Thoughts on Galactica

Been watching the BSG S2 DVDs and have a interesting insight: they are pro-torture. Starting in Pegasus we are introduced to Pegasus-6; a woman was part of the crew of the Pegasus, went into cylon rage, and killed a number of the crew. As a result of this, she was imprisoned, raped and tortured leading her to want oblibion. This desire leads her to tell Gaius what the puropose of the Resurrection Ship was, she explicitly told him what it was so he could destroy so when she dies she cannot be reborn.

A clear endorsement of the effectiveness of torture.

The clouds of ignorance begin to part...

...and through them comes a ...

What galls even more is how hopelessly naive, and reductive, those of us are who suggest that being the victim of American imperialism somehow exempts one from being corrupt and imperialistic. Those who demonize Israel, and the U.S. do exactly as this president does by setting up their own "axis of evil;" substituting a different set of names for bad guys.

Science will always win

It seems that the lamentations of the left are untrue; President Bush has failed to stop a stem cell clinical trial from going forward. What, I thought that Rove-Bush-Cheney were supposed to drag us back into a fundamentalist Christian dark agewhere the only therapies were prayers.

Ain't so.

But, all this proves is that science in the west will always move forward; no force of government, religion, attorneys can stop it.

Update:

As you may recall, OHSU announced in March that researchers from Doernbecher Children’s Hospital will conduct a clinical safety trial that involves implanting purified human fetal neural stem cells into children who have a rare and fatal disorder. This clinical trial will begin before the end of the year.

We expect this landmark trial may receive significant national attention and wanted you to be aware of it in advance.
The trial will involve up to six children who have neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (NCL), also known as Batten disease. This disease is a rare and devastating genetic condition that affects infants and children and is always fatal.

This is a safety trial that was carefully reviewed and approved by OHSU’s Institutional Review Board. While meticulous, compelling research has been conducted in animal models, to our knowledge this will be the first time that surgeons anywhere have implanted human neural stem cells into the brain.

The goal of this Phase 1 trial is to determine whether the cells can be implanted with no harm to the child. We hope it will be an important first step toward a therapeutic advance for these children who have no other viable options.

The trial uses a human central nervous stem cell product developed by StemCells Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. For more information about the study, please visit http://www.ohsu.edu/stemcellstrial.

Talk about horrible casting

Sean Penn may play Einstein for TV film

Men at work

things may seem strange for the next few days as I'm finding the structure I want

Answer to the Major: we are not good at deception

Major Matoko Kusanagi has postulated a strategy in the West-MENA wars-defeat them through making them think we are their friend; well, I disagree with her for one reason- the west has never been good at deception.

We in the West tout our "open society" as our biggest assest. We demand transparancy in government, truthful reporting, the right (even the duty) to air our deepest thoughts and feelings; while we despise shadowy government, controlled reporting, and repression of speech. If we were to try to decieve the ummah the first thing that would happen is people would find out, once it was discovered the strategy would then be lost*.

I prefer a much more basic, western approach- live our lives, with some security and spec ops against the terrorists, as normal; if another attack does occur then rain down holy hell on the terrorst supporting side of the ummah militarily, make them bleed rivers of blood and produce mountains of corpses; only when they feel enough pain will the mohammidites relent.

*I want to differentiate between deception and spec ops/intel/spying; while deception is involved in these endeavors, it is minor deception and temporary.

Back to blogging

Now that I feel more established in my life I'd like to return to this blog more often.
Don't expect many posts but a few a week should do.

Organic Republican reborn

Well, I'm starting to do what I have long been saying to people that I would, restart my blog. This is a temporary blog under the blogger code and when I have enough spare cash that I justify buying a moveable type account, I will transfer it over.

Why my own blog? Mainly because I want to stake out a body of work in trying to build a (side) career in writing. Also, there is the fact that my blog patron, razib, whose blog gnxp focuses on scientific matters does not appreciate me bringing my (snarky) political posts to our group blog, I was able to use my blog matron's blog, Sondrak, as an outlet but she did not appreciate my bringing "smart-pantz" posts to her's. So I thought it fitting to start one that would allow me to post on the things I like to post about: science, politics, the politics of science, and how science and politics interact. That plus the trivial things about my life (movies, science fiction, technology, and women)

I'll still contribute to the group blogs, but I needed a blog of my own...