Medical technology is reducing the need for stem cells.

In the laboratory skin cells were treated with a virus, which was modified to ‘infect’ them with agents that function to convert the skin cells into precursors to brain cells. These cells can specialise into the three types of brain cell: neurons, oligodendrocytes and astrocytes. After laboratory research was carried out, the converted cells were injected into the brains of mice. These mice were bred to lack the protein myelin, which is important in aiding the transmission of messages in the brain. 10 weeks later, the precursor cells had specialised into oligodendrocytes, which made the myelin that the mice lacked.

Skin cells directly to brain cells, do not pass Go, do not create ethical issues. (And creating myelin, which is something that someone like me with MS raises their antennae over.)

Good morning.

1. Car tech of interest.
2. So is the White House inconsistent or biased? Or is there another narrative?
3. What is this “poor in spirit” thing.
4. Slavery or taxation in a barter economy?
5. Progress of progressivism? Or consequences of Ms Delsol’s Unlearned Lessons.
6. Perhaps further context is required … after all Mr Biden might have continued by noting that “… and neither, of course, do we.” But I tend to doubt it.
7. Speaking of progressivism … future medical mandates?
8. A few interesting moments might be spend considering the nature of intelligent life on that planet, eh?
9. TARP and expense, or hide the cost.
10. Short answer … no.
11. No problem? Does this mean a new war/wag-the-dog is planned for the late summer?
12. Grist for the conversation going on right now in the comment trail on women and men and their power struggle.
13. Iran and demographics.
14. Speaking of demographics.
15. Some verse.
16. I don’t think the term “McCarthyism” makes a bit of sense in that context. McCarthy and the red scare was about painting with little evidence members of industry and government as “red” and banning them thereby from their position and place work. What parallel is pretended?
17. Of States and immigration.
18. Ten! Just ten and they’re “on track?” On track for what?
19. Training priests and/on abortion.
20. Liberal vs conservatives and one measure of tolerance.

You’re probably well aware by now of the murderous attack that left 15 people dead in Pakistan.

What? You thought it was 16 people in Afghanistan who were killed? Well, certainly that news is making the headlines on newswires across the world. But I’m referring to a suicide attack on mourners at a funeral in Pakistan. From Bill Roggio, at The Long War Journal,

A suicide bomber killed 15 people and wounded dozens more in an attack at a funeral in the Pakistani city of Peshawar today. The attack appears to have targeted a senior provincial government official who has raised an anti-Taliban militia in the area.

Pakistani officials confirmed that a suicide bomber carried out today’s attack as mourners were offering prayers for a woman during a funeral in the Badaber area of Peshawar.

Had you heard about this? If you had, was it a news headline or merely another one-of-many filler stories?

In a way, perhaps the fact that such stories get so little airplay, and stories of U.S. military personnel committing crimes get so much airplay is an indication of the very difference between our moral high ground and the terrorist enemy’s.

Consider the following account of Muslim on Muslim killings, per The Long War Journal.

Over the past five years, the Taliban and allied Pakistani terror groups such as the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Punjabi Taliban have shown no reservations about striking inside mosques and other religious sites, as well as during religious processions and events. There have been 36 major attacks on mosques and other Islamic institutions in Pakistan since December 2007, according to information compiled by The Long War Journal.

One of the most brazen attacks took place on Dec. 4, 2009, when a suicide assault team stormed a mosque frequented by military officers in Rawalpindi. Two senior generals were among the 40 people killed.

Another major attack took place on July 1, 2010, when suicide bombers struck the Data Ganj Bakhsh shrine in Lahore, killing 41 people and wounding more than 170. Three suicide bombers detonated their vests at the shrine at a time when it was most frequented, in an effort to maximize casualties.

The last major attack against religious targets took place on Sept. 15, 2011, when a suicide bomber killed 31 people in an attack at a funeral in Lower Dir.

All told, The Long War Journal lists 36 major attacks since December 2007 (in Pakistan alone), resulting in 805 people killed. That’s an average of 22 people killed per attack – attacks at mosques and other Islamic institutions.

Try to find that on CNN.

Good morning.

1. Gosh, liberal aghast Romney using the Obama camp SOP. Watch and wait, pretty soon Romney will have a catchy meaningless slogan like Hope/Change.
2. Why is the government solution to everything “hand out bags of money” and wait for the bubble to bust and make everything worse?
3. When you get banned from a comment “for profanity” it works better if the banned content contains actual profanity.
4. The Buddhist banned from communion still in the news. Truth is stranger than fiction.
5. An attempt to help the poor.
6. Unintended consequences.
7. Naivete as argument, there (apparently) is not “a variety of facts.” “Fact” has only one “kind” … the fact that you love your wife, that the revolutionary war was about taxation, that you are conservative (or liberal), and that the mass of the electron is .5 Mev are exactly the same sort of facts. Riiiight.
8. Here’s the memo. Not getting the memo … for example here. What part of “dead relatives” do people not get? Or is she angry that she’s related to Mormons?
9. Mr Gore now encourages electoral fraud.
10. So, do you wish you were there?
11. Grist for the insurance and coverage debate (follow the two linked links).

[Please click here for part 1, as this just picks up where that left off. Also, another blogger found the article again at a new URL on the same site. I’d searched using their advance search form with no success, but glad that it’s back so people can read the whole thing.]

The newborn and the fetus are morally equivalent

The authors, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva,  start this section with their definition of personhood.

Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’. We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.

Thus, to be a person, you have to know you’re a person and be able to value it. The state of not knowing, however, lasts quite a bit beyond newborn status. The authors, again, fail to address this. More than fail to, actually, they refuse to address it, as we shall see.

Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life. Indeed, many humans are not considered subjects of a right to life: spare embryos where research on embryo stem cells is permitted, fetuses where abortion is permitted, criminals where capital punishment is legal.

The equivalence here is somewhat flawed, not the least because they start to blur the moral right to life with the legal right to life. Further, they equate giving up your legal right to life (by, for example, murdering someone else) with a fetus or embryo being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Depending on your morals, all three examples have a moral right to life, it’s just in the last case it was actively forfeited.

Read the rest of this entry

Thinking Sheriffs Dept offer free CCW classes for women
From WISTV,

The Kershaw County Sheriff’s Department says a gruesome crime lead them to open up a free concealed weapons class for women.

According to Sheriff Jim Matthews, the department opened up the course and waived an $80 fee to sign up in response to the brutal murder of Beverly Hope Melton.

###

Thinking Canadians end government waste
By ending long-gun registration. From John Lott,

Despite spending a whopping $2.7 billion on creating and running a long-gun registry, Canadians never reaped any benefits from the project. … Even though the country started registering long guns in 1998, the registry never solved a single murder. Instead it has been an enormous waste of police officers’ time, diverting their efforts from patrolling Canadian streets and doing traditional policing activities.

###

Non-thinking gun-control advocate San Francisco Sheriff arrested for domestic violence
AND he surrenders over 3 of his handguns. From David Codrea,

“Although San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi was a strong advocate of gun control while on the Board of Supervisors, he surrendered 3 handguns when police recently booked him on misdemeanor domestic violence charges,” KCBS reports.

Mirkarimi apparently owned them while sponsoring legislation last summer to bolster San Francisco gun control laws against a lawsuit by the National Rifle Association.

What was that about trusting only the police with possessing firearms?

###

No! 4 year-old shoots his 3 year-old brother to death
Gun Safety. Gun Safety. Gun Safety. From KDFW,

Police say the woman had put the handgun on top of a chest of drawers, thinking the weapon was out of the children’s reach.

Police say the 4-year-old boy managed to get the gun and shoot his little brother.

Have a firearm and have kids? Then you make sure that the firearm is secured at ALL times (which either means locked away or secured on your person). Kids WILL find a way to the firearm. Also, you teach children about firearms – especially the kid’s rules of gun safety if they happen across an unattended firearm:  STOP! Don’t touch! Leave the room! Tell an adult!

###

ND = Negligent Discharge. In this case, deadly.
From FoxNews,

Authorities say a Florida pastor’s daughter who was accidentally shot in the head in a church died Saturday at a hospital.

The round came from a gun owned by a CCW carrier in the church. From the article (emphasis added),

Investigators have said Moises Zambrana was showing his gun in a small closet to another church member interested in buying a firearm. The St. Petersburg Times reports that the other church member, Dustin Bueller, was Hannah Kelley’s fiancee.

Zambrana reportedly removed the magazine from the Ruger 9mm weapon but did not know that a round was still in the chamber. The gun went off, firing a bullet through a wall. Kelley was struck in the head.

Guns don’t just go off. The firing pin or hammer of the handgun must strike the chambered cartridge and that happens when the trigger is pressed, either by one’s finger or by any object that is situated inside the trigger guard.

###

Stupid
And stupidity is not limited to those “trained” to work with firearms.

Good morning.

1. A narrative of why the current President has continued so many policies of the former with which he allegedly strongly disagreed … this one claims he still disagrees but his hands are tied by the Constitution.
2. Uncertainty primer.
3. Methodist theology and the early Church Fathers.
4. The end of the status quo in the US, might not be gradual.
5. Which needs to confront this notion.
6. Freedom and the left.
7. Yah, they don’t watch FOX, they don’t actually listen to Mr Limbaugh … they just bang the echo chamber drum (whilst complaining about the right wing echo chamber and not noticing that they do the same thing).
8. Logic.
9. Arab Springly thinking.
10. So, is he right? Would ABC run the alternative?
11. A question for the Fluke/contraceptives-for-free supporters.
12. A question about options and Iran.
13. The kindness of strangers in flyover land.

[FYI, Part 2 of my "after-birth abortion" article will appear Monday, for both of you waiting for it. ]

Obama: ‘Drill Drill Drill won’t work. And you can thank Me that it did.’

America’s per capita debt is worse than Greece. And Greece’s credit rating is in the basement.

BBC: We’ll Mock Jesus But Never Mohammed. (Because Christians won’t cut off their head or burn things.)

For all the talk about crude names called at Sandra Fluke, the war on conservative women goes merrily unreported. Meryl Yourish refers to this as the new Exception Clause.

No wonder liberals think their unconstitutional ideas are constitutional. They don’t understand the document’s intent.

Like all generalizations, it’s not true of every single case, but James Q. Wilson asks an interesting question: Why Don’t Jews Like the Christians Who Like Them?

Just as Jews were once expelled from Arab lands, Christians are now being forced from countries they have long inhabited.

And finally, the return of the political cartoon to Friday Link Wrap-ups.

Good morning.

1. Economically speaking.
2. Putin and the Russian Republic election.
3. A car, which appears to be designed to blow up when it hits a speed-bump. But, it looks kewl, eh?
4. Rockwell meets Lucas.
5. Interesting locution there, mocking the ivory tower distance on the one hand and at the same time figuring the term “medical zombies” is about creatures you have to run away or shoot (in real life).
6. A look behind a faux controversy.
7. I’ll bet dollars to donuts this wasn’t what you were taught in school about that little narrative. Heh.
8. I know it’s all traditional and everyone just loves that color, but I’ve never liked overmuch.
9. Becoming human?
10. Least worst … kind of like how we view democracy (vs the other forms of government) in a nutshell.

The Danish Pancakes, from Ellen’s Danish Pancake House, in Buellton, CA.

I like breakfast. But one thing I don’t care for at most restaurants are thick, thick pancakes. Too much expansive mass makes for a full stomach after only a few bites. Now Danish pancakes are very thin and not heavy handed in the least. At Ellen’s Danish Pancake House they serve up some delightful pancakes, generously sprinkled with powdered sugar, and a couple of slices of bacon to boot. Very nice change of pace (once in awhile) from the savory breakfasts I usually get. Mind you, while tasty, the plates are pricey here.

Enjoy!

– image © 2011 A R Lopez

Good morning.

1. Trends and criteria vis a vis Afghanistan.
2. Our mostly dysfunctional government.
3. Does anyone remember the kerfuffle over the refusal of communion to the lesbian in a Catholic church, turns out … there’s more to the story. I guess the story “Catholic refuses communion to a Buddhist” doesn’t have the same cachet.
4. Woops.
5. Consider this. (HT)
6. For the Orthodox smartphone set.
7. Zuh zuh zuh zooooooom. Or not.
8. A smooch.
9. A taxpayer feel (not so) good story.
10. Parasites.
11. Mr Holder and liberties.
12. So … if after all that you need a dose of really cute.

October Baby
“Every life is beautiful”

From Brett Kunkle,

Mark your calendars for March 23. That’s when a new movie, October Baby, will hit movie screens. I was able to preview the film last week and suggest you go see this one in the theater. I’ll be up front, it is a strong pro-life movie dealing head-on with abortion. But it was powerful and compelling, without being preachy. The message comes through loud and clear, but in a way that stirred my soul (yes, yes…I cried like 4 times — it was intense). And ultimately, the message is hopeful.

Trailer here.

###

Tatts for Jesus! Except…
these are done FOR Lent.

From Joe Carter,

Although Christians have been getting inked for centuries, the recent rise in popularity and mainstream acceptance of tattoos is leading many Christians to reflect on the meaning and prudence of the practice.

“Nearly 40 percent of young adults aged 18-28 have tattoos now, which is more than four times the number in the Baby Boom generation,” noted Matthew Lee Anderson in his book Earthen Vessels: Why our Bodies Matter for our Faith. “While tattoos mark a desire for significance within a destabilized world, they are a live option for most young people precisely because we have not escaped the clutches of the consumerism and the individualism that are so often criticized.”

From CNN,

In a hip, artsy, area of Houston, a hip, artsy pastor is taking an unorthodox approach to Lent.

…

He asked them to get tattoos. Specifically, he asked congregants to get a tattoo corresponding with one of the Stations of the Cross, the collection of images that depict scenes in Jesus’ journey to his crucifixion.

…

Another member of Ecclesia, Joyce O’Connor, channeled her family when she was deciding what station of the cross to get tattooed onto her body. O’Connor, who has one biological child and two stepchildren, connected with the fourth station, Jesus meeting his mother.

“I am a mother and in just a minuscule way can relate to how Mary must have felt,” O’Conner said.

“The tattoo captured me and I love it,” she continued. “When I think of that image, I don’t feel tragedy or sadness because I know how the story ends and it makes me smile.”

Permanent images on your body using Biblical imagery as a metaphor for what has happened in your life?

It seems to me that this is nothing more than a carnal attempt at personalizing scripture or, in these cases, Biblical notions.

###

Could this be an Introvert’s weapon of choice for fighting smalltalk?
From Engadget,

Silence is golden, so there are plenty of times when it’d be awfully convenient to mute those around us, and a couple of Japanese researchers have created a gadget that can do just that. Called the SpeechJammer, it’s able to “disturb remote people’s speech without any physical discomfort” by recording and replaying what you say a fraction of a second after you say it. Why would that shut up the chatty Cathy next to you? Delayed auditory feedback (DAF) is based on an established psychological principle that it’s well-nigh impossible for folks to speak when their words are played back to them just after they’ve been uttered.

###

Postscript to the Open Letter to Praise Bands
Excerpts,

1. Worship is not only expressive, it is also formative. It is not only how we express our devotion to God, it is also how the Spirit shapes and forms us to bear God’s image to the world. This is why the form of worship needs to be intentional: worship isn’t just something that we do; it does something to us. And this is why worship in a congregational setting is a communal practice of a congregation by which the Spirit grabs hold of us. How we worship shapes us, and how we worship collectively is an important way of learning to be the body of Christ…

2. Because worship is formative, and not merely expressive, that means other cultural practices actually function as “competing” liturgies, rivals to Christian worship. …The point is that such loaded cultural practices are actually shaping our loves and desires by the very form of the practice, not merely by the “content” they offer. If we aren’t aware of this, we can unwittingly adopt what seem to be “neutral” or benign practices without recognizing that they are liturgies that come loaded with a rival vision of “the good life.” If we adopt such practices uncritically, it won’t matter what “content” we convey by them, the practices themselves are ordered to another kingdom. And insofar as we are immersed in them, we are unwittingly mis-shaped by the practices.

Read it all.

###

Yes, conservative women do get more of the “Rush-treatment”

###

Heh. Funny. Very funny.

© Day by Day

I would have never thought of this, but then, I have a difficult time understanding the entitlement mentality.

Last Friday, I noted in my Friday Link Wrap-up "Medical "ethicists" are seriously arguing that post-birth newborns are ‘not persons’ and can ethically be "aborted". I also posted this article on Facebook, and one of my friends took me to task on it. He said that "sloppy agenda laden journalism" has misinterpreted their intent, and that "the researchers are attempting to provoke debate on the ethics of abortion, not the desirability to kill newborns."

I’ve read the whole piece by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, and I come to the conclusion that, while their stated intent may not be to suggest that it is desirable to kill newborns, the result will be the same. The main problem I see is that, while they have their personal moral stances regarding how often and in what circumstances what they call "after-birth abortions" would take place, their stances would not be what others use to make their determination. Would they accept a gun manufacturer’s statement that "I don’t intend my product to kill innocent people"? Perhaps not, but it can be used that way, and abortion kills millions upon millions because they are merely inconvenient. The authors’ morals will not be used to put into practice their suggestions. Keep that in mind.

(Note: While putting this blog post together, the article was removed from the Journal of Medical Ethics website. The link takes you to a "Not Found" page, and no amount of searching for title, text, or authors could find it. I’m not sure if it was taken down for some reason, or if, perhaps, only the most recent articles appear on the website. In any event, the article is no longer there. I’ll continue to look to see if it gets posted elsewhere.)

(Second note: This is why I haven’t posted anything this week so far. I’ve been spending my time working on this.)

Read the rest of this entry

The Mark Twain Breakfaste plate at the River Belle Terrace, in Disneyland.

The Mark Twain breakfast includes scrambled eggs, homestyle potatoes, bacon, and a biscuit. It’s an excellent start to the day, whether the day will include hiking all over Disneyland, or simply stopping by for a taste of familiar sights.

Enjoy!

– image © 2011 A R Lopez

Good morning

1. Guantanamo stats.
2. A little more on the Fluke/Rush kerfuffle, here in which it is suggested that Mr Rush should have investigated prior to apologizing … and here where somewhat similarly some confusion over the faux outrage over the term slut is professed. I wonder if Ms Fluke has, for example, participated in the “slut walk” phenomena and if so  … why is this term problematic?
3. And one more … Ms Althouse wonders about the liberal double standard toward apologies.
4. Dressing dad.
5. Same sex marriage and Mr Sullivan.
6. Lovecraft and epistemology.
7. Trends in modern education and demographics.
8. Sierra Leone.
9. Supply and demand.
10. Our creepy Washington.
11. Mr Obama’s putative support for Israel.
12. Apparently liberal political leaders regularly review and disavow comments made by liberal entertainers. Who knew?