated to the above.
3. A question not asked.
4. Of bigotry and hatred.
5. The science of winning a bike race.
6. Printed guns getting better all the time.
7. A top 30 fail list fer that big gubmit rollout.
8. This should be on that list perhaps.
9. Quoth Mr Sharpton.
10. The fruits of graft.
11. The way this is written it seems someone things that continuous learning after school is the exception not the rule.

G’day.

1. Mad skillz.
2. Stupid administration tricks.
3. The NSA goes into the food service industry. Maybe as a second profit center to shield themselves from budget cuts.
4. Rules broken, confessed.
5. An observer from a foreign planet.
6. This reminds me of an article in last weeks science news, which is topical on its own because the the somewhat recent rise in vampire story popularity. Actual vampires (blood feeders like the bats) have to deal with two big problems, peeing and bloating (blood is high volume and very very high in water content …. actual vampire bats will urinate while feeding and are far too bloated with blood to fly afterwards. “I vant to suck your blood” loses the sex appeal when the speaker is incontinent and morbidly obese after feeding). Something to bring up with those twilight fans.
7. Russia’s real problems.
8. It’s not an ethical dilemma … it is clearly very very wrong … at least for Christians. Who is your neighbor?
9. The Tomb Raider reboot makes sense. This, not so much.
10. Prohibition and a progressive trifecta.
11. It’s so good to see modern beltway progressives are fully supportive of populism.
12. Parsing Mr Scalia on the Devil.

Wooo. I’m home.

1. Weeping because one didn’t read enough marks the serious bookworm.
2. A question asked.
3. Neo-Keynesian economics and inflation.
4. “Needs more churn” sounds like a call for mass firings. So, the government shutdown is a good thing … providing they are let go not just furloughed.
5. More churn.
6. B/P on debt ceilings here and here.
7. Beauty and death (HT).
8. Scare quotes.
9. Theology and song.
10. On sin and repentance.
11. Talk radio not appreciated. Who knew talking about sports sports sports 24/7 was so charged?
12. Questioning whether said fallacy is actually fallacious.
13. Debt.