tisiwoota

1. Mice Genetically Engineered for Big Muscles Without Exercise by keeping a certain protein kinase in an active state.

2. The Economist Argues In Favor of a Kidney Transplant Market. Saying, among other things, that Iran does it already.

3. How Children Learn Cultural Behavior. A study of 3 to 5 year old children two different ethnic populations in Nepal. One group typically reacts to a certain situation with shame, the other with anger.

4. Spitzer Wins Energy Efficiency Lawsuit. Oh Mr. Spitzer, what new and awesomer ways of kicking a$$ will you come up with as a Governor?

5. Nanotubes are Secret Key to Legendary Swords’ Sharpness.
The bundles run parallel to the blade’s surface and may help larger particles of cementite arrange in layers. These hard layers, which have softer steel in between, could help explain how the steel remains strong yet flexible.

My second-cousin wrote the following poem based on this person’s life:

Jim Younger Is Denied Permission To Wed The Journalist From St. Paul

When you first found me, the pen

shook in your hand. You had come

to question a killer. Instead you found

a wanted man, who did not seek

to steal, but asked to take the buttermilk

palms you reached between my cell bars.

A western man, your father, should know how a gun

heats the hand, burns to be fired into the sky.

It can feel like you are in control

of the sunset. Your father never knew

how sweet a horse’s back smells the day

of a robbery, even the morning

glories tremble like fear in the light.

If I were a better criminal

I would never have met you,

so I have no regrets. We got lazy. Forgot

smart sheriffs never wait for crimes.

They see them in the hesitant parting

of clouds, know it by the chaos

of barks and dust circles.

Tell your father when my dreams

come on, I don’t count the bodies I laid

into dust, but the freckles that run

from behind your ear before falling

into the world below your lace collar.

But as I load my gun for the last time, I want

to remind you, the world needs an outlaw

heart-beat. It is why my life was spent

in dirt and hoof-beat. I know the change

in a horse’s breathing at dawn. It is the sound

of a body preparing to escape.

via ACSBlog

A UCLA student (evidently Islamic) was tasered multiple times by campus police simply for not showing his ID at the library. In the video (below) you can hear the officers demanding that the student stand up and walk, threatening to taser him again if he does not comply– well beyond the point where he seemed physically able.

1. Fun Gene Names, Not So Fun to Tell Patients
“Lunatic fringe,” “head case” and “one-eyed pinhead” might sound like insults from the schoolyard or talk radio. But these are actually examples of the kind of oddball names that scientists give to genes they discover. . . . The names are causing problems for doctors who have to counsel patients about genetic defects with names like “sonic hedgehog” and “mothers against decapentaplegia.”

2. Traffic Lights Replaced by… Courtesy?
Drachten, a small Dutch city with around 50,000 residents has removed almost all of its traffic lights. Major intersections have been converted to roundabouts, smaller intersections just let drivers work make decisions on their own. Basically, it’s anarchy. Anarchy that has completely eliminated dangerous crashes and road fatalities and created a surge in bicycle and pedestrian traffic. . . . “We want small accidents, in order to prevent serious ones in which people get hurt.”

3. Immigrants Sue to Retrieve Seized Funds They Tried to Send to Relatives.
Border states have been seizing money on suspicion that it is intended for “coyotes,” human or drug smugglers. Now a lawsuit against the state of Arizona alleges that the state “never adequately notified senders or receivers that the money had been seized, or advised them of their right to challenge the seizure. The investigation turned up 400 specific individuals who had lost money by setting up a toll-free number. There are believed to be up to 15,000 potential plaintiffs.”

4. What Bacterial Communities Can Teach Us About Health

5. New Scientist Looks at the Rise of Home-Schooling and its role in promoting the conservative anti-evolution agenda.

A bit over a month ago I wrote about how George HW Bush’s godson, a senior official in the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote an irate letter to the World Health Organization demanding that they rescind a report on intellectual property and public health that was critical of US trade policy, which I had done some background research for.

But it seems that in the intervening time, two key Democratic members of Congress and the American electorate woke up to the importance of avenging this slight against my work.

Ted Kennedy and Henry Waxman have begun investigating the US government’s behaviour in trade and public health, “including questioning the US complaint from this case.”

And the American electorate– well, you can see where this is going– gave me a Congress in which Democrats are now in the position to step up oversight over congressional committees that investigate these sorts of things.

Gosh! And my birthday isn’t for another month and a half!

More

1. Memory, Amnesia, and Lunch. In other words, the Memento guy could totally rock those big steak-eating challenges.

2. Abstinence Until 30?!? “Unmarried adults up to the age of 29 are the latest age group that the federal government is trying to make chaste.”

“Imagine that a 29 year-old single male might be told,

For condoms to be used correctly, over 10 specific difficult steps must be followed every time. This tends to minimize the romance and spontaneity of the sex act. (Choosing the Best, p. 25).”

Clearly the logical thing to infer from this program is that the federal government is trying to instill a tradition among its citizenry of celebrating their 30th birthdays with orgies (and without condoms, since those require a doctorate-degree’s worth of training to operate, and even then are a mere 99% effective.)

Oh yes and don’t forget:

“Women need affection while men need sexual fulfillment; women need conversation while men need recreation companionship; women need honest and openness while men need physical attractiveness; women need financial support while men need admiration, and women need family commitment while men need domestic support” (WAIT Training, p. 199).

3. Worker Bees Not So Voluntarily Harmonious After All. It’s just a little sad to read that police states exist as a natural form of.. er, nature.

4. Global Sex Survey. Well, okay, “Reproductive Health Survey”. The bottom line: “Marriage may be good for your sex life, but religion can harm your health”.

5. Should Developmentally Disabled Children be Kept Small? Yes, you read that right– “In a report published in a medical journal this month, two doctors describe a 6-year-old girl with profound, irreversible developmental disability who was given high doses of estrogen to permanently halt her growth so that her parents could continue to care for her at home.”

Wow. I can’t imagine that’s good for a person’s health long-term. What a difficult topic…

…

And a bonus graphic of the week…ish: