Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Michael Fumento’s article on amniotic stem cells

Yesterday I got an email from Michael where he writes,

Adult stem cells cure and treat more 70 diseases and are involved in almost 1,300 human clinical trials. Scientists also keep discovering that adult stem cells are capable of creating a wider variety of mature cells. Perhaps the most promising of these was announced in the January issue of Nature Biotechnology.

Read Michael’s latest article, Code of Silence: Another source of useful stem cells has been found – and the media and the cloning crowd are trying keep it quiet

Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, reported that stem cells in the amniotic fluid that fills the sac surrounding the fetus may be just as versatile as embryonic stem cells. At the same time they maintain all the advantages that have made adult stem cells such a success.

This has caused great consternation on the part of those seeking increased taxpayer embryonic stem cell funds. The reason is that there are currently no practical applications for this type of cell. There hasn’t even been a single clinical trial involving them. Researchers admit we won’t have approved embryonic stem cell treatments for at least 10 years.

Read very word of Michael’s article.

The fact is that while we are spending millions on dollars on embryonic stem cells, the real results are elsewhere – in the other types of stem cells.

Update, Saturday, 11 February: More exciting news – A J Strata explains:

What this means to us laymen is we now have the “on-off” switch that turns adult stem cells into some of their target cell types, in this case blood cells (or bone marrow cells). The use of adult stem cells is always preferred due to the genetic match with the patient. And finding this trigger outside the DNA (which is where I would have expected it to be, honestly) is a huge leap ahead. Now scientist will culture a vast number of tailored stem cells from the patient and know how to trigger them to make blood and marrow. It is probable this mechanism is valid for all stem cell control, so what will be left is to find the proper triggers for each cell type. Each target cell type, for example a neuron, is the product of different kinds and mixes of protein production. It would seem normal for each specific mix to have a combination of triggers that make the stem cell transform into the target type.

All speculation based on the apparent breakthrough. But reasonable speculation.

We live in the age of wonders.

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Propaganda on the news, and today’s other items

Propaganda in the news:
Voice of America or voice of Ahmadinejad?

After a Senate subcommittee hearing last summer in which an escaped Iranian dissident testified that the U.S. itself has been beaming anti-American propaganda into Iran, Sen. Tom Coburn began looking into the problem. Today, in a polite but searing letter, addressed to President Bush, Coburn spelled out his concerns that American broadcasts into Iran, via Radio Farda and Voice of America, freighted with content that sounds like the propaganda of Tehran itself, “may actually be harming American interests rather than helping.”

Global Warming Smear

political and media activists attempt to stigmatize anyone who doesn’t pay homage to their “scientific consensus.”
…
Here are the facts as we’ve been able to collect them. AEI doesn’t lobby, didn’t offer money to scientists to question global warming, and the money it did pay for climate research didn’t come from Exxon.

Speaking of “climate change”, The Economist

The other part of the report’s job is to make predictions about what will happen to the climate. In this, it illustrates a curious aspect of the science of climate change. Studying the climate reveals new, little-understood, mechanisms: as temperatures warm, they set off feedback effects that may increase, or decrease, warming. So, as understanding grows, predictions may become less, rather than more, certain. Thus the IPCC’s range of predictions of the rise in the temperature by 2100 has increased from 1.4-5.8°C in the 2001 report to 1.1-6.4°C in this report.

That the IPCC should end up with a range that vast is not surprising given the climate’s complexity. But it does leave plenty of scope for argument about whether it is worth trying to do anything about climate change.

As far as global warming goes, send me some. It’s been below 30F for an entire week here and I need to shed the Polartec and the tweeds.

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When You Tax Profits, You Tax People (emphasis added)

The prevailing 35 percent corporate tax rate takes a monster bite from all U.S. businesses. Moreover, our business taxes are far too high in relation to the rest of the world. Believe it or not,the corporate tax rate is lower in France than it is in the United States.

Along with slow-growing Japan, the U.S. has the highest marginal tax rate on corporate profits of any of the developed countries. Think of this: Germany is cutting its corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 25 percent. And if frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy wins the French presidential election this spring, he plans to slash France’s corporate tax burden. Meanwhile, we’ll still be taking our best companies behind the barn and shooting them.

The bottom line here is that our economic system is all about free-market capitalism, and at the core of that system is profit. Profit isn’t a dirty word. From profits spring the abundance of this great country. Profits are the mother’s milk of stocks and the economy. Expanding profits provide businesses the resources to enlarge production operations and hire additional workers. This, in turn, is how incomes are created, wages that are then spent by American families.

Why can’t liberals grasp this?

Because it won’t fit their script?

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Hillary
Imagining a Triangulator-in-Chief: Hillary Rodham Clinton

P.J. O’Rourke recently said Hillary’s “Hugo Chavez in a pants suit.” Should Hillary wear skirts? Donatella thinks

They make her look too masculine

In Hillary’s mind, “and that is wrong because?”

She’ll have to lose a few pounds and wear shorter jackets, to look better in skirts. This is what she looked like in a skirt years ago.

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In a lighter mode,
Affairs to Forget. How Hollywood lost its romantic groove.
Here’s my second-favorite movie,

They don’t make them as they used to, don’t they?

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Neo-neocon posts about the psychology of Psychology Today

Earlier this week I posted on Psy Today’s Ideological Animal from the point of view of whether the article addresses if there is a real threat (which it doesn’t) and how fear, in my experience, didn’t provoke my change.

Neo-neocon, one of the people who were interviewed for the article, posted about it yesterday.

Neo-neocon:

I’ll start by disclosing my personal association with the article. Back in July, I got an email from an intern at the magazine, inviting me to be interviewed for a piece on political conversions. According to the email, the article was be entirely even-handed and nonpartisan, and would incorporate stories from both sides of the political spectrum about people whose viewpoints had changed. It sounded like fun, and definitely right up my alley.

But if you read the finished product, it turns out that the “change” stories have boiled down to just one, that of journalist and blogger Cinnamon Stillwell, plus four short and superficial blurbs containing a couple of sentences apiece about four famous “changers” (yes, this part was an attempt at even-handedness, at least by the numbers: there were two righty-to-lefties and two lefty-to-righties: Brock, Huffington, Reagan, and Hitchens).

During my rather lengthy telephone interview with author Jay Dixit, he asked me many times whether my post-9/11 political change had been motivated by fear. I repeatedly explained that it had not, referring to my blog articles on change, and describing the process involved in some detail.

You mist read the rest. Among the very important issues in this study is the complete lack of science involved: IronShrink, a Volokh commenter, and G. Richard Jansen explain in detal.

As I mentioned to Neo-neocon, to have this article try to pass itself off as related/pertaining to a “scientific” study of any sort is absurd. Back in the year dot when I was in college (double major: economics and marketing) I had to collect, quantify, and explain in mathematical terms how I analyzed my data – and economics is a social science. Incidentally, a commenter at Neo’s managed to squeeze in a taunt at me for making that remark; when a person who disagrees with a “conservative” has no substantial argument, the personal attack serves as a release, I guess. For some, it’s all about feelings, and how valid it is to express them, but I digress.

The “study” is a series of observations custom-cut to fit a preordained outcome. To even talk about that study in scientific terms is like referring to the Grimm brothers tales as history.

However, this “study” is only one instance where “science” isn’t science. Read Neo-neocon’s commenter Sergei’s post, Mathematics as a tool of deception and self-deception. As Sergei commented at Neo’s post,

Psychology is not the only domain where junk science thrives; any other field where exact knowlege is still impossible or never will be possible, became a playground of pseudo-scientific speculations. But there is one all-important factor, beside immaturity of field, which foster pseudo-science: this is politization. After some problem became a hot potato in political or ideological clashes, any chance of objective, impartial study is irrevocably lost. In my memory this calamity has spoiled racial anthropology, eugenics, climatology, gender studies, many fields in history and brain research.

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Last night I watched Smoke Screen: Hezbollah Inside America. I’ll try to find out when it’s going to air again – this is a must-see.
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Dan Riehl‘s going to appear today at 10AM in CNN’s Reliable Sources

Update Via LGF,

Marg … inalized Stark: He Don’t Beat Down, He Beats …

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This week’s Carnival of the Insanities is ready and waiting for you,

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Hugo’s PR tour, and today’s other items

Now annoying people in Brazil, Chavez Calls Brazil’s Globo ‘Enemy of the People’

Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez attacked Brazil’s Organizacoes Globo, the country’s largest media organization, during a speech in Rio de Janeiro, calling the group an “enemy of the people.”

Globo publishes Rio de Janeiro’s O Globo daily and operates Brazil’s largest television network. Chavez also said the company uses women reporters to manipulate its audience.
…
Earlier today, Chavez urged his Brazilian counterpart, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to expand state control of Latin America’s largest economy.

Lula’s presidential press office declined to comment on Chavez’s comments.

Chavez also criticized Time Warner Inc.’s CNN, saying it is ‘poisoned’ by U.S. interests.

Let’s hope Lula turned a deaf ear to that bit of advice.

Chavez defends Venezuelan model. No, not this model; he means the Venezuelan democratic model.

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Eric Talks Turkey About Freedom, and beats Dinesh with a big stick. Dinesh had resoundedly earned that beating.
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From Maria,
Blinding Us With Science:

the argument in the 21st century will be about humanity itself – and whether science is the source of human values.

The Graying of America: An Inconvenient Truth
Seeking Anonymity

Movie review: The Italian
A Place Where Hope Dies, and a Boy Who Escapes Maria says,

We saw this movie in it’s original version (“ITALIANEC”) and I agree with this reviewer. This is (undoubtedly) one of those powerful, emotional movies which you remember for a long time!

I’ll have to see it – the last movie Maria recommended was the excellent The Illusionist.

Via Larwyn, The Hybridization of America

This just in
Prince Charles canceled a traditional skiing holiday in a bid to reduce his carbon footprint, or maybe American Express didn’t get his credit card payment on time…
Fahsion Week, Tehran!

Today’s video, via Steven,

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Bad science, and today’s items

Via Maria, Celebrities told to embrace the facts, not bad science
The Sense About Science guys have their work cut out for them.

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From Larwyn,
Supply Factors and Stagnant Wages

Blue collar workers’ real wages have stagnated because of labor supply factors. These include:

-The baby boom
-Immigration
-Diversity

They have also stagnated because of:

-Health insurance costs and
-Costs of bureaucracy due to workplace regulation.

Social stratification has increased because of:

-Urban renewal and disruption of blue collar social networks and
-Unnecessary college degree requirements.

In other words, supply factors and government intervention have caused the stagnation of blue collar real wages that the US has suffered in the past 30 years.

RTWT

More on Conyers: Get This Turkey Off Judiciary Committee
Oh yes, let’s put our lives in the hands of the government
UN Workers Raping 12 year olds in Sudan

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Via Beth., Honoring Those Who Died
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Via SC&A, from the Victims of Political Islam site, Dr Nasr Abu Zaid
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Call me overprotective, but I would have never allowed my son to do this when he was fourteen.

More blogging later.

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