Clinical trials with embryonic stem cells are believed to be years away because of the risks and ethical problems involved in the production of embryos -- regarded as living humans by some people -- for scientific use.Heh.
Additionally, umbilical cord blood stem cells trigger little immune response in the recipient [while] embryonic stem cells have a tendency to form tumors when injected into animals or human beings.This is really a win-win situation. I hope the process can be successfully repeated!
"I feel sad," club president Bernard Kensky said.And this is, indeed, very sad! Except, I suppose, for pessimists.
 | You scored as Monica. The neat freak who would do anything for her friends. You're Monica, not always that popular but everyone loves you now.
Which Friend are you? created with QuizFarm.com |
Broadcasting Ethics and Program Improvement Organization, a third-party organization formed by NHK and other broadcasters, has received more than 50 complaints from viewers about programs featuring characterizations based on blood types.The last paragraph of the article was interesting to me, because while I knew that blood typing had no scientific basis, I didn't realize how dated the process was:
Tatsuya Sato, assistant professor on social psychology at Ritsumeikan University said that characterization by blood types in Japan was extremely popular in the 1980s, but the boom subsided after researchers failed to uncover scientific evidence to characterize people based on their blood types.The practice hasn't disappeared from anime, though; we know, for example, that Echizen Ryoma is type O and Uzumaki Naruto is type B. (It may be that blood types are used with fictional characters to assist viewers in understanding their personalities. Similar to saying something like "he was on the football team" here in the U.S., it's a gross generalization that is immediately understood.)
The teacher of Daito Bunkadai Daiichi High School in Tokyo's Itabashi-ku is suspected of touching the breasts and legs of a female student in the calligraphy club room on Nov. 3.This is pretty much all the information we get about the incident...except for the title of the article:
More than 46,000 Americans have taken part in this online geography competition started by a man with a mission: Roger Andresen, who quit his job as a fibre optic engineer two years ago when he realized most Americans have never heard of Nauru and don't know Cameroon is in Africa.This is a pretty cool idea.
Working from his home in Georgia -- the U.S. state, not the country -- he created a jigsaw puzzle with pieces shaped like the countries of the world and launched what he calls the "world's biggest ongoing geography puzzle" on the Web.
"Geography is just a building block for understanding what's going on in the world," said Andresen, whose family includes Christian missionaries and who has travelled to 44 countries.Check out the Yahoo! News article here, and play Geography Olympics here.
"Being the world's superpower we should be informed voters," he said. "Sitting back and not worrying about these things is terrible, and it might be why the rest of the world doesn't care for us."
[Investment banking giant Morgan Stanley's chief economist Stephen Roach's] prediction: America has no better than a 10 percent chance of avoiding economic "armageddon."We're doomed!
Roach sees a 30 percent chance of a slump soon and a 60 percent chance that "we'll muddle through for a while and delay the eventual armageddon."
angelina jolie, babies, dandelions, zombies, hobbits, Jessi Klein, pumpkin pie, death, world domination, spontaneous combustion, swedish porn, procreation, politics, George Bush, Ashlee Simpson, pop culture.Yeeeeeeeeeeah.
ideally,Double yeeeeeeeeeeah. I guess it's supposed to be poetry? This is why I don't like poems ;P
all roads lead to home.
how many times then,
would our own roads traverse
our own roads, snarling
to bits
our plans for fits
for jack be quick be nimble?
tripping thick of
greedy finesse. welting
knees upon questing
efficiency, failing blind that
winding faulty path
might, certainly be
the fastest.
the LasTTesT
The perception of [blogs], as illustrated by the show, is that they are quick to respond but lack the ethics and rules that journalists play by.Every blogger is his/her own editor. That makes it difficult to toe the line of ethics, as I've touched on before. It's just too easy to write whatever you're thinking, and hit the "publish" button and share those unedited thoughts with the world. I'm so accustomed to this ease that I tend to have trouble writing a journal entry when Blogger is down and I can't use its post form. It's nice, but it's also dangerous, and I think many of us, especially those of us who are 1) newer to the scene and 2) unpublished, are still adjusting.
An accomplished terrorist -- al-Zarqawi is undoubtedly one -- understands us better than we seem to understand him. He knows that the only chance of forcing an American withdrawal lies in swaying the political will of an electorate that, already divided and unwilling, has sent its sons and daughters there. This is where his images become a weapon of war, a way to test and possibly shatter American will. He is counting on our moral disgust and on the sense of futility that follows disgust. Moral disgust is the first crucial step toward cracking the will to continue the fight.Great article. Read it.
Now let's not be sentimental about American virtue or scruple. Democracies can be just as ruthless as authoritarian societies, and Americans haven't been angels in the war on terror, as the images from Abu Ghraib so plainly show. But the willingness of American democracy to commit atrocity in its defense is limited by moral repugnance, rooted in two centuries of free institutions. This capacity for repugnance sustained the popular protest that eventually took us out of Vietnam. Al-Zarqawi is a cynic about these matters: the truths we hold to be self-evident are the ones he hopes to turn against us. He thinks that we would rather come home than fight evil. Are we truly willing to descend into the vortex to beat him? He has bet that we are not.
But his calculation is that either way, he cannot lose. If we remain, he has also bet -- and Abu Ghraib confirms how perceptive he was -- that we will help him drive us into ignominious defeat by becoming as barbarous as he is. He is trailing the videos as an ultimate kind of moral temptation, an ethical trap into which he is hoping we will fall. Everything is permitted, he is saying. If you wish to beat me, you will have to join me. Every terrorist hopes, ultimately, that his opponent will become his brother in infamy. If we succumb to this temptation, he will have won. He has, however, forgotten that the choice always remains ours, not his.
In its statement, her family said: "Nobody can justify this. Margaret was against sanctions and the war. To commit such a crime against anyone is unforgivable. But we cannot believe how anybody could do this to our kind, compassionate sister."This act, and all the others like it, will endear you to no one. Rather, we will hunt you down, and we will destroy you for what you have done.
Croatia has recalled an official from its Washington embassy after he reportedly wrote Web diaries portraying diplomatic life as boring and saying he saw no difference between the candidates in the U.S. election.But just because he wrote those things doesn't mean those are the reasons.
For those who aren't familiar with emerging blogosphere here in Croatia, it has differences to foreign blogosphere. The most popular blogging service in Croatia is BLOG.HR which started to educate people about blogs and offer them place for setting up free blogs.I, as you know, am guilty of having hurt people through this blog, so you can see why I found this interesting.
The difference is that in the 6 months blogosphere becomes more information -oriented ,at least according to impact scale ( not communication, learning, projects...) and a true citizen reporting started to raise some seriose questions. The main questions are related to some legal issues ; libel , invasion of privacy and author's intellectual property.
After all, we are small country and the information is spreading very fast over net.
Therefore, it's a need having some sort of disscusion about blogers ethics before it is too late and people get hurt.
| Original Text | Translated Text |
| Nista nova u svjetskoj banci danas. Tu u nas ured u staklenoj zgradi doalze svi, i drzavnici i poslovnjaci. Kako im nije bed nositi odijela stalno. Meni se neda, stisce me kravata, nemres imat boxerice pa te stalno dolje zulja. Bili Japanci, Francuzi, svi hoce nesto od nas. Postali smo zanimljivi sad kad ulazimo u EU. Svi bi naseg vrhnja, a kad dodju ni vrrhnja ni kumica vise nece biti.
Upravo me zvalo. Moram ic negdje. Nastavljam kasnije. Evo me vratio sam se. Sjedio na nekakvoj skupstini kao predstavnik drzave. Koja cast, mos si mislit. Bilo bi mi draze da sam jucer mogao na koncert Eda Majke. Kazu da je bilo super. Zvala me ona koja me kao ceka u Zagebu. Hoce doc preko bare da me posjeti. Neka dodje ali nedaj bog da mi ostane. Ne vjerujem joj bas previse. P.S. Procito u lokalnim novinama da se otvorilo bezbroj escort agencija samo sa potrebe delegate na Skupstinama MMFa i Svjetske Banke. | Nista money into a svjetskoj banci today. Here into a us The Office of into a vitreous scaffolding doalze all , plus drzavnici plus poslovnjaci. Of how them is not bed I will be bringing weed out invariably. A menu does not long ago , clutch me tie , stainless imat boxerice then these invariably down zulja. Bili Japanese , Frenchman , all hoce nesto with us. Limited space smo liquid USA when arrival gate into a EU. All bi colonize cream , and when assignation nor vrrhnja nor gammer vise nece to be. Management me zvalo. Moram ic whereabouts. Nastavljam at a later time. Evo me restore oneself. Take a seat at an some skupstini as a prophet unblushing. Which cast mos them philosopher. Whether bi we draze yes we do unattended jucer could at an concert Eda Mother. Cassowary that it is whether super VGA. Zvala me she which me as a ceka into a Zagebu. Hoce doc via at least yes we do me visitor. Neka assignation limit not long ago maker yes we do we remain. Does not vjerujem joj bourdon too high. P.S. Procito into a local journalist yes we do does Open countless escort agency merely from an want delegation at an Skupstinama MMFa plus Svjetske Bank. |
"The submarine erroneously entered Japanese waters for technical reasons. It is regrettable," [Japanese] Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura quoted a Chinese official as saying.I think it's neat that they figured out it was Chinese by the sound of the propellor.
The Prime Minister and his ally the U.S. President are mangling the [English] language, destroying its meaning by avoiding the use of verbs, twisting nouns into verbs, and endlessly repeating phrases until they become "zombified".Dogs and cats, living together--mass hysteria!
Inspectors at border checkpoints have seen it all: people rolled inside carpets, sewn into car seats and stuffed into washing machines, all attempting to be smuggled into the United States.That's just crazy!
But inspectors at the Tecate Port of Entry discovered a new twist recently when they encountered a little girl meticulously sealed inside a pinata.
"I'm glad I was arrested. I couldn't stop myself," officers quoted Toma as saying.I'm a rabid archivist. I've copied stuff from floppies to hard drives to CDs to DVDs. And I've lost data. The New York Times feels my pain...
In the meantime, individual PC owners struggle in private. Desk drawers and den closets are filled with obsolete computers, stacks of Zip disks and 3?-inch diskettes, even the larger 5?-inch floppy disks from the 1980's. Short of a clear solution, experts recommend that people copy their materials, which were once on vinyl, film and paper, to CD's and other backup formats.Meanwhile, a mysterious submarine has appeared near Okinawa.
But backup mechanisms can also lose their integrity. Magnetic tape, CD's and hard drives are far from robust. The life span of data on a CD recorded with a CD burner, for instance, could be as little as five years if it is exposed to extremes in humidity or temperature.
And if a CD is scratched, Mr. Hite said, it can become unusable.
Crewmembers of an MSDF P3C anti-submarine patrol aircraft spotted the submarine in seas off Miyako and Ishigaki islands, southwestern Okinawa Prefecture, early Wednesday morning. At 8:45 a.m., Defense Agency Director General Yoshinori Ono ordered the MSDF to chase the submarine after receiving approval from Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.I told you the items were unrelated.
"Some people are saying digital data will disappear not by being destroyed but by being lost," Dr. Rutenbeck said. "It's one thing to find the photo album of your trip to Hawaii 20 years ago. But what if those photos are all sitting in a subdirectory in your computer?"Okay, people need to seriously organize their computer files. I don't understand how you can not have an intuitive directory structure in which you can find all your items easily. The "My Documents" folder, in fact, is fantastic, because you can just dump everything there, and then save everything in My Documents. It's not difficult, people. STOP THE MADNESS!
For a year, Julee Lacey stopped in a CVS pharmacy near her home in a Fort Worth suburb to get refills of her birth-control pills. Then one day last March, the pharmacist refused to fill Lacey's prescription because she did not believe in birth control.Okay, dumbass, listen up.
Yeah, you're right about that connotation, I think, Dan. (Though Vader never truly submitted to Palpatine. He always entertained thoughts of overthrowing him and becoming the emperor/man in charge himself. Maybe he adopted the "my master" later on in order to try and convince Palpatine that he was sincere.
(Palpatine, of course, knew all this, as he was a brilliant evil genius, manipulating Vader's greed towards his own ends. But I digress.)
It still sounds cheesy, but meh.
As for the suit being empty, if it's empty, why do the arms need to be shackled up (in the doofiest possible pose)? I would guess that this is the point at which Anakin is fused to the suit (he is a cyborg, after all, and from recent "leaked" pictures it appears that he loses his leg as well as the hand he already lost. Those lava injuries are going to be bad, my friends).
The Dark Side does (according to comic book/novel canon) degrade the body. This is why the Emperor is so old; he has his own cloning tank for when his body fully dies, and he uses the Dark Side to transfer his mind to a new cloned body. (Which looks very buff and Aryan.) I don't know if this is going to be refuted by Episode III, or if we are going to see that Senator Palpatine is a clone puppet of Sidious, the real Palpatine...or what. (If the Kaminoans are to be believed, the cloning process does not result in a fully formed adult, like it did in the comics. But maybe Palpatine uses the Dark Side for that, as well.)
So! Orange eyes could be a sign of the Dark Side decaying you from the inside. (The Emperor's eyes are orange/yellow, in Jedi.)
Regardless. Here's how I see the progression:
First, we have the Holy Trilogy. It starts with a fable, an epic, that involves the fate of a handful of people as well as the fate of the galaxy. (And originally, it didn't have stupid slapstick comedy added for no reason.) It continues into a darker tale, a film that is a lot scarier. I was afraid to watch it as a kid. But ultimately, it's not a harmful movie, even allowing for the cliffhanger. It's life. Bad things happen. You deal with them and move on. Luke's new hand is a symbol of the fact that he's going to keep trying. Then we have Jedi, which is the weakest (I've argued before that Attack of the Clones is actually better than Jedi, but that really depends on my mood). This movie wasn't scary, but it had a lot of psychological stuff going on between Luke and Vader. It also had cute animals dying in a forest, which could be rather scarring.
The point I'm trying to make here is that the (original versions of the) Star Wars Trilogy were intelligent movies. They weren't "films", in the hoity-toity sense. They're not overly complex. But they're not dumbed-down, either.
But then we get the prequels.
The Phantom Menace: What, exactly, was the point of this movie? What happened here that couldn't have been interjected into Attack of the Clones as flashbacks? There is no epic, no endearing characters. We watch, detached, as some people run around fighting for reasons that are unclear. There's no emotion, no desperation, no need for them to win. I believe what happened here was a combination of too much complexity (in the plot, concerning galactic affairs) and too much dumbing-down (in regards to the characters, especially the comedic ones, but including others, like the completely pointless Mace Windu, and the inexplicably stubborn Qui-Gon Jinn. Padme was flat and stale, and Anakin was made of cardboard). Add in some stupid slapstick comedy and you've got yourself a winner! ;P
Attack of the Clones: Far stronger than TPM, but still not much of a movie. I had to craft an elaborate explanation for the wooden acting--one which I still cling to, desperately. This movie is 3/4 exposition, 1/4 climax, and then some hasty denouement that barely squeezes in. Threepio takes up Jar-Jar's place as Repository of Stupid Humor (though I'll admit to liking his better than Jar-Jar's). This movie, in an apparent effort to stave off the issue of complexity, has some really, really dumb moments. Example: Obi-Wan can't find Kamino in the archive. Jocasta Nu tells him "If it's not in the archive, it doesn't exist." Obi-Wan is completely baffled by this, because he knows something is there. The answer is patently obvious, even if you did grow up in a complacent culture with self-important librarians. But instead we are "treated" to a scene in which a kiddie Jedi points out Obi-Wan's lack of higher brain functions.
Due to the dumbing-down process, both TPM and AotC are kiddie movies (which is insulting to children everywhere--maybe I should say they're movies for dogs?--because kids have every right to complex entertainment, damn it). It's unclear who Lucas was trying to cater to here--families?--but obviously he was trying to cater, rather than just trying to tell a good story. Or at least, I'd prefer to believe that...and I'd prefer to believe that his edits to the originals are along that vein as well, even though he denies it ;P
The third movie, then, following two "family" movies, is supposed to be really Dark and Evil. But Lucas is committed to keeping it PG, from what I know. And I'd believe that, from the teaser.
Because the teaser is CHEESY!
What happens to dark subject matter when it isn't treated with the proper respect?
It becomes CHEESY!
What's going to happen to Darth Vader, arguably the best villain of all time?
He's going to turn CHEESY!
Given Lucas' current outlook on filmmaking, there is no way that this film could be anything close to Empire unless someone else directed it. Therefore, the themes explored in this film are not going to be given the proper weight. Vader will go from being the symbol of all the evil that lies in the hearts of mankind...to a caricature.
I don't know why people are getting excited about this movie. Everything I see just reinforces the fact that it's going to suck.
Masanori Nakamura, professor of modern Japanese history at Kanagawa University, said it cannot be claimed that the idea of using the emperor as a peace symbol as presented in the document led directly to the postwar imperial system, but it is significant that the United States harbored such an idea at an early stage in the war with Japan.This is pretty interesting, and I would like to read the full documents, as well as Kato's article.
"I know that you are very special to Keith, so that means you are very special to us."That quote was so refreshing to read. I hope Mr. Silberman is right, and this will all be a historical footnote in 20 years.
George W. Bush * (R) 58,978,616 51%Number 4! Not bad, Badnarik! (We'll ignore the fact that Nader did horribly this time around...)
John F. Kerry (D) 55,384,497 48%
Ralph Nader (I) 394,578 0%
Michael Badnarik (Lib.) 377,940 0%
